AlenK

More than 200 away now. Look's like it will be a solid fourth place, which ain't bad given the competition.

Good to know. The tech specs on casiomusicgear.com must be wrong. They don't list them, nor does the description above the tech specs mention them. Hope Casio corrects that.

Bearing in mind that I have never heard either except in YouTube videos I would expect the PX-560's acoustic grand piano to actually sound just a tiny bit better than that of the PX-860, the same (see Scott's correction below), at least if you are listening through headphones or an external sound system. That's because the PX-560 emulates some characteristics of a piano's sound that the PX-860 does not (specifically damper noise and key release velocity). However, if you listen through their respective built-in speakers I would expect the PX-860 to sound significantly better because of the 40W (total) sound system and the additional speakers in the stand, regardless of those missing nuances (which are really quite subtle). PS. The difference in pedaling action between the two, at least in their stock forms, may also result in significant sound differences. The PX-860 has the traditional three pedals, with the damper pedal supporting half pedaling. You only get a damper pedal with the PX-560, which does not support half-pedaling, unless you opt for the optional stand and also the pedal unit.

Over the last year or so Casio has revamped their entire digital piano line apart from the PX-5S (which is now looking a bit old fashioned beside all of its touchscreen-endowed brethren) and most recently its arranger line (the MZ-X models). Besides a true successor to the PX-5S (the PX-560 isn't quite that) that leaves the XW line, which is now more than four years old. That's a pretty long shelf life for any product. I happen to think a successor (or two) is overdue. So what will it be like when it does finally arrive? I don't have any inside track to what is going on at Casio. But I do have a sphere made of glass bequeathed to me by a long dead great grandfather rumored to have lived with the gypsies. (Cue sound of crystal ball activating. You say you've never heard such a sound before? Use your imagination.) It'll be mainly blue - that nice (IMO) metallic blue of the PX-560 and the MZ-X500 - with black and silver accents; very professional looking. At least one of the models (if there IS more than one) will come with a 76-key keyboard. The keyboard will STILL not have aftertouch. (😢) It will have at least as many knobs and sliders as the current XW models, although I hope for more knobs. It will have a 5.3-inch color touchscreen (easy guess there!). It won't have speakers but it may/should have the "iPad" shelf. (That was a seriously good idea, however unbalanced it made the instrument look.) It will accept a foot-switch and an expression pedal (another easy prediction). It will also have touch pads like the ones on the MZ-X models, although how many is anyone's guess. Let's say at least eight. Sound-wise, it will have the newest Hex Layer engine that is in the MZ-X500. Maybe even an improvement on that (such as allowing PWM or sync between oscillators under certain conditions, but that's just wishful thinking). It will also have the improved drawbar organ of the MZ-X models. Actually, the drawbar organ will be even better - there will be no need to buy a Ventilator or a Burn to get an authentic B3+Leslie sound. (That might be true already of the MZ-X models. Dunno.) All the PCM tones from the MZ-X500 will be included, complete with articulations, and many more. The XW solo synth will be beefed up to rival the best virtual analog synths in sound quality, largely free from aliasing and the zipper artifacts caused by insufficient calculation precision. Casio has evidently learned a lot in four years about virtual filter and oscillator design. It will have the XW's step sequencer as well as the MIDI recorder (16-track linear sequencer) found in MZ-X models and the PX-560 and they will be able to work together or otherwise be integrated (somehow!). It will have an audio recorder feature. It will of course have the programmable arpeggiator. It will still have a phrase recorder - that's mucho useful, even given the sequencers. Here's the risky guess: One or both models will include sampling capability, even better than what is in the MZ-X500 (which, AFAIK, is the same as the sampler in the XW-PD1). You won't have to decide between having Hex Layer and drawbar organ (P1) versus sampling (G1) - you'll get it all. Oh, and it will have a street price of not more than $799. Oops, maybe I went too far! 😱

If you don't really want an arranger you might want to wait a little longer. I am hopeful that a successor to the XW-P1/G1 is next in the product cue. In the last year or so Casio has updated their entire digital piano line aside from a true successor to the PX-5S (the PX-560 isn't quite that) and most recently their arranger keyboard line (the MZ-X models of course!) The XW line is now over four years old and if Casio follows the order of previous non-home-piano introductions it's next in line. Mind you, there is probably more of an argument to be made for updating the PX-5S. The 5.3-inch touchscreen and expression pedal input are just what that product needs. What could an XW successor look like? See my post in the XW General Discussion section for my attempt at prognostication. 😊

Here is a review of some recent Kawai models. http://www.pianobuyer.com/PDFarchive/2015_Review-Kawai.pdf Reviewer says action noise on the CN25 model was "moderately low and not distracting." There are other reviews of digital pianos on the site (as well as acoustic pianos), including Casio CGP-700 and PX-560. http://www.pianobuyer.com/archive.html In the review of the Casio models the reviewer does note that the action "makes a bit of a clunk when a key is released." http://www.pianobuyer.com/PDFarchive/2016_Review-Casio.pdf

Glad all is well now. Yeah, speakers can make a huge difference. I didn't know about the KRK Rokit line. I will have to check them out in person sometime.

I'm not a moderator but I don't see why anyone should delete your post. You are allowed to have opinions here and yours should stand. What I pointed out is simply that I haven't heard the same opinion expressed elsewhere (concerning the tones in the PX-5S - the PX-560 is too new to have garnered much feedback other than here). I wasn't invalidating your opinion but I'm sure it would come as a surprise to Casio given where the tones come from. PS. If I were you I would edit your posts again to remove the notes to the moderator. Otherwise they are just going to sit there because I doubt very much that Scott would remove the posts.

That's quite a harsh assessment. If I'm not mistaken many of the tones in the PX-560 come directly from the PX-5S. Reading the comments on other forums of professional musicians using the PX-5S I can't remember any of them complaining that the tones were particularly bad. Quite the opposite, actually. (I don't have a PX-5S or PX-560 myself so I can't offer a personal assessment.)

Sounds like the lone resonant filter in the OMNI is being operated at maximum resonance close to self oscillation (or perhaps actually into it - don't know if the OMNI can do that) and Greg Hawkes is moving the OMNI's cutoff frequency slider up and down to affect the pitch change we hear. Nice and spooky. Unfortunately, the P1 solo synth's modeled filter isn't nearly as nice as the analog one in the OMNI. It definitely won't self oscillate and it squeals rather rudely if you set it too high (you might have noticed ). So I doubt you'd be able to emulate the sound in the same way. But off the top of my head (not being near a P1) I think you could get reasonably close with a simple triangle wave, using the pitch bend wheel to slide the pitch of it up and down (might have to increase the pitch bend range). No filter needed at all, really, unless a triangle wave doesn't get you there. That's about what I'd expect to hear if a sawtooth (or pulse if that was the original waveform - the OMNI does either) was passed through a low pass filter with very high resonance, aside from the way the OMNI's filter can be heard to lock onto successive harmonics at low frequencies, which I think would be a bitch to emulate (and wasn't necessarily what Hawkes wanted, it's just what happens).

Bump, because I changed the title to explicitly solicit a response. It seems like SOMEONE from the forum took part and I'm inviting them to share their experience. For example, at 14m53s Mike says "Brad" and I think we know who that probably was, right?

To be fair to Mike the early videos he did, including the ones for Sweetwater Sound and Kraft Music, were very good and they convinced me that the synth was worth my time. The intro video from Casio Japan ("Shift the Sound Era"), not so much. This latest video distinguishes itself by its smart selection of sounds.

You're selling yourself short, CairnsFella. That's a REAL solid effort and you're very brave to have put it up here. And now you are offering up the components of your hard work if we're interested? Colour (color) me interested! I'm a huge Depeche Mode fan from way back (REALLY back, to when this stuff was new and I was dancing to it in the clubs).

Somewhat surprising to see such videos coming out so late in the lifecycle of the product, but IMO this is one of the best yet.

The following video from Mike was apparently originally a live YouTube stream on Feb 29. I didn't even know it happened! So my questions are: Who on the forum took part in it? And to Mike, was the test successful enough, i.e., Will YouTube streams be used going forward in preference to UStream? And how do I learn about these events before they happen (somehow I missed the invite for this one)? (And how do you make the graphic for a video in a post smaller?? It seems to want to go the full width of the window.) PS. Even though the video concerns the XW-P1, I posted this in the General Casio Discussion forum rather the XW-P1 forum because my questions concern the YouTube stream itself, not the content of the video.

@CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler You can disable local control for each part separately, which has no affect on MIDI output for each part coming either from the keyboard (the four zones) or from the step sequencer. So it should be possible to do what you're describing. I suspect, however, that latency could be a big problem if you route through a PC. I would give it a try anyway. Regarding the timbre variations of piano sounds, this is a big topic. Just changing filter cutoff doesn't sound particularly authentic: that's how early samplers did it because they had so little memory (e.g., Korg DSS1 had only 256K 12-bit words = 384 KBytes!!). Samples at multiple velocity levels are required for decent emulation. Casio, Roland and Korg all have algorithms to more-or-less cross fade between those samples to avoid obvious switching. The XW-P1 of course simply switches between three samples, which while not optimal is good enough for non-critical applications.

There is a lot of music playing in this. Are these all demo songs coming from the MZ-X500?

1. More contrast and color, less use of gray levels that are close to each other. 2. Bring back the download counter for attachments.

That person has uploaded a number of other sound-creation tutorials. It's a lot of work and he's doing a great job.

The point was simply that the "technology" (idea, really) is quite old. There was no intent to compare the XW-P1 to the SX-WSA1. If that's what you got out of my reply in that thread then I'm afraid you misread it.

Dancing banana. Oh happy day.

Not only do apparently all the official static photos for the PX-560 (and the PX-5S) show the mod wheel indent lined up with the indent of the pitch wheel, the photographers must have done it intentionally. They apparently have some misplaced notion of symmetry. The photographer(s) of the XW synths didn't make that same "mistake", so it's curious. But not unprecedented. I have seen the same thing from Moog in the last few years (but not on all models and not even on all photos of a given model). Hey, Mike, you should let the photographers of these products know the "error" of their ways.

Thanks, swistak. It sounds like some string noises are being triggered on the lowest notes and the highest notes, the latter in combination with the notes themselves, but not the variety listed for the Versatile Nylon Guitar in the MZ-X models. This suggests that the answer to my question is no; these tones aren't Versatile Tones. But they are more "versatile" than previous guitar tones, which is nice.