Does anyone know about the PSR E-473 Yet.

[vbdx66]

Hi everyone,

@PJ actually all the "exclusive" tone of the CT-S1 are in the CT-S500 and CT-S1000V.

I strongly hope that higher-end models with more buttons and controls, 4-variation styles etc., will come later, but they certainly won't land in the Casiotone line. I think that the CT-S1000 is already very sophisticated and could put beginners off (by the way, who else thinks the CT-S1000V looks like the XW1's little brother?).

For those interested, I made two posts on the Casio Music Forums about the new CT-Ss, one with links to the manuals and the product website (with plenty sound examples), and another with the best video demonstrations which have been published so far. It is in the CT-S section of the forum.

As for the manuals of the PSR EW425/E473, I repost them here for reference purposes:

https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/keyboards/portable_keyboards/psr-e473/downloads.html

Regards,

Vinciane

[casiokid]

Like you Vinciane I'm impressed with what Casio are offering with the CT-S500/1000v.   I've also noted that the output of both these instruments is only 2.5W whereas the E473/425 is 6W and 12W respectively.  And yes the CT-S1 tones are included in these models as you asked Vinciane on the live stream.   Now my dilemma which one should I get ?

[vbdx66]

@Casiokid let's forget the EW425 which is bulky excepted if you're looking for a keyboard for church service.

The CT-S500 would not be a good choice excepted if you're on a budget because for 80 $ more you can have the CT-S1000V with the speech synthesis module and which will also have a better resale value.

This leaves basically the E473 and the CT-S1000V.

What I would do when they hit the shelves is either go and try both of them side by side in an old-fashioned music shop.

If this is too tedious or if you can't wait, simply order one of the other on Internet and send it back if it doesn't suits you.

Also: if you like the CT-S1, the CT-S400 or any CT-X, you can't loose if you try the CT-S1000V.

Conversely if you are an afficionado of Yamaha's E seriesv(which your nickname makes me doubt), you might want to try the E473 instead.

Regards,

Vinciane

[vbdx66]

Hi,

Esp. for Bob and for PJ, here is a new EW425 video from Gearfacts:

https://youtu.be/fNH5XKudhAs

Vinciane

[pjd]

I don't see the Yamaha PSR-E473/EW425 there yet, however.

This launch has been very un-Yamaha. Yamaha usually issues a press release with preliminary pricing info. As yet, nada. If I believed in conspiracy theories, I'd say they hurried the launch knowing that Casio was going to drop something big.

@PJ actually all the "exclusive" tones of the CT-S1 are in the CT-S500 and CT-S1000V.

I agree and hope that I didn't misspeak somewhere? I'm paying attention to the new CTs because of those tones. (Casio hasn't given them a name, so I wasn't sure how to refer to them.) The S1 didn't have the other voices that I genuinely need.

As to Yamaha voices, I feel like I've now heard all of them. (At least the ones that I care about.) I got to the same place with Roland circa 2010 and switched to Yamaha. Lately I've been exploring iPad as a sound generator. Yamaha needs to do something to charm me. 

I think that the CT-S1000 is already very sophisticated and could put beginners off.

I agree about the sophistication, but it looks pretty simple, not intimidating. But, I'm a nut case (enthusiast).

I've also noted that the output of both these instruments is only 2.5W whereas the E473/425 is 6W and 12W respectively.

Built-in speakers are "courtesy speakers." They are useful in specific situations: living room jam, a quick playing session, rehearsal without PA. For live play, tho', one needs serious amplification.

... try both of them side by side in an old-fashioned music shop.

Oh, dear, I wish I could. I've got an N95 mask/boosted VAX, but the local music stores are stripped of inventory. It's a good time to sell off old gear as new gear is in short supply. Anybody want to buy my Nord E2?  {Just joking.}

excepted if you're on a budget because for 80 $ more

True that. It would have made a difference when I was kid mopping floors in a donut shop to make money...

Gotta go get the week's groceries -- pj

[pjd]

I posted links to the speech technology behind Casio's CT-S1000V:

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/casio-speech-synthesis-technology/

Reader, beware! There is serious science/math behind their singing/speech synthesis, the culmination of 20+ years of university research.

-- pj

[vbdx66]

Hi PJ,

One of the Casio patents arises my curiosity.

"Picture/image generation in sync with music", what on Earth could it be? The formulation makes me think of the old Winamp visualization module.

And: true, 80 $ won't make such a big difference. But there are some people out there who might just as well but the CT-S500 and spare one week of groceries if they don't care about speech synthesis. If Casio are launching two different products, they must have a reason.

Regards,

Vinciane

[pjd]

Hi Vinciane --

Reading the patent, it takes imagination to work through the legalese and the static text, i.e., lack of actual animation. It is like old music visualizers. Black and white image below. The pictures used a flower motif.

All of the patents are on-line: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/search

As to the two products, Mike Martin posted on the Keyboard forum: They just wanted to give people a choice. Some might think the singing synthesis is too gimmicky and not want to pay for it.

All the best -- pj


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[vbdx66]

As to the two products, Mike Martin posted on the Keyboard forum: They just wanted to give people a choice. Some might think the singing synthesis is too gimmicky and not want to pay for it.

Exactly. Once the novelty effect is withdrawn, I don't see the utility of this speech synthesis engine, excepted if it were possible to use it with samples of more « natural » voices, because then it could be used by non-singing musicians to add vocals to their tracks and get an idea of what their song would sound like with the addition of a singer.

Vinciane

[Keyboard Master]

I,m glad. The wait is finally over. I/m curious if it can play Sff2 styles

[vbdx66]

I,m glad. The wait is finally over. I/m curious if it can play Sff2 styles

Nope. Otherwise it would overlap with the PSR SX600.

But there is a goodie: now you can revoice the styles and store the result into a reg slot. Wished Casio would have done the same for the new Casiotones.

[Keyboard Master]

Yes I am so glad at least we can revioce a style as that feature is the first on the psr e range. Oh i wonder if they added a voice demo feture.

[pjd]

Yamaha: "SFF GE (Guitar Edition) is an enhanced format of SFF, which features improved note transposition for guitar tracks."

SFF2 is SFF GE. SFF GE has some trickery for handling guitar chord voicing. Perhaps more importantly, it can handle Mega Voice guitars (and other Mega Voice instruments).

When Yamaha added Mega Voice to the DGX (DGX-670), they also added SFF GE (SFF2) capability.

Since Yamaha have not added Mega Voice to the E-series, they don't have much motivation to add SFF GE to the E-series.

That's my simplistic take, anyway. 

-- pj

[Keyboard Master]

Cool. And at least Im glad that we can revoice the styles. Making it more fun to enjoy.

[SciNote]

Nope. Otherwise it would overlap with the PSR SX600.

But there is a goodie: now you can revoice the styles and store the result into a reg slot. Wished Casio would have done the same for the new Casiotones.

When you say "revoice the styles", what do you mean?  It sounds like the ability to change the voices/instruments of the different tracks of a style, but I don't see anything in the manual for the E473/EW425 about that.  All that I see that can be saved to a registration, as far as styles go, are normal things, such as style volume, tempo, and which tracks/parts are active.

On a different note, a kind of bizarre auto-accompaniment feature of the new keyboards is something called "smart chord."  How it works is that you go into the function menu to select an option to tell the keyboard the key of the song you will be playing by how many sharps or flats the key has.  So, if you're going to be playing a song in Bb major, you'd select two flats.  Then, with smart chord switched on, what I believe happens is that all you have to do is hit one note for the background -- the root note of the chord you want -- and then the keyboard will determine whether to play a major or minor chord based on that note.  So, for Bb major, if you hit a Bb or an Eb, you'd get a major chord, whereas if you hit a G or a C, you'd get a minor chord, because those are the natural chords for that key.  For example, since the key of Bb has a Bb and an Eb in the key signature, when you play a G chord in that key with no accidentals, you wouldn't play G-B-D for G major, you'd play G-Bb-D for G minor, because the key signature flats the B.  And I guess if you play an A, you'd get an A diminished chord.

Of course, this is for really basic song playing, as major limitations could come up, because plenty of songs do have chords with accidentals that this system would not recognize, and you have to go into the function menu and change the key signature (number of sharps or flats) each time you play a song in a different key than the one you just played.  This can all be saved to a registration, however.

[vbdx66]

Hi Bob,

It seems you didn't do your homework LoL

Go have a look at page 13 of the reference manual for the E473/EW425 here:

https://europe.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/3/1544203/psre473_en_rm_a0.pdf

You can now revoice all tracks of a given style and store this into a registration. Pretty cool. Together with the tracks enabling/disabling buttons, this will give more style flexibility. I am happy about this because usually I hate the default bass sound of the styles on all PSR E keyboards.

As for chord recognition, the so-called smart chord function is just a gimmick really. I'd rather have Yamaha implementing on bass and full keyboard chord recognition, which Casio has long had even on its cheapest home keyboards. This would probably be my main issue aside of pure sound quality if I had to choose between the PSR E473 and the CT-S500 or 1000V.

Regards,

Vinciane

[pjd]

PSS-E30 and PSS-F30 have Smart Chord, too. This messes me up whenever I play the kid's E30! 

It's easier to re-voice non-Mega Voice styles. The effect notes up in the nose bleed section (above C6) drive people crazy when they re-voice a Mega Voice style track to a non-Mega Voice. ("What are those strange noises/notes that I hear?")

I guess one should wallow in the joy of E-series simplicity... 

Nice day to everyone -- pj

[pjd]

Just got back from Guitar Center. Friday morning and the store is empty. No Steve Vai wannabe shredding, etc. 

None of the new keyboards were available, so I played a CT-S1 and CT-S410 and did kind of a mind-meld between the tones on the two keyboards. Speaker systems were both good enough, keybed felt good and both instruments are amazingly light.

Well, well, the entry-level market has gotten very competitive! Tough choices vs. the new E473 and EW425.

-- pj

[SciNote]

Hi Bob,

It seems you didn't do your homework LoL

Go have a look at page 13 of the reference manual for the E473/EW425 here:

https://europe.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/3/1544203/psre473_en_rm_a0.pdf

You can now revoice all tracks of a given style and store this into a registration. Pretty cool. Together with the tracks enabling/disabling buttons, this will give more style flexibility. I am happy about this because usually I hate the default bass sound of the styles on all PSR E keyboards.

As for chord recognition, the so-called smart chord function is just a gimmick really. I'd rather have Yamaha implementing on bass and full keyboard chord recognition, which Casio has long had even on its cheapest home keyboards. This would probably be my main issue aside of pure sound quality if I had to choose between the PSR E473 and the CT-S500 or 1000V.

Regards,

Vinciane

Great Scott!  How could Yamaha not make any mention of that in the main manual?!  That is a really nice feature for this level of keyboard.  Honestly, I don't think I would ever use it, because I mainly just use the styles for the drums, and I mainly use the registrations just for sounds, not styles.  But I could see how this could be very useful.  I believe my old PSR-520 had a similar feature, but if so, I never used it on that keyboard, either.  I haven't had that keyboard in years, so I cannot verify that one way or the other without finding the manual.

If I were to buy any of these new keyboards, I'm really starting to lean away from the Casios at this point.  The fact that you cannot have the registration buttons and style control buttons available at the same time would make it cumbersome to play the keyboard live.  And if it is the case, as it appears to be in the manual, that the actual value settings of the filter, envelope generator and other knob parameters cannot be saved in a registration or any other way, then that is a deal-breaker for me, right there.  I'll have to just see one of those keyboards in person, or just join the Casio Music Forums site like Vinciane said and ask someone there.

[vbdx66]

@PJ: interesting. If the CT-S1 and 410 are nice, then the CT-S500 and 1000V will be even better 
By the way, has anybody a clue about the difference between the CT-S 400 and 410?

@Bob: too bad, homework not done once more!: On page 33 of the User Manual it reads: This instrument allows you to change the Voices that are used in each track of a Style, such as drums and phrases. For details, refer to the Reference Manual on the website (page 11).

And: I agree with both of you, it'll be a tough choice.

As for style revoicing, I am wondering whether this applies to user styles, too... because this means that it'll be possible to remap the SFF1 styles found here with the correct voices on the PSR E473/EW425. This is pretty cool because you can then use the nicer panel voices for the styles instead of the pretty boring XG lite default voice set.

As for the real time control knobs on the CT-Ss, there is some logic there. They are really meant to be used as real time controller, so this is quite logical that you can't store the corresponding parameter values in registration slots. That being said, the effects can still be tweaked to one's liking via the menu, then stored in a registration slot.

And the CTSs have other advantages: the ability to melodically assign a sample to the keyboard range, as well as the chord detection mode, which is much more sophisticated than on the Yamaha E series.

On the other hand, on the E473/EW425, the arpeggios can be quantised... a really pro feature.

On the paper, I am really tempted by the Yamaha's. But I find that sound-wise, the Casio's are better with the AiX chip. And I really like their chord detection system.

So, yes, the best option would be to try theses keyboards out in a music shop. Or else, order one online, you can always return it if you don't like it.

Isn't life beautiful? 

Regards,

Vinciane

[SciNote]

Okay, now I see it -- one little paragraph at the bottom of page 33 does mention the style revoicing, and I did miss that.  You'd still think they'd go into more detail about how to implement that feature in the main manual.  And when going to the section on registrations, for what is stored related to styles, this is what it says:

Style settings: Style number, ACMP on/off, Style vol-
ume, Track on/off, Main section A/B, Tempo, Fingering
type, Smart chord key

Nothing about style revoicing or instrumentation.  But it's good to see such a feature on these keyboards.

I wonder if you'll be able to tell the E473/EW425 whether to save a style in a registration or not.  And I'm not talking about the freeze function, but it is similar.  On the previous keyboards, if you hit the "song" button before setting up and saving a registration, then you will not save any style data to the registration, which is how to implement a freeze on keyboards such as my E433.  Since no style data is saved to the registration, then the currently-playing style will not be changed when that registration is called up.

The freeze function on the E473/EW425 accomplishes that, but with the revoicing options, it might still be nice to have this ability to apply this sort of freeze to individual registrations.  Why?  Well, let's say you set up a few registrations with custom revoiced styles -- remember that revoiced styles will not be memorized in the keyboard unless you save them to a registration.  If you want to recall those revoiced styles, then obviously, you need to have style-freeze turned off when calling up the registrations with your custom styles.  But now, with style-freeze turned off, if you want to call up other registrations to change the sound while playing those custom styles, then the concern is that calling up those other registrations for the sounds, will also call up the style information stored in those registrations, which would then stop your custom style from playing.  Whereas if you can tell the other registrations (the ones where you only want voice information) to not save style data (like what can be done on the older models), then you can have a few registrations with your custom revoiced styles to use to call up those styles, and then call up just voice settings with the other registrations while using your custom styles.

Otherwise, to accomplish this, you'd have to have style-freeze turned off to call up the registrations with your custom styles, and then turn on style-freeze before you start playing a song -- and then do the same thing again every time you want to use another registration with a custom revoiced style.

[Keyboard Master]

Oh one thing I am also curious about is when loading styles onto the new psr e473 did Yamaha increase the style file size limit or is it still 50kb. I was curious 😎

[overover]

Oh one thing I am also curious about is when loading styles onto the new psr e473 did Yamaha increase the style file size limit or is it still 50kb. I was curious 😎

The size of style files is still limited to a maximum of 50 KB (kilobytes).

Quote from the E473/EW425 Owner's Manual, page 55:

The maximum size of a single Style file is 50 KB. Files that
exceed this limit will not be recognized by the instrument.


Best regards,
Chris

[Keyboard Master]

Oh ok. Thanks.

[pjd]

OK, I caved and bought a CT-S1000V.    I sacrificed the SHS-500 Sonogenic as it didn't really fit my original purpose. The guys at the store were having a blast with it when I left!

No I'm not abandoning Yamaha nor am I planning to post how much better my keyboard is. 

Much to try and learn as a lot of the functionality is down in the menu tree somewhere...

All the best -- pj

[SciNote]

OK, I caved and bought a CT-S1000V.    I sacrificed the SHS-500 Sonogenic as it didn't really fit my original purpose. The guys at the store were having a blast with it when I left!

No I'm not abandoning Yamaha nor am I planning to post how much better my keyboard is. 

Much to try and learn as a lot of the functionality is down in the menu tree somewhere...

All the best -- pj

Sounds great!  Let us know how well it works and how the key-feel is.  And if you get a chance, please test out whether you can save knob changes to a registration.  Basically, just take one of the sounds, then make some obvious changes to the sound with the filter and/or envelope generator with the knobs (of course, you have to first assign the knobs to those functions) -- changes dramatic enough that there would be no way you could mistake your new sound for the original sound that you selected.  Then, just save that sound to a registration.  Next, just to make sure everything is cleared, call up a different registration, then call up the registration you saved with your new sound -- then test it out.  Does it sound like the dramatically different sound you just created with the filter and/or envelope generator?  Or does it just sound like the original sound, with no filter or envelope changes?

I did join the Casio forum as suggested by Vinciane, and I posed this question.  I was told that the changes are saved to the registration, but I'm still curious, as those functions are not listed in the manual as to what is saved in a registration.  But then again, with the Yamaha PSR-E473 and EW425, the section of the manual that lists the parameters that can be saved to a registration does not list style revoicings, even though those are saved to a registration, based on the reference manual.  So, it could just be something that Casio overlooked in the manual.

[casiokid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWzkUwlm-AY

[casiokid]

Am I right in thinking that although you can change Style Parts on the E473 you cannot adjust their individual volume ?

[vbdx66]

@PJ: Cant wait to hear your first impressions 

@SciNote:

And if you get a chance, please test out whether you can save knob changes to a registration. 

No need to test, you can. The manual says that clear and loud on page 140 and 141 as well as on page 170. You can save the parameter values that you tweaked with the knobs either in one of the four Setup slots or in one of the reg memory slots.

@Casiokid:

Am I right in thinking that although you can change Style Parts on the E473 you cannot adjust their individual volume ?

You're right indeed. The only thing you can do is activate or mute a style track you don't want to hear using the track buttons under the screen. On this website, though, you can find plenty of software software to help you tweak styles to your liking.

Vinciane

[pjd]

Let us know how well it works and how the key-feel is.  And if you get a chance, please test out whether you can save knob changes to a registration.

Hi Bob --

As to trying registrations, not to worry. I have a bunch of split/layer registrations to build and, at the very least, need to dial down reverb, if needed.

Can't wait to hear your first impressions.

Hello Vinciane --

I started writing first impressions and realized that it was too much for a PSR-focused forum. I posted first impressions here:

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/casio-ct-s1000v-first-impressions/

I did join the Casio forum as suggested by Vinciane

I probably should, too, although the last thing I need is another forum.  I started lurking there recently -- enough to know that Vinciane is a star. 

Best to everyone -- pj