Klarinet Archive - Posting 000165.txt from 1997/11

From: oliver@-----.EDU (Oliver Seely)
Subj: Re: MIDI
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 12:49:14 -0500

Lori,

Right now I'm using three MIDI "players." The first one that I bought was a
Turtle
Beach Tropez board for my PC because PC Magazine had given it an "Editor's
Choice."
I've been delighted with the sound of the 128 wave table instrument assignments.
Particularly the transition from the concert grand piano (assignment 1) to
honky tonk
(assignment 4). All the others are quite nice. I hope that the
documentation that
comes with the Tropez has improved somewhat. It was "slim pickins" for
someone like
me who only wanted to play music - 1 with the synthesizer. It didn't really
tell me
a lot about how to changes various features.

Then I joined a group called (if I remember right) WIND out of the Memorial
University
of Newfoundland. The group is made up of a bunch of people really into music
synthesis, MIDI input and output, etc. One of these days I'll rejoin
because I've become
knowledgeable enough to ask intelligent questions. Anyway, I asked the
group what kind
of PC card to buy for my laptop. The climate of opinion seemed to be
Roland. So I
bought the 55P (there are two letters preceding the 55 but I can't remember
them).
It was top dollar, you can imagine, and I wasn't too happy about having to
lay out all
that money, but I've been every bit as happy with it as with my Turtle
Beach. In fact
the instrument assignments sound like maybe they are the same files. The
documentation is a little better than Turtle Beach's but as I recall, not much.

In the last two months I bought that deal from Gateway 2000, the multimedia
PC for
$1499, which must have been advertised in every newspaper in the U.S. I
have to hand
it to Gateway. They DO sell quality. The soundboard inside is an ENSONIQ
PSI Audio
board (that's not exactly it, the PSI is wrong, but it is close -- I'm at
work, can't you
tell?) But the documentation that came with the computer dealing
specifically with the
soundboard is REALLY slim pickens. So I contacted Ensoniq and they sold to
me for
$10 (!) the installation CD-ROM and the user guide. I haven't gotten around
to looking
at what is on the CD-ROM. The user guide is rather slim and gives a bit more
technical info than that which came with the computer. BUT -- and this is
the big
BUT, I don't like at all the instrument assignments. The Grand Piano sounds
almost
like a honky tonk and there isn't much difference between it and the real
honky tonk
on assignment 4. But one is supposed to be able to change to new wave table
assignments on the Ensoniq board. I still don't know if that is true
because I haven't
yet had the time to find out.

It seems like all of us are trying to pull ourselves up by the seat of our
pants.
Good luck in your decision.

Oliver