MIDI purchase
Doug,
If you can tell us some things about your intended usage, it would help us
to make come recommendations to you. For example, do you wish to create
your own sounds and/or edit existing sounds in the synthesizer, or just
have good sounding patches of real instruments? Will the unit be used at
other locations, or will it always be connected to your computer? Do you
need something that's a piece of furniture, or would the ordinary black
plastic cases be fine? Also, some indication of relative quality that
you're interested in and your price range would help us out a lot.
The way MIDI is set up, you can't electrically parallel devices. The MIDI
THRU port allows you to daisy chain the MIDI signal from one device to
another. It's nice if you need to do that, but, if you find the 'perfect
keyboard' for you and it doesn't have one, go ahead and get it anyway.
You can buy after-market devices that will do that function, or get a MIDI
interface for your computer with more than one MIDI output.
It is common, but not universal among keyboards, to get a velocity
sensitive keyboard. It is highly desirable to have one. You need to be
careful when comparing specs because some keyboards that do not have a
velocity sensitive keyboard will still receive and use velocity data via
MIDI, and claim to be velocity sensitive on that basis.
Not all keyboards have editable sounds, and not all those that do have
editable sounds are necessarily supported on the Amiga. If editing is an
overriding issue, be sure to ask about it before you make your final
decision.
There are two things that are really important in terms of selecting an
instrument. 1) make sure that you get a unit that has a keyboard action
that you like – both in size and feel. If you don't like 'feel' of the
instrument, chances are that it won't be played much and your investment
will just sit around most of the time. 2) make certain that you like the
sound of the unit. You can generally get a better sound with an external
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