The consumer electronics industry covers a wide and ever increasing area of the market.
Things that you never thought of a being consumer electronic are just that today.
Ever been to Target or WalMart and seen back by the music section of the stores electric guitars, amplifiers and portable keyboards.
Look over in the toy section and you might just find an electronic set of drums to purchase or a video game with guitars or drums added.
I have a keyboard with midi capabilities that I bought at Costco. One thing to know though about by a keyboard with midi capabilities is that is just that capabilities.
You have to get midi cables and what amounts to a converter box to act as a go between your keyboard and your computer. Then as we found out going to various music stores that the operating system Vista on the newer computers is not kind to many keyboards.
What you can do though is to add a sound program to your computer that lets you add music to it and edit it. You then hook your keyboard up to the computer threw the mike in inlets and out from the amplifier or speakers outlets from the keyboard.
Might take a while to get the proper adapters to match up the systems but I actually found what I needed including the cables to run between the two pieces of the equipment at the local 99 cent store.
Most people might say why not just use a mike to record the sounds from the keyboard to the sound recorder and editor you added to the computer. It certainly would be a lot easier then doing the wire hook-up.
I agree and actually did that first. My editing program was top end and came with a studio mike.
It works as well as you might expect a expensive mike and program should work. The problem was that there was no where in the room I could set the mike and the keyboard up with the computer that I did not get sound feedback.
Feedback is that wow noise you get when you put two speakers to close to one another in a room or put two mikes on the same channel to close to one another.
Since you have to watch the music being recorded to start and stop it the computer needs to be in the room with you. Ever wonder why in all those bad movies about the music industry why that recording equipment is in a room separate from the mikes and the speakers. This is the reason.
To be honest most equipment purchased at a discount store is not meant to be used as pro piece of equipment but can be if your creative enough and thanks to the good folks that design the consumer equipment they do over engineer everything they make making the impossible a bit easier for you.
Just remember that the consumer electronics business covers a wide and growing wider area every year. The lines between what is pro and what used to be pro are changing just as fast.
It was not that long ago that midi was something only for the pros and today it is reach of the average consumer as a result. With an ever growing population continually in search of something new from the industry the sky is the limit on what next.
William Herman
Editor
(C) MBN 2008