Musical Instruments

I was both excited and skeptical when I heard that Roland was releasing the F-20. I was excited because of the sub-$1,000 price point for a weighted-action, 88-note digital piano. I was skeptical for the same reasons.   The appeal of a digital piano is unmistakable – especially for families who want to start piano lessons, but are hesitant to invest in an expensive instrument. The Roland F-20 seems to make the commitment to music a bit less painful.

It’s only been one day at the NAMM show in Anaheim California, but I’ve been seeing a couple of themes recurring as I walk among the booths. Continued integration of or integration with touch-screen devices and miniaturization & portability seem to be features that a lot of vendors are including in their product lines this year. Day 2 will be a test to see if my hunches here are correct and to see if there are any other trends emerging.

If, like most home or project studio owners, you’ve opted to use a computer as the center of your studio, then you’ll most likely be hearing a lot about audio interfaces.    For the typical home user, the sound card on your computer is just fine. Unfortunately, for a studio owner, you’ll very quickly find that the onboard sound system is inadequate for your needs. They’re typically noisy, they lack inputs and outputs you’ll most likely need and they can be inefficient in the way they translate analog and digital audio.   That’s where audio interfaces come into the picture. An audio interface is a piece of dedicated hardware that you connect to your computer. In the most basic sense, the interface is the audio middleman between you (the real world) and the computer.