# CT-S1000v / S500 a looper-artists dreamkeyboard?

I had a hunch this synth might be a nice swiss-army-knife dawless tool. > **spoiler alert**: it turned out to be # Why I was skeptical 1. I grew up with non-editable-sound arranger keyboards/modules of the 90s 2. Keyboards with speakers usually have to compromise on soundquality / velocity-keys / no attack/release/sustain params e.g. 3. too good to be true for this price: a modern 16ch midisynth with stereo-sampler and sfz/jv1080-ish kitchensink? 4. Workstations address all these issues by becoming bulky, heavy, and full-with-knobs and menu-diving. > **spoiler alert**: it's portable AND few knobs AND editable-enough sounds AND speakers AND great velocity-sensitive keys. # CASIO AIX engine > All of this can be recalled instantly via custom presets. There's also an anti-menu-diving-features, which allows defining 'what' the menu should be in the first place. Also, I suspect their AIX engine supports sfz in(directly) because there are some sounds with ' sfz' in their name. # A refreshing 'mixed bag' * too limited to 'lose yourself in a workstation' * powerful enough to 'go dawless' * synth: ADSR/substractive and full 16ch multitimbral midi-impl * great vintage multisample instrument emulations * sampling! (from line-in, bluetooth or wav-files from SDcard) * turn on/off speakers as quick monitors for my grooveboxes or mobile music apps * you can save custom LCD menu navigation presets ('studio', 'live', etc). # CASIOTONE's hidden paradigm shift? Casiotone historically offered 'simplicity & fun'.
Current music production however, is 'complex & dreadful':

Roland GO seems to want to replace the audio-interface, and pull in the Cloud.
CASIOTONE goes way further, by **making both redundant to enable full portability**, integrate new speakertech and AI:
I've noticed that introducing a looper-pedal in the CASIOTONE workflow, allows for sampling infinite tracks from the CASIOTONE, which can later be imported into a [looped] drumkit on the CASIOTONE itself.
Gamechanger? > Are the flagship casiotones 'weird'? Maybe, but I'm not really sure what comes closer to break the mold of the current convoluted CLOUD/DAW-paradigm. Kudos to that. # Where's the DAW and mixer in all this? Well, interestingly, I noticed that the typical 'mixer-equalizer'-stage is not THAT needed anymore.
Most mobile music apps, grooveboxes, already have eq-fx, so you can layer sounds effectively.
The S1000v/S500 also features a 3band eq on each voice (even for split, or layered voices individually) and on top of that a master eq:
> The prospect of recording 'pre-mastered' into a stereo-looper pedal (as described above) become very promising. # In-depth experience-log * ♥ ~900 tones seems actually ~3000 (900+(35*60 drumsounds)) * ♥ good emulation of electric pianos [wurlitzer/rhodes etc] * ♥ switching between presets instantanious (no loading times or major drop-outs, you even get trails of the previous instrument!) * ♥ switching between FX is pretty instantanious * ♥ really like the menu-system (**) * ♥ vocal synth: very dope, even the stock ones can be used for background vocals ("doooo-waaah" etc) * ♥ modulation 'wheel' delay: on any sound you can define a delay before the modulation-depth kicks in (really brings saxophone/synthleads to life) * ♥ user presets (registrations): very easy to use (I have no need to name them, besides when exporting them to usb disk) * ✔ build quality: good (especially for this price), not too light, not too heavy..flatter/less bulky than I thought. * ✔ upgrade to firmware v1.02: very easy. Just put on the usb-stick, follow manual and profit! * ✔ loading stereo wav-files from usbstick to play synths (*) this makes the device extendable forever * ✔ Attack/Release/etc, DSP etc works for imported samples too..no limitations there * ♥ Sustain-parameter (of ADSR) is located in the 'tone' menu via a toggle (so you can easily disable/enable a hardcoded value) * ✔ system FX: nontweakable reverb-, chorus-, delays-presets are of good quality * ♥ active dsp: good stuff, apart from some crazy ones, most of it focuses on emulating/recording a prof/live sound...does not sound cheap...all FX have dry AND wet controls * ⚠ active dsp: delay: no extreme delay-lengths: max delay time is max 1 sec. Trail gets canceled when switching to non-delay fx (=fair because of 1 DSP). * ✔ active dsp: compressor: a very clean and powerful compressor, allows NY compression due to individual wet/dry-params * ✔ active dsp: LFO wah: has random-waveform (great for generative/dubtechno scenarios) * ♥ active dsp: Dynamic Wah (amplitude-based filter) is very good & responsive (to generate a punchy 'pop' sound, unlike many software solutions with too slow envelope followers). * ♥ active dsp: 'VibraTremolo' and 'Chorus' with (default params) are very good on rhodes/vibraphone to get very stereowide chords (not a cheap guitar chorus e.g.) * ✔ in the active dsp menu, the 'tone'-preset represents the default DSP preset of the instrument (replaced when switching instruments) * ♥ noise-less line-out audio (just sampled it into DAW) * ✔ really useful for distraction/plugin-free recording into a looper-pedal or DAW, replaces many of my plugins. * ✔ 35 drumkits/soundfx: really good quality, also for electronic music production * ♥ cutoff: very musical (a meta-controller?) which sometimes selectively affects certain operator/layer, instead of the whole sound (381: Amp Saw Lead <- transient disappears) * ♥ velocity: very musical (another meta-controller?) which sometimes opens a filter for short or harder presses, and closes it for opposite presses (324: Synth-Brass3) * ✔ arpeggiator: is dope, seems more than a note-arp (a filter/pan/note/scale-sequencer?) * ✔ arpeggiator can be set to 'hold' so you can switch sounds AND arp-types WITHOUT having to restart the engine/chord (not usual with some grooveboxes) * ♥ arpeggiator: also has panning arpeggiators (great to sprinkle particles into a stereo-looper to fill up the whole stereo spectrum) * ♥ arpeggiator: it works on drumkits too (generative/techno producer would love this) * ♥ arpeggiator: has random arps..(I was hoping for this)..very useful for generative drone-music (feed into reverb pedal etc) * ⚠ the reverb-presets are nice, but don't allow tweaking for 100% wet superlong verbs * ♥ the 'layer'-mode (adding a string with long release) makes up for the limited reverb, by adding lush harmonics (which still allow string-layer specific EQ-tweaking) * 🛠️ use random arps (119 till 130) to record into builtin 6track recorder to create ambient sketches? * ✔ the pad-sounds are really good, and tweakable..think roland jv..great for jungle pads etc * ⚠ apart from master eq and chosen DSP, upper1/upper2/lower instrument also go through a system equalizer (tweakable via menu > knob ) * ⚠ tried automating system equalizer via DAW for sidechaining purposes (without luck, probably better to automate active DSP knob) * ✔ drumrhythms: suprisingly good drumrhythms, great for sketching * ✔ tweaking/switching parameters with 3 knobs works fast (not everything can be tweaked, but nice balance to stay focused on big picture) * ✔ master eq: in custom mode, 50hz can be boosted, 120hz can be cut, to get a nice low bottom + non-boxy low-mid * ⚠ looping of imported WAV-samples are retriggered based ct-s1000v tempo-setting (could be interesting though) (***) * 🛠️ figuring out the .SPM sample format (it saves sampledata + settings, but I noticed that attack/release is not reflected in the SPM-data). * ✔ saving registrations * ✔ midi-sequencing from PC to ct-s1000v (in ct-s1000v settings > port C puts device into 16ch GM mode, port A is same but ch1-5 for upper1/upper2/lower etc) * 🛠️ cutoff with drumkit: does not seem to work when drumkit is selected, but perhaps I've assigned something incorrectly * ✔ cutoff with drumkit: dsp 100&101 ('LoCutEQ' and 'HicutEQ' both have 3x 3-parametric eqs serially routed (!) to tweak drums...so basically 3 eq plugins in serial). * ✔ ct-s1000v seems to be very royal on concerning parametrics eqs (on instrument, active DSP, and master) * ♥ easy recording via one button: hit record-button to arm, another press (or notepress) to start recording a lick or phrase (great to play along with PC/band e.g., to later sample into PC/hw sampler) * ✔ multitrack recording: once you get the hang of the longpress recordbutton-logic (to select tracks), it's useable for riffing over a rhythm, sample later into PC/hw sampler with rhythm muted. * ⚠ multitrack recording: the 'overdub' mention in the manual probably means 'record on 6 tracks', not 'overdub recording on individual tracks' (I was not able to figure out the latter). * ⚠ I will probably use the 'easy record' more than the multitrack recording, because looper-pedals are still the best for this imho. * ♥ sampling: drum-mode is uniquely flexible: basically choose a drumkit, and override/record certain notes with a WAV/recording. Add a keyboardsplit (ambient pad on upperside e.g.)..very unique powerful palette. * ♥ feedback friendly resampling: casio mono output > guitar stompbox > casio input (few ms of i/o delay prevents highfreq feedbacksound, works fine with lowfreq cut) > \* = put samples in `MUSICDAT` folder and load via SAMPLING > MEDIA > IMPORT > \*\* = I read various reviews of 'difficult to navigate menu', however I felt right at home with the customizable menu..perhaps keyboard-reviewers don't always have time to wrap their head around contextual UI decisions? For example, the category-jump menu-items are ONLY shown once you're changing the instrument. This is genious, same with long-press for more details. Also, vocal parameters appear only when vocal synth-tone is selected. I like contextual UX (present features when applicable). Just think of it, otherwise it would probably mean many extra buttonpresses (extra 'category'-button e.g.) or fail messages ('please first do X' e.g.). It is very hard to design an instrument with so much features with so little buttons, kudos to CASIO. > \*\*\* = in the casio survey, I asked for the option of simply looping samples between end/start. That would open up possibilities for looping 'drum' samples of different lengths (movie-samples, soundscapes e.g.)