I've been cruising the sight awhile thx for all the great info u guys put up here! I recently saw a youtube video where the DP was a yamaha P95 But the sounds were genreated thru nexus 2(not sure what that is)but i was wondering could this also be done with a P105 or is Midi THAT important? And if anyone can point me in the direction to where i can read up more on the pros/cons midi usb, and just a better understanding that would be great thx again
Duke

MIDI can be used for many thing, but the most common thing around here is to use it to trigger a high quality piano sound in your computer, i.e. something better than the sound that's built into the keyboard itself. Some keyboards have a USB connection for this, some have a standard MIDI connection, which can be adapted to USB with an inexpensive adapter. If you ever want to connect your keyboard to another device that is NOT a computer, it's better to have standard MIDI on the than (only) USB.

Basically, you can have 16 midi channels.

You play a keyboard that outputs midi (whether to a hardware synth or a software one on a PC).

Any instrument that receives midi will play the sound selected.

So if you have 3 keyboards all hooked up via midi

Keyboard 1 on channel 1,
keyboard 2 on channel 2,
keyboard 3 on channel 3

If you play the keyboard 1 transmitting just on midi channel 1, keyboard 1 will play, if you play it transmitting on just channel 2, keyboard 2 will play, if you play it transmitting on all channels, all 3 keyboards will play.

A keyboard that can play more than one sound at once can have each sound assigned to a separate midi channel and works similar to what I described above, only this time your just using the one keyboard.

It used to be that you had to use 5 pin din plugs to use midi, having to chain them so that keyboard ones midi out went to the midi in of keyboard 2, keyboard 2 midi through went to keyboard 3 ****

USB makes this much simpler, you still have to tell each keyboard what midi channel it accepts sound on though.



**** If you play a keyboard with midi, it transmits through midi out.

So if in the above example, you played keyboard 1, it would sent it's midi data to keyboard 2 via the MIDI out. But unless someone played on keyboard 2, nothing would be sent out of keyboards 2 MIDI out.

However, the MIDI through connection on keyboard 2 allowed anything received from keyboard 1 to be sent to the next synth in the line, in this case keyboard 3.

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

Are you asking: What must be done to get better sound from a piano? Can a MIDI-driven instrument do that?
If so, then yes. PC/Mac-based piano libraries can produce much better sound than a digital piano can.

Or are you asking: Which is better, MIDI or USB?
If so, then the simple answer is: It doesn't really matter. Newer pianos have USB connections, which are easy to connect to a PC or Mac ... whereas MIDI requires a suitable interface/adapter. That aside, it doesn't matter because, either way, you're sending MIDI data over a cable. The results are the same either way.

ooo i know this one.

See http://pianocheetah.com/piano/midi.html (how to hook midi up) and
http://pianocheetah.com/midi/index.html (what midi "is")