Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ever attached better speakers to a Casio Privia?

The Privia PX-750 has passable on-board speakers but it would be great to have better ones. Anyone have enough electronics know-how to advise on how to run better speakers externally? Warranty not a consideration in my case.

Is this (speaker upgrade) predominantly for you to listen to as a player or for performing to others?

If it was for you predominantly then perhaps look at studio monitors, if it was for performance you are likely going to need an amplifier...(haven't had the need for an amplifier myself - only studio monitors),

Does the PX-750 have output jacks? Up until last week, I was playing on a Casio PX-830, and I used a pair of decent computer speakers with it:

https://www.amazon.com/Genius-SP-HF1800A-Three-way-Hi-Fi-Speakers/dp/B0041Q9PZ0/

It was just as simple as plugging them into one of the headphone jacks. They sounded quite nice, I thought - definitely an improvement. This particular pair looks out of production, but there are new versions of that same type from that company, and really, I suspect anything like that would do.

After that, you're probably looking at a more serious instrument amp or PA. Either way, it'd just be a matter of using the outputs for the headphones or the lines out. If the 750 doesn't have those, then I don't know ...

I don't think it *is* that simple - I know that the components have to match electronically as far as watts and ohms. As I understand it if you overwork the headphone jacks the associated electronics can burn out eventually, unless they're actually made for doing that.

I'm thinking you have to go digging into the electronics of the unit to reconfigure things

The weakest part of inexpensive DP's is their amps and loudspeakers.

You'll be shocked at how much better the PX-750 will sound with larger speakers and more-powerful amps. That was my experience with the PX-350, when I hooked it up to a Yamaha Stagepas system (300 watts, two 8" two-way speakers). Suddenly, it had decent bass! And it had "acoustic piano" volume, and improved tone quality.

The downside is that you'll hear problems with the sound generator that you didn't know it had.<g>

If you want to know for sure, rent some speakers from a local music store. A pair of small "powered PA speakers" (there are numerous choices) -- I'd pick speakers 8" woofers -- will do fine. ""Powered monitors" will also be OK.

The PX-750 doesn't have "Line Out" jacks, so you'll use one of the "Phone" jacks. You'll need a "stereo splitter cable", to get both the Left and Right channels from a single Phone jack. Any music store will have what you need.

It's possible to mix Left and Right channels (the Left carries more of the bass, the Right carries more of the treble) into a single (monophonic) signal, and use one loudspeaker. That loses the "stereo effect", and upsets some people. I found it acceptable, and one ZXA1 speaker was all I could afford.

Have fun --

Okay, I located the owner's manual online, according to that you should be able to go from the headphone jack to the "Aux" jack of an amp and drive speakers connected to that. That's what I tried but not getting good results. Might be a failure of the particular amp I'm trying - it's old and has been sitting around a while.

Headphones out from a DP straight to speakers seldom provides good results (unless your amp is knackered or the amp is mainly for guitar use). The usual solution is to run the setup via an audio interface but now costs start to rise.

There are quite a few bookshelf speaker setups that have inputs specifically designed to take signals from headphone out jacks (from mp3 players, CD players, etc. - and so much like the Privia headphone out jack), so I still think that's your best bet - just make sure to look up the manuals and see if that's what they are designed to do. FWIW, and in my completely anecdotal experience (which is worth exactly what it sounds like ... ), I got a really nice sound and used it for years without problems. YMMV, etc.

Some people dont like them, but I got a Roland 350 keyboard amp. My PX-350 sounds great through it.

Okay, got the speakers hooked up to a budget receiver/amp from Best Buy - it works! The previous failure apparently was due to the other amp being dysfunctional.

I have the speakers on folding tables behind the piano facing up like on an Avant Grand for more piano-like ambient sound coming from behind the keyboard, not aimed right at you like the onboard speakers. Really opens up the sound. Still experimenting with spacing and orientation for the best sound.

However after trying a number of digital pianos at Sam Ash where I got a new splitter cable, this Casio's built-in speakers sound better than any of the models they had. A bunch of them had the speakers hidden inside the cabinet somewhere, seems really dumb - made the sound tinny and muted. There was no way to raise the lid, that's just the way they're built.