Joe,
I just went to the OpenLabs website and there in this link:
http://openlabs.com/developers.php

are giving you the opportunity to work with them in the design and integration of software with their product.
I think this would be awsome for you since OMB can be designed to work with the ecko system just fine. Then imagine, it would be an arranger with built in recording studio and the whole works !!!!

Man, check it out, give it a try..Im telling you, you can be rich with your knowledge. I really hope so, cause you are really trying hard to help us out in designing a prgram that will save us all money.
I for one, would sell all my stuff just to get my hands on one of this babys. If your program is tweaked just right, and it works great with this keyboard, then I would go for it all the way...

best,

musikman

Danb,

It would be more practicle to stick with PC/Windows.

MusikMan,

I signed up at that page. But I don't expect too much from that. Getting such a machine on a website is one thing. Getting it in the shops for an acceptable price is something else. I didn't see a pricetag yet.

Jos

Do some of these software synth manufacturers have a hardware version of their synth? It will be cool if I can have B4 in hardware platform which probably cost a little higher than the software version.

Jos,
I'm in computer industry and thinking about designing my own most portable pc using the Flex Microatx board. If we can make it work in a small unit like those pocket pc which is using a baby version of MS Windows OS which is designed for communication and entertainment, then it not be hard to incorporate this to the hardware keyboard. Maybe you and some other users here will try to go to the drawing board and start designing this pc entertainment center. - Dan

There was a thread long ago about a company in Germany that makes a keyboard with a PC built in that basically fits what we are talking about

Anybody remember ?

Hi Jos,
I do realize a style recorded as a midifile can be converted ( I've been fiddling round, doing it for years,) the problem is, it needs someone with a access to a kn7 in the first,and someone with the knowledge & patience to do it. It takes ages and that's one of the reasond why you haven't seen kn7 styles converted.
Even then, just say, you recorded the midifile based on the chord of cmaj, the 5 accompaniment style parts ( kn7)can may contain notes other other than what you'd expect to find in a c chord ie a's d's b's. The kn7 can handle these notes.
On a BIAB midifile if you record the midifile based on the cmaj chord , I'm fairly certain you only find c's e's g's ( correct me if I'm wrong).

Psr styles are based on CMaj7 chords. Therefor the notes you find in the 2 chord & the pad part are ususually cegb. It also has the 2 phrase parts which I think can handle notes other than ( cegb) That being the case I don't think a psr could probably handle a kn7 style (because of those additional notes )I doubt it would play the styles back correctly. I doubt my Va7 could either.

best wishes
Rikki

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About not being able to convert the KN7 to PSR, you're definetely wrong. Any style that can be recorded in a MIDI file can be converted. I used this method with BIAB styles and the styles from a Roland E-66. It

lukitoh,
Wersi was the name.

Jos, that sounds very good, but I am just
curious how this is done?(for example, are you putting the detuned notes on separate channels from the non-detuned notes for a particular part?)

Lukitoh,

The Wersi comes close but is much too expensive. A plain PC arranger with standard PC parts should cost no more than $1200.

Rikki,

It is true that you need the keyboard to produce the midifiles (you said that you own a kn7). But it surely wouldn't take ages to convert the midifiles into styles. You didn't use this feature in OMB yet. If you paste a part of a midifile into a style part using the "Chord" option, then OMB will automatically transpose the notes to cegb. In intro's and ending you would use the "Melody" option. The melody option is tricky when used with normal midifiles because you need to specify the key it is played in. But that is no problem with midifiles that you made yourself for style conversion. Just record all the intro/endings in C and the rest in Cmaj7. It will never sound off. Do the turorial http://www.1manband.nl/convert.htm

Vquestor,

In most synths this can be done with NRPN or SYSEX. Check your synths manual about this.

Jos

jos,i was saying that if you bought a second hand wersi it could be the way to go being a lot cheaper,but then again if they are that good and don,t need to be replaced ,only updated then nobody is going to sell one,oh well just athought,mike

not for the road, but working in the direction of a PC keyboard: http://www.prodikeys.com/