Most people here who're into tracking might be confronted with a common problem called
ghosting. That means if you press several keys at the same time, only two or three of them are actually detected, so you can't play complicated chords on your computer keyboard. Sadly, most keyboards these days have this problem due to the cheap circuitry used - this issue was less common back then when trackers were still cool.
However, there are still a few keyboards with anti-ghosting technology being sold, and I recently decided to go for one as I wasn't really able to play complicated chords in OpenMPT.
I decided to go for a M$ Sidewinder X4, which currently seems to be the only keyboard which costs less than 50€ (the next more expensive ones cost more than 100€, I think) and has full anti-ghosting (there seem to be a few with 5-key rollover for about 30€, though). Naturally, most anti-ghosting keyboards these days are designed with gamers in mind, not trackers, so most of them also have 365887326 extra keys which noone needs. The X4 has surprisingly few of them, only the typical media buttons, a calculator button and six macro keys (thought about using them for tracking and coding, but I don't know what to use them for yet
). The key labels are backlit, which is a very nice thing (the lights can also be turned off, of course), and the keyboard has a wrist rest which cannot be removed. It has a standard layout, which is very important for me (no keys reordered) and the keys have a good "grip". It was a very good decision to make the macro keys more flat than the other keys, so it's really not possible to confuse them with the Ctrl/Shift/Caps/Tab buttons. All in all, I can say that this was a real bargain for being a really good tracking keyboard.
So, are any of you using keyboards with anti-ghosting, and which? Do you use any other fancy features useful for tracking?
