Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kawai ES100: let's collect reviews and impressions here

I sent it to
digital@kawaius.com

Just a quick update. I heard back from Kawai USA regarding the sound caused by reverb when softly pressing D4 on the ES100. They sent me a kind email telling me they passed the question on to engineers in Japan. I will let you know in case I hear anything further.

I never heard anything further from Kawai. In case you hear a reverb you don't like at or around the fourth D then just ten off reverb. Unfortunately the keyboard does not remember it so you have to turn it off each time again when you turn it back on. I understand that it might be hard for Kawai to resimulate and program the reverb. Then again it would he nice having to disable it each time you turn it on.

Wrong. You can save settings. The ES100 have slots to save settings. You can recall any set of settings, and one slot is for default. Search on your manual.

Thanks for pointing that out. Great.

Its on page 47 of the manual.
I did overread it because in the heading above the picture it says 'Restoring factory settings'
That is a copy paste error from the previous page.

http://www.kawai.de/service/es100_en.pdf

Yes, there are unfortunately quite a few errors in the ES100 owner's manual.

I did not work on this documentation, however I hope to prepare a revised and corrected version in the future.

Kind regards,
James
x

James, that would be a big help for new users. For instance it took me a while to figure out how to set the energy saving mode (p. 48) as the text does not correspond to the image.

There's an error that threw me in the MP7 manual... the top of page 64, Storing a Setup. It talks about the Piano, E Piano, Sub, and MIDI Out sections. I was trying to make sense of that, and then it hit me, it was a mistaken copy-and-paste from the MP10/11 manual!

You read the manual?! You're my hero of the day!

(Sorry, James, I'll get round to perusing your fine handiwork one day!)

Well spotted!

According to my changelog, I fixed this error back in March, however it takes a while for the updated manuals to be printed and included with the instrument.

While the printed manual should be more or less fine, it's generally recommended to grab the PDF from the Kawai Japan (or in this case KawaiMP.com) website to ensure you're referencing the latest features and most correct explanation etc.

Cheers,
James
x

Hi James,

suppose I sent/posted a doc with all the typos I spotted in the ES100 manual would you be able to integrate them (or ask someone to integrate them) so a corrected version would be available online? Let me know. [Actually I could even start a new post to collect that info from this forum to speed up the process.]

Thank you for your kind offer gauguin.

I believe we already have an internal list of the corrections necessary, it's just a case of receiving the layout data from the individual who worked on that manual initially, and making the relevant edits.

If I work on the edits, I will also request an ES100 from R&D in order to go through each page to ensure all of the instructions are correct.

However, at the time of writing, I am rather busy with other projects which must take priority.

Kind regards,
James
x

Sure thing and good luck with your other projects!

When comparing Pianoteq with the internal ES100 sound engine, I noticed that the internal sound is lacking in dynamic range and it's also quite hard to play forte/fortissimo, regardless of the touch setting. Setting it to "Light" only reduces the dynamic range further. I also noticed, that the demo pieces play way louder than what the action is able to produce.

So today I had an idea. The AHA-IV-F action of the ES100 only delivers Note-On velocity values from 2 to 102 via MIDI. I set the ES100 to Local-Off, then I use MIDI-OX to map these values to 2 to 127 and feed it back into the ES100.

Voila! Much better. Suddenly the ES100 turned from a Pianomezzoforte into a Pianoforte - without losing any ability to play pianissimo.

That rises the question: Was this intended by design? And if yes: Why?

I'm strongly considering an ES 100. I currently use Pianoteq with my Axiom Pro controller and would like to use it with whatever weighted 88 keyboard I eventually purchase.

The ES 100 does not have USB. What MIDI/USB interface do you use? Thanks...

I think you will be very happy with the ES100.
It has a MIDI interface only (no USB out). Just get any good MIDI to USB adapter and you are golden.

I use the Roland UM-One between the ES-100 and Win7 64b. Works very well.

I use the Steinberg UR-22 for both MIDI and native ASIO audio together with Pianoteq.

My MIDI-USB cable is non-brand that looks like this:



Works fine for me.