Acoustics and Electronics
It is most likely that you must have heard the electronic version of a piano before you ever heard an acoustic one. 
What are the chances that you have heard authentic electronic reproduction of the tambura? or the tabla? Most probably none. Radel is a small ISO 9001 company based in Bangalore that makes microcontroller-based gadgets which almost exactly reproduce the tambura and the tabla. Although they have some small audio clips of the sounds that these radio-shaped boxes produce, they show promise! The controls seem minimal - the tambura has controls to tune pitch whereas the tabla has about 60 preset taals (rhythms). Now, I have seen my friend using African instruments to mimic Indian percussion instruments while composing on the computer. So theoretically, if electronics can produce close reproduction of Indian string and percussion, so can software.
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1. Debashish said...
I had once stumbled upon an Indian Music sampler Swarshala while I was searching for a free sampler. I had earlier tried DJ and wish sombody comes up with an affordable Indian one :)
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