Hello everyone- I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts, opinions or helpful info on getting together a laptop, a small musical keyboard and an audio/midi interface to have a portable midi and maybe eventually audio recording studio. I am currently attending graduate school in electronic composition in pittsburgh pennsylvania and I had to stay over thanksgiving break to finish writing a composition for a final exam. The reason was because all of my equipment is here at school, desktop pc with software, yamaha motif keyboard and other modules etc. I live about 5 hours away and I was thinking even before thanksgiving of getting together a portable studio so I can at least do midi compositions wiht sonar, lime or sibelius on the go. That way, i could take the laptop, perhaps a 25 key keyboard and some kind of firewire audio interface anywhere i'd like to, to the music building here at school, to a friends place, home for breaks etc etc. In doing research for the laptop, i'm going to pick one up from adk pro audio www.adkproaudio.com It's going to have all the bells and whistles I think, 2 gigs of ram or i might get less, 7200 rpm hard drive, i think 2.0ghz processor etc. I also might pick up the edirol fa66 audio interface and oh yes some kind of USB number pad for jaws/sonar. What has me indecisive however is what should i do about a keyboard? I came up with a few choices. Since I figure I'd probably have to plug in the laptop and whatever else since even with a high capacity battery, who knows if i'd have enough power to run everything such as the audio interface. Anyhow since i will probably have to plug in, I was thinking of getting a 25 key synthesiser that was just released called the Korg Micro X. From reading online, it can be used as a controller just like a midi controller but it also has a full synthesiser built in, with a decent amount of sounds taken from korgs high end triton workstation. The mp3 demos sounded ok, my experience in synthesiser sounds has been mostly roland and recently the yamaha motif keyboard. The reviews also say that the software editor for the board can be used as a vst plug in, so if adapted with directizer, maybe, just maybe, it will sort of work in sonar? If not, that's fine because i can still access presets but it's always nice to hope right? If the editor can be used, I would be able to adjust sound parameters and use it just as if it was a software synth but with out the CPU/ram usage. My second option was this. Picking up a midi controller such as the midiman oxygen8 25 key keyboard which connects and runs via USB and in saying that, perhaps that and the firewire audio interface can run decently off the laptop battery. I would have to end up buying something for sounds though and I was thinking either a small midi module such as the edirol sd20 or a software synthesiser. For a software synthesiser, does anyone know of one with pretty well done sounds, a decent selection of presets or also one that will let you adjust parameters with jaws using directizer so I can design my own sounds? I was looking at something such as cakewalk dimension pro, since it has lots of presets for just about any genre of music and the system requirements don't seem that bad since I will have a pretty nice system anyway, shouldn't be a problem running it. However, if a composition has 10 or more tracks, will i start having problems such as CPU slowdown, audio cutting out or something like that etc? My experience so far has only been with hardware, keyboards and modules, mainly turning them on and just using presets, i have no experience with software synthesisers. I did use the cakewalk tts1 just to see if i could insert it in to a project and it worked fine. Other software synthesisers I had in mind were the massive 32gb orchestral library called east west symphonic orchestra or maybe the garriton personal orchestra. They seem like they can be used in sonar as pluggins but who knows how well they will run, especially the east west orchestra. For general purpose composing however, dimension pro sounds pretty good or hardware wise, the edirol sd20 module can be powered via usb so one less thing to have to plug in. I am not sure which route to take here. The korg does not support aftertouch, however I could purchase a pedal in order to use aftertouch and do i really need it anyway? Probably not. Not only is it a controller and a small keyboard but it has a synth built in which is great. On the other hand, the oxygen 8 controller can run off of usb, so a few less wires to have around. Software synths sound quite good from the mp3 demos i heard, although i wish there were downloadable demos of the synths themselves so i could try them out. Even with a module such as that edirol sd20, still might be quite a portable system since it will run off the usb port. The oxygen8 does support aftertouch however, which i do tend to use every so offen. I love sounds that sound as realistic as possible and i know that there are many opinions about different synthesisers and the word realism. However, it's not really the sounds that matter, it's the final composition and printed score that matters. Mygoal here is to get a portable studio going but also in saying the word portable, maybe i should have as little wires as possible? Like i said, i'm not sure what to do here. I might see if i can get to a local store to try out the korg micro x but if i don't get to do that, i'll eventually have to make a decision on a setup. Any help, opinions, extra info, heck anything that anyone has to say would be greatly appreciated. I'd be more then happy to talk to people over the phone or on an instant messenger program as well. I will be getting the laptop probably before christmas and I'd like to have all of the equipment up and running with in a month to a few months. Thanks again for reading and have agood day! Sincerely Jay Pellis ---------- Jay Pellis E-mail: jalucard@xxxxxxxxxxxx Aol instant messenger: ftealucard Yahoo messenger: ftealucard Msn messenger, jalucard@xxxxxxxxxxxx Skype: ftealucard ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq