Here's a couple of extra MIDI ideas I've gleaned from the Web in the last couple of days:

(1) There's an excellent (if slightly wordy) set of MIDI tutorials at http://www.jjonline.com/digital/miditutorial01.asp. Don't be put off by the Christian ministry bit as he gives some excellent step by step instructions on specific tasks such as entering tune notation from a piano keyboard or using MIDI to practice difficult musical parts.

(2)
With today's sound cards, even users with basic computing needs could benefit a lot from good sound. But despite advances in the technology, not all sound cards are created equal.

On the one hand, for example, Compaq's new iPaq, an entry-level system, cuts a few corners on the sound card. Standard voice-recognition packages make it clear that the iPaq's sound quality is inadequate.

On the other hand, it works just fine at playing audio.

In buying an aftermarket sound card, make sure it uses wave-table synthesis to reproduce sound, and not frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. In FM synthesis, the card mimics musical instruments according to predetermined formulas. The computer more or less has to fake the sounds of different instruments.

Wave-table technology instead puts actual samples from leading types of musical instruments right on the card. When a sound request is sent to the card for reproduction, the card combines, edits and enhances the samples.

Another must: Buy a sound card built to the electronic music industry's MIDI standard. Pronounced ''middy,'' it stands for musical instrument digital interface. A MIDI card can at minimum process the pitch, length and volume differences between musical notes.

Find out whether the sound card is full duplex, which means you can send sound data to it at the same time sound is coming out, like a telephone. A half-duplex card would make conferencing almost impossible, as only one person could talk at a time and some voice data would likely be lost.

Also determine whether the sound card supports a high sampling rate for both input and output. Sampling takes periodic snapshots of an audio stream.

If the sampling rate is quick, as in an audio CD-ROM, the human ear can't tell the difference from the full stream.

Low sampling rates equal choppy sound. A low rate would be anything below about 35 kilohertz, which can distort the signal. Standard sound cards sample faster than 40 KHz, and good sound is almost guaranteed at the 50-KHz level and higher.

If you want a four-speaker audio system, you must make sure the PC's sound card supports it, which means the card has to have one audio output jack for the front pair of speakers and one for the back.

And make sure your after-market sound card is Sound Blaster-compatible.

Regards, John