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AMCS - the Advanced Music Construction System - WW7 workstation

This year 3rd Event Technologies launched the WW7 workstation, the first product to be released by the company to supply an area in media production technologies that give hardware reliability with software capability. The product is a dedicated desktop box for making music with the unique AMCS operating system. The robust case contains a VIA Technologies APC8750 board featuring an ARM processor, 512 megabytes of memory, a micro SD slot, four USB ports, 3.5mm stereo audio jacks, VGA and HDMI video output. With dimensions of 22cm wide by 11cm deep by 4.4cm high, makes it one of the smaller and lighter devices of its kind on the market.

AMCS is an embedded step sequencer with a "Tracker-like" interface which sole purpose is for music production. Roughly two decades ago the creation of the system began due to its creator wanting to produce studio grade sound and being stuck with a Tracker software only able to use short low-fidelity sound samples and no MIDI support. Historically Tracker had been hugely popular with music making on many computer platforms and presented in many variations, but by design has always been aimed at low computer resources, which led to limitations in capability.

The concept of making music through a top-down grid interface is still popular with music producers using newer sequencers, often remakes of classic Tracker software removing previous limitations and enabling full music production.

AMCS differs from Tracker in an ability to create music live, a user can compose and tweak whilst playing. Also instead of set length patterns, there are 256 variable loops that can contain up to 256 cues of notes or functions. These are then blended with a mixer which has 256 arrangements able to be stored and recalled in different ways.

However like Tracker, the system is light on computer processing, making it capable of operating on energy efficient technology and tolerate warm environments without failure.

The live performance aspect of AMCS allows for the system to be used like a DJ would mixing music, except that all the parts can be changed on the fly, leading to an ability to take the performance in any direction the artist likes.

Opposed to other music sequencers there is no requirement to pre-own or set up a computer, it has a clear graphical interface and is ready to use for anyone wanting to make music.

Launch price tag is 249 GBP, limited stock available to the UK;
http://amcs.3rdevent.net/upgrade.htm