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XW-P1 A Marketing Failure - NOT


AlenK

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Some interesting but not surprising recent comments over at KVR Audio. Some people JUST can't get past the Casio name:

 

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=339682&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15&sid=6593481e6af969258d7aee78b9af92ee

 

Maybe Mike can release some sales figures for the XW line-up to date? I doubt it is ANY kind of failure, marketing or otherwise. 

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Yeah, I saw that a few days ago. What I find interesting is that they are complaining "there is no after touch in this controller". "No way would I pay 500 bucks for a controller without after touch". I cannot understand why they think it is just a controller.

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Hi forum, I read the negative  post on that site. How in the world can they say the xw's are a marketing failure? do they work at casio? no. Do they have info that only casio executive's would have? no.  What it really is are just a few  people talking through their butt's. This is just more controversy for the xw's . Great gear is often controversial. 

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Some people always see the negative.. I prefer to work with what something DOES have.. And can you imagine how BORING the scene would be if every keyboard had exactly the same sounds, functions and abilities?  

A creative musician / producer will get what they need out of an instrument somehow. Look how much Emerson, Wakeman, Banks and the other pioneers got out of their instruments.  :)

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Yes, we are absolutely spoiled. "Won't buy it if it doesn't have aftertouch. Wah wah wah." We have technology at our fingertips (literally) that musicians and composers would have died for (not literally!) only a few decades ago. And in adjusted dollar terms it costs us less for equivalent functionality every year.

Imagine, for instance, making an album of multi-track "orchestral" music using just two monophonic, analog synthesizers and a Mellotron (the latter sparingly), none of whose keyboards have aftertouch or even velocity sensitivity, laying each track one by one primarily in real time (no MIDI and only a very simple digital sequencer) to reel-to-reel analog tape. (Most people here probably have never seen a reel-to-reel tape deck, much less used one.)

Imagine producing something like this with such comparatively primitive technology:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/synergy-electronic-realizations-for-rock-orchestra-mw0000650861

How it was made: http://synergy-emusic.com/erro.html

My favorite track: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-zNFkvRPo. (If you like it you really should hear it properly from a CD.)

Larry Fast has always been my principal inspiration for electronic music. He's the reason I got into it in the first place.

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Nice of you...Chaos. ;)

But "...never took off..."? Without sales figures we have no way of knowing how well or how poorly it has taken off. I suspect Casio has sold quite a few, enough to make it at least a minor hit in the synth world.

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Talk and criticize is free. CASIO has been sleeping for many years in the music world. Start over is a hard and difficult journey. But CASIO has awakened with great ideas and fresh news.

Marketing is hard if other manufacturers are at the top of the market.

CASIO XW is a failure in Spain. But this does not mean that CASIO has failed. People do things to fail.
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Another poster who makes a claim that they can't possibly know unless Casio's sales figures for the XW have somehow been made public: http://www.yamahaforums.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=5449: "Looked really good but reviews have not been great and sales pretty poor."

Re reviews I have scoured the Internet and I can't say I saw any that were actually negative. Some took issue with different aspects of the instrument but in the end they all said it was good value for money. So this poster is wrong on that count, too. Haters will be haters.

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Hi AlenK, it's kinda weird to me that the few negative  review's I have read are from people who don't even really seem to know much about the xw,or if they do, there's  one little thing it does not have, they have a fit and say they would never want the xw. In my opinion, these people want the perfect synth (there is no perfect synth) Again this is just my opinion, but those people have a narrow view on this subject.

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There are comments and then you have comment's I don't see any substance in those comments about getting in touch 

with the XW series, I think all they babble about are the specs and what they feel like the lack off certain functions. 

 

Any person taking a first look at the XW series makes guesses what it is spoiled by the view they have of other brands of synths,

it leaves people second guessing without knowing actually by playing with the synth instead of looking at it or watching product

or unboxing video's. 

 

I also was spoiled by other brands for what a synth could be but once I had the G1 starting to play with it that when its potential 

came clear to me. What do people want people don't know but for some reason there is a need for the sound of vintage synths 

and the trend of finding those classic sound. The XW series provides a nice blend for those classic sounds and new ones you

don't necessarily  need a sofware synths emulation with a library here and there. With a touch of a button you have your XW

for that stocked with lots of those vintage waves.

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I agree XW-Addict,  I was spoiled on the motif synth, but when I heard the XW-P1 sounding as good or in some case's better than vintage analog(solo) or (poly) hex, exept for filter sweep's, how could I not love this synth. I do not claim to be a synth expert, but I know a great sound when I hear it. With my XW-P1 I have every analog synth in the world. It is so easy for me to forget im jamming with a digital synth sometime's. Other than  the dist/od guitar's this synth is kick a**.

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It's funny, but there is something about having to deal with hard limitations - in this case the limitations inherent in the XW - that can bring out the creative spark in people. Other people equipped with dozens of keyboards in their studios seem to flounder as if the very variety of choices creates a kind of creative paralysis. (e.g., Do I use sound 24 from synth A or sound 315 from synth D on track 19 of my 24-track opus?) Frankly, most of the tracks or "songs" I have heard from well-equipped synth enthusiasts hardly sound like they needed all that equipment. I'm sure they would actually have done better with less.

The XW has a passel of sequencers, decent PCM sounds for the most part, great monophonic and pad-type synth sounds, decent organ sounds, a simplistic but usable effects system and 64-note polyphony. Isn't that enough to create something wonderful without needing any other synth?

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Good ideal AlenK, in all fairness to casio, when I heard the xw dist/od guitar's, I was like yuck, and I moved on to other sound's, kind of giving up on the dist/od guitar's on the xw-p1. Guess I was a little spoiled on my motif's instant gratification.  It's funny though, the only thing I miss about my motif compared to the xw-p1, is those dist/od guitar's and the strum guitar tone.  The xw-p1 has everything else covered.  If someone can create a convincing dist/od guitar on the xw-p1, that would be most excellent. however, I have found if you use external dist/od with the xw-p1, and you turn off the insert on the xw-p1 dist/od guitar's, you can create pretty convincing dist/od guitar's.  

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Call to Mike: Can your sound-design wizards please work on coming up with some really nice lead guitar patches for the XW? Solo synth is fine, even though it's only monophonic (after all, lead guitar stuff is monophonic most of the time).

 

I have found running the XW through something like a COSM effects box really help make the guitar sound more realistic - don't know if you've tried anything like that yet.   :)

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Hi Scott, I run my xw through cosm too, I have two stereo vs8f2  fx board's installed in my roland vs2400,

 

The VS2400 is REAL nice. I have an old Roland Disclab.. was nice for a time... but can't stand how long it takes to write data. Now I use it as a mixer and effects box along with the BR800.  Probably the last hardware multitracks I will get now that I am getting good with Reaper.

ps. Ahhh.. who knows.. maybe I will get a 64 track hardware multitracker someday. Probably be down to $150 in a few years!  :)

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I should try running the XW-P1's output into my Mustang II guitar amp, which allows a "speaker-emulated" recordable digital-audio version of its processed sound to be output to a PC via the USB connection. Fender's Mustang amps do a pretty good job of modeling different kinds of amplifiers and their associated (and naturally occurring) distortions. Of course, with a guitar sitting right beside it (which I rarely pick up now because of the P1: damn you, Casio :)) maybe there isn't much point.

 

PS. I would need a direct-input converter, or so-called "reamp" box, to do this, which I don't currently have but can be made pretty inexpensively. For anyone interested here is an link to an Inexpensive DIY project: http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/314.html. I have not tried to build this but if you can handle a soldering iron it doesn't look at all difficult. This circuit does assume you are feeding it from a balanced signal, however, which of course the XW-P1 does not output. I'm not sure what will happen if you feed it an unbalanced signal, with one of the input lines being ground. I believe it would still work.

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