# 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.)