Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How would you hook up your Kawai CA65/95 to True Keys?

For those with some experience with this, how would you connect True Keys to a Kawai CA65/95 DP for maximum sound quality and ease of use?

Of course, before considering all that, we would first have to ask if it would be worth all the trouble to do it. If our goal is both to play with a tone that is superior to Kawai's, and to record that tone, will it be worth the financial investment and time involved? From what I've heard of True Keys samples it certainly would be, but if you happen to own this program I would appreciate your opinion.

If it's a go, how do we play and record in the simplest fashion for a DP that is designed for home use? It seems to me that many people won't be able to conveniently use a desktop, at least for recording, so is a powerful laptop the best answer? Or better yet, can you play live using True Keys as your sound engine, and simply record what you're playing on the USB memory stick? If so, I don't think you'd need a laptop; you could just string a connection to your desktop. (My desktop is about five feet away from my Kawai DP.)

As for sound, would the full tone of True Keys be heard through the Kawai speakers? If so, would it make better sense to own the CA95, with its soundboard, rather than the CA65? (I'm thinking of the Italian piano's full effects here.) If external speakers would give the best sound, what would be the best such speakers, and how should they be hooked up?

And finally, if you can't record on a USB stick, is there a program that records automatically as you're playing True Keys?

If many of these questions seem ignorant, I will say that today is the first time I've heard of programs being able to offer their own piano tones, and I think I was lucky to hear the piano sounds of True Keys.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice.

"As for sound, would the full tone of True Keys be heard through the Kawai speakers? If so, would it make better sense to own the CA95, with its soundboard, rather than the CA65? "

Good question; I've been trying to get an answer to that for a while now and to no result. It al depends on the fact if the Kawai has an EQ in between the sound-input and the amp/speaker system to get a relatively flat frequency response from the whole sound projecting system. The CA-95 / CS10 have the extra feature that sound that's played through the audio-input , can be recorded alongside the sound of the internal tone generator. Since the hardwired digital correction EQ sits somewhere between the sound engine and the amp/speaker system, it could be that the audio-input signal will be corrected as well, when played over the speakers. But this is still speculation.

Perhaps a CA-95 owner can shine a light on that - haven't had any response from Kawai on this subject so far.

Thanks for your reply, JFP. Knowing which speakers and sound system is best for True Keys is crucial, and until those questions are answered it's really difficult to make a commitment to purchase.

There is no doubt that my present DP, the Kawai CN34, is certainly inadequate to use with True Keys, but that's probably a moot point, as I will shortly be upgrading to the CA series. However, if the CA sound system falls short, that would seem to mean adding a system with adequate speakers and a receiver. Whether that's worth the expense and trouble I don't know, but like you, I'd like to hear from other Kawai owners on this.

I heard about my HP-505, that the instrument would specially take advantage of its several speakers by splitting the internally generated sound into different frequency ranges and then sending the high frequencies more to the right, the middle frequencies more to the center and the lower frequencies more to the left of the several speakers mounted to the instrument. But this splitting, making the sound of the high class DPs so full and sourrounding, would not be applied to external sound sources linked into the instrument.
Therefore I wouldn´t expect linked in sounds to become as lively sounding in the instrument as the build in sounds.
I didn´t check if this is true, but at least be aware about such things and better go somewhere to really check the achievable sound result out live and yourself!

I own a CA65, and I've tried routing Ivory II through the line in and out the built-in speakers. It's quite offputting. I don't know if Kawai EQs their samples before playing them through the built-in speakers or something, but there are some very obvious peaks in the frequency response. I use an RME interface, so I can correct it somewhat using the built-in hardware EQ, but I still very much prefer using a proper set of monitors.

The EQ that Kawai uses to get a better (correct) sound ove the speakers is between the internal sound engine and the amp / speaker system and is digital. The line in on the CA-65 is a simple analog line that goes directly to the amp/ speakers, so indeed no (digital) EQ correction is involved.

The cA-95 however samples (AD conversion) the input , otherwise it couldn't record it onto USB stick. So there it can be possible that the input signal crosses the digital EQ stage as well when played over the speakers, resulting in a better sound. Or it may not..., only Kawai knows and they won't tell (so far).

Bummer. If I had a good reference mic setup, I'd record the output from the speakers when playing back a performance and when piping in audio recorded from the line out so I could get a better idea what the built-in EQ settings looked like. Does anybody have any vague idea what the frequency response of the CA65 speakers is?