General Midi Keyboards |
| This page is dedicated to explaining how general midi keyboards or
digital pianos are not effective enough in order to produce quality
results for your midi compositions. There are a variety of midi
keyboards on the market, ranging from cheap casios, to the higher
quality casio wk3000ad 76 key general midi keyboard, to one of the
highest quality midi keyboards called the Kurzweil. There are a variety
of digital pianos out there too. Price range of all midi keyboards
varies from $50 - $5000. The question is, are these more expensive midi
keyboards going to make a composition sound full of life? There are many things that an ordinary person will not know about a midi keyboard. Some general midi keyboards produce wonderful sounds. There's no doubt about that. But midi keyboards ranging from $500 - $5000 are simply rip offs. The reason for this is because midi keyboards contain ROM (read only memory). ROM is memory that can't be manipulated, and can hold very little data. Therefore, all the WAV files that are stored in the ROM of a midi keyboard are limited. Each note contains a series of wav files. Some of the more expensive midi keyboards may have up to 3 or 4 velocity layers, and about 5 seconds of length for each note, then the WAV file loops after it passes the 5 seconds. This is to save memory. Midi keyboards also use another clever trick to save memory. Instead of sampling EACH note, they simply raise the pitch of one note until it becomes ridiculously noticeable. They may do this for a 5 - 10 note span. So, even if a digital piano has 88 distinct notes, there may only be 30 actual notes sampled. The degrees obviously vary with the more expensive general midi keyboards. And if your talking about a sound card, forget it. Sound cards only have 2 megabyte soundbanks for each instrument. Most soundcards will only have one velocity layer with instant looping. A piano may contain only 5 to 10 of these notes sampled. Same goes for the strings, guitars, bass guitars, drums, harps, woodwinds, brass, etc. Never waste money on a soundcard if your only goal is to make your midi sound more realistic. It simply will not happen, even with a very expensive soundcard. If you don't believe me on this one, simply listen to your compositions using your soundcard. The playback is horrible. What I am trying to get at is that my recording studio uses genuine sounds that far exceed the most expensive soundcard, digital piano or general midi keyboards. I absolutely use no looping tricks and no memory saving tricks. Furthermore, every note is sampled with 4 - 8 velocity layers, natural decay, and excellent reverb qualities. I even have separate stacatto sounds, and up/down bowing sounds, which you will NEVER find on any soundcard or general midi keyboard. If you don't believe me, simply find demos of any expensive midi keyboards, and compare them to mine. |