Casio product expert Ralph Maten explains the features of the new Casio XW-P1 Perfomance Synthesizer, at Musikmesse 2012.
The video is about 12 minutes long, and there’s some cheesy commentary along the way, but it offers a good introduction to the new Casio synth’s capabilities.
It’s just amazing. And it’s only $500. The market is so incredible right now. The Tempest is around $2,000. The OP-1 is almost $900. And Casio has this amazing machine for $500. I like those other two, but a lot of people all around the world will be able to afford this and it seems to be able to do a whole lot. And it’s got a little home for an iPad built right into it. Can’t be bad for the iOS revolution people. Looks like Casio is going to win, to me.
It looks awful, and the knobs look cheap. I’d have to see and hear it up close.
It probably is a pretty cheap build, but on the other hand, casio (in my experience), has been surprisingly durable.
What makes this keyboard interesting is that it falls into a bit of a grey area in the price-point. Cheaper home keyboards by Yamaha and Casio, have a couple of nice features, but generally their sound sets are weak. The pianos are usually decent, because this helps sell them.
But to have a keyboard with decent sounds, and MIDI i/o/t is makes this an appealing options (especially for teachers with keyboard labs).
It is hard to discern whether you can have a filter envelope for individual notes in hex layer mode.
If you can’t, it’s a horrible omission. If you can, then we’ve got a real synth here!
Damnit, I hate everyone! Who is this guy giving the demo and these people in the suits? They don’t even know what the hell they are doing there or one word what that guy was saying about this synth. They got these stupid ass grins on their faces when he started playing shit they might recognize. Was any of this relevant with todays music standards? I guess at least the demo wasn’t a dub step piss parade. He gave no real info about the synth, as nobody has yet. The fact that most of the world is filled with dicks that have no clue about anything and run everything just pisses me off to no end.
If you hate everyone, you should go into Religion or Politics, which are great places to WORK it, heh heh! OTOH, I take your point. I have a basic idea of what these synths will and won’t do, but far too many demos consist of dubstep or ancient pop songs, neither of which show off the sound set well. I hope Casio does well with these, but I also hope people will use them more broadly for things beyond re-runs of “Safety Dance.” You know how it goes: most will just enjoy noodling, but a certain upper layer will really make ’em sing out. I’ll be listening for that once these are actually for sale.
Don’t get me started about politicians. But I do think this is a cool synth. There’s a demo vid floating around somewhere that showcases the poly performance mode that sounds pretty right on.
I think Casio won the Messe. There was some intereseting analog stuff, but in digital realm XW-P1 makes Rolands efforts laughable.
well… at least a demo without dubstep! 🙂
still… I’always very skeptical about instruments that do everything, I prefer the ones that do one thing and try to do it the best they can. those are the machines that reach amazingness, the I-can-do-it-all machines usually end up into boring-land
It seems to me to be a jack of all trades, and an ace of none. Not to say it doesn’t have it’s place, but i don’t think it’s really for us (meaning people who are deep into synths and such).
The sequencer is ace.
I’m buying one. You can route your audio in the back pitchshift and filter it, I wish someone would demo that aspect of it.