Yamaha PSR 2100 & Cakewalk

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Bill Brown

Post by Bill Brown » Sat Nov 29, 2003 2:57 pm

I've had Cakwalk Home Studio 5 for a long time, connected to a Yamaha PSR 520 and a slow Windows 95 computer and it has worked fine – except that sometimes it plays back through the keyboard using all the wrong voices, which I have to juggle to put right. The reason is, I think, I can't identify the PSR 520 in the instruments list.

Now I've just bought the Yamaha PSR 2100 and I'm going to connect it to my new 2GHz P4 512 MB RAM (etc) computer and I'm thinking of installing Cakewalk Home Studio 2004.

1. Should I use Midi connections, or the USB facility? I think my USB computer sockets are still the 1.1 variety, not the newer 2.0 – I'm not a computer boffin – so would I have to upgrade if I use the USB connection?

2. Should I go for the Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 software, or something else. Bear in mind that I can only operate at a certain level – I'm not a natural musician, either – wish I was(!) –– but I found I could handle things in Cakewalk 5 very nicely, keeping things simple.

What I want to do is identify the PSR 2100 in the Cakewalk program so that whatever voices are played on the keyboard, the same voices will be reproduced on playback.
What I'm partly trying to achieve is a balanced 'layering' of voices to get an orchestral effect, or different kinds of band sounds.

Any suggestions will be warmly welcomed.

Bill


GretscGuy
Posts: 434
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2003 1:26 pm
Location: Massachusetts USA

Post by GretscGuy » Sun Nov 30, 2003 4:05 pm

Bill,
Let me try to answer your questions.
1- You are sending MIDI data no matter if you use the midi connections or usb. Does your keyboard have a usb port for midi connections? If it does you could try it, but I would bet that regular midi cables are going to work better (I could be wrong).

Also, I would guess that if you are running a P4 then you probably have USB 2.0 ports. These can be used with regular USB devices and they won't speed up or slow anything down. If you have a USB 2.0 device they will be much faster. MIDI communications are not big and complicated and don't require 2.0. I used to do midi on a Commodore 64 without too much latency.

2- I would bet you could pick up a legal copy of ProAudio 8 or 9 on ebay. If you want some more features, etc... I have seen PA 8 going for $10 or $20 bucks (it was about $300.00 new!). I used PA9 up until about three months ago with great results. It probably would be a good investment. Although if you like the software you have, don't spend money on an upgrade.

3- You definitley want to obtain a new .ins (instrument) file for the keyboard. This is what gives you the txt names of patches in Cakewalk. If you are working in GM (general midi) mode, here are some quick references:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... stTabl.htm

Print it out, that way if you have trouble finding the correct .ins file, you'll have a general idea of what number sounds do what.

Good Luck!

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