midi controller + laptop

[Milkman]

Hey Everyone,

Currently I have a Roland ep85 keyboard that just isn't cutting it anymore. There is a consistent hum, the sounds aren't that great and the lack of weighted keys is getting to me.

So I was wondering how much sense the following scenario would make. Instead of just buying a new keyboard to replace this, I was thinking why not get a nice midi controller (like the 88 key weighted action one from Maudio), a good sounding keyboard amp, and some software synths to load on my laptop?

Does anyone here use a similar setup for recording/live use? I play mainly pop/jazz kinda stuff live and in my home recording setup. I already have a good laptop that could run any software stuff I need.

Also, how do the software sounds compare to the ones built in to various keyboards? I've been impressed with the Native Instruments B4 and have heard good things about the Steinberg Grand software.

I'm just trying to guage if at this time, this kind of setup would work as good as, or better than buying a nice Roland or Yamaha keyboard. Of course it's nice to have one machine with everything built in, but using MIDI to trigger software sounds seems awfully tempting.

Thanks for any replies!

Milkman

 

[ssscientist]

I have a similar setup, and a bunch of NI stuff will run in stand-alone mode.

If you're not going to be sequencing anything on your laptop this becomes important because many softsynths are still in VST, DX or AU plugin format and need a compatable host to make any noise at all.

I can do things now with soft synths and fx that I never could have imagined doing in hardware. The repatching alone would take a while, as would getting over the disapointment when discovering that it just doesn't sound as cool as you'd hoped. In software you can set a patch or fx chain or anything you can imagine up and tear it back down as many times as necessary to come up with something good.