Small GM sound module

Having had a couple of Windows let downs recently, I began thinking of a backup solution by passing the computer. As I usually have a 48 note keyboard with me, I was thinking of buying a small USB/Midi GM sound module. If anyone has a suggestion for such a device, could they please let me know. Cheers.

In a former life, eh, in the past I used a Roland SoundCanvas. I checked and they are still available.

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I own a V3 Sound Grand Piano XXL which has decent bread and butter sounds.

I’d go with a backup computer.

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Been there. Too expensive.

Anyone know if this is any good?

Here is the demo:

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I actually went ahead and bought one of these. My local music shop has sold them in the past, so I figured they just might be ok. I’m getting it from Thomann and they have the money back policy within 30 days if it doesn’t work out.

Let me know how it works out. I’ve had my eye on this for a while but it has never been on my priority list for purchase. I was just thinking it would be handy to have around if I had a MIDI keyboard and not near anything that generates sounds. I haven’t had this situation come up in years (because I have too much stuff).

Steve

I’ve been in the situation two or three times when I have set up all my gear and Windows has thrown a wobbly and has let me down refusing to cooperate. I’m then in the humiliating situation of having to pack up without making a sound and slink on home. Fortunately, these have been public market gigs and not private paid ones. I usually have my 49 note keyboard with me (for solos mostly during a break from playing my digital guitar), and with one of these sound modules, I could just put the computer aside and play piano for the rest of the gig. No more going home in disgrace.

Things like this MUST NOT happen. I had blue screens on stage before, but having to pack up and go home is unacceptable. You might want to do a clean reinstall of your system and if that doesn’t fix the issue, consider investing in a more reliable machine.

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I have done this in the past on a regular basis. But not so lately. Comments from forum members have stated that regular rebuilds of Windows are not necessary these days. In fact, one member in particular has not rebuilt his machine for several years. I have recently created a second partition on my machine especially for gigging. This basically gives me a second machine. In a perfect world your quoted comment would certainly be valid.

Dunno how far down the rabbithole you want to go, but heres a thing - GitHub - dwhinham/mt32-pi: 🎹🎶 A baremetal kernel that turns your Raspberry Pi 3 or later into a Roland MT-32 emulator and SoundFont synthesizer based on Circle, Munt, and FluidSynth.

GM module made from Raspberry pi !

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Well, it arrived today and I must say that I’m pleasantly surprised. Overall it sounds very good. The unit has three presets and I will probably store acoustic piano, accordion and strings in those. It has a built in battery with 5 hours of use which will also power my keyboard. I also have a battery amp, so I can take it to the local beach BBQ for a singalong (maybe!!). No latency as to be expected due to built in sounds, and no response to AT. Velocity sensing is good but no adjustment, and also no splitting of keyboard. And only one sound can be played at once. Some sounds had built in modulation which in the main was too slow in frequency. And using the mod wheel did not help, and actually made me almost feel sea sick. Other sounds had good modulation and sounded great (Trumpet).

What else I didn’t like so much:

  • It wont play whilst being charged.
  • The reverb is very average and only adjustable in amount. I found it sounded
    best set at about 40%

So there you go. I had to pay an exorbitant freight cost to get it to New Zealand, as there were none in the country. I feel that you can’t really miss with this unit. I have 30 days of trial to decide whether to keep it or not. There is another more expensive unit (MidiTech Pianobox Pro) and I’m going to check out whether it has better features such as more than one sound at once and keyboard split, but as far as sound quality goes, I’m impressed.

Thanks for the update! Pretty much what I would have expected for the price.

I should have mentioned that there are two midi inputs. One is usb A for the host keyboard and there is a second input that accepts a 1/8” jack. A converter cable is supplied which is about 5” long and has a midi din socket on one end and a 1/8” jack plug on the other. I used a converter cable (midi to usb A) with my iPad, and found that a number of midi commands worked from this input including program change. So this makes the three presents redundant.

I think it may be possible that you can get more voices if you use one for the USB host jack and the other one for the MIDI DIN cable. I think that I read that somewhere in the description.

[quote=“SteveC-Bome, post:17, topic:20926, full:true”]
I think it may be possible that you can get more voices if you use one for the USB host jack and the other one for the MIDI DIN cable. I think that I read that somewhere in the description.

Can you point me in the right direction?
I’ve been fiddling with the controls on my keyboard and the 1/8” input is certainly changing things. Trouble is, I haven’t found a midi spec to explain what’s what.

Page 5.

Thanks for the manual. I hadn’t seen that before.

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