Members hhbhhb Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 Hi there I have acquired an sl 990 for my daughter to practise the piano on. I have a laptop and Midisport Uno cable (have loaded the acompanying software), to connect them to each other (and a cable to attach the laptop to her micro cube guitar amp). How on earth do I make it make a sound!! I have no idea what I am doing and no one to help! I would like to get this up and running in time for christmas morning. Does this thing have sounds in it already or do I need to download them to the laptop? If so where, then how do I get the noise out of the keyboard? I have downloaded the two page manual from the website and am still none the wiser....... Yours, very stupid and heading for a bottle of wine....... Hannah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Delicious Lamprey Problem Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 I know it's Christmas and all, but I don't believe for a moment that you're a virgin. Or is she adopted? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChristianRock Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 Maybe she was referring to her daughter? :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Delicious Lamprey Problem Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 This one time, I'm not going there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Delicious Lamprey Problem Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 hhbhhb: I believe your keyboard has no "built in" sounds - it's designed to control audio software that resides on your computer (either a "DAW" environment such as Ableton, Cubase, Sonar, Logic, etc. or a standalone piano/synth program). What led you to buy this specific product? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Gribs Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 As far as I know, the SL 990 is just a MIDI controller. It does not make any sounds by itself. You can connect it up directly to a hardware sound module or to a MIDI interface that is connected to a computer and/or other MIDI devices (depending on the interface). The M-Audio cable that you purchased for your daughter is a very simple but practical interface that allows you to connect MIDI in and out ports to your computer via USB. To make sounds on your computer, you need to have some sort of software that "listens" to the MIDI port for the messages coming in from the keyboard that describe what keys are pressed, how fast they were pressed, and the pressure at which they are held (along with any other messages coming from the pitch and mod wheels and other buttons on the panel), and sends the sounds to the audio driver for the sound card (integrated or otherwise) on your laptop. There are a very large number of programs out there that can do this. You can search for information about them online ate places like KVRaudio.com . Many are stand-alone and many are designed to run inside of some sort of host program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Delicious Lamprey Problem Posted December 23, 2008 Members Share Posted December 23, 2008 Or maybe we misinterpreted the title - perhaps she means she needs help from a virgin. Well, missy, you appear to have been misled about KSS. We're all men/women of the world, here. Know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hhbhhb Posted December 24, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 24, 2008 Hi allThanks for the advice.So, I need to buy some software? This was going cheap on ebay and the guy delivered to me too! I wanted something full size with weighted keys for G to practice on.It has a lovely action but I will be bloody amazed if I can get a sound out of it before tomorrow morning.Is this going to cost me a fortune?I have just posted for advice on KVR too, thanks for that Gribs.I hope I am right in assuming I just need to purchase something online, download it and HURRAH!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fierywater Posted December 24, 2008 Members Share Posted December 24, 2008 Well, E-mu offers the Proteus VX software instrument for free at this page. All you have to do is sign up for the newsletter and it should offer you the download link. I just downloaded it on my PC to give it a shot - the pianos aren't bad (especially for free) and it offers a variety of other sounds too. Most of them (if not all?) were taken from the Proteus series of hardware synthesizers that E-mu developed in the 80s and 90s. It operates standalone too, so you don't have to worry about finding a host for a plug-in (most software synthesizers come as plug-ins that you need to host in something like Cubase, Logic, etc.). Just download it and install it. Once you open it up, you should be able to go to Options -> Preferences -> MIDI and set the Ch. 1-16 setting to Midisport Uno (or whatever your MIDI interface shows up as). After that, start playing and hopefully you'll hear the selected instrument! I'm guessing that it'll automatically choose your sound card. If not, go ahead and select DirectSound under the Audio tab in the Preferences window. The default piano isn't great, but the StereoGrand settings sound at least as good if not better than what you'd find on your average home keyboard. Hope this works for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Delicious Lamprey Problem Posted December 24, 2008 Members Share Posted December 24, 2008 Nice work, fiery! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Allerian Posted December 24, 2008 Members Share Posted December 24, 2008 SL990 owner here. Take feiry's advice - the easy thing is: Since the SL990 only supports Midi channel 1, configuration should be a snap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hhbhhb Posted December 28, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 28, 2008 Thanks Fiery. I'll give that a go later. I also, thanks to toine6 on KVR, downloaded Minihost http://www.dontcrack.com/freeware/downloads.php/id /4228/software/MiniHost/# And http://download.dontcrack.com/safwan_matni/Prova.r ar and had a piano sound coming out of it within 5 mins!!! Amazing!!! Thank you to all who pitched in, it was a very successful Christmas day after all. Happy New Year! Hannah x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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