Connnecting to Roland Piano 700

[Kip Bryan]

I'm a first time user of Cakewalk and I have a Mio cable (usb to midi) which cakewalk recognizes.  I'm not being able to make any connection to the Roland Piano 700 which is over 30 years old.  Reading the cakewalk information makes a comment about downloading instrument for older instruments.  I'm thinking this may be the problem, but I haven't been able to find these downloadable instruments.  Does anyone know where I could find them, or is there another solution?   

[User 905133]

Instrument files (*.ins) shouldn't affect whether or not CbB (Cakewalk by Bandlab) sees your interface.  Years ago I borrowed a Mio usb to midi interface cable to test drive and it worked very well, but that was on an XP SP3 PC.

Does the interface show up as a midi device in Preferences > MIDI > Devices?  A screenshot might help to figure out what's going on. Also, under MIDI > Playback and Recording, does it say MME or UWP?  

Update: For the Roland Instrument file which contains the definition for the RD-700GX, see the links on this page . However, the manual I found for the Digital Piano RD-700 is copyrighted 2001, which is not quite 30 years old.  What model do you have? If yours is really from 1994, there might not be an *.ins file for your model. The earliest Roland.ins file I have is from 1998.

I sometimes have good luck searching for *.ins files on the internet, so I will look to see if there is an instrument definition for your model.

Edited April 2 by User 905133

[John Vere]

USB to Midi cables are very iffy way to connect older gear. They don't have a proper midi driver so often Cakewalk  doesn't see them. '

You will need an Audio interface anyways to record the audio from the piano. So most cost effective solution is an Audio interface with Midi ports. 

Edited April 3 by John Vere

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, Kip Bryan said:

I'm not being able to make any connection to the Roland Piano 700 which is over 30 years old.

I assume that what you're trying to do is use the Roland 700 as a controller to play software synthesizers?

If your MIDI-to-USB cable is being recognized by Windows and Cakewalk, it should work to connect any 5-pin MIDI keyboard. Just make sure you get the MIDI in and MIDI out ports right.

I Googled the Roland 700 and the blurb on the Roland site mentions "MIDI Tx button for easy control over external MIDI devices and sound modules."

Most keyboards with MIDI outs have their MIDI out ports configured to transmit, but if that's not the case with your Roland, you may have to press that button and/or crack the manual.

The only reason you would wish to use .ins files is if you are trying to control the Roland 700 with Cakewalk. And they aren't strictly necessary just to get note data from Cakewalk to the keyboard. They give Cakewalk the ability to display and select patches. At this stage, I wouldn't worry about .ins files.

You also don't need to drop a hundy on an audio interface with MIDI jacks. I have one similar to this one, which is $14. It works great. You'd only need an interface if you wanted to record the actual sounds your piano is making. If you just want to record the MIDI note data, the $14 one is fine.

A good utility for checking to see whether MIDI data is reaching your computer is MIDI-OX.

Here's a screenshot of it monitoring what's coming out of my MIDI interface with my Yamaha keyboard plugged in. The Yamaha is constantly sending a MIDI timing clock along with notes.

Edited April 3 by Starship Krupa

[User 905133]

https://www.roland.com/uk/blog/rd-stage-pianos-history/#:~:text=In 2001%2C the next big,the JV and XV Series.

https://cdn.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/RD-500_OM.pdf

https://www.roland.com/global/products/hp700_series/#:~:text=Roland's HP700 series supports your,instrument that grows with you.

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/HP704_702_eng02_W.pdf

 

Edited April 3 by User 905133
to add another resource link