CTK-7200 vs CT-X5000: how do they compare?

[CharlieWorton]

I'm curious as to how the CTK-7200 and the CT-X5000 would compare.  Both are 62 key boards, both are the high end of their respective product lines.  The CTK-7200 is readily available at $349 USD, while the CT-X5000 is available on European web sites for pre-order at $595 USD equivalent (but that price may change, due to VAT not being applicable to US pricing, and the fact that pre-orders of new equipment usually cost more).  The CTK-7200 has the aging AHL sound engine (tri-sampled), and the CT-X5000 has the new AiX sound engine.  The CTK has slider controls designed to emulate the drawbars on a pipe organ, as well as a dedicated Leslie speaker simulator; the CT-X has neither.  (I'm told that the drawbar slider controls can also be used to control other aspects of the CTK sounds).  Both keyboards have a pitch wheel.  The CT-X has 800 tones, the CTK has 820.  The CT-X has 235 rhythms, the CTK has 260.  Both keyboards have a 17 track recorder, both have RCA out jacks and USB Midi, both have Mic and audio inputs.

 

Beyond that... things get a bit hazy.  I don't know how the editing features of the 17 track recorder compare.  Or the rhythm editor, or pattern sequencer.  I don't know the polyphony capability of the CT-X5000 (the CTK is 64).  I don't know if the firmware is fixed, or flashable (the CTK is fixed).

 

If the two keyboards are 90% or more duplicates of each other, one would expect that the CTK-7200 would disappear by the end of 2018, as the CT-X5000 becomes more widely available.  But if the two instruments offer different, and complementary features, both might continue to live side by side for a while.

 

I'd hate to lose those drawbars, and the leslie speaker simulator.  Both are cool features, and I can see the drawbars being really useful for controlling synth effects.

 

So I guess the question is...  would the CT-X5000 be considered a reasonable replacement for the CTK-7200?

[TheBradge]

Polyphony on both is the same.

It has a much better sound-engine, probably a more intuitive OS with ditto pattern sequencer.

Four variations per style.

 

CT-X doesn't have drawbars, so i'm not sure about the leslie sim.

 

I'm intriged by the CT-X5000! But i think that it's a bit of a miss from Casio to not ATLEAST put the MZ-X / PX touchscreen on there..

[Casiofun]

It would seem logical that the CT-X 5000 replaces the CTK-7200. Polophony is the same at 64. Looks like they're going back to presets for Organ tones but the sounds are supposedly editable. I would think the pattern sequencer, and 17 track recorder are similar to the 7200. You  also have the Expression pedal input. It is also possible that Casio refreshes the 7200/7600 to compete with the Korg Kross and Yahama MX as they don't have anything that directly competes with those currently.

 

[CharlieWorton]

Just as a point of interest...

 

I am drawn toward the WK-7600.  If it had the AiX sound engine I'd own one.  So would it be possible to use the WK-7600 as a controller for either the CT-X700 or the CT-X5000?

 

I know they're both USB midi, not real midi, so I'd have to have a host somewhere in there.  But if I did that, could I then use the WK-7600 in real time as a controller for other USB Midi keyboards?

 

Just trying to wind up with the best of both worlds...

 

[jenny]

Does the CT-X5000 have a mixer?

[Lee33]

Other than the drawbars and organ aspect, Id expect the CT-X to be equal or better every way. I'd expect the sequencer functions to work similarly or the same. Although I I mentioned in another thread I'd expect there to be absolute bargains out there for the ctk/wk over the next year but I wouldn't buy one right now. Also, in respects to the CT-X series I sincerely hope they have improved the manual over the ctk/wk series... 

[roncist]

For me it is a disadvantage to have the sound category buttons on the left side(CT-X5000) - better on the right side of the keyboard like on the CTK 7200 or CTK 6200.

The CT-X3000 has no sound category buttons !.

[tuxfriend]

Hmmm ... would be interesting to see what the advantages/disadvantages of a CT-X5000 compared with an MZ-X300 are. The prices are similar IMHO.

 

MZ-X300 has 128 polyphony.

[Mike Martin]

On 2/18/2018 at 2:08 AM, jenny said:

Does the CT-X5000 have a mixer?

 

Yes and the number pad can also be used as mute switches to turn on/off different accompaniment parts. 

[Mike Martin]

On 2/18/2018 at 7:27 AM, tuxfriend said:

Hmmm ... would be interesting to see what the advantages/disadvantages of a CT-X5000 compared with an MZ-X300 are. The prices are similar IMHO.

 

MZ-X300 has 128 polyphony.

 

Here in the USA the MZ-X300 is almost twice the price of the CT-X5000.  

Higher polyphony, touch screen, sampling...lots of differences actually.

 

[skyy38]

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 5:37 PM, BradgeMusicTube said:

Polyphony on both is the same.

It has a much better sound-engine, probably a more intuitive OS with ditto pattern sequencer.

Four variations per style.

 

CT-X doesn't have drawbars, so i'm not sure about the leslie sim.

 

I'm intriged by the CT-X5000! But i think that it's a bit of a miss from Casio to not ATLEAST put the MZ-X / PX touchscreen on there..

Putting a touchscreen on there doubtless would add at least another 100 bucks and most Casio's without a touchscreen did just fine.

[skyy38]

On ‎2‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 11:58 AM, Mike Martin said:

 

Here in the USA the MZ-X300 is almost twice the price of the CT-X5000.  

Higher polyphony, touch screen, sampling...lots of differences actually.

 

Speaking of polyphony, is 64 going to be enough for a keyboard like the CT-X5000, with the latest sound engine, over 16 recordable MIDI tracks?

I mean, it just seemed to me that the 5k SHOULD have 128 poly.

[skyy38]

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 7:01 PM, CharlieWorton said:

Just as a point of interest...

 

I am drawn toward the WK-7600.  If it had the AiX sound engine I'd own one.  So would it be possible to use the WK-7600 as a controller for either the CT-X700 or the CT-X5000?

 

I know they're both USB midi, not real midi, so I'd have to have a host somewhere in there.  But if I did that, could I then use the WK-7600 in real time as a controller for other USB Midi keyboards?

 

Just trying to wind up with the best of both worlds...

 

How about a USB to MIDI converter box?

[Chillwalker]

On 2/18/2018 at 1:27 PM, tuxfriend said:

Hmmm ... would be interesting to see what the advantages/disadvantages of a CT-X5000 compared with an MZ-X300 are. The prices are similar IMHO.

 

MZ-X300 has 128 polyphony.

Let me say ONE thing: Had the MZ-X3000 here. For ONE Day. Thew features are amazing...but it sounds like crap. I am a professional Composer. I thought about buying a arranger workstation to get inspired in Songwriting without dealing arranging it. To focus just on composition. But I cannot do this when the intern Sounds and rythms...juist sound like cheap Casio.
Its like putting a Ferrari body on a Fiat base. Shiny, handsome....but dont you ever switch the key. There is a reason why the MZ-X300 is now sold for under Store purchasing prize...and the MZ-X5000 kinda vanished.... I guess some "extra smart young marketing genius, fresh from some exclusive Business College had lost his first gig too. But, hey, maybe he finally has the time to learn to play an Instrument...like tambourine ;-)

[skyy38]

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 5:07 PM, CharlieWorton said:

I'm curious as to how the CTK-7200 and the CT-X5000 would compare.  Both are 62 key boards, both are the high end of their respective product lines.  The CTK-7200 is readily available at $349 USD, while the CT-X5000 is available on European web sites for pre-order at $595 USD equivalent (but that price may change, due to VAT not being applicable to US pricing, and the fact that pre-orders of new equipment usually cost more).  The CTK-7200 has the aging AHL sound engine (tri-sampled), and the CT-X5000 has the new AiX sound engine.  The CTK has slider controls designed to emulate the drawbars on a pipe organ, as well as a dedicated Leslie speaker simulator; the CT-X has neither.  (I'm told that the drawbar slider controls can also be used to control other aspects of the CTK sounds).  Both keyboards have a pitch wheel.  The CT-X has 800 tones, the CTK has 820.  The CT-X has 235 rhythms, the CTK has 260.  Both keyboards have a 17 track recorder, both have RCA out jacks and USB Midi, both have Mic and audio inputs.

 

Beyond that... things get a bit hazy.  I don't know how the editing features of the 17 track recorder compare.  Or the rhythm editor, or pattern sequencer.  I don't know the polyphony capability of the CT-X5000 (the CTK is 64).  I don't know if the firmware is fixed, or flashable (the CTK is fixed).

 

If the two keyboards are 90% or more duplicates of each other, one would expect that the CTK-7200 would disappear by the end of 2018, as the CT-X5000 becomes more widely available.  But if the two instruments offer different, and complementary features, both might continue to live side by side for a while.

 

I'd hate to lose those drawbars, and the leslie speaker simulator.  Both are cool features, and I can see the drawbars being really useful for controlling synth effects.

 

So I guess the question is...  would the CT-X5000 be considered a reasonable replacement for the CTK-7200?

 

The CT-X5000 has 260 rhythms NOT the CTK....

[Ken Madell]

Hi Charlie, Mike, everybody,

I have a CTK671, CTK691, CTK2400 which all went to students, WK7600,  CTK4400 and FINALLY a week ago a CT-X3000 ha,ha Mike got mine B4 you did,

 

So, first hands on impressions for comparison 7200 and 5000 my models essentially identical, There's nothing you'll miss from the 7200 in the 5000 and 3000 audio is just as powerful, so you probably don't need the weight and higher price of the 5000.  

For me the 3000 is Casio saying, "We like what we've been doing so far, but we had a lot to learn; this time let's rethink/improve EVERYTHING and make something PERFECT. "  If you have full  facility with earlier models, you barely need the new manual which is much better than previously. At the same time, operation is somewhat different, but so much simpler and more intuitive.  Takes just a little getting used to.  Location and functionality of buttons is better and simpler. 

You now have 8 registration buttons, 4 rhythm variations, 4 phrase pads for ANYTHING, user creation/modification for anything, and you move from playing, recording, mixer settings, sequence editing, function settings etc. in a free and interactive way that feels like computer multi-tasking.  

The tones, rhythms, drum kits, effects, keyboard response and feel, memory capacity and interfaces, audio system, composing/arranging features, demos,  display functionality, and anything I might not be thinking of right now, is better.  Someday, maybe there will be a Carnegie Hall performance.  

[george kaye]

I own a music store in Southern California (Kaye's Music Scene).  I've been disappointed for years with Casio's drum kits.  They've always sounded terrible up until the new AiX sound engine came out this year.  Finally, the sounds on these new models are great, especially at these prices.  Casio had done a great job with Privia products featuring really good pianos, electric pianos and organs but all there other products still had poor quality drums, not very good sounding guitars, basses, horns, etc.  Whether you like their user interface compared to other brands, you will be impressed with the new sounds, effects and editing capabilities. Comparing these models to older products, all I can say is go and find one and listen to them!

[Ken Madell]

On 6/1/2018 at 7:35 PM, george kaye said:

I own a music store in Southern California (Kaye's Music Scene).  I've been disappointed for years with Casio's drum kits.  They've always sounded terrible up until the new AiX sound engine came out this year.  Finally, the sounds on these new models are great, especially at these prices.  Casio had done a great job with Privia products featuring really good pianos, electric pianos and organs but all there other products still had poor quality drums, not very good sounding guitars, basses, horns, etc.  Whether you like their user interface compared to other brands, you will be impressed with the new sounds, effects and editing capabilities. Comparing these models to older products, all I can say is go and find one and listen to them!

I have a 7600 and 3000.  All I can say is that when Casio moves forward into a new line of products there is such an enormous improvement.  The new editing and user creation capabilities are so well designed and so USEFULLY and Creatively real-time  interactive and integrated.  In one day you can watch yourself becoming a better musician.  

[Rudolph R-N R]

I had a WK7600.  Grew to detest the sounds, pissed me off.  My biggest concern in getting the MZ-X500 was if there’d be a sound quality improvement.  The X300 has the same sounds as the X500.

 

Glad to say, contrasting to Chillwalkers 1 day evaluation, I really enjoy the sounds on the X500.  It’s a pretty sweet package altogether.  The speakers rock on it, many jam sessions don’t need an extra amp, and the sound quality it even greater with the Hex Layers (though it’s a shame they didn’t optimize the user interface to make seeing and layering 6 sounds at once more user friendly, a tall task).

 

These days I use my ipad a lot for extra sounds, and its obvious that these apps sound better than the X500, but very few keyboards sound as good as these apps, and once I layer the X500 with the ipad, wowee, glorious sounds abound!

 

I do think Casio missed an opportunity with the battery powered option being taken out on the CT-X5000.  They could have disabled the onboard speaker sound when powering from batteries, the X5000 would make a sweet portable board!

[Brad Saucier]

4 hours ago, Randelph said:

 The X300 has the same sounds as the X500.

 

Not completely true.  The MZ-X500 has 200 additional preset tones, the hex layer tones, and by extension bass synth tones.  Hex layer is the most desirable sounds and synth features in all of Casio's keyboards.

[Jokeyman123]

What apps sound better than a keyboard?

[Rudolph R-N R]

On 12/9/2018 at 11:03 AM, Brad Saucier said:

 

Not completely true.  The MZ-X500 has 200 additional preset tones, the hex layer tones, and by extension bass synth tones.  Hex layer is the most desirable sounds and synth features in all of Casio's keyboards.

 

OK,  didn’t know that.

 

I really don’t know why Casio developed such powerful layering technology and didn’t finish the job, it’s their claim to sonic fame as you say.  

 

For starters, most of the hex layers are for EDM, which is not for the vast majority of users beyond a novelty factor I’m guessing.  So developing a much larger starter library of factory made hex layers for a broader audience would have been incredible, hex layers are amazing.

 

Another thing is that Hex Layers are inherently difficult to use without having   ONE   screen that tells you basic information for all 6 layers:

- The name of the sound used for each layer

- How its mapped across the keyboard

- Velocity levels it responds to

Without this information in front of you, how does anyone remember more than a few of how they are laid out?  Most people don’t have a photographic memory.  It would have to cram a lot of well-laid out info on one screen, but it’d make all the difference in the world, those six sliders would be a path to musical satisfaction!

 

The other thing, is that the same principle applies to creating Hex Layers.  There’s some inherently good things about how its set up now, but man oh man, with an ipad editor, creating hex layers and a whole community of hex layer creators would be a slam dunk!  

 

And why not Casio?  You can carry all that work on those hex layers over to your next keyboard, but first you’ve got to make them accessible to your end users!

 

 

[Rudolph R-N R]

On 12/9/2018 at 3:01 PM, Jokeyman123 said:

What apps sound better than a keyboard?

 

Well, take it for what its worth.  I’ve had a Yamaha XS7, their workstation that came out in 2007.  I’ve had arranger keyboards from Yamaha, Casio and Korg, a Nord Stage Classic, and now the MZ-X500.  I was surprised at how blah I felt about Yamaha’s top of the line workstation at the time, loved the keybed but the sounds mostly didn’t move me.  Really enjoyed the Yamaha and Korg arrangers with built-in speakers, though I wasn’t focused on sound quality at the time.  The Nord Stage was and is a real treat, nice to be playing a weighted action, with aftertouch, and for the most part I really liked the sounds, instead of having to audition hundreds upon hundreds of sounds and try to make out which were the best, I just mostly like almost everything, and needed fewer sounds to achieve musical satisfaction.

 

But along the way it became a matter of educating my hearing and taste.  What does a real organ, or Electric Piano, or synthesizer or good piano sound like?  A good Leslie effect? And all the other effects.  For example, one of the things I hated about the WK7600 was the reverbs and chorus effects were miserable, just bad sounding.  Whereas on the X500, they’re really pretty decent.  

 

I’m still learning what a real organ can sound like, but playing with the Galileo 2 ipad app is getting me closer.  Some of it is that there’s literally dozens of parameters you can change, and part of it is they have really good effects.  And, beyond the quality of the organ sounds there’s having organ chops!  It’s not a piano!

 

Same with Neo Soul Cafe.  I’ve never played a real electric piano, but my Nord Stage warmed me up to what that could be like, and now with this ipad app its like, wow, the level of expressiveness is just outstanding, very satisfying to play, and once again, the onboard effects are top notch, very vintage.

 

And finally the ipad app Syntronik.  I still haven’t wrapped my head around it other than its just blowing my mind!  For one thing, many of the sounds are so out of this world, like nothing I’ve played before, the depth and soaring capabilities just blow me away.  But its a steep learning curve, because I haven’t played these sounds before (at least very much), I have to learn new ways of injecting them into the music, which is great.  I don’t want to be wallpaper, I want to be heard, but not to shock or be outlandish, but deeply expressive.  It’s a challenge though, so many of them have a screeching, fizzy high end that is just way too much, cutoff filter and EQ needed for my taste!

 

I’ve purposefully limited myself to just a few apps, its a lot of work learning each one!

 

I haven’t really figured out how to do anything more basic than playing one or two sounds at once from the ipad while playing the X500, but the combination of the X500 and just one or two of these sounds has been pure bliss!

 

Randy

[Jokeyman123]

So the iPad apps are not just controllers, there are built-in sounds within the applications? I'm asking because usually there is a whole bunch of latency (delay from whn you hit a key) when using software-generated sounds. Maybe the ipad platform is better, but for Android the ability to play computer-generated (ipad, Android or even Windows) is pretty nasty last I checked. Even when playing pre-arranged midi files, the pad and phone apps are still sketchy and Ive got pretty new stuff. At least wih Android.

[Home16]

Здравствуйте.Недавно я приобрел CT-X5000. Какие имеются новые стили,звуки которых нет на серии CTK? Нигде данной информации не нашел, поэтому обращаюсь к вам. Очень нужен перечень новых стилей и тонов.