theodorn

There is a stage setting where sliders 1-4 have been set to control the volume of the four zones, one for each zone.

http://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/files/file/53-4-zones-4-sliders/

I made one 1,5 years ago (wow is it that long?) It is made from the original order (not the alternate order) of stage settings, and you can both find Excel and PDF versions, links in the comments.

http://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/topic/4919-a-list-of-stage-settings-and-their-zones/

Edit This is only the stage settings, with information about what is on each zone and whether the zone is on or off, by default. There is a list of tones in the manual.

It depends on whether you are downloading a tone or a stage setting. If it's a tone, you can easily put it in a user location (ones starting with the letter U) and you won't be overwriting anything. These locations (U : 20 and on, in the piano category) simply contain GrPnoConcert, the same piano as is in location P : 00, the first stage setting, 0-0.

If you download stage settings, you have to replace any of the 100 factory stage settings, but you can always fetch the old factory settings again, one at a time or all, as Joe points out. I personally like to use the Electric Piano stage settings in bank 1 for user downloaded stage settings, and keep all the piano stage settings in bank 0 intact.

The factory stage settings are intended as templates, the user can change to his/her own liking, and even substitute his/her own, though a lot of the factory settings are very good - out of the box, as it's called. One more thing, you are never replacing every sound in the PX-5S, unless you give the Load - All command.

A link to an Excel file.

https://copy.com/i9ZNmjx3LrylTTBG

Welcome to the forums, TomAviv. Incidentally, I also upgraded from Yamaha P85, and felt it was quite a jump up in dynamics and features. I also mostly use a piano sound. The 0-0 setting is good enough, but I also like to use 5-0, Just the Way, because I like to add a warm pad to the grand piano sound.

Yesterday, I decided to add volume control to it, it's not that hard. You just choose the stage setting, then push

EDIT -> Stage Setting -> Common Edit -> Slider [1,2,3,4,5 or 6] and set it to CC07:Volume.

Then EXIT all the way back. You can do this for any and each of the four zones.

One more thing you need to do, is disable the slider you just set to control volume on zone 1 (or any of the zones) for the other three zones, this way:

EDIT -> Stage Setting -> Zone Edit -> Slider1 Enable -> [Off]

Instead of Slider1 it could of course be any of the six sliders, just the one you chose in the first step to control the volume for zone X. Again, the slider has to be disabled for all the other three zones.

When you're done you simply save the modified stage setting:

WRITE -> Stage Setting -> Replace No/Yes? -> +/YES.

If you change an existing stage setting,and regret your changes, you can always restore the original ones, the factory settings can be found online.

Choppin is right, PianoManChuck explicitly stated that he was driving both sound sources at the same time, not by playing first the PX-5S and then the Ravenscroft (again with the PX-5S of course.) Line Out for the PX-5S, and the Ravenscroft via the USB connection. Then he assumably edited the video, inserted the Ravenscroft version of each passage, immediately after the same passage recorded with the Casio, through the Line Out. He must have had a screen capturing software to record the interface of the Ravenscroft, which is the UVI workstation, if I'm not mistaken.

There are actually two ways to record the PX-5S, using any of it's internal voices. On the USB flash drive or through the Line Out. Recording through a headphone jack might be considered the third way. I don't know if it there is a difference between a Line Out recording and a USB drive audio recording. I know at least the PX-5S doesn't sound the same through a headphone jack and Line Out, there are more distortions through the headphone jack. If there are distortions when playing, there must also be distortions when recording.

Thank you for your comparison video, PianoManChuck. I enjoy your videos very much, keep them coming!

I had guessed that the first one was Ravenscroft, assuming the name of the files was not a hint.   Still at some point in time, I thought the second one was the R. Felt as though it had more timbre in the beginning, like a real piano has. I hardly noticed any difference, and I'm not even sure that the Ravenscroft is better, than the PX-5S, and if so, then only by a margin.

I've been listening to software pianos day and night the last weeks, wondering if I should get me one, and by now, I feel maybe there's no need. For the record, did you record with the grand piano concert voice, the first piano of the PX-5S's list of piano voices, the one that is by default in stage setting 0-0? I ask, because we have so many possibilities to play with the existing piano voices and make new ones, taylored to our preferences.

I've used your stage settings quite a lot and I like them. I'll post a more detailed review later. Since we're talking about this, I feel the volume of the MVGRANDPIANO needs to be lower. I notice distortions, if I play forte or above. I also use The Pianist, and I noticed it has a more realistic decay than the basic GrandPianoConcert, setting 0-0. It decays slowly if holding the pedal, while with 0-0 it just stays at the same volume and disrupts suddenly when releasing it. How did you do that?

Do you want to record as AUDIO, not MIDI? The file you want to play, is it MIDI or AUDIO? If it's only MIDI, you can use the Song recorder to combine a few phrases, up to eight in one file.

Song -> Edit -> Track edit [Enter] -> Insert (above the stage settings number buttons, for each track you want to add.) For each track, add from your existing phrases collection. When all is done, save the Song with the Write button, a step I often forget myself.

Maybe you know all this, and this is not what you want to do?

Edit Some time ago I was trying to find out how to send a MIDI file back to the PX-5S and record it, using voices from the instrument. I ended up playing it from Synthesia, just had to make sure on which channel each track was residing, and that the right voices were on the corresponding channels of the PX-5S.

This is a very talked about issue and complaint against digital piano manufacturers, not just Casio, but all of them. With memory as cheap as it is today, it's hard to explain why the companies don't insert bigger memory chips into their products. Even a few gigabytes memory module wouldn't add much to the manufacturing cost, but would open up so much possibilities to improve the sounds.

Hopefully the manufacturers will step into the 21st century, what this regards, or as some have said, the 20th century, but if they don't don't, they'll lose customers. People will simply turn to software based pianos and other instruments, coupled with basic not too expensive MIDI controllers.

Don't know if anybody is still following this discussion, but I have no problem with headphones. However I get a high buzzing when I plug my laptop into the Audio In.

I can see the phrases on my laptop. Browser: Firefox.

I'm asking this question on behalf of someone else, but does Casio use the same unweighted actions in all of their WK keyboards?

The question originated on the Piano World forums, and an answer will be appreciated there or here, doesn't matter to me. I will keep track of both forums. Here is the thread on Piano World:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2237524/Best_keyboard_for_learning_Pia.html#2237269

With thanks in advance.

Great job.

I don't think you can have the metronome on without having the phrase recorder on. However, if you don't save the phrase after your playing session, everything that was recorded, is wiped out, when you turn the PX-5S off. If you check the phrase number you used, when you turn it back on, you should discover the phrase is just as it was (with nothing in it, if it was initially an empty user phrase.) Be careful not to record over factory phrases, as you may want to use them later. The empty user phrases start at 100, if I'm not mistaken.

Scroll to the phrase you want to use, and press Edit. The time signature appears as Beat, followed by [4/4] if the phrase has not been written to before. Change to the time signature you want to use, with the -/No and +/Yes buttons, and you can hold the Num Key to move in bigger steps.

I feel the volume of the metronome is too low, compared to my playing, so I prefer to connect my laptop to Audio In and use some software metronome. Just be careful to turn the volume down before connecting anything to Audio in, as the volume of the external source can be quite high. I connected my laptop with an external USB sound card, and the volume was so high, that I only got distorted sound.

Just for the record, if you Choppin, or anyone reading this thread is not in the Facebook group, the problem has been solved. Mike said the voice in zone 2 was connected to MIDI channel 2. Even if zone 2 is off, external MIDI programs can have access to the voice there and it seems Synthesia and Composer were invoking the voice on zone 2, by sending a request through MIDI channel 2 and therefore strings were played.

I simply set all zones to GrPnoConcert, consequently, only GrPnoConcert could be played by the programs.

Not sure if this bank is created on the fly - probably not - rather something that is there by default. Called general midi, everything set to zero. I always have to assign each new score to my new bank, which I simply call StageSet00. A real brute force solution. I wish there was some easier way to do this,

I'm still having the same trouble with Synthesia. The problem is understanding MIDI, knowing how all the different stage settings map to our computer programs and how to access that information. Now I'm using something called Loopbe1 with MIDI-OX to run Synthesia. It stops this string fetish of Synthesia, but now the problem is Synthesia won't play the tracks, they are muted. Although I can play myself and the voices are not changed.

Maybe it's not worth the time and trouble to sort this out and I should just stick with paper sheets!

It seems the problem is solved, after a long reading of the MIDI implementation document. There are some controls, which are numbered 0 and 32 respectively, 00H and 20H in hexadecimal, as is used in the MIDI implementation document for the PX-5S. It talks about something called Bank Select MSB. MSB stands for most significant bit and represents some binary number that has to do with some activity in the piano, in this case selecting a bank. The MSB for the Grand Piano Concert sound is 64.

According to the MIDI document, I had to enter the LSB, least significant bit, into control 32. That one was a bit harder to find out. I set the MIDI-OX program up with the PX-5S hooked up, switched to every tone on zone 1, from 00 (the grand piano) to the troublesome GM Piano 1, which is number 17 and logged all activity. The MIDI-OX registers the MSB and LSB, which I found out to be 40 and 00 in hex for all the tones, or 64 (just as it says in the tone list of the tutorial) and 0 in decimal, respectively.

To sum it up, by setting ctrl0 = 64 and ctrl32 = 0, Notation Composer stopped playing the strings on top of the piano sound.

Thanks for all your help, hope this experience of mine will be of use to someone who gets in similar trouble, but I actually hope noone will. At least I learned more about MIDI!

Thank you for your help, Choppin. I tried this manual inserting of bank numbers, didn't solve my problem. It seems Composer always creates some MIDI bank. I even tried deleting that bank, and made a new one with [Ctrl0,Ctrl32] = [112,36] attempting to force NC to use the new bank. It didn't work.

I can actually scroll through, or control, the voices in the PX-5S just by scrolling through the cells in the table below, you mentioned. The strange thing is, that the cells have no names or values, but they for sure represent some of the voices. I would like to be able to close the door to all outside interference with settings on my PX-5S, but it seems impossible to do that without also cutting the piano away from the outside world.

Unfortunately both programs keep messing with the piano. Synthesia has actually stopped switching to GM Piano 1, but is now layering piano and strings on stage setting 0-0. The strange thing is that zones 2-4 are shown as off and the only zone on is zone 1, with grand piano. As you know, strings are on zone 2 in setting 0-0. Composer has started switching to GM Piano 1 again, even with Bank Select method set to None. Settig High reso out to Off didn't change anything, regarding this.

Thank you, Choppin. I could set an option in the configuration window of NC so that it leaves the settings of the PX-5S alone, by setting Bank select to None. Similar thing in Synthesia, there it's called MIDI.AllowProgramChange. Unchecked that option and everything is working the way I want it. I'll try your suggestion if I have more problems regarding this.

Has anybody else experienced that? I'm using two programs, Synthesia and Notation Composer. I tried to hook up to MIDI Illustrator Maestro, it didn't happen there though. In the other two programs, the tone is always changed to GM Piano 1. Is there any way to prevent this from happening? This almost makes it impossible to hook up to the named software packages.

I tried changing the Local Control when connecting the Synthesia, after consulting with the Synthesia developer on the software's webpage. It worked better but the volume was much lower that way, probably because the external software was in charge of the piano. Not sure about this though.

With Notation Composer, setting Local Contral to Off didn't change a thing. The software kept switching my PX-5S to the annoying GM Piano 1.

Hello candy.chiu.ad. What you're looking for looks very much like a program called Synthesia.

Synthesia, Piano for Everyone

The bought version includes exactly the option of making the song progressing wait for the right note to be played. Or are you talking about programming this option yourself?

Would like to upload this list I made, of all stage settings and what is on each zone. I just list the names of the tones and if they are set to on or off, but not how each and every parameter (EQ, reverb,...etc.) is tweaked. That might be a bigger task.

Uploaded as PDF, since the forums don't allow Excel files. However the document is available in Excel format on the Facebook group. Hope this helps.

PX-5s stage settings organiser.pdf