Hello again everyone! Another question to keep things rolling perhaps! After recording on my KN 6500, using EastRecord, and saving the music in a Technics format on a floppy disk, is there any way to play it back on a computer using Windows, which seems to open Real Player automatically? I get a message that the format is not supported. (By the way, what IS the format of a Technics file?) Thanks everyone.

Ted Rose

a big subject, I'm afraid.

technics format is a proprietry format for all the dedicated features on the keyboard. it is not universal because no one else uses technics features.

to play on the pc, you need a universal format.

you could transform your creation into a midi file and save it. this is a universal format, but uses no easy play features or technics voices. so some editing is needed for a decent result.
this will then play in media player with whatever gm sounds your pc soundcard has. this will generally not sound as good as the original.
you could use media player to trigger the KN gm sounds down the midi lead if you wanted.

the easier option is to record the audio on the pc. this maintains most of the sound quality (or all with good equipment). but the wave file will be very large, suitable only for saving on cd. there are many free programs to convert the audio to mp3 format. this uses less space on the computer but cannot be played back in most cd players. and still won't fit on a floppy.

Ted & Alec,
Don't overlook Real Audio as a good universal format for transporting your music. It creates a small file that is mailable or postable to websites and on the majority of computer soundcards sounds exceptionally good. There are many codecs in the real audio encoder that can be used for the quality of the music and the size of the file.
Bebop

The only advantage of real format is the relative size, the quality is worse than mp3, which itself needs to be encoded carefully not to lose too much.

I am biased against real audio because the software is terribly intrusive and a source of many windows problems with its automatic grabbing of all playback formats, making it difficult for the beginner to undo the associations, and annoying adverts.

Thanks, friends, for your suggestions. I love playing with my computer almost as much as I love playing my 6500 (well, maybe only a fraction as much!), so I will experiment as you suggest. Any other ideas cheerfully accepted!

Ted Rose