Hi Rikki,
thanks for the comments. AJ, thanks also!

Yes, the Casio can transmit midi in all 16 channels, and sounds good enough in HyperCanvas. Also, it seems like OMB is a nice program to have, but they could make the demo last longer than 30 sec to give a better taste.

I have a tiny little problem though, anthough Casio sends all the accompaniments in MIDI OUT, for no apparent reason they have done something with the bass channel, and so it plays one octave higher than it should be.

Solving this one will please me immensely, to say the least. How can I change that? It cant be changed in the Casio itself, it has to be changed in the receiving end.

I am having a "noticeable" lag in HyperCanvas. forte says it is 10 ms, sounds more like pressing the same key in quick succession. I hope it can be reduced with changing the soundcard (currently a $6 CMI 8738 chipset), I'll get a SB live or something from a friend and test, and I'll report back my findings.
If you have any more ideas, please share.

Trident, latency (delay) of 10 ms shouldn't be that noticeable, nor should it sound like a double-strike of the key. Perhaps you are experiencing a MIDI "echo". This may be due to the manner in which you have your equipment connected via MIDI, and certain settings. You might try changing how you have "Local Control" set on the Casio, if it's adjustable on your model. Also, check whether your software is enabling "MIDI Thru", and if that can be controlled.

I hope that helps.

--Barry


[This message has been edited by quietDIN (edited 12-20-2004).]

Barry,
notes sound twice, but first from the keyboard itself, and then from the PC speakers (softsynth). (You can achieve the same thing as Local OFF by just turning the vol of the Casio all the way down, right?).
The closest description I can give, is that it sounds like a very fast echo, but from different sources.

I have heard midi echo from the casio before, using a PC sequencer, and the notes were so close together that they sounded like a phaser effect, or some times cancelling each other.

I can understand that there HAS to be a lag, but it seems it is longer than the 10 ms. It seems that the "reported" latency is 10 ms and the "actual" is more like 50 ms or longer, but DEFINITELY smaller than the internal PC synth lag.

It doesn't bother too much, but there IS a difference in the way the keyboard reacts. Certainly, it can't be recognised by a listener, but If someone with a little experience plays the instrument they will surely detect a "sluggishness" in the way it reacts, due to the latency. Sometimes feels like walking in the sand very close to the sea. You are walking fine, but something is wrong.

Anyway, your remarks about possible midi problems, have to be checked thouroughly before I say there is nothing wrong with them, but for now it just doesn't seem like a midi problem to me.

I have friends that own a "mom and pop" computer store, and I have earranged to borrow a SB live they have around, to see if things better. If yes, with about 70 €, É can buy an Audigy 2 ES or something from them which reports "Very low latency" in the specs.
Anyone with experience in that line of cards??

How Local OFF will affect things depends on the manner in which Casio implemented MIDI on the CTK-750. I've run across synths which don't have MIDI Thru jacks, but pass data received at MIDI-in on to MIDI-out, causing a MIDI "feedback loop" if the PC also has MIDI Thru enabled. Admittedly, in addition to "smearing" the sound, that also tends to cause stuck notes and other MIDI "hiccups". But it's easy enough to try turning Local off; see page E-66 of the CTK-750 manual if you aren't already aware of how to do that.

--Barry

Hi Trident,
the only thing that springs to mind would be to edit the basses in Hypercanvas either lower or raise them an octave and save them as a user set. Not sure if your casio can handle it though. It may require bank changes.

Fortunately with OMB I can usually find some sort of a solution to help fix up any problem I may encounter with the psr styles it uses.

Just out of interest have you tried using OMB as the arranger with your casio as the sound module.

I actually don't have latency problems. I have a fairly new, reasonably fast computer ( whether that makes any difference , I wouldn't know, I'm not terribly computer literate)

I plan on using Hypercanvas for the style parts mainly. I usually play piano as my main instrument voice so I use my clavinova piano voice for that, rather than Hypercanvas and I use "full keyboard mode" , rather than having a split.
Main reason for Hypercanvas is that I was forever upgraing keyboards, each time I had a lot of editing to do ( retweaking styles). Figured this way, if I do end up finding a better sound source down the track, I'd still have Hypercanvas, OMB & the styles for it, just need to tweak any new styles I may get for the new soundsource. I can always keep adding software, can't afford to have a collection of keyboards ( haa haa)

I was mainly asking in that if you happened to already have an sb live card in your computer, soundfonts ie synergi ( frank put me on to them) might be another option to look at, but don't dash out and get one just for that.

best wishes
Rikki


[QUOTE]Originally posted by trident:
[B]Hi Rikki,


[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 12-20-2004).]

Barry,
thanks for the info, Local on or off doesn't make any difference in playing except hearing the casio of course.
I have been experimenting with forte settings and the reported latency is about 8 ms? now. Tried to lower the buffers, got awful noises instead of sound.
I think it feels better, I didn't have the time to test it though.

Rikki,
I have an "el cheapo" soundcard, and when i play with headphones, a noise is heard along with the sound, sounds like the hiss you get when putting meat on very hot surface. It stops a little after the actual instrument sound stops, so it is not the "usual noise" you get from equipment.
I'll install an SBsomething to see if that is related to the soundcard or the Hypercanvas samples. If that noise stops, keep heads low, I am going to throw the old card as far away as I can.
In an old Cakewalk I was using years ago, ver3 If I remember correctly, I was able to set a -12 semitone transpose in the channel that the bass was in so it sounded as it should be.
How I'm going to do this in HyperCanvas, god knows, but I;'ll try to get hands dirty, digging.

If you have any suggestions, they are welcome
Thanks you both for your time and effort.

trident, I have tested the Hyper Canvas on the Audigy Platinum, Audigy 2ZS Platinum and the professional Steinberg VSL2020 with no noticable noise - even at very high volume levels. The better samples usually do not suffer from such problems.

You should know that if your computer is of the general garden variety and not tweaked for music you may experience higher levels of noise and distortion.

You can use M. Bedesem's programs together with a sequencer such as Cakewalk to set the octave levels of any of the 16 channels in the style. You can also do this in most softsynths or in forte.

To work with softsynths and hosts requires some investment in time to understand how these things work but once you do you will never go back to hardware. I have done this for several years. Also good results will cost money to acquire high quality software (samples, synths, hosts, effects and so on). You get what you pay for.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 12-21-2004).]

Frank,
I totally agree, and my softsynth experience spans the incredible amount of 1-2 weeks.

The Pc is a Theodore-assembled Frankenstein, (used to work in a computer store for 6 years, so I haven't forgotten how to do it), and I am downloading everything I stumble on on the net, so it is not "clean".

Electrically it is not clean also, and I also believe this hiss problem is related to the soundcard , not the samples. I'll try 44.1 Khz instead of 48 Khz, to see if things will better.

What about the Audigy2 ZS? Is it worth the 70 EUROS for the bulk or 90 Euros for the retail????
Or a borrowed and never returned SB Live Value will do the trick?

trident, all the Creative soundcards are good (equal in quality to most keyboards or sound modules) but do not equal the performance of the so called professional soundcards, e.g., Echo, Fronteir, Steinberg, Ego Systems, etc. I mean higher quality with respect to things like signal to noise, distortion, dynamic range and so on.

I would pick the Audigy card if you can given that you can load a wavetable greater than 32mb. The alternative would be to use SBLive and a softsynth like LiveSynth Pro to load your soundfont wavetables which are greater than 32mb in size.

Hi Trident,
if you're planning on using a software sequencer, it should allow you to transpose.

You can definately edit the Hypercanvas sounds and save them ( I tried transposing one of the piano sounds).

I'm planning on converting the drum tracks of the psr styles that I use to gm drumsets.
Might make things easier in the long run than converting or leaving them as XG (my piano's have xg)

In Hypercanvas I can also edit the individual drum volumes plus some other stuff as well.

best wishes
Rikki