anotherscott

Yeah, they seem to have been in-and-out of the more (semi-)pro-oriented market numerous times over the years. I think it's a testament to the PX5S and PX560 that, as old as they are, they're still in production, and still competitive.

It would be great if the MIDI controller function could be saved as a registration, or better yet, even a single part of a registration (Upper 1, Upper 2, Lower), so you could more easily switch between internal and external sounds (or even combine them) in the middle of a gig (or even mid-song).

So if you wanted to have different sets of registrations for different gigs/projects, I guess the way to do it is to save/restore complete backup files. It would be nice if they added a backup/restore option for just a set of registrations, though, especially since the manual says that saving/loading an All Data file can take several minutes. Actually, it would be really nice to see a computer-based librarian, where you could more easily re-order your registrations, or assemble/manage different combinations of them for different projects.

The User's Guide has a Tone List with the MIDI bank and program changes required to call up any of its sounds, which you would then be able to do over MIDI from any device that lets you send those commands (e.g. computer, iOS device, another keyboard). For more advanced functions you can also invoke with MIDI commands, download the separate MIDI Implementation chart.

Yes, the interface is really nicely designed. The fact that you can change the main 5 buttons to have the functions you really want there made a big difference to me, too. I haven't played those particular boards, but yes, I'm impressed with the action on this one. I even find piano to play surprisingly nicely on it, the toughest test. I don't know how much of that is the action per se, vs. the samples they're using, vs. the mapping of one to the other... but whatever it is, it works. And yes, better in that respect than the Korg PA1000 you compared it to. I'll be curious to see your comparison to the EW425!

I don't have the answer, but I know that a number of the sounds of the CT-S1 were new to that model, and that those sounds were then brought into the CT-S500. So if you look at the sound list for CT-S1, those would be the ones to check, to see if the similarly-named sounds are better on the CT-S500 than they were on your older model. It's not an overwhelming number of sounds to check, there are only a total of 61 sound on the CT-S1 to begin with. I wouldn't count on it. You can save modified versions of sounds as registrations, but it's pretty limited in what you can change, i.e. things like effects and EQ, but no "deep" changes. It's not like on some other Casios where you can get in and tweak different component elements of the sound. I think the EPs on the CT-S500 are pretty good, though. I'm not familiar with the ones on the X5000.

Yes, the PX5S MIDI Implementation document confirms you can use sysex for this, with all the relevant data provided. I am not well versed enough in sysex to give you an example of how to do it, though.

Maybe clarifying... Prophet wouldn't have a GM sound bank, but since the Casio's GM sound bank would send Program Changes 0-127, that should allow you to invoke sounds 1-128 of the current Prophet bank. Of course, you also have to transmit it on the channel the Prophet is set to receive on. By default the Casio's Upper 1 part transmits on channel 1, Upper 2 transmits on 2, Lower 1 transmits on 3, Lower 2 transmits on 4. (I believe only Upper 1 can be changed to some other channel.)

I would expect regular Program Change and MIDI Volume (CC7 and/or CC11) to work, do they not? (though pitch bend range would probably require sysex, if it could be done at all.)

For connecting to another MIDI device, you would use the 5-pin MIDI connections rather than USB. But what exactly are you trying to do? That is, for what purpose do you want a MIDI connection between the PX560 and a drum machine?

C is what you would need to playback 16-part MIDI files, which was part of its design all along. Whether A is better is only a matter of what it is you're trying to do. I can see why they wouldn't want to change the default... any users who had been using the board's ability to playback MIDI files would find that something that had worked all along would suddenly fail after they ran the update!

In case anyone finds their way here from asking this question on google, changing registrations via MIDI is now do-able, see https://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/topic/21937-ct-s500-ct-s1000v-firmware-update-now-available/

I'm trying to load PJD's registration banks, but the Casio is telling me no file found. I tried formatting the USB stick on the Casio itself, and the files copy over to the stick (from my Mac) without a problem, but the Casio is not seeing them, it still says NO FILE when I look for Registrations under the Media tab. Has anyone else run into this? Has anyone else successfully done this, dragging the files over onto the USB stick from a Mac?

This is great. I just picked up a CT-S500... and it's possible that I might have returned it if it weren't for this update. It was a little surprising not to see named registrations, especially after (IIRC) the PX560 did not let you name registrations, but that was addressed in a later model based largely on the same foundation, the MZ-X500. So having added it once, it seems like they understand that this is a useful thing that people want. (Though one would think that would have been obvious on its face!) But here's the main thing here that I think people may be missing: The fact that you can now select Registrations over MIDI, combined with the fact that almost everyone has a smartphone, plus the fact that the keyboard includes a little bluetooth dongle you can leave in, means it's actually pretty easy to get named registrations! You can use any of a number of MIDI apps (like that old favorite Set List Maker) to create a scrollable list of 64 sounds with their song titles (or whatever other way you might like to describe them), configured to send the appropriate MIDI command. Place the smartphone somewhere convenient, and boom, you've got a touchscreen with a scrollable list of your 64 named registrations. Just tap the one you want to select it. With bluetooth, you don't even have to run a cable. All this would have been impossible up until this new update. So if you really need those named registrations, you can have them. (Right now I'm playing with MIDI Designer Pro on an iPad for CT-S500 sound selection... it's got enough screen space that I can have a ton of buttons and not even need to scroll to find what I'm after.)

Then you should be all set... just use that CCK with a regular USB cable (USB-A to USB-B, like the typical USB printer cable). (BTW, the box you linked to in your OP would not work, that's designed for connecting multiple boards that have 5-pin MIDI connections, and the Casio does not have that connection.)

Yes. But first, does your ipad have a lightning connector, or does it use USB-C?

The Program Changes for the CT-S500 are the same as for the 1000, so the same loaded custom voice set works for that model as well.

Some other differences... Setups can be named, Registrations cannot. And I believe Setups can include MIDI parameters wheil Registrations cannot. So if you want a button you can press whenever you want to play a particular sound from an attached iPad/iPhone app or whatever, I think you have to do that with a Setup, not a Registration.

"Why did they do it like that" is always what I think when they leave off the 5-pin MIDI jacks... but it's not just Casio... practically all low-cost boards don't have them anymore. And without them, yeah, you need a host function somewhere. But you said that, besides the Hammond and Casio, you also have an iPad in the mix. The iPad can act as a host! So you can run an app like Camelot Pro or Keystage with your two keyboards connected to it, and then your Casio and Hammond will each be able to send MIDI to the other.

To answer your specific question, the MZ-X300 has 128 mb of expansion memory for additional samples. The PSR-S670 has about 32 mb. But AFAIK, there are no factory "soundpacks" for you to load, rather that space is there for you to load your own content. Either way, that's only one of many possibly relevant differences between the boards...

The feature is nicely demonstrated at the 3:23 point in this video...

TP-110 is entirely different from the TP-40 series. But there are other 7x-key hammer action boards around. Korg SV2 uses Korg's RH3 action, also used in the recently discontinued 73 key versions of the Grandstage and Kronos. Yamaha has the P121 already mentioned (GHS action), and also the CP73 and YC73, which use BHS (balanced rather than graded versions of the P121's action). Dexibell uses the Fatar TP-100 in the S3 Pro (and in the older S3 and P3). Kurzweil Forte 7 uses Fatar TP-40L (the lightest feeling of the TP40 actions). Nord uses the Fatar TP-100 in the 73 key HP versions of the Electro 6 and 76 key version of the Nord Stage 3; they use a version of the TP-40 in the 73- key version of the Nord Piano 5. Numa uses Fatar. It's actually the same company, so they use their own actions.

Something I found helpful is to create a new User that you log into just for your music stuff, which is an easy way to eliminate any "hidden" background tasks you may have running from other apps, that you might not even be aware of.

Unlike Windows, you don't have to concern yourself with locating an alternate driver for Mac. IF an alternate driver is needed for a particular keyboard or interface you are connecting to your Mac, it will be provided by the maker of that keyboard or interface.

PX560 has 4 internal zones and no external zones (compared to PX5S which has 4 of each). You could conceivably use internal zones as external zones by silencing the internal sound for a zone so it only triggers an external sound, but IIRC, the 4 zones are fixed to channels 1 through 4, and have no ability to do things like send specified MSB/LSB/PC when recalled. If your external device only requires PC (i.e. it has only a single bank of no more than 128 sounds), you might be able to do what you need by assigning an internal patch that has the same PC number, though I'm not sure you could silence that internal sound without silencing the external one (assuming you want *some* internal sounds to play, so you don't simply want to silence the board at its outputs), because it's possible that a volume setting for the internal sound on that MIDI channel might also affect the volume of the external sound on the same MIDI channel, I'm not sure. But the bottom line is, unlike the PX5S, there are no specific MIDI controller functions in the PX-560, so whatever you manage to make it do will be essentially trying to find ways to "trick" it into doing something it wasn't designed to do.