There are two sides to the coin when you want to create a new musical instrument from the bottom up.  One side begins with the modest hackers who only want to pick apart an instrument to see how it works.  These are the guys who have little financial backing, and chances are pretty high that they’ll actually destroy something they are working on before it even starts.  These are the ones I like, because they have to final a clever way to make things work, and they don’t have development teams working around the clock to fix their problems.  On the other side of the coin you have the big names with millions of dollars at their disposal. These are the ones who take an idea and put every ounce of their energy into making it happen.  The initial costs are mostly done with research and development, so there is no real trial and error process that needs to take place.  Sometimes the heads of these companies do not know a thing about what they are producing; they only know that it will be profitable to sell it at a high price.  Both of these methods have unique outcomes, but one is almost always more expensive that the other. http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/07/10/alphasphere-nexus-now-available-in-the-us/