I have an urge to buy a Casio PX 360, butt am wondering how good and useful the styles and MIDI playback features are. Any advice is appreciated.

If not a Casio, then does the Rolan VR-09 offer SMF playback?

There's a comparison and reviews at the bottom of the page.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PX360

There are no styles? This is a piano. The DGX 660 has styles.

Yes the Privia PX360 has styles

The piano feel is very satisfying, but the styles are inferior to Yamaha.

I spend a few hours with both the PX-5s as well as the PX-560

Keyaction is very good for under 1000 keyboards
Piano, synth, E-piano, organ, strings, pads all sound decent to good
Where Casio lacks is the orchestral sounds like brass, woodwinds and such... they are poor quallity

As far as the arranger part goes... just use the Drums and you will be allright, dont expect anything fancy like yamaha or Korg does.
As a stage piano both these instruments fair well, as an arranger the 560 lacks..

The PX5s is quite popular as a stage/midi controller on stage... extremely light and yet a very decent action
Best part, when sweaty fingers, you still have good grip on the surface of the keys..

From the VR-09 specs on Rolands website :

SMF/AUDIO FILE PLAYER SECTION
Playable File Format
SMF File: Format 0, 1
Audio File: WAV, AIFF, MP3

I thought of getting a good 88 key controller and midi it to my Pa4x. I would have great styles and great sounds. It would also take less room.

I am not sure how I much control the controller would give me.(Important) I would use both keyboards in an “L” shape; one in front of me and one on either side.

1-Would I have to touch the Pa4x at all?
2-All opinions are welcome.

John C.

If using the PA4x with the kronos, i have 16 pads programmed for controlling the PA4x (Using the Korg nanopad 2) .. i barely have to touch the pa4x..

I have used the pa4x also with the Kurzweil PC3x (as it has an awesome touchstrip and a breathcontroller) but it does not have any programmable buttons... which means i had to touch the PA4x for almost everything i wanted to do..

I changed back to the Kronos as my lower keybed... because simply needing to reach to teh upper keybed was to much for quickly doing some things...

Another option is using the EC5 pedal of the PA4x, but sadly the pedal settings are global.. i think 5 pedals would be enough for almost every performance... but then you should be able to save them for each song in the songbook, which is not possible for global settings..


If your 2nd keyboard doesnt have programmable buttons or pads, you could allways consider a midi controller... but having direct access programmable buttons for Midi CC is almost a must to play on a remote keyboard.

I played on a Casio CPG 700 the other day. The piano felt and sounded nice. I'm not sure if want to use the arranger outside of the house though.