What are the General midid sounds found in most digital pianos

[Dnnyboy]

When I see the listing of voices on some pianos (like the casio cdp s350)after the standard voices I see their general midi counterparts but I have no idea how the two differ

[AteS]

There is information about ‘general midi’ in wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI)

In short GM is a set of minimum requirements and therefore a GM voice is compatible and interchangeble for all manufacturers.

 

[Dnnyboy]

So would you say for it to be compatible it loses in quality compared to other sounds in the piano

 

[Jokeyman123]

The GM soundset in all my Casios are somewhat comparable for most of the instrument groups-with  a few important differences-the acoustic pianos included in the GM set are not stereo-and will not have the damper resonance and other specific acoustic piano settings in the non-GM piano selections. These use the same sound samples I believe, but without the addtional DSP acoustic piano settings and stereo .wav-mapping, don't sound as good to me at least. The electric pianos and organs also have several much more high-quality sounding tones than the GM equivalents, at least in my PX560 and 350-I do not own the PX-s series. The drumkits will also have some additional kits that may not be available with the standard GM drumkits.

 

Bank select -You need to know the bank select settings for using the better non-GM tones when using software or playing midi files from a computer-the GM sounds have different bank select numbers than the non-GM sounds. A typical smf midi file will usually have bank select messages that trigger the GM tones, unless you change those yourself, and save the edited midi file once you make those changes.