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I have a Roland KR 177 at present, with which I have been delighted. I am not much of a pianist, so I use the automatic arranger a lot, recording numbers on to the floppy disk then transferring to a PC to correct the mistakes with my now defunct software called Audition (a sort of poor man's Sibelius.

I particularly like the Roland sound system as this softwared can do more with Roland GS sounds than with most other MIDI files.

I am looking to upgrade and wonder what you would suggest as a replacement (probably second hand as this one was) and prepared to add (say) one thousand pounds to whatever I get in part exhange.

Not being locked to a floppy for transferring to the PC would be a good start. Do any of them now use CDRW for the same purpose?

Keith Walters

I'm not too sure about CDRW, but may digital pianos are including USB ports owing to the growing need for instruments that have the ability to interact with computers. Personally I use USB and burn CDs from my computer after editting the sound files and have never used instruments with either floppy or CD drives. Some of the current Clavinovas allow you to save your performances on a USB pen also which would be much safer than CDRW which I have found to lose information and data very easily. Some Kawai models such as the CP136 Ensemble Piano has a CDRW drive so maybe checking out the Kawai website could be useful here also.

Within the digital grands from Yamaha, they do have media centres which include floppy and CD drives as well as the increasingly more common USB port. However, as you can imagine, these are well into four or even five figures depending on the model.

I know the Kurzweil have some of their controllers with floppy drives such as the K2600X everyone is making a song and dance about. Have not tried their Mark series digital pianos which are a fairly recent addition to the range.

Thanks for that; very useful. A USB connection would probably do all I want.

One thing I am having problems getting to grips with in the specifications is how many "digital pianos" have a full set of MIDI instruments (like my present Roland) so that I can arrange 128 instruments with lots of polyphony and play back (effectively) a full symphony orchestra.

64 note polyphony and only 3 or so different voices seem pretty limiting; but that is what it seems to me so many instruments are offering. Or have I missed something?

KW

No, Keith you are quite right.

Polyphony only seems sufficient when you are playing real time. Sequencing eats up your polyphony which is why Kurzweil for example (which just springs to mind) allow you to boost your polyphony. It is often called "expandable polyphony" for the reason you have stated. Having said that, most workstations will allow you around 128 note polyphony which is good but you'll still find people harping on about running out!

Having said that, I have come across a keyboard with 192 note polyphony which is pretty impressive! Can't just think of the model...