Keith McMillen Instruments, makers of alternative MIDI controllers and audio interfaces like the QuNeo, QuNexus, K-Board and Soft Step and 12 Step conrollers, have announced the launch of KMI Labs, a showcase for the technologies developed at the company.

Preliminary technologies showcased at KMI Labs include

• smart fabric (which senses variation in pressure and changes resistance as it is compressed) used in the company’s MIDI controllers
• the Acoustic Instrument Message (AIM) protocol, which performs a spectral analysis of the sound from each individual string to turn timbre into synth commands and can run over standard MIDI

Some of the current and upcoming instrument projects on the site are

• the StrongArm six-string sustainer (pictured, below; here’s an overview and this is an instrument demo)
• the StringPort guitar synth and MIDI controller (an overview, and a demo)
• the K-Board Pro 4, a four octave MIDI keyboard controller with “true X-Y-Z response per key” (pictured, right,