Ebonivor

I just keep my lunch in there :-) Hey Krullebolle, maybe you could wire it up to be a sandwich toaster...so many possibilities!

What a meanie! It's a wonder you managed to keep your great Irish sense of humour. Keep smiling :-)

Ah, no...that would have been one of the aborigines. We "whites" didn't arrive until 1803... just slightly before my time :-)

Me too. In fact my first guitar amp was a "portable" radiogram that was modified by a neighbour who was responsible for setting up and testing the TV transmission in my home state of Tasmania, Australia. I was 16 at the time.... It was soooo long ago :-(

And probably none of them can programme a VCR... hey, now I'm showing MY age!!

Krullebolle, it's not a long post- it's a very interesting insight into the workings of organs. Thanks for taking the trouble to explain it in such easy-to-understand detail.

Mike, I'm trying to decide on speakers to use at home with my PX-5S. Could I ask what model the studio monitors are that I can see in your home studio - and do run the PX through them?

Hmm... I don't have any chunks of flesh falling of yet, but I've lost the callouses on my left hand fingers since the PX-5S been getting far too much attention while my guitars sit languishing in the corner,,, :-)

Hugh, I seem to remember you mentioning that you had uploaded some drum phrases on on of the posts. Am I mistaken, because I can't seem to find them in the downloads section.

Sounding good Hugh...I think I need some lessons :-)

That's great Splinters, and I'm glad you worked out the method of driving Logic at the same time. I hadn't got around to doing both at once - it's good to know that I can. I hope you end up being happy with the PX-5S - from your photo, it certainly looks as though Casio built it especially to fit your workspace :-)

The trouble is that the PX-5S is so versatile and flexible that we expect it to do everything - all for less than the price of a half-decent acoustic guitar, and that's a one-trick pony! God we're greedy! ;-)

Choppin, your points are quite valid. I've worked with electronics for over 50 years in design, build and repair, so I've had my share of solving interference problems. I took all of this and more into consideration when I was conducting my tests. I do believe that the problem has more to do with the design of the iPad circuitry than that of the PX-5S. I don't think that even Steve Jobs could have predicted the incredibly diverse demands that the iPad would be expected to fulfil. Sometimes we just expect too much... :-)

Splinters, I don't get the noise when I insert the stick - it's when I mount it, but only when I have the audio out from the IPad connected to the PX-5S while the keyboard's USB midi is connected to the iPad with the Apple Camera Connection Kit. Mike Martin is saying that it's a ground loop caused by the inadequacies of the USB midi standard and that may well be the case, although some users are saying that they don't have the problem. Today, I tried connecting the standard midi connections to the iPad via my iRig MIDI connector instead of USB and there was no noise, so I guess I'll use that until a better solution comes up. My iRig MIDI is the 30 pin model, so I have to use the Lightning adapter with it which makes it potentially fragile, and of course, i need to run two cables instead on just one. There is one benefit; the iRig MIDI has a micro USB connector for supplying power to the iPad. There's a lengthy discussion about the issue on the Facebook page that you might want to participate in.

Mau Van, I haven't noticed that, but I did have something weird happen using the data editor. I was experimenting with editing the Air Ep2 stage setting and so that I didn't overwrite the the original on the keyboard, I saved it to disk with a new name - Air Ep3. I then decided to transfer it to a location on the keyboard, so I dragged it over. It showed up in the right hand column in the editor with the original name, and sure enough, that's what the keyboard displayed. But it did have all of the modifications I had made, so I loaded it back into the editor, changed the name and wrote it back to the keyboard. This time the name stuck. Just to test it again, I tried transferring the copy I had saved to disk to a different slot on the keyboard. The same thing happened - it showed the original name. So, I trashed the copy on disk and transferred the Air Ep3 setting back to disk from the keyboard. From then on, I could transfer it to the keyboard and it kept its name. I think Casio has some work to do addressing and fixing quite a few issues like this.

Splinters, I posted this comment on the Facebook group. You are not alone, so hopefully we can get some answer as to why this is not happening with all PX-5S units. Here is what I posted: "I noticed this problem with the buzzing a couple of weeks ago but just put it down to the possibility of a dodgy audio cable. Having read all the reports here, I thought I should pursue it further. I have an iPad 2, iPad Air, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 5C, so I am able to test with both Lightning and 30 pin connector, plus, I have the Apple CCKs for both connector types. I also tried swapping several different cables. Here are my results: With both iPads, a short buzz follows a played note, however, it is not consistent but tends to build as more notes are played. The iPhone 3gs causes a continual buzzing, although, it says that the CCK is an unsupported device. The iPhone 3C is silent, except for a bit of buzzing if the Lightning connector is slightly jiggled. To determine whether the buzzing was only evident in the output stage of the PX-5S, I decided to record a a few notes to the USB stick. I first tried this with the iPad Air. The first thing I discovered was that there was a lot of buzzing as the USB stick mounted. I recorded a few bars of single notes, fast and slow, at varying velocities, plus a few chords, and found that the buzzing was continuous while recording. And yes, it was there on the recording when played back with the iPad disconnected. I had the same result repeating the exercise with the other iPad. By the way, I should have added, that I tested with and without mains power ( with batteries), and alternating between the 1/8th and 1/4 inch inputs. I have had the unit for a little over 3 months and it is running firmware 1.11. Since Scott, Brad and Paul seem to have had their PX-5S for a while longer and aren't experiencing the problem, I'm starting to wonder whether there has been a change in componentry, or, perish the thought, a drop in quality control."

Try this (i assume you are using the data editor). Select stage setting Air E. Piano 1 (1-0 unless you've moved it somewhere else). Select the Tone Z1 tab then the DSP tab. Change the algorithm to Tremolo. Note that the parameter numbers are relative to their position left to right continuing on the next row. For this exercise, we are interested in Rate (parameter 1), Depth (parameter 2), Wet Level (parameter 4) and Dry Level (parameter 5). Now setect the Stage Setting tab, then the Common tab. Note that this stage setting already has the Slider 1 target 1 set to DSP Param 1 - leave that as it is, but target 2 is set to DSP Param 2, so set that to Unassigned. This slider is now controlling the Rate, so you will want to set the Min and Max to values that keep it under control - I find that Min 35 and Max 90 give a fairly good range. Now move on to Slider 2. Target 1 is set to DSP Param 8 - change it to DSP Param 2. Target 2 is already Unassigned so you can leave that alone. You can also leave the Min and Max values as they are - that will give maxinum control over Depth. Next, change Target 1 of Slider 3 to DSP Param 4. This will now be controlling the Wet Level. We're going to use this slider to control the Wet/Dry mix, so set the Min value to 42 and the Max value to 127. Now select Target 2 of this slider and set it to DSP Param 5 (the Dry Level). Set the Min/Max values the opposite to Target 1 - that is, Min 127 and Max 42. Now you can contol the Rate with Slider 1, the Depth with Slider 2 and Wet/Dry mix with Slider 3. Plus, the original stage setting had Chorus, Delay and Reverb set on Sliders 4 through 6 and they remain. Try mixing those effects in with the Tremolo and go crazy!! Ah, but wait - there's more! How about introducing Pedal 2 to switch between Wet and Dry? Set the pedal's target 1 to DSP Param 4 with Min Value at 0 And Max Value at 127. Set target 2 to DSP Param 5 with Min Value at 127 and Max Value at 0. Now set both the On Rate and Off Rate to a low value so that the effect will fade in and out - I find that somewhere between 10 and 15 works well. You can set the pedal to either Momentary or Toggle mode depending on your preference. You could set this up instead of, or as well as, Slider 3. The next step is to save it with a new name to a spare slot on the PX-5S so that you don't overwrite the original. All a bit over the top? Maybe, but it's a good way to see just how flexible the controls on the PX-5S can be. Have fun!

I was getting frustrated by the same thing, so I got into the habit of naming them in the format YYMMDD-#, e.g. For the third backup today it would be named "140317-3". There are three problems with this: it takes a lot of knob twiddling to enter the name; it only allows for nine backups daily ( OK, ten if you include "0"); and the big one - remembering what number thelast backup was! Oh how I wish Casio would move into the 21st century with its naming conventions - 8+3, really? I thought DOS was dead! Don't get me started on my frustration with having to have the recordings named "TAKExx". And loading stage settings etc. from the USB drive - how can you possibly tell what's what when the name is truncated to such an extent that it's meaningless. If you are loading a stage setting or whatever, you don't need to see the file extension. If that was dropped, at least it would allow for more of the actual name to be displayed.

I agree with what you are saying Choppin. I am particularly cautious about losing any resources ( it comes from 40 odd years of working as a professional photographer and graphic designer and having learnt the necessity of having multiple backups of everything!). Although I find the data editor to be quite primitive, it's the only way that I create or edit anything on the PX-5S, because I can easily save everything to disk so that I can reload it at any time and I never overwrite any stage setting that I haven't created myself. That way, all of those unique tones that are were saved as part of the stage setting will still be there. However, if I do find a customised tone in a stage setting that I particularly like, I will both save it to a user slot and also copy it to disk.

Hey Mau Van, no need to apologise! With the number of great contributions you've made to the downloads section, your hands can write anyway they like! I write a lot of my posts, emails etc. on my iPad, and I'm always finding that I've typed something wierd - usually just after I've sent it. What I need is an iPad with fully weighted hammer action keypad! :-)

The biggest problem I have with sliders, knobs, wheels and pedals is remembering what I've assigned to them - at some stage, I'll have to decide on some sort of standardisation. But then that would take away all the surprises! I've got one stage setting I've made that has hex layer with four layers comprised of various strings ( would that actually be a quad layer?) on zone 1 plus concert grand on zone 2 and brite grand on zone 3. I use sliders 1-4 to control the mix of the layers and sliders 5 & 6 to mix the two piano tones when I need to cut through more. But like SonnyDaye suggests, I use the mod wheel to control the volume of zone 1 - it''s then like a master volume for the hex layer mix. But then I switch to another stage setting where the mod wheel acts as just that, and when I reach for it - whoops! That's not a volume control!!! Then there are the other stage settings where I've set the sliders to work in the opposite direction - like drawbars - to avoid the sudden jump in level when you first adjust them in a stage setting. I'm driving myself crazy... there are just too many options.... but isn't it great to have them!

Choppin, the downside of that method is that you can't partially add an opposing layer to the mix, for example, if you have layer 1 at full volume and want to add layer 2 at, say 60%, volume. I tried this method for a stage setting where I had a hex layer on zone 1 and tones on the other three. I wanted to be able to not only control the volume of each layer, but the other three zones as well. On top of that, I wanted the knobs to control reverb, delay, pedal 2 on-time and pedal 2 off-time. I eventually gave up because I figured I was just being greedy - and my aging brain couldn't remember what I had put where! I can't begin to imagine why anyone would want to try to control 12 layers, but then, I've seen some pretty amazing keyboardists that have left me in awe! Hey, here's an idea for Casio - since most of us have five digits on each hand, how about putting 5 sliders on each side of the display? Aaah, but then there's the hex layers - better make that six! ;-)

Thanks Brad. That cornfirms what I thought to be the case with stage settings and tones, but I was not aware of the situation with phrases. Good to know!

I'm a little confused. I understand that tones are saved within stage settings, but I'm puzzled by the fact that some of the downloadable stage settings have instructions to place an accompanying tone into a particular slot. I also seem to remember someone asking why a particular stage stetting that they had downloaded was not working properly and the author said that they had probably not imstalled the tones in their correct slots. Surely this shouldn't be necessary. Of course, having the tones separately available can be very useful if you want to load them into user slots for easy access in other stage settings.

You'll be wishing the days were longer when you get it! There are just not enough hours in the day to do all the things we need to do, and yet have sufficient time to experience all the pleasures the PX-5S has to offer! All too often I find myself still playing and exploring its wonders at 3am... :-)