Tagged As: Virtual Piano
Question:
I recall on my Win 2k system there was a virtual piano where I could just add a few sounds (am testing something out) with this virtual piano that shows up on the screen. In that PC I had a Creative Labs SB Live card. In my new Dell PC with WIndows XP SP2, I have just on board audio. Do not see any Midi ports in Device Manager but nonetheless do not see any virtual piano. Thoughts?
Answer:
The virtual piano was probobly a Creative Labs program that was installed alongside the sound card drivers. No version of Windows has a virtual piano in-built. If you ever had one, it came with some audio stuff you installed, presumably your soundcard. This would have been a program that came with the SB card. Although the on-board audio of modern computers is great for multimedia playback, it's a step backward from the previously ubiquitous SB cards for musicians. You rarely get any useful musical utilities, you don't get a hardware midi synthesiser and there isn't an external midi port. Your midi sounds will be handled by the Microsoft Synth, a Windows component. It doesn't show in Device Manager. Even if you had a virtual keyboard, the latency (delay) of the Microsoft Synth is so high as to make it unusable for real-time playing. If you want the facilities of the SB Live I suggest you install one. Quite cheaply available on Ebay. Disable your on-board sound in BIOS if it causes any problems.
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