COLUMN: During their O-Live broadcast/webcast today, Open Labs revealed their newest music PC product, called SoundSlate, which has the Open Labs UI, and about 10,000 sounds built-in, with support for dual monitors. It’s a stand alone music PC that fits in one standard rack mount space, and has an external touch panel interface.

It comes with the RIFF user interface, 2GB RAM (up to 4GB), and is designed to be a stand-alone VST open source sample player. It is intended to be a lower cost option for those who may be on a budget, and don’t need the larger form factor of the Open Labs NeKo, MiKo, or Dbeat.

It also supports ADAT I/O, unlike the standard Gen5 MiKo, NeKo or Dbeat. This makes it ideal for digital streaming of 8 channels to a mix desk, or to another recording system like a Digidesign 003R, MOTU, or similar hardware DAW audio interface.

An additional system is available with two SoundSlates racked with Furman power for live performance settings, where the “RPS” system works as a redundant playback/performance module; with live switching if one unit fails.

Pricing will be under $2,000 for a single rack unit, and according to the webcast will start shipping on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009.