hi guys,

now it's time to buy a new masterkeyboard. my old yamaha psr-500 is gettin' older and older, and it doesn't realy fit into my workspace.
i saw some pictures of midiman's new oxygen8. it features 8 free asignable potis to control parameters via midi-data. BUT the manual of that keyboard is limited to 2 octaves. i think that's not enough for me.
whats about miditech's midicontrol? this thing got 49 keys and 12 potis. that comes closer to what i think of. 4 octaves are a 'must-have' and some knobs to control parameters via midi are very usefull.

my question to you: got any alternatives? what equipment do you use?

oh, i almost forgot: the price plays a REALY BIG role in my decission. both of the mentioned keyboard cost about 170$, 200$ would be ok for me, too (hey, i'm just a student!).

thanks for helping...

Lol... i have a PSR-300 and it's brutal. I can't stand playing it, because the keys are so plasticky and they don't feel like a real piano. If I buy a new keyboard I'm going to spend quite a bit on it and get a nice set of keys.

That oxygen8 seems pretty good, and in your pricerange. 2 octaves isn't the end of the world, because if you're working with a synth you can always change the fundamental frequency... so you bass will fit fine if you hit A3 on your keyboard, and so will a screaming lead. And, you can also always change what notes you are playing from your sequencer.

I've also heard good things about fatar controllers.

ok, if you know what you do, then 2 octaves are enough. i mean, if you already got you melody, lead and bass you/i would normaly record each of them alone.
but i love sittin' there and playing around with some different melodies and samples. i normaly use the whole manual of my yamaha, so 25 keys aren't enough.

for the moment my decission falls to the evolution mk-249c. it got 49 key and 12! potis. it got connected with you pc or mac via usb. i don't know if it got an buildin midi-interface like the oxygen8, to control some other hardware synths and stuff like this. it cost around 177 euro, no clue what's this in us-$.

I use the oxygen8 right now and it is great. The actual range includes 7 octaves you simply shift them up and down with buttons right on the face. You can’t play them all at once but still, it’s a great keyboard.

quote:

Originally posted by cyrus2k2 but i love sittin' there and playing around with some different melodies and samples. i normaly use the whole manual of my yamaha, so 25 keys aren't enough.

What do you mean? Do you map different synths to different parts of your keyboard? How do u do that?

no i don't use multisamples. i wanted to say that i load some different simple synth sounds into fruityloops, and then i begin to play. i play piano since i was 7 or 8, so i tend to play bass and lead melody together on my keyboard (thats why i need so much keys ) if i got a cool melody i switch through the loaded samples to see what sound fits best.
but of course you can use multisamples, mapped to different regions. fruityloops does NOT have this feature, perhaps version 3.5 will. but there are some good software samplers, like Halion or NI's Kontakt, which can map dif. samples.

I still don't understand... are u saying that you use the same synth sound for your bass and your lead?

most of the time, or i use some plugins like mda piano. but it's just for testing. to find some good sounding melody lines.
and it's not realy a bass-line but a second synth line just some octaves lower than the lead.

I have a psr-540 and a korg n364 and most of the time I use the psr as a midi controller...The sounds are shitty unless u have a signal processor...