Hi,
one fellow musician asked me the following:
how long does it takes before you can hear the mp3-song (vocal) playing on the KN7000.
He is a singer, whishes to buy the Kn7 and want to use a mp3 for 2nd/3rd background-vocal.
Does it also works with midi: i.e. playing a midifiles on the KN7 and at the same time the mp3/wma vocal/song?
I myself have no experience with the audiofunction.
I know one need the SZ-CB7 SD-Audio-Kit to get it on the SD card.
Is there anyone to advice me, so I can give it trought to him?
Thanks in advance,
Cees


[This message has been edited by cees (edited 11-15-2003).]

do you mean load time or play time?

I have a 256 card with almost 100 audio CD tracks on it. The load time from putting it into the SD slot until ready to play is about 5 seconds. The play time is instantaneous and depends on the silence you record at the beginning of the tracks, i.e. if the tracks starts after 2 seconds of silence, it will start 2 seconds after you press the play button. If you edit the tracks for zero silence at the beginning then playback is instantaneous when you press the play button. Likewise if you want to skip 10 tracks forwards or backwards while playing, the new track starts to play immediately after the tenth press.

Real background vocals is an ideal application, I have heard a vocalist duet live with herself from SD in a large concert hall and the clarity was excellent at high volumes over a large high quality pa system.

Thank you Alec for your helpful and clear answer. I understand the possibilities.
For his question about the background vocal together with MIDI, I think for myself: why one would?
To my opinion one can record midi (output) and background voices at the same time, and use it then as an mp3 to play it on the kn7?
But techically spoken, is it possible to let play midi in KN's sequencer (and play along) together with a mp3 on the KN7?
It is difficult to explain another question, but I hope I made myself clear ;-)
Cees

You made it very clear, and I believ that this is the way of the future. With storage media getting larger and cheaper all the time - midi files will become passe. I already use many trax recorded in this manner and I'm spoiled. Tweak your sequences as best you can - record them to audio with background vocals, and use the MP3 as your backing track. It's stable. It's easily played on many players or laptops and simple to make quality tracks available in a host of situations .... eg: acoustic piano, guitar etc.

The answer is yes, you can synchronise the sequencer playback with the audio playback from SD.

The "Getting the most from your KN7000" book has half a dozen demo tracks on the CD to load onto the SD card. Some use 7000 created backings, including the 'strumming guitars' but most of these use audio backing tracks of a real orchestra; real brass, real strings etc etc. The melody from the KN7000 sequencer plays along with the real orchestra, along with a slideshow of the rolling music score in the screen. You can switch the melody off in the sequencer and play along yourself live with the real orchestra using the KN7000 voices and still have the rolling music score in the screen to read the melody, all perfectly synchronised with the music.

Thus the possibilities are endless, if you play acoustic instrument and KN7000, you can duet with yourself by recording the acoustic instrument onto the SD card, then play keyboard.
You could use KN auto-accompaniment backing or use a karaoke mp3 orchestral track for backing.
As I said vocal or choral backing is an ideal application for SD audio playback.

Basically any audio multitracking for which I needed a laptop, portable flash or hard drive mp3 player or cd player to play along with before can now be stored on the SD card requiring only the KN7000 for playback.

Much appreciate your replies Uncle Dave and Alec.
I guess the fellow musician's choise is a lot easier with these answers and views.
Cees

Hi,
I've had a friend record backing tracks for me on his Wersi ie I gave him the sheet music, he recorded the whole song but left out the melody part. He saved it as a wav file. I converted to mp3 using the Panasonic SD Audio Writing Kit & saved it to sd card.
I then play along using left & right hand melody parts.

I used to also record my 9000pro songs ( backing tracks) as mp3's. Wheras if I'd saved those 9000pro songs as midifiles, they would have required a fair bit of editing for me to be able to play them in the kn7.


best wishes
Rikki



[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 11-15-2003).]

Is it possible to trigger the playback of a specific audio track from external MIDI equipment? I'd like to be able to assign the appropriate MIDI command to a MIDI foot switch in order to trigger recorded sound effects stored on the SD card.

Thanks,
Mark.