Casio previa Px5 no volume pedal

[Dlrshort]

Those of you that gig with this piano, how to you get used to not having a volume pedal when you need to adjust your volumes on the fly?

[CEB]

For "Piano" you don't need an expression pedal. The control is your hands.

 

But if you want to really make full use of the synth engine or use it as a controller... I am sure the fanboys will have some creative work arounds

[Ashville.Guru]

MIDI Solutions Pedal Controller.

 

It's been mentioned several times before, but this continues to be a can of worms. Frankly, I'm amazed at the dozens of rants and complaints about the lack of pedal input. The MIDI Solutions box is 4X2", weights 4 ounces, and is actually a far superior solution to built-in pedal jack. You can use any damn expression you have pedal lying around, without worrying about polarity and stuff. You can adjust sensitivity to get perfect control. Adjust CC and channel and curves to produce musically interesting effects. Stuff that is unthinkable with built-in pedal inputs.

 

I guess emotional indignation at what a manufacturer ought to have done, gets in the way of seeing how easy it is to get the functionality you want...

 

EDIT: Some of that indignation is justified. Thanks to poor MIDI implementation on the PX-5S, even the MIDI Solutions' box is not a complete workaround. Thanks to @AnotherScott for the correction.

 

- Guru

[CEB]

The complaint is that you have to buy a $50 3rd party device to add expression control to a 'professional multi zone controller'.

 

[Curmudgeon]

I'm in the mostly love the PX5S camp, but I do wish it had an expression input or two. I think expression input should be a standard feature on any board marketed as a controller, especially on a product that boasts such a deep synth engine. If Casio released a successor to the 5S that had an expression input, half damper input, 2 switch inputs, and no other changes, I would most likely buy it, because it would be everything I want in a controller, and it would make my setup and tear down a little bit quicker and less complicated.

 

3rd party workarounds may be functionally superior, but every additional piece of hardware adds complexity, setup time, and one more thing that can go wrong. I'd rather have it all built in.

 

For now, my preferred workaround is a Boss FV500L stereo volume pedal, or, when controlling MainStage, a Logidy UM1. I also own 2 of the MIDI Expression units, but the Logidy is a little quicker to set up, and also functions as a my patch increment/decrement pedals.

 

 

[Dlrshort]

MIDI Solutions Pedal Controller.

 

It's been mentioned several times before, but this continues to be a can of worms. Frankly, I'm amazed at the dozens of rants and complaints about the lack of pedal input. The MIDI Solutions box is 4X2", weights 4 ounces, and is actually a far superior solution to built-in pedal jack. You can use any damn expression you have pedal lying around, without worrying about polarity and stuff. You can adjust sensitivity to get perfect control. Adjust CC and channel and curves to produce musically interesting effects. Stuff that is unthinkable with built-in pedal inputs.

 

I guess emotional indignation at what a manufacturer ought to have done, gets in the way of seeing how easy it is to get the functionality you want...

 

- Guru

 

Thanks to all that replied. Guru, I am not very tech oriented myself, could you briefly explain how you could integrate the volume pedal into the Casio? I am looking to use it for AP, EP, strings, etc, not to control other keyboards. Thanks.

[AnotherScott]

Those of you that gig with this piano, how to you get used to not having a volume pedal when you need to adjust your volumes on the fly?

If the only thing you need the pedal for is volume, and it is okay if the pedal controls the entire output (as opposed to, for example, changing the volume of only one of the sounds of a split or layer), it is easiest (and cheapest) to put a standard analog volume pedal on the output.

 

The complaint is that you have to buy a $50 3rd party device to add expression control to a 'professional multi zone controller'.

It's actually about $120. But really, that wouldn't be my issue with that solution, if I really needed that pedal. After all, the PX5S as-is for $1000 or with an expression pedal input for $1120 is a good value either way. My issue is different, which I'll get to...

 

3rd party workarounds may be functionally superior, but every additional piece of hardware adds complexity, setup time, and one more thing that can go wrong.

The add-on box requires set-up time only once, when you first program it. After that, you could velcro it to the keyboard, and it would be as convenient as having it built in. (Well, assuming your case could accommodate the lump.)

 

The MIDI Solutions box is 4X2", weights 4 ounces, and is actually a far superior solution to built-in pedal jack. You can use any damn expression you have pedal lying around, without worrying about polarity and stuff. You can adjust sensitivity to get perfect control. Adjust CC and channel and curves to produce musically interesting effects. Stuff that is unthinkable with built-in pedal inputs.

Guru, if you're using the PX5S strictly as a controller (no internal sounds), maybe that's true (though I'm not sure you couldn't program a pedal plugged into a built-in input to do the same things via manipulation on the receiving end, at least if your receiving end is a laptop)... but if you're talking about using a pedal on the PX-5S' internal sounds, I'd have to completely disagree with you. Putting the MIDI Solutions box on a MIDI input is actually very limiting compared to what you can do with built-in pedal support. On workstation style boards, you can set the expression pedal to do whatever you want... volume, modulation, filter sweep, pitch bend, whatever... and you can vary this function on a patch-by-patch basis. You can be completely selective about which sounds in a split or layer you want the pedal to be affecting. You can even have the pedal do multiple things at once, on different sounds (for example, program a cross-fade by having pedal depression increase the volume on channel 1 while decreasing the volume on channel 2). With the MIDI Solutions box on the Casio, the pedal can effectively only do one thing, period. Sure, you can program it to send a different CC if you wanted it to be filter sweep instead of volume, but not in the middle of a gig. So if you have the pedal programmed to be volume, that's all it can be for the entire gig (or until you reprogram it with your computer). There's no way to do patch-by-patch reassignment. No ability to have it simultaneously do different things on different sounds (channels). For that matter, no way to have it affect all sounds globally, either (it can't simultaneously send to all 16 channels*). For all intents and purposes, it allows you to use the pedal only for one, single function, on one channel, for the duration of the gig. That's extremely limiting compared to what you can do with the built in expression pedal support on a typical Yamaha, Kurzweil, or Korg.

 

* (You *might* be able to mirror the same function on up to four channels... the docs for the box say you can, but Mike Martin has said elsewhere that it is limited to channel 1 only, so that might be a limitation in the PX5S. Still, that's the least of the issues.)

[CEB]

Are you running stereo or mono? You have more options if you run mono. You can just run you audio outputs into a volume pedal then go from your volume pedal to you amp rig.

 

But it only controls the volume output of your entire output you can't fade in out fade out just strings unless you pan a mono piano to the right side and pan everything else to the left side jack. Who knows how it will pan with any effects implementations these patches may have.

 

This expression pedal business is the Achilles heel of the Casio. But I'm a hater even though I personally sold several friends on this board. You just have to be very simple with your implementation. It aint a controller.

 

[B. J. Love]

I wrote to John Fast at Midi Solutions regarding controlling multiple channels with the Pedal Controller. The function to control up to 4 channels was added in 2004. Units produced prior to that control only one channel.

 

I've written before about the PX5S's lousy pedal implementation - I love all other aspects of this piano - but equally maddening and to my mind, even stupider, is the fact that while the PX has fantastic half-pedaling capabilities, these too must be accessed with an external device. I own two pre-2004 Pedal Controllers. I use one for simple string and pad layer fades and the other for half-pedaling the piano. But I agree with AnotherScott, the boxes are vastly inferior to hardware pedal inputs that can be programmed per Stage Setting.

[TomKittel]

Wouldn't it be possible to open the PX5S and just solder a jack socket to the pins of one of the knobs (K1 to K4)? Then this particular knob / jack could be programmed as CC07 "Volume" or CC11 "Expression". Then just plug a pedal into the jack.

[Markay]

There is another issue that seems to be overlooked when the lack of an expression pedal jack on Casios comes up and that is the role it plays with a Clonewheel emulation. In most Clones as the expression pedal is depressed the amount of overdrive increases in the Leslie sim as volume increases. You cannot simulate this characteristic with an inline volume pedal.

 

IMO adding expression with assignable role per sound and cross fading and a 9th fader for full Drawbar emulation would make the PX5S a category killer.

 

[AnotherScott]

Are you running stereo or mono? You have more options if you run mono. You can just run you audio outputs into a volume pedal then go from your volume pedal to you amp rig.

There are also stereo volume pedals (2-in/2-out).

 

This expression pedal business is the Achilles heel of the Casio. But I'm a hater even though I personally sold several friends on this board. You just have to be very simple with your implementation. It aint a controller.

 

Here's how I see it... If you're looking at it as a controller -- i.e. disregarding its internal sounds -- the lack of the pedal input isn't so bad because it is easy enough to use that box, and getting back to Guru's post, you can do at least as much with the external box as you can with the internal jack. The lack of the pedal input really doesn't have much impact on the use of the PX5S as a controller (at least if what you're controlling is a laptop, which seems to be what most people interested in dedicated controllers are doing these days), I'd say it's much more of an issue when using the board as a self-contained keyboard playing its own sounds!

 

To me, the Casio's wheels, knobs, sliders, zone programmability, and direct select patch recall buttons are plenty to make it qualify as a quality controller. Everyone is going to have their own lists of "musts" for a controller, depending on their personal use. For you, it's got to have a pedal, but at least you can add one. For someone else, maybe it must have aftertouch, or a ribbon, or a joystick, trigger pads, or whatever else they have come to rely on. For me, most Roland controllers are almost useless because, while they may have pedal input, they lack instant patch selection, you have to scroll through your presets, which I find intolerable in live performance. No board has everything. At least the pedal is easy to add, and since the pedal physically ends up in the same place regardless, the ergonomics are even identical. Adding some of the other things to some other board--in the cases where it is even possible--still creates placement issues. I mean, sure, you could add a knob-and-fader box to some other board (or some patch selection device to the Roland), but finding a convenient and stable place to put these things for in-performance manipulation can be a challenge, an issue you don't have when adding a pedal to the Casio.

 

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you that the Casio would work for you as a controller... but it certainly can work for many people as a controller. If I was looking for a controller alone, I'd rather add the pedal externally to the Casio than find ways to add knobs, sliders, and preset recall buttons to the Roland A88!

[AnotherScott]

Wouldn't it be possible to open the PX5S and just solder a jack socket to the pins of one of the knobs (K1 to K4)? Then this particular knob / jack could be programmed as CC07 "Volume" or CC11 "Expression". Then just plug a pedal into the jack.

Hmmm! If that works, it's kinda brilliant. ;-)

 

There is another issue that seems to be overlooked when the lack of an expression pedal jack on Casios comes up and that is the role it plays with a Clonewheel emulation. In most Clones as the expression pedal is depressed the amount of overdrive increases in the Leslie sim as volume increases. You cannot simulate this characteristic with an inline volume pedal.

True. Though if you happen to have a pedal like a Vent around, you could put that after the inline volume pedal to accomplish that function. But no, I don't imagine too many people wanting to buy Vents exclusively for the PX5S! Also, though, if you're using the PX5S as a controller (i.e. for an organ sound that does not reside in the PX5S), the MIDI Solutions box would also be a way to address that.

 

IMO adding expression with assignable role per sound and cross fading and a 9th fader for full Drawbar emulation would make the PX5S a category killer.

There are 6 faders, so you need the 7th and 8th faders too. ;-) But if you're talking about using the PX5S' internal sounds, it's more complicated. I think what prevents it from having full 9-tone organ functionality is not the controls, but the sound generating engine. Hexlayers support layering up to 6 tones within a single sound... it's not a coincidence that there are 6 sliders. I don't think the architecture supports individual control of nine sonic elements, so the limitation is presumably not the number of sliders. However, having the extra sliders could be useful for controlling an external organ (VST or whatever). Of course, if you're a serious organ player, you're not going to really want to be playing it from the PX5S' action, either! Still, sure, full organ drawbar functionality would hit another checkmark for some people.

[CEB]

Yeah 2 in 2 out. The only stereo pedal worth a crap.

[Markay]

Actually I would like one as a 2nd controller for AP, EP etc. Adding expression to the PX5S and XW P1 and 9 faders to the PX5S would make them the best value controllers available with bonus built in sounds.

[Ashville.Guru]

On workstation style boards, you can set the expression pedal to do whatever you want... volume, modulation, filter sweep, pitch bend, whatever... and you can vary this function on a patch-by-patch basis. You can be completely selective about which sounds in a split or layer you want the pedal to be affecting. You can even have the pedal do multiple things at once, on different sounds (for example, program a cross-fade by having pedal depression increase the volume on channel 1 while decreasing the volume on channel 2). With the MIDI Solutions box on the Casio, the pedal can effectively only do one thing, period.

Mea culpa! I stand corrected. Thanks, Scott - I've edited my original post.

 

I assumed (incorrectly) that the PX-5S is just as flexible as a workstation, exactly as you've described above. I vaguely recalled from the MIDI manual long ago that it accepts instrument-level messages. I just rechecked, and these are SyesEx messages, not CC messages. Again, my bad, I should have been more careful before posting.

 

So the limitation of the PX-5S isn't the lack of physical input jack, but lack of per-patch MIDI CC assignment flexibility. And I'm surprised, really - with an editor software, it should be easy to allow per-patch CC control of internal sounds rather than SysEx. Perhaps this can be addressed through a future software update...

 

In any case, I agree that it is very limiting. I'd be rather indignant if I had the PX-5S, too...! Not having the jack is excusable, the poor MIDI implementation less so.

 

To the OP - my apologies for the confusion; as Scott points out, the MIDI Solution's pedal will allow you to control volume, and only on one part (if I understand it correctly). Let us know if this is still an acceptable solution, and we'll guide you through.

 

- Guru

[Dlrshort]

Someone suggested the Korg expression pedal. Could anyone explain difference between high and low impedance pedals?

[Markay]

AS - I get that aftertouch etc may not now be widely available but which ones currently available - other than Casio - do not support volume and expression?

[AnotherScott]

AS - I get that aftertouch etc may not now be widely available but which ones currently available - other than Casio - do not support volume and expression?

I don't know the specs of all the controllers off-hand, but the Samson Graphite 49 lacks the expression pedal input. It has aftertouch and 9 sliders though! Of course there are lots of really cheap controllers as well as non-controller-specific keyboards (digital pianos, synths) that don't have expression pedal inputs too.

 

Anyway, my point has nothing to do with whether Casio is alone or one of many, it's simply that every board has its compromises. As a controller, at least this limitation is easily addressable in the Casio. There are other controllers, like the Roland I mentioned, that have serious controller limitations that cannot be as easily addressed.

[Kenny Ingram]

Adding expression to the PX5S and XW P1 and 9 faders to the PX5S would make them the best value controllers available with bonus built in sounds.

This is true about how they currently are. The PX- 5S has 6 sliders by design, the XW-P1 has 9 to coincide with the Drawbar Organ mode (as well as per-tone expression in Hex Tones and Solo Synth oscillators).

 

As far as the CC pedal complaint, there are obvious ways around it in my own case, I would never want an expression pedal on a bottom keyboard anyway. I use it for APs, EPs, and layering strings or pads on top of them. CC pedal would complicate things much more than it would help. The top keyboard in a setup I find to be much more important to have a CC pedal, which I still haven't been able to accomplish yet (while using an external module but hypothetically it should work), but if I needed it desperately I would have done something different.

[AnotherScott]

Not having the jack is excusable, the poor MIDI implementation less so.

I'm really not surprised that a board that doesn't have an expression pedal jack doesn't have user settings for what the non-existant expression pedal should do in a given Stage Setting. ;-) I don't think they ever expected anyone to connect such a thing... I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese designers were unaware of the existence of the MIDI Solutions box, much less considering that any siginificant percentage of their customers would actually buy one. It would be a bit complicated, too, since the pedal input would be coming in on a given MIDI channel and then need to be re-routed (while all other uses of the MIDI In jack would not need any such manipulations). And the menus in the PX5S are already complicated enough!

 

Really, I think it simply should be accepted that, if you want a board with sophisticated pedal manipulations of internal sounds, the PX5S is not a good choice. Every board has its limitations. If that's what you need, at about that price, get a Korg Kross or a Kurzweil SP4-8, and trade-off some other advantage that the Casio has (like the knobs/sliders, or action, or travel weight or footprint), that's life. OTOH, for simple pedal functions, you may be able to get by with the MIDI Solutions box or an inline volume pedal.

 

in my own case, I would never want an expression pedal on a bottom keyboard anyway. I use it for APs, EPs, and layering strings or pads on top of them.

I never bother with an expression pedal on my bottom board either. But I can see where they can be useful, for things like bringing strings in and out under a piano part. It would obviously be even more useful for people who gig with just one board. Another place it's handy is if you're playing LH bass... with both hands busy, it's nice to have a way to adjust the RH/LH sound balance without needing a hand. Though as CEB said, if you run mono and pan your sounds, there are even ways around most of these issues.

[DanL]

I use one on my bottom board. Fading parts in and out is difficult when both hands are playing parts.

[Kenny Ingram]

I'm not a fan of complicated pedal setups. In a 2-keyboard setup, after 2 sustain pedals, one CC pedal, I'm done. I'm aware I could add another CC pedal, a forward and backward pedal for advancing patches, a forward and backward pedal for flipping pages on my iPad, but usually don't bother with any of that.

[Markay]

Someone suggested the Korg expression pedal. Could anyone explain difference between high and low impedance pedals?

 

Apologies for my part in hi-jacking this thread and taking it way off your original query.

 

Simply put high impedance pedals are for guitar use and low impedence for keyboard use.

 

I chose a Boss FV 500L pedal which is not cheap but:

- is made of die cast aluminium

- has a reasonably long throw - which allows greater control between soft and loud;

- supports both volume and expression with separate jacks for each;

- has adjustable minimum volume;

- has adjustable pedal feel, from light to heavy;

- is a stereo pedal giving you mono, dual mono (2 boards through the one pedal or two sounds from the one board, one panned hard left and the other hard right)and stereo options.

 

At the time I purchased it like you I just required an analog inline volume function but as my live rig has gotten more sophisticated this pedal has continued to cater for my requirements.

 

[Markay]

I think what prevents it from having full 9-tone organ functionality is not the controls, but the sound generating engine. Hexlayers support layering up to 6 tones within a single sound... it's not a coincidence that there are 6 sliders. I don't think the architecture supports individual control of nine sonic elements, so the limitation is presumably not the number of sliders.

 

My recollection is that when the PX-5S was released Mike Martin suggested that you could map additional drawbars to the 6 faders providing a way to manipulate all 9 drawbars supported by Casio's tonewheel emulation. So I do not believe your statement is correct that the PX 5S emulation does not support 9 drawbars. AFAIK it is the same emulation as that in the XW P1 which does have 9 faders.

 

The Casio Clonewheel emulation would need to be upgraded to cater for expression but when there are clonewheel emulations like Galileo available for a couple of dollars in the App Store rewriting the sim is clearly no longer a prohibitively high cost option. And Casio would be able to use the upgraded sim across multiple boards including the WK, XW and PX series.

 

My point was not to compare the PX 5S with other midi controllers but with other hardware boards with a tonewheel emulation. The VR09 supports expression as does - to my knowledge - every other board with a tonewheel emulation. Add in the more synth orientated hardware boards with mappable pedal assignments and I think there is a long list of boards that support expression. So I don't see expression as an esoteric luxury and neither do other manufacturers it seems.

 

There have several comparisons between the PX 5S and Nord's and many have considered that the PX 5S sounds are on a par with the Nord's. Add in support for expression and 9 faders and the PX 5S would be the functional equivalent also.

 

As for how deep the expression control goes that is up to Casio. The benchmark in this thread has been set at a high level with all the options available in high end boards or a VST host like MainStage. Maybe Casio do not have to shoot so high, they could settle for less functionality as Roland did with the VR-09.

 

 

 

[AnotherScott]

My recollection is that when the PX-5S was released Mike Martin suggested that you could map additional drawbars to the 6 faders providing a way to manipulate all 9 drawbars supported by Casio's tonewheel emulation. So I do not believe your statement is correct that the PX 5S emulation does not support 9 drawbars. AFAIK it is the same emulation as that in the XW P1 which does have 9 faders.

I don't think that's right. The XW-P1 does support 9 separate drawbar tones. I think the only way the PX-5S could simulate that would be for some of its 6 tones to, themselves, contain multiple drawbar frequencies (which would not be able to be independently varied). The XW-P1 was designed to have clonewheel organ functionality. The PX-5S wasn't, but Mike did some clever programming to get it closer. Also, I'm not sure, but I think the organ tones on the PX-5S are electronically generated, whereas on the PX-5S they are sampled. Anyway, I don't think the two share the same underlying organ emulation, but Dr. Bombay Mike will probably show up here before too long to clarify. ;-)

 

when there are clonewheel emulations like Galileo available for a couple of dollars in the App Store rewriting the sim is clearly no longer a prohibitively high cost option.

That's not necessarily true... that cheap software still needs hundreds of dollars worth of hardware in order to run. The hardware in a given keyboard is not necessarily capable of doing the processing that an iPad can do.

 

My point was not to compare the PX 5S with other midi controllers but with other hardware boards with a tonewheel emulation. The VR09 supports expression as does - to my knowledge - every other board with a tonewheel emulation.

The XW-P1 doesn't.

 

Add in the more synth orientated hardware boards with mappable pedal assignments and I think there is a long list of boards that support expression.

Of course! I never said there weren't!

 

So I don't see expression as an esoteric luxury and neither do other manufacturers it seems.

I agree that it's an unfortunate omission. As I said, someone who needs it may need to choose a different board, and lose something else that the Casio has. Hopefully future Casios will better address this.

 

[Kenny Ingram]

Now that we've reached some sort of conclusion, I'd like to end the thread with this:

[Six-string-man]

 

I don't know the specs of all the controllers off-hand,

 

 

Really? I'm surprised and disappointed Scott. You seem to have the specs to every piece of arcane gear ever invented at your fingertips! I feel let down

 

At one point, I thought you must use User's Manuals for a bit of light reading!

 

 

SSM

[AnotherScott]

AS - I get that aftertouch etc may not now be widely available but which ones currently available - other than Casio - do not support volume and expression?

My point was not to compare the PX 5S with other midi controllers but with other hardware boards with a tonewheel emulation.

I see where my confusion came from, I didn't realize that "ones" in that first quote was meant to refer to boards with clonewheel functions, as opposed to controllers. I agree that it is particularly unusual for a clonewheel to not have an expression pedal input, which actually made it more surprising for me on the XW-P1 than the PX5S, since as I mentioned, I don't think the designers of the PX5S thought of it as a clonewheel (Mike Martin kind of turned it into a semblance of one after-the-fact). But OTOH, at the time the XW-P1 came out, it was something like a third of the price of the next cheapest keyboard with a clonewheel function (the VR-09 wasn't out yet), so the omission seemed a little more understandable in that context. Low cost generally means compromises, and even the "next step up" from the XW-P1, the VR-09, is missing some of the typical percussion and CV front panel controls, for example.

 

There have several comparisons between the PX 5S and Nord's and many have considered that the PX 5S sounds are on a par with the Nord's. Add in support for expression and 9 faders and the PX 5S would be the functional equivalent also.

It's kind of apples and oranges... Functionally, in many ways, the PX5S is already superior to more expensive Nords, i.e. in split/layer capabilities, in direct button preset recall, in some of the MIDI functionality. Of course, the Nord has its functional advantages as well, including rewritable memory for addition of new and/or custom samples, and well-differentiated dedicated front panel controls for many functions. But as for the sounds... while I think the Casio is certainly a very usable board and a great value. I don't think the piano or organ are sonically in the same league as Nord's... but to each his own. The recent "blind test" posted here between the piano sounds of the two resulted in the Nord "winning" by more than 2 to 1... but sure, that still leaves an awful lot of people who liked the Casio at least as much as the Nord. One thing that skews even that comparison, though, is it compared one Casio piano sample set to one Nord piano sample set. In the case of the Casio there IS only one sample set (though it can be tweaked in numerous ways), but in the Nord, there are a variety of distinctly different pianos samples that can be loaded into it, so even people who preferred the Casio to the Nord piano sound in that video may not have preferred it to some other Nord piano sound. They could, for example, be reacting to preferring the sonic character of the Steinway that Casio used, and may have liked the Nord better if the Nord sample selected were also a Steinway. But sounds being as subjective as they are, I would expect there will always be some people who would still prefer the Casio piano, or at least consider it, as you say, on a par with it. As for organ, I don't think I've ever heard someone refer to the Casio as sonically on a par with Nord. But regardless, while we may disagree about the PX5S' potential as a Nord equivalent if only it had 9 faders and expression pedal, there's no doubt that the PX5S sounds plenty good enough for many people's needs and is a great value.

 

edit: I also wanted to add that, personally, I now find the PX5S piano much more satisfying that I originally did, having downloaded one of Mike's tweaked variations. Which also serves as a reminder that the comparison isn't strictly about how they sound in the abstract, but also about how they play.

[Dlrshort]

Just ordered the Bose pedal. Will see how it goes.