WK-7600 as organ CONTROLLER?

[zamood]

I’ve been having fun with my collection of gizmos to extend the WK-7600’s capabilities: HOTONE’s Ampero Control with DOREMidi’s UMH-21 to enable footpedal control of Leslie sim speed, CME WIDI Master to use board as controller for iPad music apps.

 

I have currently been having a blast loading a ton of VSTs onto an extra laptop I had lying around and trying out MIDI hosts, favorite one is Cantabile. It’s nice to be able to connect headphone out of computer to Audio In (Stereo) on the WK-7600. Sound quality good enough for a nice and portable “live rig”.

 

I have come to accept that the WK-7500/7600 organ sound is passable for a non-discriminating audience, otherwise is meh/thin. Curious if anybody else is playing around using the WK-7600 to control a more realistic software clonewheel, trying to take advantage of the drawbars to be active in the VST? 

So far I have gotten it to work with IK Multimedia’s B3-x (PC trial version only to date [my laptop is unfortunately too underpowered for it], I’m disappointed that I can’t also try out the iPad version) as a potential paid option, and for a free option I actually went back to the old 32-bit VST “Organized Trio” (free version of VB3-II), which works great, but I did need to use a MIDI CC controller remapping tool to get the upper drawbars working correctly.

 

Thank you for reading my ramblings, I hope others have found this somewhat useful, and curious also of course if others have had similar adventures?

[zamood]

Related to this, still frustrated that I haven’t been able to completely selectively silence a “Drawbar Organ” patch on the WK-7600. Sure, if I set the patch to 0 for all drawbar settings and keep percussion off, it is silent… but then if I’m playing through MIDI to the “Organized Trio” VST as above (audio coming back to WK-7600 via AUDIO IN [STEREO] jack), and then change the drawbars (to drive the VST organ sound), of course the WK-7600’s own organ sound starts to be heard too.

 

Am I right that there isn’t a mixer channel for AUDIO In [STEREO]? If I go to track A01 and turn volume to 0 (or turn off the track , it mutes AUDIO In [STEREO] as well. I have tried using the EXT (I) jack instead, doesn’t fix the problem. And I’ve been very disappointed about the sound quality of anything coming through the EXT (I) jack, very hissy and I cannot improve anything really with the threshold settings.

 

Looks like I need an external mixer, but this sort of defeats the purpose for me of this keyboard having a built-in mixer function.

Am I missing something here?

Edited October 14, 2023 by zamood
Typo

[Brad Saucier]

Go to the mixer and turn off part A01.  This turns off local control of just that part of the sound engine.  A01 is upper 1.  If you want to turn off local control of the entire internal sound engine, go to the function menu under MIDI settings, turn off local. 

[zamood]

Yes, turning off local control was helpful. 
 

So I’d say that I now have a pretty good “rig” for dual manual organ playing, admittedly giving up on the on-board sound of the WK-7600, and using it to drive the B-3x (finally bought the VST with coupon for $65) with full physical drawbar capabilities (just for one manual, which is fine)… and footswitch control of the Leslie speed  as described above. My second/upper manual… a cheap Casio LK-170 my nephew is no longer using 🙂.

 

I’m comparing the cost of this setup to buying a Hammond SKXPro (starting at $4000) and laughing…