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Hi Forum and Kawai James, hopefully you read this

First I'd like to report another bug. I'm not 100% sure but I believe it started after the update to the newest version (the one that fixed the annoying pedal bug in dual mode) , however don't quote me on that if it turns out this was present from v 1.0.

The Bug: When switching between sounds, the sound jumps to the first default sound (SK PIANO) instead of what's been selected.

More Description: When I'm playing a sound from one of the categories (for the sake of example, let's say I'm playing an organ patch) and then I'd like to go to another category (for example, "EP") I press the circled button of the EP category but the sound is jumped to the first default sound "SK Concert Piano" of the first acoustic piano category as also denoted on the screen, even though the button pressed was of the "EP category". In order to get to the EP category another press of the EP is needed after noticing the misbehaviour.


This type of bug (sound switching jumps to default sound) has occured many times throughout my playing with the ES920. This is annoying due to not being able to predict WHEN it happens. I just went to my ES920 to try to recreate this bug and somehow it happened ONCE but I can't seem to recreate the bug at will and while playing an important gig if I need to quickly switch a sound during a song I might find myself playing the default piano sound when in fact I chose a different sound. Not sure if this also affects user presets but this should be verified by KAWAI to make sure it doesn't. I'm pretty sure this bug also happened to me when using the VALUE (sound +/- 1) buttons to go to the next/previous sound when instead I got jumped to the default piano.

Now, this doesn't happen at all when I quickly scroll through with the category or value buttons to go between sounds. I haven't timed how much wait time between singular program changes this bug occurs but when you're playing some songs/pieces it could take several minutes, time passes lol. I don't know whether other factors affect this, such as key presses, pedal hold. etc. (Program change is also MIDI related) and since I have no knowledge of how the KAWAI ES920 software works, I can't diagnose and debug this correctly.

Please please KAWAI team take notice of this and check the software for the cause of this and fix.

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Now for a question: Does the ES920 transmit aftertouch? of course it doesn't have it's own aftertouch strip, but if I use a hardware/software synth that has aftertouch settings, can the aftertouch work via MIDI?


Thanks!!!

Hello Chummy,


Yes, I've read your post, however it's usually more polite better to just send a PM directly.


Okay, I would recommend taking one of the following steps:

1. Send me a PM.
2. Contact my colleague at Kawai America who assisted you with the pedal bug reported previously.
3. Contact Kawai Japan by sending a message via the enquiry form on the Kawai Global website.

Thank you!


If you are able to reproduce this behaviour consistently (i.e. the SK Concert Grand sound is selected every time you press a sound button), it's likely a bug. However, if not, it could be caused by something else.


According to the MIDI Implementation Chart the ES920 does not transmit nor receive aftertouch data. Just out of curosity, given that the ES920's action does not have any kind of aftertouch functionality, what kind of aftertouch MIDI data would it send?

Kind regards,
James
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"More polite"? what a strange response... anyway, the point of of other users seeing this post is self explanatory: maybe someone managed to find out what causes this or can contribute additional info in the hopes of helping KAWAI solve this. (forums in general are a good place to find solutions using mass knowledge). What would you like for me to write you in the PM?

[/quote]Okay, I would recommend taking one of the following steps:

1. Send me a PM.
2. Contact my colleague at Kawai America who assisted you with the pedal bug reported previously.
3. Contact Kawai Japan by sending a message via the enquiry form on the Kawai Global website.

Thank you![/quote]


Thank you for the advice. Just done number 2 and 3. Sent both to Alan and an Enquiry form to KAWAI Global.


Oh my bad.. I was thinking about two different things while writing and my mind wandered. Yeah it wouldn't work with an external synth since the keyboard has nothing on it. I was thinking by mistake of some keyboards' ability to receive aftertouch data from DAW regarding their built in sounds and mistakenly applied it to external sounds too. Sometimes when you really wish things to work, you just think like that haha.


a 100% software issue. I've been a programmer of such stuff, notably in MAX language and MSP, and have built software sequencers, samplers and other tools etc. to be able to recognize such issue as presented by the behavior of my ES920 unit.

BTW - important info! before I updated my KAWAI ES920 to the current latest version (v1.11) I installed a BETA update file sent only to me by the American rep. the official 1.11 version (can't know for sure if these were the same files or not in retrospect) appeared on the KAWAI site only a couple of weeks later and I decided to install it on top of the BETA update I already did. This may or may not be a factor affecting the bug and I am most likely the only person in the world who did this.

I just thought about this after already having sent the letter to KAWAI reps in Japan and US. However, I sent them BOTH a link to this thread, precisely for the purpose of following the developments of information so hopefully they do read on.

So to clarify, this mean that...


Correct?

Kind regards,
James
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Are we talking to the supreme leader or the grand ayatollah or something here?

This happens pretty often, meaning most of my sessions with my ES920 it happens at least once. Obviously if it happened only once or twice a year I wouldn't have thought much about it nor I'd remember this is a thing probably... but I find it hard to determine what causes this nevertheless since I have no access to the software, not knowledge of how it is programmed and there are way too many contributing factors to be able to do proper diagnosis. I WILL try to video film it just like the last bug I caught, it may take me a couple of days since I'm a bit on the busy side right now. Hopefully I can catch it and post an update in this thread.

Thank you for the additional information.

So, if a session lasts... let's say 1 hour, and this phenomenon occurs at least once...would that be an accurate description of the occurrence frequency (once an hour)?

The ES920 v1.11 software update was released in April, and this model is quite popular, so I would have expected more users to have encountered this phenomenon if it is indeed a software bug that affects all instruments running v1.11.

Do you have any other devices connected to your ES920, aside from the included F-10H damper pedal?


Thank you. Any additional information that helps to reliably reproduce this phenomenon will also be useful.

Kind regards,
James
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Here's a video of the bug I created (link to YouTube):   

 I wrote some further important details in the video description in which I also copy here below:




This mail + video was sent to KAWAI US rep. I will keep you guys informed of any developments in follow up messages in this thread.
Cheers!

@Kawai James

Yeah in my last post I said "often" and in my current post I said "rarely".

and TBH, it sort of happens once and hour or every few hours.. and even that is a super rough estimation because I don't have a scientifically accurate idea. Terms such as "often" and "rarely" are relative and are affected by feeling.

I have definitely encountered it many times for it to be a "thing", that's for 100%. I tried getting a second video with the bug happening using the "Category button" but couldn't. Funnily enough, when writing the original post in this thread I went to my ES920 and it happened with the category button, and I was so disappointed I didn't have it on tape. I might try to get that one sometime, but after an hour messing around that's a lot of wasted time for me... which I can't afford. Hopefully whatever I did will be enough^^

Hello Chummy,

Thank you for uploading the video.

I discussed this topic with one of my colleagues at Kawai America whom I believe you are already in contact with. Hopefully you will be able to get to the bottom of this one.

Kind regards,
James
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UPDATE: After talks with Kawai US the team in Japan once again released a BETA update (1.12a) for me to install. The update FIXES the bug!
a diagnosis has been also made by Kawai team: The bug is caused when being in dual mode (one of the sounds should not be the default SK piano) , then switching to a single sound (you can then toggle to however many single sounds you want) and then pressing the value +/- button. The sound will jump back to the default SK piano rather than increasing/decreasing the sound selection by 1, as should be expected when using the "value" button.

I assume this update will be available to the public soon, following its success

I should apply to work at KAWAI at this rate haha :-)

Regards
Chummy

Hello Chummy,

Thank you for sharing this positive outcome with the rest of the forum.

We were not able to reproduce the sound category button bug that you initially reported. However, as you note, my colleague in the US was able to reproduce a similar issue that could occur when the value buttons are pushed under certain conditions (as per your example video), which has been fixed.

I don't know when this fix will be made publicly available, however if anyone else is experiencing this issue and would also like to receive the beta version, please feel free to send me a PM.

Kind regards,
James
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