| There have been several rumors floating around about a new cheaper Kurzweil
machine. Most people perpetuating/attending to these rumors like to foster
the idea that (like DEC and our uVAX II) Mr. K is making a more heavily
miniaturized version of his $11K synth and it will be cheap but it will
'BE A KURZWEIL', that is, it will have all of the $11K version's capabilities.
Well, to the best of MY knowledge as a Kurzweil rumor perpetuator, the company
is NOT GOING TO MAKE A MINIATURIZED KURZWEIL. What they ARE going to make is a
$3000 electronic piano. Period. As to whether this piano will even have a
MIDI interface, I don't know. For me as an electronic music composer, such a
machine would hold little interest. We'll have to wait a while to find out if
they even do anything other than their large model. Cash flow in small
companies (especially small synth companies) is always a problem.
As to your request, I would second John's idea: get a MIDI interface for your
MAC. At least one exists that I have heard of (I haven't actually seen one).
I'll try to find the article, if you like.
Further, since you're interested in sampling machines like the K, take a look
at the Ensoniq MIRAGE mentioned in note #56 in this notes file. I bought a
Mirage, and for the price, I think it's the best sampling keyboard around.
Some of the limitations mentioned in that note (like a lack of technical
documentation) are being remedied by Ensoniq. They are publishing (real soon
now for about three months) an ADVANCED SAMPLING GUIDE for the Mirage which is
supposed to have a much more in-depth discussion of the ins and outs of good
sampling techniques for their machine and a better discussion of their MIDI
implementation. I called the company and got a small spec (about 5 pages)
describing the MIDI commands, enough that I could probably code up a software
interface for it. It DOES have full wavetable programming built in; they just
don't tell you how to get to it in the little book that comes with the synth.
I have two other voice disks for it: some high and low string sounds, which are
adequate-to-very-good, and some synthesizer sounds, also good. There are more
disks (at least Daddy's in Nashua has many more than I do) but I have not heard
them. A rumor I heard about the Mirage (supposedly from the Nashua Ensoniq
sales rep) was that they are going to produce something like an 'advanced
sampling upgrade', which will be a hardware device that plugs into an expansion
port on the back of the machine. This is (remember this is a rumor) supposed
to increase the upper sampling rate to 50K! Rumored cost ($600?). So for
about $2300, if this is true, you could have a REAL NICE sampling keyboard.
Check out the Mirage. I'm pleased with mine. Its capabilities nicely
compliment my DX-7.
-jim
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