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FunkKeyStuff:My Musebox arrived today.

Short review: Swiss Army knife? Ha! More like a spork with a cracked handle! This thing is SOOO going back tomorrow.

Longer review: I didn't get any further with it than scrolling through the presets. That was all I needed to decide I wouldn't be keeping it. Without even considering the quality of the sounds, here were some of the problems I ran into...

• Pops, cracks and dropouts abounded, just like you'd expect from maxing out the CPU while playing VST instruments. These ranged from occasional (every few seconds or so) to constant, ear-shattering distortion, depending on the patch and how many notes I was holding.
• Latency was noticeable. Not unplayable, but definitely closer to that end of the spectrum than to the "near-zero latency" claimed in the ads.
• Loading patches is not instantaneous. For some sounds it's nearly so, but for others it's almost like waiting for a Kronos to boot up every time you change patches. I clocked the Big Concert Grand at a whopping 34 seconds.
• In less than an hour the unit froze on me twice. When I changed patches it stayed on the "Loading, please wait..." screen for an exceptionally long time, then said, "Error, could not load selected sound." The first time this happened, when I then went to load another sound, it said "Attempting to restart," and it was eventually successful. The second time it froze completely and I had to shut it down manually. Bear in mind this happened while scrolling through the presets, and not playing any notes.
• The headphone output was so noisy as to be unusable.
• Not an actual problem, but a trivial nuisance that I'll complain about anyway because I'm so pissed about the other issues: the power button blinks annoyingly when the unit is in standby mode. In fact, between that last sentence and this one, I went and unplugged the thing because I was tired of looking at it.

Even if all those problems magically disappeared, I still doubt I'd keep it, at least judging by the quality of the presets. The APs were useable but definitely nothing special, particularly by VST standards -- better than, say, the SV-1 samples, but not in the same league as even the original Ivory. The lower velocity ranges were almost nonexistent; pp sounded like mf with the volume turned down. There were a couple Wurli patches that I'd describe as "passable," and absolutely no Rhodes that were even that good; besides not sounding remotely authentic, they were all so thin and weak that I'm pretty sure they'd get buried in the mix by a flute. Clavs were lackluster ROMpler quality -- no specific pickup combinations, just the dreaded Clav 1, Clav 2, etc. Brass samples were heavy on the orchestral side, with not a decent pop brass section to be found. There may have been some moderately okay strings and synth pads, but honestly by the time I got to that point I had pretty much given up hope, and wasn't really even paying attention anymore.

Oh, and from what I can tell, I believe it is only bitimbral. You can have two patches split or layered, but that's it. I was hoping that each "patch" could have multiple zones with multiple timbres, but from what I've seen, that doesn't appear to be the case. Then again I'm not certain of this, because I decided it was going back before I dug deeply enough to find out for sure.

Usually when I don't like a piece of gear, I'll say this wasn't for me and didn't meet my specific needs, but I could see where others might find it useful. But I'm sorry to say this just seems like an utter piece of crap that never should have been released. Even if I simply got a faulty unit and the vast majority are free of the (multiple, seemingly unrelated) technical problems I encountered, it still seems like only a marginal step up from, say, a half-rack Korg module from the '90s (and in fact some of the sounds reminded me very much of those), with some extra audio processing abilities but far less flexibility. How exactly this is supposed to be a viable piece of gear in 2012 is beyond me.

This is really just a preliminary review - I really haven't had time to scroll through all the sounds to fully evaluate them. But I will share my first impressions. My experience was not as negative as FunkKeyStuff's - I will try to cover some of my own experiences relating to some of the points he raised.

I should start by saying that I'm an amateur jazz pianist, playing the occasional gig, looking for perhaps some decent electric piano and organ sounds to go with acoustic piano. Thus, my expectations of the Muse box are not as high as many of you. I've been quite happy with my Receptor 1 Rev C loaded with Komplete 5, using Akoustik Piano, Elektric Piano, and B4. But I was looking for something smaller, lighter, and simpler. In addition, the operating system for the Receptor 1 is no longer being updated, so I thought there might some additional cool features in Muse OS 2.0.

I have not personally encountered any pops, crackles, or dropouts. I also found latency acceptable, although I did go into Settings and change latency from "Normal" to "Lowest." I encountered one case where I received an error when loading a sound - it may have said something like "Attempting to restart" (don't remember exactly), but it didn't have to completely reboot before being ready to try again. Perhaps it performed the equivalent of a Quick Reset, normally performed by pressing the power button 3 times in succession.

I discovered that there is already a software update, which I downloaded and applied, so I'm guessing any crashes can be addressed in this manner. The upgrade was downloaded and installed automatically (this required a network connection to the Internet), and I was asked to reboot. I said OK, but the Musebox appeared to freeze on the Shutting Down screen. (Progress appeared to be at 100%.) I waited several minutes for fear of interrupting the process, after which I tapped the Power button twice (the normal shutdown command), which had no effect. Finally, I had to hold the power button down, which is the equivalent to pulling the plug. After this, however, the Musebox seemed to start up OK. My box shipped with System Version: 1.0.20120220 - after the upgrade, it was 1.0.20120222. The other stats in the About Box:

Hardware Version: Musebox (Rev A)
Memory Available: 53% of 2G Total
Primary Drive Space Available: 467.9M of 7G Total
CompactFlash Space Available: Drive Not Found

I confirm the 34-second loading time of the Big Concert Grand, though most patches load much faster. I think this is probably inevitable, since the sound samples are not in ROM - they must be loaded into RAM from the hard disk, and even a solid-state hard drive will not accomplish a near-instant load.

I heard a couple of light pops when shutting the unit down, which surprised me, because the Receptor has a relay which disables audio output whenever it's changing states. Nothing too severe, however.

One problem I had was finding the Mix panel - it was not visible in the Muse Remote Control screen, and I searched in vain for the right button to invoke it. The docs said nothing about this. In the end, when I changed the resolution of the Muse UI, it turned out to be at the right edge, as part of the normal screen - it was just invisible with my initial settings.

I have found a few sounds that are good, and some that are not, but as I mentioned, I have much to explore. That said, some of the pianos did have a rather narrow dynamic range. And while playing a descending chromatic scale from G3 on the Studio Grand patch, the piano suddenly became much more trebly when I reached D3 - obviously a patch boundary.

If I could give my own perspective on Muse Research and the Musebox, this is what I would say (this is pure conjecture, of course): Muse made an amazing product in the Receptor, but it wasn't cheap to develop, and it wasn't cheap to support. There were many famous users, deservedly so, but the box was expensive, and in the grand scheme of things, they probably didn't sell enough to make a huge profit. The open structure which allowed users to install software was also probably a nightmare to support - and not necessarily due to problems with the Receptor, but sometimes because of problems with the VSTs it hosted. When the Intel Atom platform came along, with it's smaller footprint and lower cost, they saw an opportunity to make a Receptor for the masses, leveraging their existing technology and turning a higher profit. There was probably no way they could have supported user-installed software for a user base as large as they hoped to attract. So they were forced to make Musebox a closed platform. Once it was closed, however, they probably felt compelled to cram every possible sound into it, to justify that decision, and to answer all the questions about why this or that sound wasn't in it. With a slower CPU and other resource constraints dictated by the form factor, they had to compromise somewhat to shoehorn all these sounds into the final product. Would I have preferred the Musebox with just Ivory and maybe B4 installed? Sure. But who knows, maybe someday there will be custom editions of the Musebox with other sets of sounds installed. That's the beauty of its flexibility - they wouldn't have to change the hardware, just the software.

Despite the problems, I'm not planning to return my Musebox. I am hopeful of additional sounds being released in the CF format. And in the meantime, I found a pretty promising organ split, and some of the electric pianos might work for me, as well. I also have faith in Muse - the Receptor has some amazing technology behind it, and I believe much of that value was transferred to the Musebox. It can only get better.

Now, time for my pet peeve. The QuickStart guide is GLUED to the top of the MuseBox. Once I decided to keep the unit, I knew this had to go - but it was definitely NOT made to be removed. I spent probably an hour trying to get it off. For starters, it's covered with a plastic layer - once that's gone, the paper underneath has so much glue that you can peel up a little edge, thinking you'll pull off a big hunk, but it shreds so you only get about a square millimeter. Even after I got all the paper off, there was lots of thick, sticky glue all over the top. I took the top off and put it in hot, soapy water (I know this voided my warranty, but that was gonna happen anyway), but it had no effect. I tried acetone, but that started taking the paint off as well. Ultimately, I just had to rub and rub with a cloth to get it off - well, actually, there's still some residue I'm working on. What a hassle!

Looking forward to some more Musebox reviews...anybody else ordering one?

pwm