The Eat at Joe's Kawai K5000 Message Board Digest The Second Letter Sent to Kawai ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For those who recall Troy's hinting that there could possibly be another system upgrade in the future, here is a letter I just sent to Troy at Kawai. He also asked me send a copy of the list to the National Sales Manager, which I did. LETTER TO KAWAI BEGIN QUOTE: Here is the list of wishes and bugs that has been compiled during the past year that the message board has been running. They are divided into three categories, bugs, useability issues, and new features. Several of them would require changes in the way patches are saved in memory and so would probably not be possible, but many of them could be implemented without any problems in backward compatibility. Kenji ----------BUGS---------- There is a bug in version 3.01: On the DHE Multiview screen, the loop parameter is not displayed correctly. The value being displayed is the one belonging to harmonic #1, regardless which harmonic you have selected. Editing the loop parameters works, even if you don't see it on the display when you re-select the same harmonic again after some editing! You can verify that on the DHE (single) View screen. There, the individual loop settings are displayed correctly. When there is only one patch in a memory bank, and you delete this last one, then the memory organisation for this bank seems to get corrupted completely. A strange noise appears when patches are changed. (When will we hear that sound in a tekkno production?) Saving patches is no more possible. The only way to recover the bank's memory structure is to reload the entire bank from a *.KAA file. I use the K5000S, and after installing the new 3.0 operating system, I've noticed that sometimes when playing an arpeggiator, a note will drone (even after the arpeggiator is turned off) until I find the note that is stuck and press it, or until I switch the patch. Stretch tuning - specify exact cents between notes & also stretch greater than 100 cents per note. The manual does state that you can do this but it is not possible. I observed that both the DCA_Key_Scale_To_Envelope_Level and the ADD_DHL_Key_Scale_To_Gain parameter seemingly do not function (at least in some cases). I have also noticed that some of the Key Scale parameters apparently do not function or have a function different from what is intended. Experimenting with a piano sound, I just could not understand why the tone was so mellow. After careful comparison with other sources I finally found the culprit: KS to Gain in the DHL Common screen was set to +45. Reducing it to 0 or some negative value cleared up the sound and brought back the high harmonics. Is there anything in the words "KS to Gain" to tell any of you that this is really a brightness control? Some of you may have downloaded and tried Kenji's Hammond patch. If I play this patch, there is a curious variation in the amount or amplitude of the low harmonics. Play e.g. the note C5 (i.e. two-line C) over and over again. What I hear is not a constant tone, but a random fluctuation between C5 and C6. That is, the low harmonics seem to drop out once in a while. This phenomenon appears to occur only if at least two of the three voices in Hammond are active. I cannot make it happen with one voice only. It seems like the dynamic voice (or "source") assignment of the synthesis software starts the 2 sources with a little delay. This delay is not constant, so the phase relations between the sources vary from note to note. In this case, the sources 1 and 2 are identical, so some harmonics may easily be cancelled by the phase shift, each time different ones. Maybe even the fundamental. But there appear to be some bugs in the MORF function. In particular, the Harmonics Levels of the MORFing source are sometimes set correctly, sometimes not. ----------USEABILITY ISSUES---------- choice of continuous tracking of params like filter res (currently you must retrigger the envelope for res changes to take place. This is useful in some instances but a pain in others. Panning is another such parameter that needs to be tracked (as a previous poster mentioned). The "Disk Write" function in EDIT mode should check if the file name already exists. (It does not - only the "Save" function in the DISK menu does.) When loading a patch from disk into memory, the patch that is already in the selected program slot should be displayed at the top of the DISK LOAD screen as it is displayed when you use the Write function to save a patch to memory. When loading a patch from disk into memory, the program number selection always is set initially to A1. It should be set to the program number that you were last using when you first went into the disk menu. i would like the volume setting in mulit mode to show changes (with both numbers and slider graphics)when they are made by an external sequencer. when i first tried it, i thought that it wasnt working because nothing on my screen changed. i wasnt sure untill i dropped the levels way down and heard a drastic change. Fix voice stealing bugs. There are times when voices are stolen when polyphony cleary has not been exceeded (such as a two mono-voice split in multi-mode. You would never expect one of the voices to be stolen, but it happens if you sustain one for long enough while playing rapidly on the other. Greater flexibility on choosing stealing criteria, e.g. oldest, softest, etc would be ideal. In general, I would much prefer that a more recent voice that has been released would be the one to get stolen rather than an older voice whose key is still down. And it's a hassle that you have to save the sources before you execute the MORF. I wish the K5000 would read the sources being edited rather than the old version in flash memory. you can press F4 to turn the FX off but how about letting us press it again to turn it back on! is it just me or does it seem strange that this was not implimented? We have a relatively large display. Why are e.g. envelope levels displayed as 0-127? Why not %, and time in seconds? The copy (that is, parameter import) operations within the ADD menues should not be restricted to the same bank as the patch being edited. This applies to the MORF source selection, too. Velocity curve selection by graphic "icons" rather than numbers that I have to look up in the manual! (My brain's programming language is not MIDI!) I'd like to have a pre-listen feature for all copy operations, or at least the possibility to see the other patch's name on the display. Again, the Kawai engineers don't seem to realize that the user has sounds in his/her mind, not numbers! Generally, I'd prefer import (copy-from) functions to export (copy-to) functions. I'd like to keep the LOCAL setting OFF, but it resets to ON every time I power down. Are you guys manually turning it OFF for every sequence session? Even the K4 retained the LOCAL setting on power down. The Formant Filter is transposed together with the played note if you play 'legato' and the POLY mode is set to SOLO2. Even though this pitch tracking may be useful in a few cases, it is mostly annoying. ----------DESIRED NEW FEATURES---------- LFO sync to MIDI batch loading of *.ka1 files. just highlight a number of patches (as you would in windows explorer.) then specify where you want them to go. (bank A/D , patch numbers xxx through xxx.) If you could reassign the Macro Knobs to send out the continuous controller messages of your choosing, the K5000S would also be a very, very nice controller keyboard. Even though you can program the K5000's patch parameters to respond to different CC's, which alleviates the lack of macro knob assignability while working with the K5000, this doesn't help when using the knobs to control parameters via MIDI on other synths. The Macro knobs are a very useful addition and I hate to see their potential diminished in any way. I don't think that this addition would be hard to implement either. You could set up the user assignability function to be active only when MIDI control is set to "Local Off" and avoid interfering with whatever goes on when the K5000S is in "Local On" mode. With this feature you could use the knobs as controllers for whatever other equipment you have also. While you're at it controller reassignability would be useful for the mod wheel, switches and foot pedals also. A copy function for the effects block settings: From Single to Single and from Single to Multi. More (and more advanced) edit macros for ADD sources: 1. Shifting the DHL and FF spectra up/down and left/right. 2. Stretching/compressing the DHL and FF curves in horizontal or vertical direction. 3. Tilting the spectrum - this is the same as combining the edit macros "dark" and "bright" that we know from the K5k user interface. 4. Cross-fading (interpolation) between two spectra (DHL or FF). And extrapolation beyond! (It's the same formula.) 5. Smoothing/enhancing the spectra. It's a sort of "filtering the filter". 6. Translating the DHL spectrum into a FF spectrum and vice versa. This could be done gradually - think of a sort of DHL/FF crossfade. Edit buffer dump via MIDI. Plain and simple I would like a compressor in the effects section. Since I'm using a "sequencer studio", I didn't need a compressor until I got the K5k. If you start turning knobs and get the filters screaming it's a necessity. (Which is a good thing--it brought in some real world texture and unpredictability.) I've been trying to put together a patch where the FF is keyscaled 1:1 to the keyboard, so that going up a half step on the keyboard raises the FF a half step. (I want to do this while fixing the pitch of the ADD). The KS for FF depth doesn't seem to stretch far enough. Kenji ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------