[objectman]

Well, I'm having not having problems anymore because I bought an M-Audio MobilePre USB sound card. It came bundled with Live 6 LE which is great - although it doesn't do musical notation. The new sound card works very nicely and didn't even need to be installed. Both my computers seemed to know what it was.

Nobody tells you that your midi keyboard won't work well without a good sound card. To be fair, only really computer-savvy people know such things and there are a surprising number of computer novices working in these music shops - weirdly.

You're right though Brandon. The issues were mainly with my new (ish) Dell laptop sound card. When I purchased it with Soundblaster Audigy - it came with a virtual soundcard - not a real sound card.

Cakewalk LE is laughable. There's no way I'm buying the full version of that software. There's a quickstart guide which shows you how to get sound out of your keyboard. When you finally do (again - the quickstart guide says nothing about sound cards) - it's like you've bought a cheap 1980 Casiotone.

The lesson: If you buy a midi keyboard, also buy a good sound card.

An external soundcard will allow you to travel from computer to computer. And don't get either bundled with Cakewalk. Like the software's namesake (DeBussy's beautiful piece of music The Golliwog Cakewalk) it's for kids!