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Privia PX-160 - bad sound quality from headphone jacks?..


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Hello!

I've bought a new Casio Privia PX-160 some months ago and I am wondering why it doesn't sound as good in my headphones as in I hear on various YouTube reviews (I used the same headphones on piano and on my PC to listen and compare). Sound isn't bad, it's just way less clear, especially the bass notes. I also checked some other headphones I have at home with different impedance and sound coming from jacks on the front is more or less the same.

Can anyone please tell me what's the deal here? I noticed that in reviews they always capturing piano sound from line out jacks on the back - is this the reason why the sound is better? Or they are using PA system to enhance sound quality? Is there any way to make my headphones plugged in piano sound better? Headphone amp maybe?

P. S. Headphones I'm using with the piano are Invotone HD2000.

P. S. S. Yes, I did reset piano settings a few times, it didn't help.

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Another way to compare-but you will need a digital recorder or small mixing board plus possibly a 1/8" to 1/4" stereo phone plug adapter if your recorder has 1/4" headphone jack-take the line out connectors (1/4") from the PX160 and connect to your recorder or mixing board. Using the same headphones, listen to the PX160 through the recorder, make sure you have levels set properly.  If it sounds better through this system there could be something wrong the the PX headphone jacks although not too likely. I see these phones are rated at 32 ohms impedance-I think the PX160 is rated at 3 ohms at the headphone jack according to the manual, this can't be right. That's unusually low for a headphone jack-my other PX's are 200 ohm and 170 ohm and i get similar results with all my phones (AKG monitors), I wonder if the manual is not correct. If it is, this presents a curious problem and may be why the headphones are not sounding too clear. 3 ohms will not give you good results with most anything as far as I know, except maybe cheap earbuds, the mismatch with 32 ohms may even be too much. The effect will be just as you noticed-there will be a noticeable drop-of at the high end frequency response and maybe worse. I wish I had a PX160 in front of me so i could test it out, but my best guess is that this spec is designed for some type of specific headphone to work clearly. Maybe you need to get in touch with Casio tech support to find this out, or hopefully someone else on this forum can weigh in. The closer your phones are to the actual impedance of the keyboard, the better your results providing the phones are reasonably spec'd out.

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Thank you for the reply!

Unfortunately, I don't have access to this audio equipment, though I tried to plug in small media center and guitar processor (sic!) to act as an amplifier. It didn't do much aside from insignificant increase in volume. Guess I either need a good amp or headphones that will match with the piano specs perfectly. If I'll find the solution, I'll post it here!

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Another way if you have a laptop or desktop computer with a "line-in" 1/8" stereo jack, most do. Connect the line-outs of the PX to the computer's audio in jack with the proper csble-I have several that have 1/4" monophonic plugs on one end, and a 1/8" stereo mini-plug on the other. Listen to the PX through your laptop and check out what that sounds like. I have posted some questions about this in another post here in the Casio forum, about headphone impedance. Maybe we can get a better idea of what is happening.

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I have a a PX-5S and a Koss PRO4-AA headphone, that are a 70's model, aimed to the broadcasting production, so they have an high impedance and bass frequencies aren't enhanced at all. So when I use the headphones I hafe to turn the volume to the max and the bass response doesn't have the punch you expect. 

If you are using an external amplifier especially one marketed as acoustic guitar amplifier when you switch bak the sound will result plain and beige.

 

By the way, have you tried to pan lef and right the sound? Because a missing ground connection on the phone jack will make the sound weird and hollow.

 

 

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3 hours ago, mike71 said:

 

By the way, have you tried to pan lef and right the sound? Because a missing ground connection on the phone jack will make the sound weird and hollow

No, how do I do that? I need specific equipment?

EDIT: Sound from line-outs on the back seems very good, so it indeed seems like a headphone problem

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update: So I've went and bought decent monitor headphones (ATH-M40X) and small amplifier (FiiO A3) and sound became much better. It's still different from YouTube reviews sound, but at least now I can finally hear all range of notes properly. Sound is extremely clean and accurate now, just what is needed for practice sessions.

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Happy to hear that.

 

Often digital pianos are not like typical stereo equipment-there is such a huge range of frequencies reproduced by a good digital piano-that unless your headphones are pretty closely matched to the "impedance" of the headphone jack, even the best headphones that sound great with a stereo may not work well at all with a digital piano. My AKG k52 headphones connected to my PX350 or PX560, these sound terrible-no high frequencies, muffled bass like a cheap pair of earbuds. Connected to my stereo , laptop or mp3 players, these same headphones sound really nice! Only my monitor (flat frequency response) headphones bring out the true quality of the pianos and other sounds. 

 

The AKG52 are yep-52 ohms impedance. My K300 and 301 monitors are 200 ohms which I expect is closer to the impedance of both PX Privias. Not as loud out of the headphone jack, bu the fidelity is there. So impedance matching apparently is very important to the sound of the Privias, or any other music workstation I would think. And some very high impedance pro headphones will not be able to get sufficient power to get a decent louder sound from a digital piano. I cannot use my old AKG K240 600 ohms headset with my Privias at all, I would need a "headphone amplifier" to use these with the digital piano.  With my stereo, these sound fine. Glad this worked out.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update #2: Out of sheer curiosity I've bought cheap Y-cable (L/R 6.3 mm jack -> stereo mini-jack) and connected rear line-outs of my Privia with FiiO A3 headphone amp... And I couldn't believe the result! FINALLY I'm hearing sound that's very close to those YouTube recordings. Though some details are still lacking it's a huge improvement over previous setup (headphone amp connected to front headphone output). Now it sounds like completely different instrument! I have no idea what's the culprit here (maybe my headphone jacks are defected or something, though I doubt that), but I'm really glad that the sound problem finally solved. Hope this info will help someone with similar issue!

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I'm glad you found a solution-I'm more puzzled than before since impedance matching doesn't seem to be the issue-there must be something I'm missing here-and yes maybe the specs I see aren't correct-for the Privias-the headphone manufacturers I think are fairly reliable although I'm still puzzled why the AKG k52s sound so bad but only with the Privias. That's why i have the post about the Superlux headsets-I want to find out what others are hearing, from these or other headsets in order to compare.

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  • 2 months later...

Update #3: I've tried Superlux headphones suggested by Jokeyman (HD681), and they indeed have better sound on PX-160 than my M40X. Treble notes sound just amazing, especially if you set +1 or +2 brilliance in settings. Bass is more or less the same as in M40X, maybe a bit less detailed, but overall sound is much more alive and pleasant, so now I'm completely satisfied. I gave up on trying to understand what's the deal here, I'm just gland things have worked out for me.

P. S. I'm still using line outs on the back though, not headphone jacks, it's still noticeable that line outs have better sound quality.

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks for the info in this and related threads, all (esp. Jokeyman123).  I bought a PX-160 recently, and wasn't happy with how my Tascam headphones (which worked fine with my old PX-830) were sounding.  I bought a cheap headphone amp, and that helped a ton.  FYI, the one I bought was from these guys:

http://www.lucidlaboratories.com/headphone-amplifiers

Very affordable, and also neat how they literally make them in mint / candy tins (I chose Altoids Wintergreen :) ).  Recommended!

 

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  • 1 year later...

Sorry for the late post but I have to thank you all for these informative answers.

Being a woman, I really get confused when something goes wrong. I've had a similar situation with Sony MDR7506. There was a cable problem, and I solved (and found) it by switching on other headphones.

But if something like this will happen next time, I will be prepared and will go to reread this thread :)

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Great forum here, there is already tons of info about almost every Casio made, except watches! And "being a woman?"-you don't have to be a woman to be confused-look at some of my posts, and as far as i can tell, I am a man-at least my wife thinks so.........................:www.MessenTools.com-Frutas-pianodance:That's us doing a duet....

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