What's this?

[A Little Birdie]

 

[happyrat1]

Why don't we skip the bloody games and you tell us what it's supposed to be.

Gary

 

[Biggles]

WTF cares

 

[A Little Birdie]

maybe this one is better...

 

[happyrat1]

So? Casio's come out with a vocoder? Considering everyone including Zoom have put one out the past few years, what's the excitement?

It still probably has less than a Gig of PCM sounds crammed into it and will make a fine toy for junior on his next birthday.

THIS??? is what Casio comes up with to redeem itself for the CTX line?

Any real MIDI ports and line outs or is it the victim of cost cutting butchery.

And how much do they plan on asking for this protend instrument??

Gary

 

[Biggles]

Am I supposed to be impressed.

The CTX with AIX arrived one Friday and collected the following Monday, total rubbish.

If this supposed to entice me to buy, if so it aint gonna work for me.

 

[A Little Birdie]

Casio, much like many other entities these days, is making it clear that that they intend to double down on their utter arrogance.

It's like watching Radio Shack and Sears die all over again.

 

[happyrat1]

Casio did so well in the 80's with the CZ line they still think 40 year old injection moulded designs have a place in the studio and on stage.

Their engineers dream up brilliant creations but then the bean counters strip em down of anything pro before they ship a single unit.

I swear the company must be run by a bunch of manic depressives off of their meds.

 

[A Little Birdie]

They are turning over their upper management this year. https://world.casio.com/news/2021/1228_personnel/

Pretty much the last hope for any kind of improvement. We'll see.

 

[happyrat1]

The PX-5S and maybe the PX-560 were their last decent offerings.

But even these couldn't hold a candle to offerings from Roland, Korg, Medeli, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, they've missed the boat with me and I've moved way beyond their offerings in this lifetime.

Gary

 

[A Little Birdie]

The PX-5S and maybe the PX-560 were their last decent offerings.

But even these couldn't hold a candle to offerings from Roland, Korg, Medeli, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, they've missed the boat with me and I've moved way beyond their offerings in this lifetime.

Gary

They are capable of competing in the big leagues, they simply choose not to. Despite ten years of their customer base screaming for them to do it.

They've got people paying $8000 for G-Shocks. The Celviano Grand Hybrid tops out at $6200. Why they don't offer pro-level arrangers and workstations is just foolish. Sprinkling single features across low end platforms is just cynical at this point.

As said above, they have the hardware to win. They could easily produce a workstation/arranger- with both AiR and AiX. By using more than one of their own chipsets- they could easily achieve 512 polyphony. Pour all their synth knowledge into it. A comprehensive and redundant UI with computer DAW like familiarity and functions. Gigs of sample space. Every type of sequencer there is, etc....

Medeli certainly seized on the lull in the market. The AK-10 hardware is on par with a PSR-SX900 or PA-1000. Korg and Yamaha both raised their prices last year. A sign that even they are still far from releasing anything new. The Fantom's updates have slowed badly to the point where we have to wonder if there's anything left to exploit. Still tons of UI issues after two years.

It can be supposed that the current conditions of the world have a lot to do with this lull in the market. As said above, Casio's latest changes to their R&D makes for one last window. Dare we to raise our hopes again?

The answer to that is unfortunate.

 

[happyrat1]

Well Winter NAMM is happening in a couple of weeks, so we'll all get to see the latest whizbang technology from all the players so let's wait and see if anything eye-popping turns up or not this year.

Gary

 

[happyrat1]

And if someone came to me today looking for a starter piano I'd rather steer them to a Studiologic Numa than a Casio or a Yamaha these days,

Gary

 

[A Little Birdie]

Winter NAMM was cancelled. It'll happen in June.

Patent registrations suggest that Casio will release a new digital piano with an LCD touchscreen.

It's likely another Celviano, but it's possible it will be a Privia. Hopefully the recent patent refers to a new action. Otherwise the Smart Scaled Hammer Action fiasco does not bode well at all for the future.

Perhaps the new R&D boss at Casio will replace the miserable jerk who doubled down on that.

 

[happyrat1]

I thought Winter NAMM was still on schedule to go virtual this year.

Now it's been cancelled?

Gary

 

[A Little Birdie]

Google "winter namm 2022". I'd have posted a link but I didn't want to wait to have my post moderated.

 

[happyrat1]

So it hasn't been cancelled outright.

It's simply been pushed back to June 5th.

Gary

 

[BobF.]

Last decent Casio keyboard was the CTK-7200. They took a dive when they introduced the CTX line-up. I assumed it must have been because Casio designers became tone-deaf.

 

[Biggles]

Winter NAMM is now Summer NAMM

The January event is now called Believe in Music and I started a new thread about it a couple of weeks ago.

I watched a few of the Believe in Music video streams at last years BiM, it was the event where the Yamaha DGX 670 was released.

 

[A Little Birdie]

I stated above that NAMM moved to June, jeez....

Last decent Casio keyboard was the CTK-7200. They took a dive when they introduced the CTX line-up. I assumed it must have been because Casio designers became tone-deaf.

The CT-X3000/5000 is largely superior, except for the fact they took the sliders off. Had they not done that, the CT-X5000 would have been somewhere between a Korg PA300 and PA700, which cost $1000 and $1700, respectively. Just asinine.