Mike Martin

I've had an Elgato Streamdeck for a while. For my work at Casio is has become an essential tool for controlling cameras and scenes for our webinars and such. However when I'm not doing these things, it has been sitting on my desk without much practical purpose. I've seen that there are plug-ins that can make the Streamdeck a controller for Logic. I ended up finding a practical application for my specific setup. I recently fixed up my K2600RS, replaced the floppy with an SD-card SCSI emulator and got it all set up and mounted in my desk. Some great nostalgia for me since I worked for Kurzweil for many years up until 2003. Unfortunately its placement in my desk made it challenging to reach and operate easily - I must have short arms or something. I'm not sure if Kurzweil still does this but the K2600 front panel buttons could each send and receive MIDI Sysex for remote control. My initial plan was to use an iPad app for this purpose but Logic doesn't like to pass Sysex data. As I result I found that the Streamdeck could be setup to transmit MIDI commands directly to a specific MIDI interface port, so I didn't have to worry about workarounds in Logic, MIDI mergers or anything else. You can customize the graphics for any of the buttons. I'll probably set up an additional page for the number pad. Honestly I see myself setting up a number of templates for other keyboards and rack gear that aren't immediately within an arms reach.

Agreed with AnotherScott. The CME line-up is great and so is their support.

This is the problem.

Craig, What kind of monitoring system are you using for your Atmos mixing?

Well I got something completely unexpected. Found at an estate sale in near mint condition. Probably hasn’t been played in 20 years but after a lot of heavy lifting and a quick clean its up in my studio. Between Vangelis and Peter Gabriel I’m just a crazy for this sound. I’ve never thought I’d own one of these much less in this condition. It has MIDI installed although I haven’t tried it yet.

This has been on my list. I hadn't seen anything that showed control over virtual instruments, thanks for sharing your findings. Definitely saving up for this.

CT-S500 also has an expression pedal input. Sound wise, the CT-S500 has a larger sample set which includes more vintage keyboard sounds (Mellotrons, String Machines and some vintage Casio stuff too). The DSP editing in particular is powerful.

I'd bet it is power supply related.

Pretty remarkable - https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/vocal/jacob-collier-audience-choir/

Yes. No drivers needed. I’d recommend installing the latest firmware for DAW use.

We had a Celviano demo stage and a Privia demo stage at NAMM. These aren’t stage pianos, they’re console pianos.

AP-S450 and AP-550 are shipping next week. AP-750 is late Feb, early March.

This in my opinion is one of the things Casio has always gotten right. The new "Hamburg" piano sample in these new pianos is just unbelievable too. They recorded the same piano - so it is a familiar sound but they nailed the dynamic response.

All three new models have the same action, the “Smart Hybrid Hammer Action Keys (Celviano Edition) with Spruce construction”. It is NOT the same action as our Grand Hybrid, it is a new action - a variation and improvement from what is in the PX-S7000. We've had some very discerning professional classical players at the booth this year and we have received some great feedback from them and everyone that has played these new instruments. The Bechstein plaque is on the AP-750 because they still collaborated on the voicing of the "Berlin" piano tone, as well as the speaker system on this instrument and other elements.

Yes, I've spoken with Dave Weiser and everyone I know from my previous days at Kurzweil. I've swapped a lot of RAM to test this. Perhaps I'll buy one more set but in the meantime I'll keep watching for a dented up K2600 to acquire another motherboard.

Got the power supply back, refurbished and installed it back in the K26000RS. Unfortunately no change. Sample RAM will not show up. I've got 4 different RAM sticks of various sizes to try, two of them are new and the other two are what I've had in the unit for years. So other than finding another motherboard, I'm at a loss as to how to fix it. The SCSI SD-card emulator seems to work perfectly, of course I can't load any samples.

I was visiting a Chicago area piano dealer and they had this Korg DW8000 on the wall. Completely mint condition other than the missing tip on the joystick. I've always had a soft spot for this synth. Not something I needed at all but he made me an offer I could not refuse.

Clearly I need to set the record straight about a few things. First, I've never this this occur on any other Casio model. The first time I recall seeing this issue was during the 1.12 firmware. As 1.13 was addressed released shortly after, I simply asked customers to make sure they had the latest update installed as the logical path with something like this arises. It was a surprise to me when some users reported this after the 1.13 firmware update so that is when I personally started trying to get to the source of the issue. There was never any kind of PR campaign. I have been the only Casio employee ever publicly addressed this and I've simply done my best find a solution. In all of these years, I have personally only encountered the bug one time and have never been able to come up with any way to duplicate the issue. We (Casio America Service department) have taken the opportunity to return / replace units thoroughly check them and try to find the issue and replicate the bug without success. I went as far as to do a user survey to try to find out how wide-spread the issue is, track serial numbers and come up with other common situations when this has occurred. Globally I think there were less than 50 reports and for the majority of those, the problem never reoccured. @Rodan88 if this is in fact reoccurring on yours, please send me a PM and I'll see what I can do. My only guess after all of this is that it is somehow tied to the flash memory or something more random such as static electricity. In many of the cases it was when the keyboard had not been used for an extended period of time. I've been completely transparent about everything written above in this thread on both the PX-5S Facebook group and CasioMusicForums.com as I am here. So while I don't like it, the solution is simple. Keep the latest firmware on a USB drive. If the problem were to occur, it would take about 9 minutes - barely longer than it takes some high end workstations to boot. The chances of it happening seem to be quite rare.

Pretty great deal at Musio. This is a rebranding of the Cinesamples library in their own player, not in Kontakt format. It is $0.99 a month for 3 months, then $9.99 after that or you get the whole library indefinitely for $299.99 I'm trying it right and one of the most unbelievable things is how quickly everything loads. They mentioned their new engine was fast but I've never experienced sample based software engine this quick. I'm still exploring everything it has to offer but there is so much there.

My good old K2600RS has been acting up. It isn't something I use a lot but after so many years working with Kurzweil, this instrument not only has some sentimental value and has a lot of my custom sounds. So the sample RAM was no longer recognized. I swapped the RAM out a couple times and had the exact problem. It was completely functional otherwise. I contacted everyone I knew and searched around the web without any success. I finally stumbled upon a used motherboard on Reverb hoping this would solve my issues but upon installing this new motherboard it wouldn't even boot, put my motherboard back in, no problem except the same sample RAM issue above. I was luckily able to return the motherboard. I had searched over and over but never found this thread until now - I stumbled upon an old thread on Gearspace where someone mentions the exact same symptoms and found the root of the problem in the power supply. So, I found this guy on eBay that will refurbish the power supply for $90. That has been shipped off and I'm anxiously waiting its return so I can put it back together. While the K2600RS was all open, I've gone ahead and replaced the internal hard drive and floppy with a SCSI SD-Card emulator. I'll report back here once I get the power supply is back and installed, fingers crossed.

I had not seen that one @AnotherScott - nice that one has a MIDI out too. Cool

The pedal to USB products from https://www.audiofront.net/MIDIExpression.php are an easy fix for integration in any MainStage or computer based rig. I'll add that the on/off Envelope times on a footswitch that the PX-5S has implemented are simply brilliant. If you listen to that audio example I posted earlier in the thread, all the filter swells in that example were done with a footswitch.

This post made my day! I recently got my PX-5S back out after moving earlier this year. I have put in countless hours programming sounds for this instrument and it still surprises me today. If I had the time, I'd reprogram all the factory presets again although I'd be tempted to make the 90% of them synth sounds after a few the other essentials. It is a dream instrument for pads, arpeggios and other animated sounds. Example of me messing around with the PX-5S and XW-P1 for the lead: https://on.soundcloud.com/DWgpH They're extremely limited, you can probably find them new at some retailers. Regarding the touch screen I think it depends on your use case. For playing piano and doing splits and layers on the fly - no question the PX-560 was fast and probably the best interface I've ever seen. For programming sounds the PX-5S was actually significantly faster. The two buttons left of the display allowed you to page through zones or layers with your left hand, while you'd adjust parameters for each with your right - a faster two handed interface. Brilliantly fast once you understood the architecture. I really can't comment further unfortunately.

The only elements that would be the “same” across multiple Cherry Audio plugins are the effects. They’re all quite different and unique.