Hi All,
 
My first post here.
 
I recently "discovered" my Roland A-30 controller keyboard which I bought in the 90's to teach myself to play the piano. It's been gathering dust for many years.
After a good clean and some batteries, it seemed to be alive so I'm keen to resurrect it.
 
Since most PCs no longer offer game ports, I bought a cheap MIDI to USB interface (the one with the strange looking clef). These receive mixed reviews but I can always buy a better one if need be.
 
All I really want to do at this stage is use the Roland as a rough and ready electric piano - if I press a key, the appropriate sound comes out of the speakers, just like I used to do 20 years ago. I can't even remember what software I used to use then.
 
Is Music Creator 6 Touch a reasonable way to achieve this?
 
At the price, I don't expect professional quality - just as long as there aren't likely to be any significant latency issues. Any extra bells and whistles would be a bonus.
 
Thanks,
Paul.

If all you want is a way to use a MIDI keyboard to make sound though your computer, you do not need a DAW. You can use something like http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm and any number of VST plugins. Latency is dependent on your soundcard or audio interface. If you want to record on a computer, then it is DAW time.

MC6 will give you professional results if you give it professional results. 

If you are serious about the music and recording, I would suggest you purchase a nice USB interface capable of audio and midi input.  Something that will run with ASIO drivers. The cheap things work OK but to get the best results you want a more  "pro" quality interface like many here use.... 

A 20 year old keyboard will very likely have some very dated and fake sounding patches in it. So..... using MC6, you can use it as a midi input device to control the much better sounding soft synths which use sampled sounds... all internal to the MC6 DAW software. 

Much of the early music on my web site was done with MC4...and the more recent music there is done totally "in the box" with X1 essential.... very much the same program as MC6. 

Thanks for your replies,
 
I downloaded VSTHost and MuLab and both gave the same unsatisfactory result - only occasional notes, perhaps every 5th note, from the keyboard would play. (Apologies - I realise that this is a Cakewalk forum but I'm just trying to establish that the keyboard is working correctly before I invest in MC6).
 
Hopefully it's just the cheap MIDI to USB interface but I'll hack up a simple opto-isolator circuit so I can have a look at the MIDI Out port on the keyboard with an oscilloscope to see if the messages look reasonable. If so, I'll investigate a better interface such as you suggest, Guitarhacker, and try again. (But this is still probably the wrong forum for this discussion.)
 
The A-30 is just a controller keyboard, Guitarhacker, so no inbuilt sounds. It looks like MC6 comes with 6 instruments in the basic package. My local music store is still advertising MC5 and they have a matrix on their website which lists significant feature differences between the boxed and downloadable versions of MC5.
 
As far as I can see there is no boxed version of MC6 Touch available? (yet?)
 
 

Never had an issue with VSThost in years of use with a variety of MIDI interfaces and keyboards. MIDI-OX might help you determine what is happening. FYI, there is a trial version of SONAR X2, which MC6 is based on. At this time, MC6 appears to be available as download only.

Thanks for the tip on MIDI-OX. That looks very useful for debugging this.
 
I agree that VSTHost is probably not the problem - after both packages produced the same result, I started looking back up the chain for the culprit.
 
Lucky I enjoy problem solving

Generally, skipped or missing notes in midi comes from a soundcard that can not handle the load and process everything in real time.  We see it happen often with new users to cake products who are using their factory sound cards and MME as a driver. 

To get professional level results out of any Cakewalk product, you should also plan to invest in a nice USB musical interface which runs native ASIO drivers and has midi as well as audio inputs AND nice high quality preamps on the audio inputs.  Focusrite and several other brands meet this criteria. 

A good quality interface will give you the operating results you seek in the software in the first place. I personally use a Focusrite interface which I bought at the same time I bought the software MC4.  Once I got it set up, it has run like a "Pro" ever since. 

have a listen to some of the music I create on a very basic set up on my web site. The earlier stuff is all on MC4 and more recent music is on X1 essentials....

A good interface literally makes all the difference in the world as it relates to the experience you have while recording. Don't be afraid to invest in a good interface. It's money well spent.

Thanks for the advice, Guitarhacker.
 
I looked at your website after your previous post and then checked out the Focusrite hardware. Looks good. Unfortunately, like most technology, it's expensive here in Australia and, at the moment, I'm in the "can I get this keyboard working again?" phase. I'm still not convinced that it has survived 20 years of gathering dust.
 
After scook's suggestion, I loaded MIDI-OX and the messages are erratic and often don't pertain to what I was doing on the keyboard. So I'll build up a simple circuit and connect my oscilloscope to the output of the keyboard which will allow me to remove everything else (PC, USB interface, drivers etc.) from the environment. If that looks kind of reasonable, I might then connect it to one of my arduinos and capture the MIDI messages. If I can then prove that the keyboard is working correctly, I'll be happy to spend some money on quality interface hardware and MC6.
 
I enjoyed listening to some of your music this morning over breakfast.
 

Hi paul49. I'm jumping into this thread pretty late, but I'm wondering if you got your A-30 working. The A-30 is currently my primary controller and I'm running it into my computer (into Sonar) without any issues at all. My current interface is an M-Audio Audiophile 192, but in the past I have also used a midiman midisport 2x2 over USB. I haven't experienced any dropped notes.
 
How did your oscilloscope investigation go?

Hi colin,
 
Guitarhacker's advice was right on the money.
 
I soldered up an opto-isolator circuit and spent a very interesting couple of hours investigating the results. In the process, I (re)learned a lot of things I'd forgotten about MIDI and learned a few more about Roland's implementation. After I'd analysed the oscilloscope traces and related them back to what I had expected to see and discovered a couple of things I hadn't expected but eventually worked out what they were, it became apparent that the Roland was working just fine.
 
So I decided to take a calculated risk and bought a Steinberg UR22. Works very well.