shane@ganash.UUCP (Shane A. Bouslough) (02/27/85)
Greetings synthesis lovers,
I am glad I found this group. Now I have a reason to read the news.
Some notes on previous news:
1) Will someone please tell me more about the PAiA vocoder.
2) The two new MIDI keyboards from Roland are excellent, but their existance
is pointing to a trend which is going to explode in the near future. That
is: new synths are going to be modular rack mounts like the Roland Super
Jupiter so everyone can keep their favorite keyboard and still have access
to new technology as it developes.
3) I'm not sure if the Korg Poly-61 can be upgraded to have MIDI, but Korg
has come out with the Poly-61M which has it, thus it may be difficult to
upgrade (they may want you to buy a new keyboard).
4) The Kurzweil is one of the most incredible advances in synthesisers in
recent years. It's uniqueness comes from the fact that it models sampled
sounds taking into consideration many variables rather than just playing
back waveform tables. It knows harmonics vary with velocity, pitch, prox-
imity to other notes in a chord, etc. It's amazing to hear a whole cello
section explode by just holding down a few keys. By the way, if you want
their demo album forget it. They have demo compact discs (and cassettes)!
5) All the talk about MIDI and baud rate is semi-moot because of the new
MIDI-RS232 interfaces that are (relatively) cheap and are appearing almost
daily.
New news:
1) I am surprized no one has been jumping up and down about the new Mirage
by Ensoniq. It is packed full of desireable features and is the first
digitally sampling keyboard that is CHEAP! At $1695 the sound is wonderful.
The piano is very good and the velocity sensitive keyboard complements it
perfectly. It has problems though, mods are being sent to distributors
daily and one the one I was playing with couldn't read some of the
different sounds on the 3.25 inch floppy supplied with it. Also the
formatting on the floppies is proprietary so if you want to keep your own
sounds you have to buy pre-formatted disks at $20 a pop. You can however,
have 100% access to the waveform table through the MIDI interface so if
you have a PC you can store your own sounds on your own floppies. When they
get the bugs out this synth is gonna be awsome.
2) Have you noticed Oberheim and Rhodes don't push MIDI too much? They have had
their own computer interfaces for years and are resisting MIDI because
of the R&D money that would be wasted if it became standard.
3) Roland is working on a digitally sampling keyboard. Expect it RealSoonNow.
4) The MIDI seminar being given by Roland at many major cities lately is for
musicians that want to use it, software houses, and audio/visual companies.
They want $125 a person to attend probably to weed out the curious from the
serious. If anyone attends, I would love to find out how informative it was.
5) Roland is phasing out sequencers from their new synths because they want you
to put out $500 for their new external MIDI sequencer! GEEZ, gimme a break.
6) Does anyone have a list of 4-track cassettes and their price/features?
LONG LIVE DIGITALLY SAMPLING KEYBOARDS
--
Synthetically,
Shane A. Bouslough
{floyd, hjuxa}!ganash!shane
Periphonics Corp., 4000 Veterans Memorial Highway, Bohemia, NY 11716
(516) 467-0500