Does anyone know anything about midi?

[Petter]

Midi is beyond me, I donīt understand the Out vs In thingy.
 Lets say I have a great piano sample, like Ivory, and a recorded midi track in a sequencer program like Cubase. I manage to get the digital piano to play up a recorded midi sequence, but how would I go about if I want to use the piano sample sound for the recorded midi track and then save it like a Mp3 file?

[Bob]

If the keyboard isn't doing anything -- producing sound -- then you probably don't need it after you captured the MIDI info through the piano keyboard.   In fact... Just one MIDI cable.  Out from the keyboard, in to the computer.  Because if the keyboard isn't producing sound, it doesn't need any feedback from the computer.  Although... The computer might control things on the keyboard -- Computer is master, keyboard is slave.  That type of thing.

If you want the audio, like onto a CD or mp3 file, you need to have the computer play the MIDI and record that into audio.  Or maybe they can just convert it now.  Then save the audio file and burn it to a CD or whatever.

Although... I'm not an expert, but I heard that audio is piped through your computer's sound card, which is a consumer level sound card for a consumer computer -- basically cassette tape quality.  That was awhile since I heard that.  And I don't really understand that part.  But I heard you're supposed to get a better sound card.  They make free-standing sound cards I believe.  Anyone know if that's true?  Or is that just to get pure audio out of the computer?  Recording the audio out of the little headphone jack isn't going to be high quality for sure. 

Maybe that will help.  The MIDI is just information, 1's and 0's.  The program probably saves it as it's own file for that program.  That's still not the audio.  I wouldn't be surprised if there was a "convert to audio" button somewhere, maybe in the file menu.  I don't know if Cubase does audio too, although I'm thinking it does.  It must.  If the computer is producing the sounds.

Although if the keyboard is the piece producing sounds, then you need to capture the audio from that. 

[Petter]

Yea I got the midi track and I guess youīre right I donīt need the keyboard anymore, just have to figure out how to load the sample into Cubase and then convert it to audio, like you said.
 About soundscards, you need a decent one if you want to run the midi signal though the computer in real time with a stereo sample without any latency. And loads of RAM, thatīs what they told me, at least.

[Bob]

MIDI is only information.  Just 1's and 0's.   So I thought no.  However, I had an audio expert tell that yes, MIDI info does actually go through the sound card.  So I don't know.  Maybe he was goign to try to sell me a sound card.

Yes, audio stuff is still heavy on RAM.  As much as you can afford from what I hear.  I think... maybe I heard 2GB at least?  I think they have faster though, 3GB?, and then people mess with clocking their computer so they run even faster.  Dangerous but possible.  Overclocking I think it's called. 

I'm not an expert though.  I would think if it's a consumer computer and it's fast enough....   But the sound card thing worries me for that type of stuff.  And if you spend big bucks on a computer, software, and want a professional recording created... I would want to know for sure.

Audio though.  Soft synths.  Takes a lot of computing power and all those synth orchestras are limited by the speed and ability of your computer.

Interesting stuff.