havingfun

Yes, the PreSonus R65's appear to have a tweeter design similar to the Adam Audio monitors. Can't say anything about a sound comparison - no store in my area carries either monitor to audition. And as I mentioned earlier, it has been hard for me to compare monitors via YouTube audio recordings. The most accurate audition seems to be by connecting the monitors up to your specific keyboard and giving them a play.

My monitor quest is a somewhat long story. My goal was to improve over the sound from the keyboard's speakers for playing in a bedroom-sized room. I started with PreSonus E5's after hearing them auditioned with several other name-brand monitors on YouTube. However, I was disappointed with them once connected to my keyboard: the concert grand samples had poor base and the mids sounded hollow. I juiced up their response a bit with the keyboard's 3-band DSP equalizer and a sub-woofer, but could still not overcome the hollow mids. Next came Kali Audio LP-6's based on the many favorable reviews on the internet. Unfortunately, I tested them for only a short time with my keyboard since both monitors distorted badly (like they had brokens speaker cones) on specific notes from the keyboard (each monitor distorted on different notes). They played fine on other notes. Finally I upgraded to PreSonus R65's in hopes that the thin folded membrane tweeter would improve the mids, and that the larger woofer (6.5") would fix the base. Once I hooked these up, one of these also distorted on specific notes from the keyboard and was returned. The replacement sounds fine so I finally have two decent-sounding monitors which sound similar to the sounds I get out of headphones with this keyboard. They are only rated at 150 watts and I use them just for personal listening, not gigging. I can't compare them to the 1000 watt QSC's you mention.

"Good sound" is very subjective - everyone will have a somewhat different opinion. I agree that the sound from the on-board PX-S speakers is not great - makes the Concert Grand piano sound hollow and "tinny" to my ear, and does not do justice to the nice samples stored in the keyboard. However, in my view, the sound is not awful, either. Given the price point and the small dimensions for the keyboards, the sound production is OK. But to get good fidelity from the keyboard, you will probably need to upgrade to decent monitors. My limited sound testing resulted in upgrading the monitors twice before I was satisfied. Unfortunately, I found that I had to audition the monitors-with-keyboard in person; the sounds recorded in videos did not seem to correlate well to the live sound. For example, PianoMan Chuck put out a video where the on-board speakers sound pretty good:

No problem at all for me. With a light positioned to illuminate sheet music on the music stand, any glare bounces sideways or back away from my eyes. Plus the blossy surface is easy to wipe clean.

I have an 88-key spandex cloth cover from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CZTOPSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It is very stretchy and even fits over the music stand if needed.

A Guitar Center store nearby finally got in a new stock of Casio PX-S1000's so I had a chance to compare the concert grand samples on their store keyboard with mine. As suspected, the "twang" was the same for the three notes I have mentioned in earlier posts. The store salesman was interested in my comparison experiment, so he came over to the keyboard to listen for himself and readily picked up on the unpleasant resonances. He guessed it was too much tremolo, maybe from the "Acoustic Simulator"? And to Mike Martin's earlier point, the twang is audible starting at least a second after the notes are played so long as the notes are sustained (either by holding the key down or depressing the sustain pedal). Releasing the key quickly (no sustain) eliminates the twang on my keyboard (all notes sounding great). And as Brooster stated, the S3000 has very good sounding acoustic pianos on 84 notes, and I still find mine very enjoyable to play.

So is there a list somewhere with the definitions and characteristics of each of the 92 "amp cabinet types" to use as a starting point? Seems like without that, it will be a big effort to wade through each of the cabinet types and variations within the cabinet types to see if any implementation of this DSP could improve my monitor sound. Maybe this DSP cannot even be used for this purpose?

I could use some help with the AMP Cab DSP. I am guessing by the brief description on page EN-89 of the User's Guide that this DSP can be added to a tone to modify the sound from my monitors. The keyboard sound played through my headphone amp and headphones is dramatically better than through my monitors, so improving the monitor sound would be nice if possible. So if that is the intent of this DSP, how do I choose among the 92 "amp cabinet types" listed in the Guide, and what do the Display names (FD-PRNST through AC-SIM) mean?

Mike: With my keyboard, Damper Resonance provides a beautiful "after tone" which sounds almost like a whispery echo in a large room after the key is struck. This is in addition to the sustained note. When I turn the Damper Resonance off, the sustain pedal still sustains the note as before, but the whisper is gone. Neither Damper Resonance on or off effects the unpleasant "twang". And by the way, all notes on my keyboard sound great with the sustain pedal not depressed, so apparently the samples of the 9 foot concert grand are indeed very good. I feel like I am beating a dead horse here. No one else is either hearing the sound I hear or if they are, are not annoyed with it. Setting the Hall Simulator to N.Y. Club helps a little. I can live with that. The rest of the Concert Grand notes sound wonderful, particularly when sustained. Thanks for your patience on this.

Mike: thanks for your response. It makes sense that what I hear is in the note samples since these specific keys play fine (clean resonances) with all the other piano tones except the five I noted. Also, I would expect that a keyboard sound problem would impact more than just 3 keys. Sadly, the twang or resonance I hear on these 3 keys does not seem to complement the tone of the notes played as do the many other sympathetic resonances that are audible with other notes. If I learn any more about this issue, I will report back on this forum.

Here is a second attempt at providing a video of my keyboard "twang". This time I recorded with my phone close to the left on-board speaker. I plan to do an audio test of a retailer's PX-S1000 to see if the same problem exists in a second keyboard, but currently their Casio's are out of stock. 20190529_155600.mp4

I appreciate your help, Jokeyman. I have applied a stereo 3-band equalizer DSP to my keyboard to try to remove the "twang" with no benefit. The Grand Piano Concert tone has a default monaural 1 band equalizer DSP assigned to it, but Casio has it turned off, so I assume it has no effect on the sound. (Grand Piano Concert tones are in stereo). I am guessing that Casio assigned this default DSP just as a place holder, since it makes no sense to transform the tone to monaural. When I turn it on, it plays all keyboard notes in monaural as expected, and as expected, it sounds bad compared to the stereo version. If I understand correctly, there are 26 other DSP modules (beyond the 2 mentioned above) that can be assigned in place of the silly default DSP. It will take a while for me to wade through those to see if any of them reduce the twang I hear. When one of these is substituted for the default DSP and turned on, it apparently adds some sound effect on top of the basic tones (i.e. post-processing the original samples). Each of these additional DSPs has parameters that can be adjusted individually. As far as I can tell, there is no way to adjust the basic tone samples themselves. So to be clear, the Grand Piano Concert tones with twang are in stereo. And also, they are audible (to me) via the on-board speakers, my monitor speakers, earbuds, and my headphone amp/headphones (with all speakers turned off).

I raised the issue of note "twang" a few days back (see above). I should emphasize that it is a peculiar sound that occurs a full second or two after specific keys are played and only when the sustain pedal is depressed - so maybe not easy to hear at first. I have experimented with the Equalizer DSPs but as expected, they broadly change the frequency response of the keyboard but I can't seem to find any settings that reduce the twang on these 3 notes. I see that this topic has had well over 100 views to date but no other PX-S3000 owners have commented on whether they are hearing the problem with their own keyboards. So is no one else having this problem? If not, this may strictly be a problem with just one keyboard . . .

Yes, I agree. Grand Piano Concert has its default DSP as Mono 1-Band EQ (not sure why), but it is turned off. If I turn it on, it collapses the stereo samples to mono (and sounds terrible).

Video (above) does not seem to include my text. That is a video of my keyboard with the "twang". Frankly, the speaker on my phone did not seem to pick up the problem sound very well. Not sure if you can hear it.