Mike Martin confirmed on the MZ-X facebook group that the MZ-X will load yamaha stylefiles natively...

I think this sets the MZ-X another step higher on the market...

Wow that's massive. It almost puts into an "open arranger" category

Nothing totally new, Wersi has been able to load .sty files for almost a decade now, yet still the step is huge

That's great news. Bacchus how do you know there will be an 88 keys version? Is that for sure.

just because it loads Yamaha styles I would be surprised if they even come close to sounding like a Yamaha arranger KB especially any of the new styles in the Tyros4/5/s950/s970....what turns me off is the BOXEY keys.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=mz%20x500%20casio

I asked Mike Martin, didnt get a reaction from him...

Maybe he doesnt want to spoil the Musikmesse surprise

The MZ2000 loaded both Technics and Roland styles directly from disk. They all needed some tweaking, and the results varied from fairly good to awful. We converted some Yamaha styles to Roland format, as the MZ did not read Yamaha style files. Much tweaking was needed there as well.

When converting styles, you allways need to tweak them to get good Results, expecting anything different would be overreaching. The same is to be expected from the MZ-X, yes it can load Yamaha styles, but they need to be tweaked for the best results...

The only arranger that has passed this stage is the Varranger that has several different soundsets that replace the orriginal brands soundsets.. And even on Varranger tweaking thos styles will give you better results..

I think Casio support forums will become the place where people will share their converted and eddited styles...

In truth, I didn't care all that much for some of the MZ's own styles, but we are talking about a board that is well over 15 years old. I agree about all conversions needing tweaking. I found the MZ and it's mixer function to be quite user friendly for tweaking vs the other arrangers I used in those days. I still have an MZ2k and fire it up now and then. I thought it's strengths were organs, synth sounds and editing capabilities, and guitar sounds ( which were as good to my ears as anything that was available back then. ) In truth the MZ-X may be completely different in those areas. I'm not as into using arrangers as I was back then, but if they come up with really good panel sounds I might be interested. A quality arp function or programmable pads would be a big plus for me. I would hope you are right about Casio forums and sharing of ideas / files, etc, but back in the MZ2k era user support was almost non existent.

I gotta love your forum name ZootAllures ... I am probably the only one who knows what that is. I am a total Frank Zappa fan and I love the album Zoot Allures. Wind up working in a gas station.


Zoot Allures featured renowned drummer Terry Bozzio