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Good to see that Kawai is taking good care of their customers. Kawai James of course is a hero! :-)
I'm a happy owner of a new CA79 and I really enjoy the sound quality, key action (with LOW key noise!), looks and overall (build) quality of this piano.

I'm a bit struggling to get the same good sound quality through my headphones. Maybe they're worn out, but I find the sound too sharp and it's quite ringing with the standard settings. Any tips are appreciated. I've posted a question about good, warm headphones for CA79 in a seperate thread, but any suggestion is welcome.

What really, really needs improvement IMO in the user interface is the way/options to handle registrations. This is now far too limited. I think it should be possible to save a user setting, rename/edit it afterwards and make it possible to select one of the user settings as your start up default (just by selecting it). The way it's implemented now (with the startup option to 'Current') is not handy at all. Also, it should be possible to backup/save your registrations to USB. Just in case. And so owners of CA79/99 can share them.

Agree and all good points Mr F Sharp - I have been thinking the same.

Thanks for the support Killometer, let's hope Kawai will do something about it soon!
It's just software and has little to do with the hardware, so it should be doable I guess.

I also would like to have a better integration with the Ipad app.
In the current setup, it functions quite independently: it stores user settings in the Ipad, not in the user area of the piano itself.
I think it would be better to make settings in the Ipad and save them in the piano.
That would really make it a Piano remote control (Which the name PianoRemote suggests).
Or even better, let the user choose where to store the settings (in the piano or in the Ipad).

Same here, the sound was a bit too sharp for me through headphones (CA79). I changed the “touch curve” to heavy-1 and the “key volume” to high damping. That reduced the sharpness & ringing significantly (mostly by changing the touch curve setting). But a couple of weeks ago I bought pianoteq with three grands and was very pleased with some of the modelled sounds. Especially "Grotrian" & "Steingraeber". But now finally I’m using Garritan CFX (full), for me there’s no need anymore to change back to the onboard CA79 sounds (at least now).

I’m using the Sennheiser HD 599 headphones and I’m very happy with them. I also tried Beyer DT770 Pro (200 Ohm) but the sound was too muffled and not clean enough for my ears.

Could you please share your setting? How do you use the Garritan Software? Do you use midi out? Is an audio iinterface needed? Does the sound at the end comes back through the onboard speakers? Is it really latency free?

Thank you TomBom, those settings really make a Lot of difference. It sounds much better now. Great advice.

I’m glad I could help

Regarding Garritan CFX: I’m using a mac-mini for Garritan (it’s a mac-mini from 2012 with an Intel i7 2,3 GHz and 4 GB RAM). I'm starting the mac when I turn the piano on. The boot-time of the mac together with the garritan software lies around 25 seconds. The CA79 needs 35 seconds, so in my case I don’t even have to wait for the mac & garritan because of the piano boot-time
The connection CA79 -> Mac is established via the Midi USB output (CA79) and USB Input (mac). You just need an standard USB cable. To get the sound back from the mac to the CA79 speaker, I’m using a standard audio cable (3.5mm) from the line-out (mac) to line-in (CA79). So you can use the onboard speaker and if you want to play with headphones you can use the piano headphone connector. I don’t use any audio interfaces and it’s absolutely latency free. In some scenarios there might be a ground loop in the system (because of the two-way connection between the CA79 and the computer) which will cause a disturbing noise. In this case you will need a ground breaker (it’s a cheap cable) for the audio connection. I don’t have this problem but I had to turn off “Bluetooth Audio” in the CA79 Settings, because I had some background noise at the line-in with bluetooth audio on (don’t know why, but I don’t use this anyway).

I forgot to write: To turn the CA79 onboard sound off while using Garritan or any other VST you have to set “Local On/Off” to Off in the piano midi settings. Otherwise you will hear both sounds.

Thanks a lot, that is really helpful

Hi TomBom, thanks again, but I will hang on to the internal sounds of the CA79. I really like them!

Hi Kailord! I did think the bootup time was excessive. Also I am using my CA79 with a VST, and the VST interface is not great and forces me to uncheck/recheck the MIDI connection each time the piano booted up.

So I queried opinions here about leaving the piano powered on all the time. Kawai has no official stance on doing this, and some forum members here do and some don't. So, for the past 3-4 weeks, I have left the piano powered on. The effect is amazing - you just sit down and play! Kind of like <clutches pearls> an acoustic!


Absolutely not. If you power on and start playing, and then the software kicks in and changes to your settings, there is no harm done.


It's not that bad. There is a fellow here who is having an extreme time with his touchscreen it seems. But that hasn't been my experience. Like a lot of apps and hardware, it's a little clunky but it gets the job done without too much trouble. And also, you can always use an app to control it instead.

Hi Everyone,
I happily own a Kawai CA79, bit I recently noted something odd, that I would describe as a "wrong" behavior of the sustain (or damper) pedal, vs. a real grand piano.
Please try the following:

-Play a bass note, say the bottom E, keep it pressed
-Then press the sustain pedal
-Then release the key (obviously it keeps playing)
-Then slowly press again the same key. You don't want to actually "play the strings" again, just press it to have the specific key damper "away from the strings".
-Then release the sustain pedal... and, the note stops playing, except for some resonance.

A grand would continue to fully play the note, as the strings would never have been damped, in the sequence.

Don't you find it is wrong and should be corrected?
FYI, I tried the same with Garritan CFX sw connected via USB MIDI, and it works correctly, the sound of the played note continues fully.

What do you think? Shouldn't it be corrected?

Cheers everybody!
Corrado

Not downplaying issues but is there anyone who actually plays piano that way?

Hi InspiredByKawai,
the example I made is extreme and not "musical", it's intended to highlight very clearly the behavior I am referring to.
But I believe that behavior can affect the overall sound and feeling of the piano, though in a more subtle way.

Do you agree a real piano behaves differently?

(FWIW I actually recorded a piece, the ending is a large chord with sustain pedal down, slowly fading: I actually like, before it fades fully, to just stop it except the bottom note, by releasing the damper while keeping the bottom note down... that's how I noticed everything)

Corrado

I tried this on my NU1. As described the original note keeps playing throughout. I also think the behaviour of your CA79 is wrong compared to an acoustic.

But I find this part of your description slightly confusing:
What resonance?

Definately that this is a (minor) bug in synth engine.

I refer the the sympathetic resonance, if you play a sound with this feature turned on and to a good level. All modern digital pianos have it (for sure the NU1 and the CA79).

In my case I have the wrong behavior that the note does not continue to play as it should, but you can hear the subtle resonance of the same note/string only.

I mean, for a digital piano this level I would assume the acoustic piano behavior is replicated perfectly, especially thinking to a not-so-complicated thing like the damper mechanism. Would be nice to know if different models / engines from Kawai get this done right or not.

I hope Kawai can fix it with an update!

Thanks.
Corrado

It should, especially since it should be easy to correct, it's probably just one simple programming flaw. It was the same on Casio GP.

Hello,

i just tried this with my Kawai CS11 (Harmonic Imaging XL) and it worked like it should on an acoustic piano. Propably an error in the new rendering engine.

Daniel

Thanks for your answers

@Nordomus: you mean Casio GP had the same issue but then Casio corrected it? Than I can hope...!

@danielp11: thanks for testing, so I hope Kawai is reading / listening, and willing to fix!

Cheers.
Corrado