Suppose my sound making facilities consisted of a Creative
Labs AWE64 Gold card connected to a Roland Sound Canvas.
Would I be able to use this with Csound or would I need
entirely different sound making facilities?

I'm trying to figure out what sound generation hardware
to get. My understanding is that I can use the above
configuration to play instruments resident on the Sound
Canvas or to use AWE64 Gold to create new instruments.
As such, I'm told that this will give me the capability
of writing classical music using classical instruments
and to supplement them when necessary with whatever
information is needed to explain a new instrument
to the AWE64. And that is something I would like to be
able to do. On the other hand, I am attracted to the
possibility of being able to experiment with Csound
and to hear the results. So naturally I'm wondering
how, if possible, I can arrange the hardware configuration
so that I can use it either for classical composition
or for experiments with Csound. Moreover, it is natural
to wonder whether the two activities can be combined,
in that I could use csound to create new instruments
which I could then combine with those resident on
the Sound Canvas in my compositions.

Yes, I'm still clueless even after reading this
newsgroup for such a long time.

Allan Adler
adler@pulsar.cs.wku.edu