Central Music Company

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CME (Central Music Company)

Type	Private
Industry
Founded	1993
Headquarters	Beijing, China
Key people	unknown
Products	Musical instruments, Recording equipment and accessories
Revenue	unknown
Number of employees	unknown
Website	www.cme-pro.com

CME is the registered trademark of Central Music Company, a musical high-tech company founded in Beijing, China in 1993. Its main focus is consumer and professional digital music production equipment.^[1]

History[]

Central Music Company imports and distributes into the Chinese music production market many of the world's most well known music production brands including Apogee, , , Kurzweil, Moog, , Novation, PreSonus, RME, and Røde (among others). CME was also the distributor for Yamaha music production products in China, until April 1, 2005 when Yamaha founded its own Chinese subsidiary. After this, CME began researching both the Chinese and overseas markets and started developing its own products. These products are now sold worldwide under the CME brand name.

Products[]

CME is known primarily for its MIDI keyboard controllers. Their MIDI keyboards were particularly ubiquitous in professional music creation circles in the early-to-mid 2000s, seen in demo videos of virtual instruments such as and Arturia. The of the keys on the 88-key keyboard were particularly popular. CME has branched out from only making MIDI keyboard controllers and also has made:

• ASX - an expansion card for the and keyboard controllers that made them stand-alone synthesizers
• Bitstream 3X - a MIDI desktop control surface
• Matrix K - a USB audio interface with optional FireWire expansion
• Matrix X - an analog 5 channel mixer
• Matrix Z - a 4-channel analog headphone amplifier
• U-Key - a portable synthesizer
• UF5, UF6, UF7, UF8 - MIDI keyboard controllers
• VX5, VX6, VX7, VX8 - MIDI keyboard controllers with , touch-sensitive pads, and HUI control surface capabilities
• WIDI-XU - a wireless MIDI transmitter the size of a small USB flash drive.
• WIDI-X8 - a wireless MIDI system
• ZSC64, ZSC 76, ZSC88 - MIDI keyboard controllers with weighted keys on all smaller-size models

References[]