Jim-
    I was chatting with a friend last week at TMEA and he mentioned someone developing a Standalone VST host machine? Can we get some more info on this?

This kind of thing has existed for a while...  something new may be due though...

http://www.museresearch.com/

Receptor is proably what you're talking about (see drumcat's link). Muse Research was exhibiting with us at TMEA, and they've developed a Receptor compatible version of VDL. Receptor is pretty darn cool. It may not be for everyone, but it's a hardware unit that holds VSTs and allows you to play them in real time, or in your studio. Think of it like an iPod for your virtual instruments. A sound canvas, but with the flexibility to hold whatever VST instruments you may own. Essentially, it's a second computer to play your sounds (with midi and audio routed via Ethernet), but without the overhead of having to run Windows or Mac OS.

I was told by a little bird that the only downside is that it does not support sound banks. So that would be kind of a bummer for us percussion guys who like to load a million instruments into a bank to be used by one channel.

Ya, for me it's one of those things that sounds great on paper...

[quote author=Bryan Harmsen link=topic=1579.msg7514#msg7514 date=1172208417]
I was told by a little bird that the only downside is that it does not support sound banks. So that would be kind of a bummer for us percussion guys who like to load a million instruments into a bank to be used by one channel.
[/quote]

VERY true...

[quote author=Jim Casella link=topic=1579.msg7506#msg7506 date=1172126489]
Essentially, it's a second computer to play your sounds (with midi and audio routed via Ethernet), but without the overhead of having to run Windows or Mac OS.
[/quote]

From the Muse website: ";Instead, it runs a custom-built version of Linux, which Muse Research has created to provide the lowest possible latencies coupled with the most efficient processor usage.";

This is really interesting because it's very possible to build a simple linux OS, but audio support on Linux is terrible- they must have had to do a lot of work to build a VST player. 

So does anyone have a working opinion of this thing?