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I agree about the oxygen8 not having enough keys. However, that's what I have and use, so I wanted to speak from experience. There are other options for more full-size keyboards.
The second to last is full-size and semi-weighted. The last has hammer action! Though it is 600$US.

I agree about the oxygen8 not having enough keys. However, that's what I have and use, so I wanted to speak from experience. There are other options for more full-size keyboards.
The second to last is full-size and semi-weighted. The last has hammer action! Though it is 600$US.

I agree about the oxygen8 not having enough keys. However, that's what I have and use, so I wanted to speak from experience. There are other options for more full-size keyboards.
The second to last is full-size and semi-weighted. The last has hammer action! Though it is 600$US.

I have to admit I don't fully understand these all-powerful keyboards. Why not just use a computer? Software synthesis and recording? Better gui (larger real estate for sure), more choices. You could posit portability but I think my powerbook and my oxygen8 is more portable than this sucker. It's cool, it's geeky, but that does not make it worth the cash, especially if I'm just worried about getting things done. It seems to me all-in-one systems are more prone to breakin down. Modularity, right? It is pretty though.

I'd get this one instead. It's basically the same keyboard, but m-audio dumbed it down, called it the Keystation and is selling it for $99. Guitar Center had it last night for $140, I think. More features, including the pitch wheel and slider functionality. Give it a look, you might like it better.

I can vouch for that M-Audio USB Uno; it works great and could not be simpler to set up. Just make sure to download the newest OS X drivers as in the box it may come with a bunch of OS 9 stuff that won't mean anything to GarageBand.

After installing the drivers, though, it's completely plug and play, the best MIDI experience I've ever had.

~jeff

I can vouch for that M-Audio USB Uno; it works great and could not be simpler to set up. Just make sure to download the newest OS X drivers as in the box it may come with a bunch of OS 9 stuff that won't mean anything to GarageBand.

After installing the drivers, though, it's completely plug and play, the best MIDI experience I've ever had.

~jeff

"musicians, on the other hand, buy turtle beach sound cards..."

Baloney. Unless they've introduced it recently, TB/Voyetra have NOTHING in pro audio, or even pro-sumer. What do they have to compete with this: SekD or this: m-audio or this: aardvark ?

A whole lot of the commercial stuff you hear today was done with ProTools: DigiDesign

Real musicians use cassettes, when we can afford them.

I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 running under Mandrake 9. It took a little tweaking but now works well. It's missing many of the bells and whistles present on the Audigy, but in return you get high-quality* DA and AD converters, MIDI in/out, and SPDIF in/out. Simple, very low noise, records and plays back at 24-bit 96Khz. I use it for music production but for things like gaming you might like the EAX effects and other perks on the SB.

* - you can pay $1000 just for an AD/DA converter, so "high quality" is relative, but it definitely beats out the SB.

I use a midiman DMAN 2044. It only works in Win98, but it's awesome. It has 4 in / 4 out 1/4inch jacks. I use CoolEdit Pro from Syntrillium software for multitrack recording and editing. Everyone I know in a band smacks their head after paying thousands of dollars to rent fancy studios when they see this cheapo setup.

So I'll post my own question, guessing what the post was supposed to be: I'm in the market for a digital multitrack, but since I'll be recording my wife's voice, a guitar and keyboard, I shouldn't need more than four tracks. I've seen lots of expensive digital 8-track and 16-track recorders, but a simple, high-quality digital equivalent of the old casette four-tracks (we own one of the casette types) would be really nice and would save some money. So what do people recommend?

Something off this page. From what you're asking, the Delta 66 may be the right one. Don't waste your time with cassettes, digital or not, when for about the same price, you get 6 in/6 out, and virtually unlimited tracks in software (CoolEdit, Cubase, etc.).

The price you quoted for Reason sounds rather expensive. I bought my copy for US$270 at my local music store (Guitar Center). I also got a MIDI keyboard and a cheap USB MIDI interface (Midiman Midisport 2x2) and a copy of Sound Forge. You should download the latest demo version of Reason and also listen to the example songs.

Forget using the built in sounds on your SoundBlaster. Reason, or any other software synth, is going to blow away those sounds. Plus they can play back samples as well. The synths are really synths, they're just in software instead of hardware. I personally don't see any reason to buy more hardware synths unless you are going to be performing live. One thing you will want to look at when choosing a sounds card is to make sure it has ASIO drivers. If not then the latency on the sound card will be too high. The bottom line on this is that there will be a delay between the time you press a key on your MIDI keyboard and when you hear the sound from the computer.

I just got back from CEDIA conference (Custom Electronic Designers and Installers Association conference) where there were a lot of MP3 components. And everyone single one was overpriced, under powered and not worth the electronics put into them. Sure you go that way but anyone with the ability to put togather an MP3 server could do a much better job than I have seen by the stereo industry thus far. Not to mention that adding a DVD player and a hardware decoder will get you a fantastic AV component that will rival anything you can currently buy at any price. Just get yourself PowerStrip which will fix the display problem. Then a good IR controller and your ready to rock. I would mention that it would be really smart to get a good sound card say a M-Audio 2496 a lot of soundcards don't sound any good in a stereo setup.

if your SACD player doesn't play anything but original SACD's (no SACD-R), then you won't be able to play your copy as an SACD

but your computer surely will be able to. SACD's quality is analogous to 24/96 PCM. even now you can get a soundcard capable of 24/96 playback for about $200, cheaper than a SACD player. & of course this will come down.

You want quality audio in a PC? Go get a card made by these people, these people, these people, these people, these people, or these people. Then we'll talk.

I wonder how many people have encountered the problem I have right now. I bought a Midiman Delta 1010LT, which the company claimed worked under Linux (through "third drivers", from ALSA). This was fine with me so I bought the card (which box had a nice linux sticker on it).

I then tried to make the card work under Linux, only to find out that it wasn't supported by ALSA and that though there were some efforts under way, AFAICT nobody has ever been able to output a single sound out of that card. I wonder how many companies use this kind of false publicity with Liunx.

In response to some previous comments about perceived limitations of software synthesis for live performace, or emotional expression:

Good synth software like Reason (and its synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers), can be controlled realtime via standard MIDI devices. A couple interesting ones (I don't work for Midiman!):

• Midiman Oxygen8
• Midiman Surface One

Tactile interfaces like these allow for a huge range of expression and compensation in a live OR recording environment. A mouse/keyboard can be used too, but I often fid the onscreen controls are not large enough or truly desiged for exacting real-time control.

Some may not find electronic sounds familiar or comfortable, but I truly believe a GOOD electronic musician has all the tools to add variance and emotion to a musical performance. Do many do it? I dunno, but the capability and potential is there.

Unless we have some kind of digital speakers...Yes, there is a quality loss when sampling the analog output

We do have digital "speakers". It's called S/PDIF.

Any modern CD player and reciever should have it. (My $200 Sony disc changer does. So does my $250 Technics reciever... this stuff is consumer-grade). If you do any music production, there's a good chance you have inputs and outputs on your computer, too.

Start your computer recording and then play just one track on the CD player. Strip leading and trailing silence. You now have a perfect digital copy.

(which works on my Windows XP machine)
or its successors from
MidiMan

I still prefeer to use:

MIDIMAN Audio Quattro
and/or
EMagic EMI 2|6

for the real professional on the road with a laptop.

Midiman makes the quattro usb based sound system that apparently has very low latency and excelent quality. The price is pretty low too. It has 4 i/o's and you can get the omni system that adds 8 more inputs to it

Why not get a USB audio device? I have the Audiosport Quattro and it works great. www.edirol.com has some nice cheaper ones as well.

Acording to true audiphiles, the audio output quality of consumer grade cd players is crap.

They are correct that different DACs sound very different. For example, I got a Midiman Flying calf 24 bit DAC for my car mp3 player. It sound *MUCH* better than any sound card. I know some audiophiles purchase single disc cd players for > $1000, just to sound that little bit better.

The problem is, once you hear something that sounds better your ears get spoiled, and you think that anything less completely sucks!

Here's Intervideo's WinDVD compatibility list (shows a lot of cards support 5.1 and S/PDIF). I would assume that other cards would work fine with WinDVD if they support it, but I skipped over all the ones in the list that don't have those checked.

Here's Neoseeker's audio card reviews. Links to other review sites as well. PC AV Tech seems good as well.

And the list of ones I'm still looking at:

• Midiman's Delta Series. These are professional cards, but the bottom ones might be affordable (the Audiophile 2496 in particular). Good Linux support. I'm considering going all the way and getting the Delta 66 (quite expensive...one place has it at $350) to be sure I have something that works. The audio quality would be much, much better than I need for sure. One thing I'll certainly check out more before spending all that money: I don't know if the Windows drivers support consumer game APIs like EAX and such. None of the professional cards mention this and I'm not sure if it's a "of course, even the consumer cards do that, why bother to mention it" or a "these are for recording, not games" sort of deal.
• Philips Acoustic Edge 705 and 706. These looked pretty good in a review site. I haven't checked Linux support.
• Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. One review site said they had crappy drivers as well (stability problems under 95/98), so I'm not too likely to get this one. It was an old review, though. I hadn't realized Turtle Beach was in danger of going out of business.
• Hercules Game Theater XP. This wasn't on my list before; thanks for the tip.

hmm... after a quick check both Midiman and RME have linux support (or are supported).

Now I don't know about you, but RME is better than any of the brands you mentioned (In my opinion of course). And motu doesn't write very good drivers for any platform. But that's beside the point.

The Mac is not going to last forever as the leader of this race. Steinberg Canada has already stated that Windows 2000 is their preferred platform for stability and speed. Not to mention price of course (not the price of windows but the hardware).
I've talked to several Yamaha Techs from Japan who say the same thing.

Now I agree with you that OSX kicks ass in many ways. But Linux on a PC kicks even more ass. The raw speed, the choice of hardware, and the *ahem* choice of OS.

The problem here isn't software (although the programs aren't exactly excellent either). The problem is hardware. Speaking as an audio engineer, i will make the bold statement that NO pro-level sound card is currently supported in linux. Some people may disagree, but let me see if i can cut some of them off at the pass; a sound blaster of ANY kind is not a real sound card. Nor is a gravis, a turtle beach, or any other of the gaming cards people usually mention. The turtle beach comes close in a few areas, but doesn't get out of the hobbiest arena, due mostly to it's SNR, i/o connectors, and low rate ADCs.

Don't misunderstand me, i'm not saying these cards are horrible or that they suck, but if you think you're gonna replace 2" tape with your audigy, think again.

The real pro-level sound systems like sonic solutions, protools, motu, and to a more semi-pro extent midiman and echo audio have absolutely no linux support. For now, studio level audio with linux is a total dead end. The most you can hope for now is to use it for audio processing or creation does not even involve a sound card, and that's a pretty limited use.

BeOS could have made it, in fact they were starting to, but then they made the brilliant decision to "change focus" from multimedia to networking, good call guys.

All is not lost however, because OSX will bring light. Mac is THE platform for pro audio, protools is native to it, as is sonic solutions. This means that before too long all the biggies will be offering drivers for OSX (midiman already does), and if they are smart enough to offer the source with them, then they'll be ported in short order to linux i'm sure.

Linux audio now? bah! Linux audio in three years? definately!

Midiman has great support for Linux. Wants digital audio straight from a Linux machine?

Actually, you can (still?) buy "pro" audio DA / AD gear with no restrictions. For example, check out M-audio's pro-grade sound cards. There's even Linux drivers.

And they aren't too expensive. The basic "Audiophile 2496" card has 24 bit, 96 Khz DA and AD converters, SPDIF digital IO, and MIDI. Even better, the SPDIF connectors on that board give the user full control over the SCMS (aka "scums") serial copy management system. The

Sound Blaster Live's SPDIF, on the other hand, won't let you copy SCMS-protected content, even if you own the DVD it came from. Apparently this is normal for "consumer" grade stuff.

Get affordable "pro" gear while you still can!

Check out the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95

Check out the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95

Check out the M-Audio Audiophile soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95

Check out the M-Audio Audiophile soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95

It's because of people like this, that companies like MidiMan exist. Great Linux sound/midi card from these folks.

It's because of people like this, that companies like MidiMan exist. Great Linux sound/midi card from these folks.

There are converters between digital coax (S/PDIF) and optical digital (TOSlink). Ask you local music(ian) equipment store - not the HiFi shop, but the one where you can get e-guitars, synthesizers and professional recording.

The only one which comes to mind (caution: I have no personal experience with digital cabeling myself) is the "Midiman CO3" (http://www.midiman.com/new.htm) which converts all digital audio (AES/EBU, S/PDIF Coax and TOSlink - any sampling rate) to any output (~) incl. setting/deleting SCMS bits - maybe overkill for your application and with about $250 (US) not the cheapest, but to give you an impression of the "high end" solution.

This little guy if perfect for putting on your desk with your computer.
It has 1/4" inputs and Radio Shack has all the adapters you need. $99 is worth it.

I've been using a Midiman Multimixer 6 for the past few years to mix my synths, CD and PC. It really rocks, is very small (15x8cm/6x3in), exceptionally robust (metal casing), the sound quality is second to none, and the beasties are dirt cheap.

www.midiman.com/Html/products/mixer s.htm

The Multimixer 6 has 6 mono channels, with pan/gain on each one you can assign stereo and balance as you require. The Multimixer 10 has an added 2 stereo channels (also with pan/gain). Both units feature seperate left/right master gain controls.

Mixer power is taken from a 9v adaptor.

To further the flexibility of my system the Midiman is chained to a hi-fi amp.

I have no connection with Midiman other than as a satisfied customer.

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