Step Your Production Up With The Neko! by kbone, 05/14/09 11:11:10

Photos: Mark Ewing

The workstation concept has always been an attractive one: everything you need to accomplish a particular job housed in one package. In the field of music technology, workstations started with the integration of keyboard, sequencing and synthesis facilities. The idea has grown to encompass storage, more and more effects, and eventually audio recording of some form, whether as linear tracks or by means of sampling options.

But a number of questions often occur to the more thoughtful workstation synth user: wouldn't it be nice if we could swap around different bits of various manufacturers' technology to customise our workstation? What if we could add plug-ins to our main instrument? And wouldn't it be great if we could run our favourite sequencer on our workstation?

Maverick US developer Open Labs have finally provided an answer to these questions in the form of the Open Synth Neko 64, which builds a PC into a keyboard-equipped package and is therefore capable of running audio-sequencing software, virtual instruments and plug-in effects within the one case. The Neko has been a couple of years coming, and was given a long introduction back in the February 2003 SOS NAMM show report, but it's finally here. And it's deep — a keyboard workstation with an entire PC inside its case, including audio and MIDI hardware and a host of music-making software. Everything can be done in one integrated environment: MIDI sequencing, audio recording, editing and mixing, and mastering to CD. At home in the studio or on stage, Neko can be taken anywhere you'd take an ordinary synth, except it's more powerful and expandable — oh, and larger and heavier, of course!

You're also free to add the commercial software of your choice to the supplied collection. It may not be possible to assemble a 'best of' from various Korg, Roland and Yamaha synths with Neko, but given that practically everything in synthesis and sampling history has now been emulated in some form in software, you should be able to easily assemble an instrument that does what you want, in your way. That's the theory, anyway. What about in practice?