music styles compatibility

[Ludwig]

Hi everybody!!! I'm new on this forum and the topic I would like to address regards the compatibility between old generation casio music arrangers and new generation arrangers.  The thing is, while most rhythms are compatible between old generation keyboards, they aren´t compatible with  new generation keyboards. This is utter hogwash. If  we take Roland for example, just for comparisons sake, a music style from the roland e-86 is compatible with the most recent flagship keyboard, the roland bk 9. I've read somewhere that all casio style files ending with the cpt extension, have to be converted to ckt format in order to work on the most recent casio arrangers. I don´t understand why this is so, because just the software required to convert cpt files into ckt files is just as expensive as  a new keyboard. If you ask me, this is all about marketing and making  profit. 

 

One question though, if anybody on this forum owns a casio wk 1800, could you tell me if the styles of the wk1800 work on the casio ctk 7000?

 

 

I would be very greatful if you could help me with this problem.

 

 

 

[Null]

Whenever you design backward compatibility into a keyboard you have to make tradeoffs in designing the new keyboard. 

 

When they design a new keyboard they like to add the latest hardware advancements and sometimes you have to ask yourself is it worthwhile supporting a decade old soundset which most people have seen reach its end of life years ago and ended up on the scrap heap?

 

It seriously depends on which audience Casio is trying to reach these days.  For me, my XW-P1 is my first Casio since a $60 throwaway Casiotone CA-100 I owned over 18 years ago.

 

If Casio is seriously trying to reinvent itself and its corporate image from a manufacturer of cheap Walmart toys to a professional synth company then sometimes you have to throw away the old technology in favor of the latest and greatest whiz bangs and hope to build a new following.

 

Personally I hope they sell enough XW's that it continues to be supported for decades to come, but I'm reasonable enough to know that in all likelihood within 5 years something better and smoother will come along and my XW will become yet another "vintage synth" with all the good and bad vibes which tag along with that label.

 

As for pricey conversion software, it depends on who wrote it.  Chances are if Casio developed it in house they would end up giving it away.  If some third party programmer spent the last 3 years of his life reverse engineering the formats only to have his software end up on bittorrent anyway and end up selling 60 legit copies, then I too would charge up the yin yang for it

 

Just my $0.02

 

Gary

[Silvano Silva]

Almost Whenever you pass a style of an old keyboard to the new there is some loss, this is unavoidable because the new keyboard always has more features and tones. An example was the yamaha PSR 730 and when I had spent the styles for PSR 3000 had difference because the volumes have changed, the PSR 3000 MAINS had more, MORE FILL INS
AND intros
ENDINGS.

[XW-Addict]

In a way Casio should have made some files compatible I agree that at least they could made some files adaptable for newer systems or provide conversion programs to do it yourself.