Programmable Sound Computer That Does Anything
To understand where the future of music hardware is headed, take a look at how gaming consoles are created today. These used to be machines that were designed for a specific task – nothing more and nothing less. Imagine if your Nintendo 64 was able to browse the internet and store files locally as well. It was hard to imagine back then, but this is the norm when it comes to the Playstation 3 or the XBOX. These consoles are basically computers that are designed to run games. They aren’t as robust as your typically desktop, but they are also smaller and fine tuned for gaming (where a PC generally is not).
Is it possible that music hardware will one day be treated the same way? Imagine being able to load up any type of instrument on a machine that was built to accept programming. Some would say that the personal computer can already do this task and more – but the PC is not something we would like to haul around with us. A laptop brings us closer, but is still a computer at its more basic form. Could a small synth-specific computer give us what we need without the extras that a computer brings us?