keyboard recommendations under £600 ($950) ?

Hi all,

I'm in the early stages of setting up a home studio for the purposes of professional composing. To begin with I'll be attempting to produce professional-level, polished pop music recordings and composing classical music in my spare time, whilst also regularly practising and occasionally performing piano music.

I am looking for a keyboard under £600 ($950) with the following requirements but I am a bit confused at the moment as to what to buy, does anyone have any recommendations?...

-- 88 keys

-- realistic fully weighted action (plus if possible - touch control, so that other instruments can be played on it that might not suit a piano-type hammer action)

-- portable

-- compatible with a realistic soft and sustain pedal

-- full midi capability with zero or near to zero latency

-- compatible with the following equipment/software: MacBook 2.1 (2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1GB 667MHz DDR2-SDRAM 2GHz processor speed); Edirol UA-25 USB Audio Interface; GarageBand 3.0.4; recent Sibelius or other similar software

-- if a concert/stage/digital piano, it must also be compatible with modules or software packages that can produce ultra-realistic vintage keys/orchestral sounds

-- if a midi controller keyboard, it must also be performable without always hooking it up to a computer: in other words, I would like to be able to run it straight into any amp such as a hi-fi amp, or through a small manual sound module such as the Alesis NanoPiano then into an amp. This would be for the purposes of practising at home and occasionally playing live. It would also hopefully have a headphone socket so I didn't have to annoy the neighbours.

Is there a keyboard out there with all these features or am I wishing for the impossible?

I would be most grateful for any suggestions...

:yc:

Hello, welcome to YC,

I think your list of needs won't be solved with a single keyboard :D

first, a concert electric piano, is made to play piano pieces in a live performance were its sound won't be replaced, almost like having a real piano on stage, (those tend to be heavy no matter if they are called "portable". Functions like midi controller, synthesizer sounds, or any other non-piano sounds won't be covered by this keyboard very well, and you cannot add those "ultra realistic" sounds on it.

A Synthesizer, is the one for the good sounds, but if you have those "good sounds" in your computer you don't need to spend on one, (the 88k synths are expenssive and heavy)

A midi controller is only the keys to play what you have in your computer, it won't work by itself.

If is only to produce, not to live performances, I think you need a midi controller, and of course, good software and libraries/plugins (but that would be within your studio only)

here you can check some 88k midi controllers.

Welcome to Yc =)

to have a Keyboard like you described you will need to have something in the range of a KORG PA2x Workstation which is a bit over your price range .. Or you can just have a "clavier maitre" or a midi controller.. and have another descent Keyboard so that you can cover all the points you have there .. It's almost impossible to find what you are describing there .. i think you have to compromise a bit ..

I don't know exactly what kind of Production he want's to do, but I would invest more in software and libraries, than Hardware, unless he want's to do Live performances. And for a studio a 61 keys controller might be enough.