Concerning the value of the cd-writer...

consider the following:


There are the following features that are related to cdr:

a) all factory styles and sounds are stored in flash. Those can be erased, replaced and restored. Clearly, you cannot restore them through the floppy disk and it is not wise to store them in the harddrive, what if the harddrive get erased. Also even if you are careful, what if you totally new sounds and styles? You are not going to transfer them through floppy disks. So clearly there must be another medium. Also, what if you want to backup some styles and sounds you have creatred on the keyboard and you want to transfer them to the computer?

b) One of the requested feature is record audio on harddisk or keyboard. This gives you the option of transfering audio quality tracks from keyboard to computer. This is very important and very convenient.

c) backing up the harddrive

Let us look at all possible imaginable posibilities:

1) floppy disk: what about backing up 4GIG harddrive?

2) FLASH cards: First they are very expensive, the capacity is not as much as one CD_R, you cannot have and purchase unlimited amount of those cards, you cannot use the computer with those.

3) JAZZ drives. Very good and very powerful. But Jazz disks are expensive compared to CDR (they can store more data... BUT FOR A PRICE).. not available on most computers.

4) SCSI. very good and very fast. The problem they are not available on most computers. Especially, SCSI drives DO NOT... and let me repeat DO NOT perform THAT MUCH higher than ATA/100 7200RPM and therefore, most DAWs built these days are ata/100 based and not scsi-based. also you lose other conveniences as well.

5) CDRs, cheap, available, flexible. The only problem I can think of it is does the built in CDR get affected by transporting the keyboard.


Finally, the CDR cannot be a replacement for the harddrive. We still need large harddrives (and we may still need a floppy disk drive for now). The harddrive is important for recording audio to the drive, for saving, sequencing and so on and so forth.

In conclusion, the CDR is not a nice option. It is a must in a very serious modern keyboard workstation.