Ok so there was some hinting from me yesterday regarding a new instrument that was truly an open system and that generated some excitement. Sorry to all those who PM'ed me and I didn't answer. I wanted to do this right and rather than posting bits of information on the forum, I was hoping to get you all some sort of an exclusive and indeed that's what you will get.
The actual developer will join the forum later today and actually answer your questions.
OK... here goes, I'll tell you what I'm comfortable talking about and I'll then hand it over to you guys and the actual developer.
The company behind all this is an Italian Company called Lionstracs. They already produce a Linix based keyboard called the Mediastation which is an Arranger Keyboard / Workstation / VSTi Multi Host. For a number of reason I've always felt that the concept was directed at the wrong people because ( and no disrespect to arranger users) arranger users are a different breed with very different needs, but we won't go into that here. The important thing here is that the new products are cut away from that side of things and are directed squarely at the likes of us, the workstation and DAW users. The systems Lionstracs offer in this area are also considered to be well developed.
There are a number of new keyboards and rack units on the way. The keyboards range from a 61 Groove and Groove DJ keyboards( I believe this is a 49 key unit but I could be wrong) right out to the full 88 Stage Pianos too. With the rack units you have a 2U and a 4U designs. (obviously the release of every item will take a while, but I believe the Groove Keyboards are almost ready).
There are two type of screens used across the designs, some are 800X600 8 Inch displays and others are 260X64 sized displays (same shape as KORG 01). The 4 Unit Rack actually has both displays. You have the 8 Inch on the left side and in the top right you have the 260X64 size which glows Blue with White writing. Both are Touch Screen too.
For the front panel controls I believe this will vary, but as far as I'm aware in all cases you get Rotary Encoders. I believe some keyboards come with sliders but the racks only have the encoders. The buttons on all the units all illuminate and can all do two colours, orange and green.
Connectivity is partly what you would expect from a true open keyboard which means Yes you can do things like connect your Monitor to the back of the keyboard and so on. The other connectivity varies for different products and I don't have all the details, but from the 2U rack you can expect 4 assignable pedal connections and dual midi I/O. Twin L&R Audio outs too. The 4U rack on the other hand has 40 audio connections on the back, 20 I/O. You also get things like 8 Midi I/O too. I can't remember the other details on that right now though.
All the systems are truly fully open, meaning you can technically run any VSTi you want on it. I think it's important to understand that there is also a difference here between the Lionstracs products and the likes of Music Receptor or SM Pro Audio's V-Rack and V-Machine. While they are open systems too, you can't install what you want on them. You have to wait until compatibility is added, or in the case with SM Pro Aduio you have to use a PC running an application called VFX to load the VSTi's onto the V-Rack/V-Machine devices and even at that you need an additional wizard file for most plugins to get them working.
Where with the Lionstracs products open means you don't need wizard files and you can install whatever you want and in addition to that you have full access to the actual plugins.
From the VSTi side of things you can run up to 8 Hosts at the same time where I believe windows can only run 1 so there are additional possibilities here over the likes of a Neko / Miko from that point of view. I don't know enough about this to comment though, so I'll leave that to the developer to explain how it's been streamlined through their custom software.
From a price point of view, I believe that all the units will be very competitive. If you were to go on the price of the existing Mediastation and to go all out by pick the most expensive and most powerful 76 model you could buy, your still looking at under 3K for the highest model. So time will tell, and all this looks to be hotting up to be something very interesting indeed.
Regards
Sharp.
Within reason obviously. 
). I was hoping it'd be a touch screen so I wouldn't break it in first use ya know? 
and to be so upgradable is a huge.
