Lookin for Help purchasing a midi player

Kurt,
We need more info.
What is your composition system? (Computer, midi kb, etc.) Include SW, and your intended outcome. (Symphonies, organs, choir voices, etc.)
I don't know if I can help, but I am sure someone else here can. Post your system. Include your church's system, input, amp, speakers.
The better information we get, the better we help you find a solution.
Are you looking to "DJ", or just let something run from start to finish, meaning does this solution need to have the ablility to stop and start at your command?
You will probably get some very good advice here, without a lot of techie-talk.
Cheers, ( and rolling up our sleeves)
Dan

This one is pretty nice.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/K2600R/

I want to avoid setting up a pc at church (bad part of town) . Im thinking of something portable that can plug into a mike jack on stage.

Thanks for the input.

The K2600R may be a little over the top for us, but it is very nice.

Well, if you want to play midi files and have access to the tempo, I would think you'll need to use a sequencing program like Sonar, which I'm assuming you already have.
Either that or some sort of Karaoke machine.
If portability is an issue, a laptop is perfect and with Sonar you could do everything you want.

I guess I'm just assuming that he's got Sonar or some Cakewalk software...
I mean this is the Cakewalk forum, right?...
he said he can manipulate the midi's on his PC, so that software on a laptop, playing right out the soundcards stereo out to his board would be good enough and probably the easiest, cheapest way to accomplish this...IMO

ORIGINAL: pastorkjl

Hello my name is Kurt and I dont know what im doing.

I would like to purchase some type of box that will load my midi's and play them on our church sound system. I would like something that is stand alone without a keyboard. I dont want to use cd's, and I want to still be able to manipulate the tempo and range of the midi song. Thanks for any advice in advance.

Kurt

Well, you know something, because you took the time to ask!

Echoing what someone else said, your best bet (IMO) would be to get a laptop PC with a decent PCMCIA sound card such as the Echo Indigo, patching the output of that into an input on your Behringer mixer.

Assuming you're using a Cakewalk product to do the editing (tempo, key, etc.) of your purchased MIDI songs, simply install that software on the laptop (delete software from your other computer to be completely legal, from an EULA standpoint), use a soft synth on the computer (i.e. Edirol or others) to turn the MIDI data into sounds and you should be good to go. Take the laptop with you if you want, or keep it with your mixer, amp, etc.

Recommend you make sure everything works properly (software sends audio to card, cable from card to mixer works properly and mixer is set to take the right audio level from the card) before Sunday morning - you don't want to mess around with configurations 2 minutes (or less) before service begins.

Good luck; let us know what you decide to do and how it works!

Kurt,
It sounds like you are not composing, but buying "off-the-rack" midi tracks, which are probably set to the General Midi (GM) standard voices.
You will need a synth, and since you want good piano and good bass, you might need a better synth that is found in on-board computer audio cards.(most computer sound cards will generate voices, they are on-board synths).

Since you do not want to set up a computer, I think you might need a synth keyboard, with audio outputs, that will also load midi tracks, either from a computer, or from a card (PCMIA, CF, etc.), but my guess is that you can eliminate a few steps, and it would be a wash $$, if you just used a laptop.

I think your best bet is to get a cheapish laptop, with an outboard card (Like the Echo), and probably Reason for SW. Reason is a better bang for the buck, for your solution. I love Sonar, but it is complicated, and is a machine designed to do a lot more than you want to, and demands a rather robust investment of time. IF you have Sonar, then you can do everything you want to with a laptop, so there is no reason to buy Reason. Midi files are very small, so you would not have any complications with a laptop a few years old.

You can plug the output right into your system, and pretty easily set the voices (piano, bass, etc.) to better voices than your purchased midi GM-voiced files will have. You may be able to find a laptop with an internal card that can handle soundfonts. These are not the greatest sounding voices, but that would keep you from having to use an outboard midi contraption, like the echo. You could just plug the laptop speaker out into your system. Some of the soundfonts might sound pretty good in a small hall. It is a judgement call. I liked soundfonts, until I bought my first synth (JV-1010), and I have an Alesis QSR that has some pretty great piano, but I would still need either a keyboard or a computer to do what you want to do.

You could start this way, with a good laptop, and if you find the soundfont thing untenable, then it is a small expense to add the Echo card.