How are Parts 5-16 used in the PX-5S?

[gusbeto37]

Hi everyone, it's been quite a while since I checked the forums. To me, my PX-5S is simply one of those instruments/devices that's so logically made that it never generates questions for me and I always manage to get it to do what I need it to do. That is, until today.

I am more of a player and I always play at home, I use my PX-5S as my main keyboard and from it I control 6 other midi devices, each on their own channel. Up until  couple of months ago, I only used my computer to record a single stereo channel of music. Now, everything has changed for the better and in my home studio I've setup a Dante network and I've started with a Yamaha Tio 1608-D so I have 16 channels of multitrack recording and I've spent a month experimenting with audio setups for my studio, mostly focused on the drum mics. Now I am moving on to the MIDI part of improving my setup and for the first time ever I want to record midi into REAPER with my PX-5S, which means that I will be controlling everything from my DAW.

 

While experimenting, I noticed that my PX-5S was responding with audio to CH 5 even when no zone is active. I delved a bit and using the forums I realized that there are 16 sound generators but only 1-4 correspond to the active zones. What are the rest of the generators used for? Is it just to play general midi files from USB/MIDI?

[Brad Saucier]

5-16 can be used to play MIDI files from a flash drive, used for MIDI IN as a sound source, and used by the internal song sequencer. 

 

Here's a rarely used tip in regards to this topic.  Zones 1-4 are fully configurable MIDI controllers.  Internally they are set to control parts 1-4 of the sound engine, but externally they are configurable to control any MIDI channel.  If you configure the 4 zones with MIDI OUT to channels 5-8, you can loop a MIDI cable from OUT to IN and control up to 8 parts of the PX-5S sound engine at once.  

[jaspeter]

On 11/19/2021 at 2:48 PM, Brad Saucier said:

Here's a rarely used tip in regards to this topic.  Zones 1-4 are fully configurable MIDI controllers.  Internally they are set to control parts 1-4 of the sound engine, but externally they are configurable to control any MIDI channel.  If you configure the 4 zones with MIDI OUT to channels 5-8, you can loop a MIDI cable from OUT to IN and control up to 8 parts of the PX-5S sound engine at once.  

 

Wait...

What...?

 

Whoa...   🤯

 

I thought I pushed the limits of the PX-5S pretty hard, but you just blew my mind.  There's some serious potential here!  Thanks, Brad!

[Choppin]

What?

 

Now I'm just angry!  😀  No problems with MIDI feedback?  I suppose because of the MIDI ids being the same it would just think another PX is sending in data.

 

I just rigged a virtual port in MIDI-OX where the MIDI output from the keyboard loops back into the MIDI input of the keyboard and it totally works so far without issue.

 

So with two hex layers, you could potentially have 18 tones playing simultaneously.  Plug-in a usb drive that plays a MIDI file or use the song sequence for the other 8 channels and you can play along for a total of 26 tones.   and 256 polyphony...  My head hurts

 

[jaspeter]

I finally got a good reason to try this. I needed to layer a separate tone but couldn't use an available zone because I needed them to have their own arpeggiators for other parts.  It worked!  ...kind of.  Because the tone selection is in the system-wide mixer, it doesn't appear you can save that information on a Stage Setting basis. Rather, it's global to all settings.  That still works because I don't plan to use this trick a lot, but it's a little disappointing.

 

I patched the MIDI Out directly to the MIDI In, with no device in between.  

You will get MIDI feedback if you don't filter out program changes: System setting - MIDI - Rx filter - Program Change : On.  This is a little counter-intuitive, because you're turning the filter on, which filters out the Program Change messages. Otherwise, the PX-5S will get stuck in an infinite loop selecting Stage Setting 0-0. 

Edited February 21, 2022 by jaspeter

[Brad Saucier]

30 minutes ago, jaspeter said:

it doesn't appear you can save that information on a Stage Setting basis

 

You can save everything in a stage setting.  No need to use the mixer.  Don't forget that for each zone of a stage setting, you can customize MIDI program change data, independent of what the zones are selecting internally.  Selecting a stage setting will select the desired tones for everything, internal and external.  Edit, stage setting, zone edit, MIDI edit.  

 

30 minutes ago, jaspeter said:

Otherwise, the PX-5S will get stuck in an infinite loop selecting Stage Setting 0-0

 

In system settings, MIDI, configure stage setting change to program bank, instead of NRPN.  You'll need to do it this way if you want to use what I mentioned about saving tones above.