Klarinet Archive - Posting 000152.txt from 1997/11

From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
Subj: Re: MIDI
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 11:00:13 -0500

lori lovato wrote:

> Seriously though, anyone have any suggestions and/or advise for a midi
> first time purchaser?

External MIDI synth - Proteus (expensive!), Kurzweil MicroPiano (much
less - last time I looked it was about $400.00)
There's _many_ more.

IBM PC based cards - AWE32/64 - Price is very attractive, clarinet
sounds pretty good after twiddling a bit (why
do all the crads default to a _deep_ vibrato?).
Game support is good.
Turtle Beach - pricier, more "professional" than
AWE series (very little in the way of gaming
support), solid sound, good patch editor supplied
with the card.
Gravis used to be in there, but I don't know
if they're still around.

External MIDI synths are in most cases far superior to the MIDI
sounds produced by internal cards - but - you pay a far greater
amount for them. A good percussion only synth can set you back 2
or 3 hundred dollars.

I personally have 3 MIDI devices available to me on my home toy -
an AWE64, a (noname) card with a wave table synth (I can't remember
the manufacturer of the chip, but it was a major synth manufacturer),
and an external Yamaha PSR-510 (I think) for both MIDI in and out.
I run the outputs into a older Marantz stereo amp (via a mixer) and
then to a couple of Bose 301 speakers I had laying about.

Each has advantages and disadvantages. We won't talk about how many
MIDI patches, sequences, and maps I've got :) and I'm _still_
never satisfied.

Cheers,
--
Mark Charette, MIKA Systems, Inc., charette@-----.com
">>As far as I can tell, no."
">Fortunately, this is not correct."
"Proving once again that ... the best way to extract useful infor-
mation is to post wrong information." - Roger Glover, F90 mail list

   
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