Post
by mazz » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:28 pm
Just got back from a nice couple of hours at Muse Research in Menlo Park, CA. It's a bout a half hour drive from my house, longer coming home because of heavy traffic on 101.
The main sales guy Bryan, who is in the videos on their website, did a nice thorough presentation and showed the capabilities of the Receptor nicely.
Basically they can do what they do with a seemingly lesser powered machine because it runs in Linux and it uses many fewer CPU cycles and much much less RAM than a regular PC. PCs pretty much need much more effort and hardware to get the same performance results because of all the stuff that runs in the background, even on a stripped down system.
The Receptor is designed primarily for live performance in that the design mandate is for as close to zero downtime as possible and also wicked fast response to MIDI (very low latency) quick patch changing and some nice ways to set up splits and layers really quickly. They also have 3 insert effects per channel and 2 send effects as well. These effect setups can be any plug in that you have on your system.
Lots of composers have also bought Receptors. For me, some attractive features are the Uniwire (Ethernet), very fast loading of large templates, easy to navigate OS and setup, the ability to hook a VGA monitor and mouse and keyboard up to do editing, or run the setup app remotely over the network, bulletproof OS (no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs ghosts in the machine here!).
He loaded up about 10 channels of VIs, everything from Kontakt to Omnisphere, Stylus, FM8, Lounge Lizard, etc. It didn't choke, the stuff loaded quickly and at no time did it crash. The only time there was an issue was trying to load up Alchemy, but that was because it wasn't authorized yet on the demo system.
Also, they will load and authorize all your software, no need to send it to them, they have it all there. They have tech support!
I'm seriously considering getting one because I could load up LASS and my other string and brass libraries that run in Kontakt and basically run with no downtime, viruses, headaches. It would boot up quickly, I could set up a template with basically the entire LASS library in banks with keyswitches/program changes and be ready to rock. Getting lots of music out the door quickly is one of my goals and this would facilitate that. Plus when that big film/game scoring gig comes along, there will be no stress in the gear department. James Newton Howard just bought a few so that's a good endorsement right there. Also they don't give away any units to endorsees, everyone who owns one has bought one, even Herbie Hancock!
All in all a worthwhile field trip!
If you buy one directly from them, tell them I sent you!
