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Also known as the “portable grand” piano, the Yamaha YPG-635 is the perfect solution for those seeking the real feel, action, and sound of a quality piano in a portable keyboard. You can bring the sounds of a real grand piano practically anywhere – 88 keys of weighted, graded hammer-action.

This is a trusted keyboard, having been in the top 10 best selling keyboards on Amazon in 2010. So far in 2011, it is still a top seller, and still redefining the kind of picture families will have for the instrument they keep in their living rooms.

Aside from simulating a grand piano, this keyboard excels as an educational tool. It comes packaged with the “Yamaha Education Suite” that included 100 songs – 30 built-in and 70 more on an included CD-ROM. These are easy to start playing along with and learning. The songs are divided in different parts for the right and left hand. The system will intellectually monitor your progress and you learn through the chord dictionary and conquer three lessons for each hand in each song.

Recording is fast and easy; a 6-track sequencer is built into the keyboard’s system. The sequencer basically functions as a real multi-track recorder in the system. Recording your sessions is as simple as a button-click. This keyboard is also compatible easily with digital audio workstations like Garageband, Logic, etc. for more advanced recording.

“Full Keyboard Mode” may be the coolest feature of this keyboard. This mode enables the keys of the keyboard to function exactly like a piano. As many of you may know, it is usually necessary to play chords on the left and melodies on the right of a keyboard. However, this Full Keyboard Mode feature nullifies this and enabled you to freely play notes across all keys like a real piano. When this is used with the accompaniment feature, the chords you play will be followed by the virtual band. This is a remarkable feature, and really caps off the Yamaha YPG-635′s ability to imitate a real grand piano.

“Hi-Fi” and stereo were the big things for audio enthusiasts decades ago. Some people even bought vinyl records of sound effects just to marvel at the fidelity and stereo effects. Quadraphonic sound was tried for a while, but systems were expensive and recording and media required 2 additional channels. In the last decade digital audio has made even more sophisticated systems not only possible but also affordable.

Surround Sound, Dolby, and THX

Stereo uses 2 recorded sound channels to feed a left speaker and a right speaker, roughly corresponding to our left and right ears. Surround sound processes additional channels to enrich the audio experience with additional speakers. There’s several types of surround sound. The first uses a fixed listener location for a 3-dimensional audio effect. Unfortunately this also means there’s a single “sweet spot” where the effect works best. Other types use speakers behind the listeners for an audience-wide experience. Each speaker feed is called a channel.

Audio processing from Dolby Laboratories began way back in the 1960s with noise reduction. Dolby processing has evolved to multi-channel surround-sound processing through a succession of small steps. One of the most recent is Dolby TruHD. This provides loss-less encoding (no information lost, no noise added) of 8 or more channels.

You may have read about receivers boasting about THX. THX isn’t actually a recording, encoding, or surround sound technology. It’s actually a quality standard and certification system. Originally used for movie theaters, it “guarantees” high-quality multi-channel sound.

5.1 Channel Systems