basic newbie question

[KPEC3]

I play a PX-150.  

 

If I bought the cable to hook it up to my computer, is there a website to get the sounds?

 

Or does it play through the DAW?  Mine is Garageband.

 

Or do you download software?

 

I'd rather have a machine to plug my PX-150 into that generates sounds, rather than my computer.

 

Then I could plug that machine into an amp.

 

My computer is old and slow.  Who wants to play if there's latency?

[Brad Saucier]

Do you want sounds from the PX-150?  Or are you looking to play sounds from virtual instruments?

[KPEC3]

I guess virtual instruments.

[Brad Saucier]

The sound will come from software like GarageBand whenever you add an instrument to a MIDI track.  Your PX-150 is just a MIDI controller in that case.  

[Jokeyman123]

Couple of ideas-

1) I believe the PX-150 has mid DIN-5 pin connectors. This enables you to connect to a huge number of "outboard" midi sound modules-such as the Roland Sound Canvas, several different Korgs, Yamahas, Kawai midi tone modules will give you a huge assortment of other sounds directly playable with the PX150. I have a Roland PMA-5 and a Yamaha QY-100 both can connect directly to any of my Casios with the 5-pin midi din connections, and these in turn can be connected to your DAWs, so the sounds you hear from the module you chose will be recorded and played back although you will need to connect a computer with a midi din to USB adapter cable to be able to have the tone module sounds playing back from your DAW. 

 

This gets a little tricky as you will need to monitor the tone module sounds from its outputs rather than the computer's sound-and as Brad said, if you computer sounds that are being triggered by your DAW as you record you will still hear the latency delay effect but only if you re listening to the computer's sounds-the modules will eliminate latency. Even a very fast computer will not solve that software problem as it has everything to do with the software drivers, another complex project in itself. Look up "ASIO" if you really need to work with only 'virtual" computer sounds and want to play these live with no latency.  And I have another approach I will describe at the end of this post which might make this software approach a bit easier with less latency.

 

The pure hardware solution you might want to think about-use a hardware sequencer to record whatever you play on the PX150 and a hardware tone module-such as the Alesis MMT-8, the older Roland MC-50's or even the Kawai Q-80, but this keyboard is not "multi-timbral" I think so it is not capable of playing more than one midi DAW or sequencer track at a time. Again, I use the QY-100-which not only has a multi-track midi recorder built into it, also has hundreds of additional sounds you do not have in the PX150. This enables me to create simple or very complex arrangements with one keyboard, and this module. There aren't too many hardware modules that can do that anymore though, why I kept mine. The larger dance machines-the RM1X Yamaha and Roland MC505 lso have midi sequence req=corders buikt in plus a huge variety of sounds which can be played and recorded using just the PX150 but this is a littl emore expensive approach. This hardware solution lets you eliminate a computer completely for recording or playing back. The other idea, which I also use.....

 

I have a "virtual' sound engine installed on all my Windows machines called "Coolsoft".

 

This replaces the internal synthesizer built into Windows (yes there is one but it is pretty awful-and I don't think Windows 10 has one at all anymore). Easy to install, freeware supported by the developer-and now-you can load "soundfonts" which have been around for awhile. There are many-again freeware-I use Arachno, Fluid and a few others-the Coolsoft website will point you to these.

 

 A soundfont is a collection of "virtual" sounds playable directly from your computer with a mid/usb cable from the PX to your computer and some of these sounds are very good, I am using one now called "Giant" which has woodwinds and choirs that sound more realistic than my best workstations! The benefit of this program-it allows you to install any soundfont you can find online and install it it in Coolsoft-very easy to do, many are online for free-and play it as you would any virtual synthesizer-and in turn these sounds will play through your DAW or any midi sequencer program.

 

Once Coolsoft is installed, any DAW will "see" it, and give you the choice of using that for your "sound engine". Arachno and Fluid use the standard General Midi arrangement of sounds-so you now have a full virtual library of everything in that soundfont-drums, bass, strings, synth leads, pads, most anything you would find in a multi-timbral synth workstation. But there are many other soundfonts with specific collections of for example-atmospheric sounds, pianos etc.

 

The other benefit-it has a setting for "latency" which if you set it up right, even with an older laptop-it will reduce the latency effect-so you can play the soundfont sounds live with very little latency. With a fast machine, you can eliminate latency completely. And if you load a midi arrangement with many parts into your DAW-I think you will be impressed with the quality of the sounds compared to the lousy windows built-in sounds, and even some multi-timbral workstations.

 

Sorry for the long post, I was a music/technology instructor, its hard to stop being one sometimes but I hope I helped. Been in the game for awhile, I've had to learn alot over the years...

Edited November 28, 2021 by Jokeyman123

[KPEC3]

Thank you so much Brad and Jokeyman123.

 

I've got a lot of research to do!

 

It's great help, I appreciate it.

[Jokeyman123]

Take your time, no-one learns this overnight. and there is plenty of support online now-just have to do a little at a time. the midi spec alone took decades to develop, and so did most of our equipment!

[KPEC3]

I have changed my mind.  I really don't want to run my keyboard through my computer, except to record.

 

I want some kind of external device to modify the sounds.