Choppin

You should be fine. The USB port can't receive and transmit the same data or you could end up with an endless loop. What you receive on the USB port won't be transmitted back out through the USB port. It could come from the Midi 5 pin though. Something like below: Pedal --> Computer --> USB --> Px-5s -->Midi 5 pin out --> back to computer using what came in on USB Simultaneously Px-5s keyboard playing --> USB out --> Computer

Midi signals themselves should have pretty much no latency. You should be able to chain 10 midi units together and be fine. There is very little data transmitted with Midi and the rate it's transmitted relative to the amount of data makes it very quick. The bottle necks are going to be in software and sound hardware. The biggest bottlenecks come in the form of playing samples and analog to digital conversions (digital data into actual sound). A poorly programmed DAW or one not setup properly can slow things down considerably. in terms of hardware, you mentioned an RME interface. I know PCI type RME interfaces kicked butt in terms of low latency and quality - that's going back some years. Perhaps their USB interface is good also.

Pretty much any sustain pedal would work. You could use two KSP100 pedals. It's a fairly tough, full size, generic sustain pedal (inexpensive). It also has a polarity switch on the bottom in case you need to use it on a particular machine. The PX-5s automatically adjusts to the polarity of any pedal on boot up but the switch may make the pedal available for use on a different keyboard. There are no dedicated connections for half damper or expression pedals on the px-5s. An expression pedal would have to be run through midi, and I can't think of any 3 pedal boards that have 2 single ring cable 1/4 cables and a 5 pin or usb midi connector. You could probably get away with a almost any two pedal combo as long as it has two mono 1/4 plugs (single ring). That would be for soft and damper. Plus you could program either for sostenuto. If the two pedal unit has a TRS plug, you could split with a Y TRSF to mono cable. The same applies to a 3 pedal unit except you can only plug two of the pedals into the PX. Though, I haven't tried splitting the signal or using a multi-pedal unit.

Hello, 1. Yes, you can have two switch pedals that control soft and sostenuto. By default, the grand piano setting has the two pedal controls set to soft and damper, but you could change either one to a sostenuto if you like. 2. I'm not aware of any that would work with the px-5s. 3. The USB port should be able to receive any midi data that is transmitted to it. It sounds possible. I take it the intention is to have the performance (midi wise) of the Px-5s captured on a DAW. My thought is, you may have to split the initial signal that you want routed back: 1 to the px to control it, and one to the DAW to merge the pedal data with PX-5s performance. On the PX what is physically played on the keyboard can be routed out OR what is input from an external source can be passed through. There is no dedicated MIDI thru port on the PX-5s so it's an either or situation. Once midi data is received and it triggers events on the PX, that's where the flow stops; or those events can be passed through. I don't believe they merge on midi output. That's why I think you would need to split the pedal signal at the pc level: 1 to the DAW to merge with the MIDI out of the PX and one to the PX to control it (if you want to hear the effect on the px itself). I haven't plugged in an external midi device to the PX for a while but I remember something like this being an issue. There was no MIDI merge for mixing midi events from the outside with midi events generated from the PX-5s for midi output. But I might have that wrong.

Gremlins? You said you used a mic to record your speakers. That could make a difference. Just positioning the mic at different angles or moving it closer or further could change the recorded sound.

aron, I agree. But a recording vs a live playing may be different. My assumption, and I may be wrong for assuming, is that Rocknrolldentist is playing the recording through the computer, but the live playing is going through headphones or the amp directly attached to the PX. My intention is not to offend or say anyone is wrong. I'm just saying there are factors that may make one's experience different from another's - that includes the physical hardware (the keyboard itself, the speakers, etc.), the method of recording, the output volumes, and of course the person listening. I apologize if you thought it was an attack.

That may not be necessarily true. When the data is output and saved to USB it goes through a conversion process where it is defined as a 16 bit 44.1 khz sample in wav format. That conversion is going to cut out some of the extraneous frequencies. Listening directly from the outputs, while still a digital signal, the output may not be at a consistent sample rate and will also be mixed with additional electronic noise that comes from the output plugs themselves, the cables used, and the conversion to a specific audio format is bypassed. In theory, the two sounds should be very similar, but the results may not be the same. Plus the output volume to the USB will influence the amplitude of the sample recording itself. There may be anti clipping compression that occurs in the PX when saving diretly to USB which would also shape the frequencies.

This may be related: I dug around and found an old thread regarding a "tinny" sound that seemed to be present after the upgrade to version 1.13 . I remember hearing it specifically through headphones. I rarely play through headphones anymore and equalize and adjust the sound coming out of my live speakers so I hadn't really thought about the high-end over tones I remember hearing. I don't know if the attached thread adds anything, but it may help validate how one may feel about the sound they are hearing.

Hello, I don't think it is possible to record a phrase from an external source.

Can you record the PX and attach it and point out (maybe the place in time) where you particularly hear the ringing? And also include another piano example that you would say has no ringing so people understand what you are refering to?

I'd be curious to hear a recording of the PX-5s piano sound with the bell tone, and another piano sound (from whatever source)where the tone does not exist. RNRdentist can maybe point out what or where the ringing overtone is occurring in the recording. Also, try the DSP effect "Piano Effect". Adjust the lid, the reflection, and the other levels and see what you get. Make sure reverb, delay, and chorus are off. Also try adjusting the resonance and the cutoff in the filter settings. Also check the System Resonance. There's string resonance, damper resonance, and damper pedal noise. Your high pitched ringing may be hiding in reflections or resonance. Look for effects that amplify or exaggerate harmonics.

For my setup, I actually use an older PC running Linux. For audio, I use an Echo Gina 24 plugged into a PCI slot (2ms to 5ms latency) and I plug midi (5 pin) into a legacy SoundBlaster card (also plugged into a PCI slot). I can hear no noise, but can see small fluctuations on the Ginas vu meters. This comes from the PX-5s outputs using unbalanced cables. The noise is inaudible, but could probably be lessened or close to eliminated if I used a converter. I record usually into Ardour. MIDI I may use Rosegarden. I use a lot of different tools to edit midi files.

tonykeyz, I'm just curious, is there anyway you can do a patch change on the Vr-09 and see what midi code it is sending - using a computer or something? If we can see what is happening, it might explain what's going on. Also, maybe try using MSB set to 113 (hex 71) in case the roland is not using 0 based numbers but starting from 1. Strangely, the manual lists banks at 0-127 but the program change at 1-128 - not sure why the inconsistency but you might want to see if using 113 makes any difference.

Hello, You have to make sure your MSB and LSB are specifically for banks. There can be MSB and LSB for any thing. You specifically want the bank controls though. The MSB for Bank is actually 0 and the value you set for the controller is 112. Like Aron wrote, you can ignore the LSB. The final value is the program change number, in this case the stage setting. In Aron's example above : B0 00 70 C0 XX translates to Set status byte for control code change (B) to change what follows on channel 1 (0) : Set the MSB at Bank 0 (00) to 112 (70) then initiate a program change (C) on channel 1 (0) and set it to XX

Nice! There's a lot of good, old equipment! Why are those nifty boxes so hard to come by these days? Aren't the needs still there?

Ok, based on your description, your setup seems ok. you would play either the roland or the PX and that would trigger the proteus. In the end, everything gets routed through the proteus and recorded on the mac. Noise problems can come from many sources. My suspicion is if you are powering the Midisport by the midi cables only or by USB, my thought is there isn't enough power going into the box. This can cause noise. If it has an external power source, you would likely get better performance. Also, if there is a USB cable plugged into the box, there may be grounding issues. Three big things cause noise - interference, poor grounding, bad cables. Those are top of the listers. Easy fixes often come in the form of new, quality cables. the others may not be so easy to track down. Check the noise with either the PX or the Roland plugged into the Midisport, but not both. Use 5 pin midi cables whenever possible and not USB.

@Maurix Your description sounds like doubling. If you recorded into Cubase from the PX, were all 4 zones or more than 1 zone transmitting Midi? If so, multiple midi events of the same note may have been recorded on a single track. When you copied back from Cubase to the PX editor, even though it was a single midi channel, there may have been several of the same note on each beat. It would be hard to see using music notation or a piano roll. You'd have to look at the midi events (the numbers) themselves. If you want to upload one or two of the patterns that you find weird, I'll take a look when I get a chance.

Yeah. Use 112 to change the whole stage setting.

Ah! It must start at 1 instead of 0. So 97 on the px becomes 98 on the hammond! Good find! That's one of the headaches with MIDI - all manufacturers aren't consistent with the numbering. Even on the PX within itself - the tones are 0 to 127 but the midi channels are 1 to 16 instead of 0 to 15.

chiming in here, if both keyboards function fine independently, i would check the sk1s midi setup. is after touch active or is there a velocity cutoff or other velocity related parameters? is there an upper and lower keyboard setting on the sk1? is the px transmitting multiple zones on the same channel? if zone 1 and zone 2 are outputting on the same channel, that double note may be screwing up the sk1s interpretation of the midi event. youd have to systematically eliminate possibilites to track down the issue. one thing to do is use a computer to monitor all of the px output and see if any midi notes/events aren't being tranmitted. something like midiox could do that or even a daw. you could record you midi playing on a daw from the px and then play it back to see if anything is getting lost.

Hello, I'll start with the short answer: You need to access the External Zone on the Hammond. If I understand the manual correctly, for the upper keyboard you would set XU1 (PROG) to 97 - 0 - <px hex tone number> So if you wanted to set the px=5s to concert strings it would look like 97 - 0 - 73 for M-BNK-L PROG . You'd also have to make sure that for particular XU1 Zone the channel is set to 1 or 2. Those are the only channels the px-5s will understand a hex layer change request for. Read below if you want some background information on what is going on. I'll try to make this as painless as possible but I want to include some background info to help explain what we need to do which should be useful for future midi stuff. Basically, we have to send a control code from the hammond to the px-5s so the px knows what the hammond wants. You probably already knew that - the question is, what should the hammond ask for? Midi messages can have a whole bunch of numbers sent for 1 single request. What we want is a bank and program change and that is made up of 8 numbers divided into three commands also called three strings of information. This is gonna sound a little complicated, but stick with me: A MIDI message often contains 2 groups of 7 bit numbers. Group 1 is called the Most Significant Byte (MSB) and group 2 is called the Least Significant Byte (LSB). We use the term bytes because midi is electronnic, and also it's in Hexadecimal format (too much info?) With all that being said, you have to have the hammond tell the PX to change to the proper bank that represents a Hex layer. You then have to have the hammond tell the PX which tone to use (program change). The midi message starts off with a status byte that will say "The status of this particular thing coming up is about to change." In our case, we want to tell it that we're going to pull up a Hex tone. Whenever we want to tell a midi device we're going to change a control code of some kind, the status byte will almost always start with B (hexadecimal) which is the number 11X16 . Immediately following the status byte is the channel number. Midi channels are zero based which means channel 0 is the first channel so if we are transmitting on channel 1 the full status byte will look like B0 ( that is 176 in regular numbers - decimal). Above, when you needed to set the zone to channel 1 on the hammond, it learned that it would have to send status bytes = B0 for midi operations. Ok, once the px-5s has been woken up by the status byte and told "somethings coming..." it now needs to know what will change. In our case, we want to change the tone bank to Hex tones. The main bank for all tone groups on the PX is contained in the MSB. Seem a little familiar? Above when we referenced M-BNK-L , that was the hammonds identifier for MSB and LSB for a particular bank change. The box for the bank MSB is always 00; and we need to tell the Px-5s what we want to put into that box: i.e. what bank we want to switch to. 97 is the Hex tone bank which is 61 in hexadecimal notation. Therefore our first group of numbers out of the 8 is: B0 00 61 That says: "wake up PX! we're changing the status for the tone bank MSB to 61. We still have to address the LSB and the actual tone we want. The LSB is similar to the MSB setting except the LSB bank box is 20 (32 in decimal). And luckily, the PX-5s doesn't require a particular bank setting for it. The value sent will be: B0 20 00 "PX, we know we have to tell you about the bank LSB, but we're just going to set it to zero." Last but not least is the tone number referred to as the program change. The program change also has it's own status byte: C . It follows the conventions of the B status byte in that Channel one would be C0, channel 2 would be C1, Channel 3 C2 etc. It differes from the B status byte because it changes only one thing - the program (patch, tone, stage setting, etc.). So we don't have to call the MSB and the LSB. We just need to call up the concert strings for our example, which is number 49 (73 in decimal). C0 49 The complete midi code sent to access the Hex tone would look like: B0 00 61 B0 20 00 C0 49 That may be more information than you ever wanted but it should be helpful in identifying how you would set up your zones and programs in the hammond menus and what the px-5s actually would receive or act on.

Hi, Can you provide a little basic information? Which keyboard will you play with your fingers? What is the last device you want to receive all of the midi information? Thank you

Hello aron, I played with the Velocity sense and to me it made no real difference in terms of feel. It does scale the way the velocity responds - the higher the value the faster the key has to go down to produce a perceived high velocity response; the lower the value the lighter the touch necessary or the slower the speed of the key going down to produce a perceived high velocity response. And I say perceived because it does not change the actual velocity. If the key goes down at a velocity of 127, the velocity transmitted will be 127 regardless of how the velocity sense is set.

There is a System setting where you can determine what the PX-5s sends when you change a stage setting. I think its System Settings > MIDI > Stage Set Chg > set to output either program Change or NRPN This isn't the same setting that you access in the Stage Setting when editing. This tells what MIDI information is transmitted every time you select a new Stage Setting.

I'm more used to the action, and there has been some wear as I've had the keyboard for a couple of years now. I hadn't played an acoustic piano for some time and when I did recently, the key repeat was what I expected. The PX is a great keyboard, but for me, the key repeat doesn't respond to the way I play. So, maybe I never did get fully used to the action; then again, I don't practice for hours a day.