Hello to all

I am new in this forum, I have listened many good things about it, I expect to confirm them.

I have an old Roland arranger keyboard without disquete driver. I want to be able to use new styles, and my dealer offers myself three options:

1. To buy another keyboard. I want a keyboard for use at home, and especially easy management, but with a very good piano voice (or that permit importing it). My dealer prefers, in average range, Ketron XD9, then PA60, and then PSR2000, all similar in price.
Which of them has better piano voice, or if it does not, which of them permits to import and load external piano voices on the keyboard? (I like a lot the piano voice from my Roland kb)

2. To buy an arranger module and to connect it to my present keyboard, that I would use only as midi keyboard. My dealer knows Ketron XD3 ¿are there any more?

3. An opcion a little strange, perhaps. My dealer tells there are some programs to make sound yamaha styles on pc playing from a midi keyboard (as my present keyboard). I have read something upon the "Realtime Style Performer", and I have seen in a forum informacion upon it, that I put here: "The gives you the ability to play musical styles created for Yamaha PSR musical instruments via MIDI. The program is solely dedicated to realtime "live" performance with a MIDI keyboard connected to PC, like it is done by the auto accompaniment PSR keyboards. It is not a sequencer. By this the program introduces new abilities and does not cross performance of the other software applications and utilites available on the market, which deal with Yamaha PSR styles and MIDI."
Is that a real option? Is it possible to play a midi keyboard, and from it, make sounding yamaha styles on pc? Does changing left hand chords on keyboard change chords on yamaha style loaded on pc?

I will thank a lot all your sincere opinions about my questions.
Cheers.

I am only a few steps ahead of you in making these decisions... it's not easy. Ultimately, your decisions will involve some trade-offs... sounds, convenience, support, cost, and your priorities. There is a tremendous amount of wisdom and knowledge on this forum. My best advice is for you to use the archives with it's search function. Good luck!

Glenn

track,
first, welcome to synthzone!
There are many sound modules you can choose from with dozens of piano sounds to control from your keyboard. Yanaha,Roland, Korg Kurzweil on and on, they all make modules. As far as what sounds the best, is something you have to find out for yourself. As you read through the forum you will see that we all have our favorites, because the sound of something is a personal thing. So what I like, you might not.
My suggestion is to try some modules and see what you like.

As far as trading for a new keyboard, that is just about the same answer. What I think would be fair to say is that Yamaha has the most available styles and extra goodies available on the net. Most all the boards though are pretty good and it just becomes a matter of features that one has over the other and what you feel you need to have in a board.
Terry

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 09-28-2002).]

Tracknet,
If you already like the piano on your old Roland and just want new styles and you already have a computer, then option 3 is the way to go. I tried to do this this weekend: I had the software, styles, midi cables, computer, midi keyboard. I got an error when trying to load the RTSP - damn.

Starkeeper:
Real time style layer is on http://lotal.narod.ru/

I have been able to load the program.
I have connected my Roland kb to pc by two midi cables (midi in, midi out), and I have added a midi instrument to midi port...

But, then, something doesn't ok, because I load a style, programa start it, but it doesn't sound: only silence and diods go.

I'll try to know what is wrong, perhaps I need to do something more in my kb or my computer.

It will be great if someone here knows more about it.

Cheers

I would be interested in knowing as well why your setup does not work.
What do you mean "But, then, something doesn't ok, because I load a style, programa start it, but it doesn't sound: only silence and DIODS go."

Tracknet:
A) is your puter MIDI OUT linked to your MIDI interface? Maybe you linked it to an internal synth (I mean soft-linked)

B) is your board ready for MIDI receiving? Is it able to receive multichannel midi messages? Does it have something to press/turn? I have a Roland JD800, and its multitimbral behavior should be explicitly selected.

C) no offence, but is your midi cable properly connected? In my setup I often change my midi chain, and I often fail MIDI connections (well, this happened in the past: now I use blue cables for COMPUTER-To-KEYBOARD path and black cables for the reverse)



[This message has been edited by RicFreak (edited 10-01-2002).]