Casio ctk6250 is a good keyboard?

[Sonny]

Here it is the link of it: http://www.casio-intl.com/asia-mea/en/emi/high_grade/ctk6250/
Is it a good keyboard?
is the sound good?

 

[happyrat1]

Any keyboard only sounds as good as it sounds to your ears.

For the money the Casio CTK keyboards are pretty decent sounding consumer keyboards, but they simply aren't in the same class as professional instruments costing thousands more.

So when you ask "do they sound good" my response is "compared to what?"

Gary

 

[Fred Coulter]

Also, using the onboard speakers or through a decent amplifier?

 

[happyrat1]

Good point Fred. I own a Casio WK-6600 that sounds crappy when you compare the internal speakers to outputting thru a 45 Watt Behringer Keyboard Amp. The difference is like night and day.

Gary

 

[Sonny]

Oh i mean if this keyboard ctk6250 if it has a decent sound, because i wanna enjoy the sound in it

 

[happyrat1]

In that price range it is one of the better choices you can make.

Gary

 

[Rayblewit]

Comparing the sound of high price "professional" keyboards with budget or mid range "hobbyist" keyboards makes no sense. The obvious sound difference sticks out like a dogs hind leg.
Anyway, now the risk of sounding contradictory, the trumpet (for example) on my low end mid range work station has a flaw in its sound. I am wondering if this is normal in high end models as well; being that it is a computerised sound and not natural from the mouth blowing. So if you hold down a note over 3 or 4 beats to the bar or even over 2 whole bars or more you get a wave effect. Like WAAH, WAAH, WAAH, WAAH (over 4 beats in 4/4 time) and on higher octave it is more like WA,WA, WA, WA, WA,WA, WA, WA. (over 4 beats in 4/4 time). I have heard this on Casio and as well Yamaha.

 

[Ted Nicoson]

Sonny

Here are several of the better YouTube video demos of the CTK-6250 that show off some of its capabilities:

 

[Rayblewit]

Wow! That last video is such a beautiful sound. I would think that would no doubt answer the two original questions by Sonny.

 

[happyrat1]

Anyway, now the risk of sounding contradictory, the trumpet (for example) on my low end mid range work station has a flaw in its sound. I am wondering if this is normal in high end models as well; being that it is a computerised sound and not natural from the mouth blowing. So if you hold down a note over 3 or 4 beats to the bar or even over 2 whole bars or more you get a wave effect. Like WAAH, WAAH, WAAH, WAAH (over 4 beats in 4/4 time) and on higher octave it is more like WA,WA, WA, WA, WA,WA, WA, WA. (over 4 beats in 4/4 time). I have heard this on Casio and as well Yamaha.

What it all boils down to in a modern ROMpler keyboard is how much did the manufacturer spend on CPU's and ROM and RAM when they built it.

For sustainable sounds like horns and flutes they have to loop the sample in order to make it play like the real thing.

Some of it involves compression tricks and careful choices of the loop points to try an achieve a smooth and homogenous sound. There's other factors as well like multi sampling and resonance and FX processing to try and smooth things out.

But in the final reckoning, it boils to to how large are the samples, how long do they run, and how much compression and CPU power and RAM/ROM did they throw at it?

Most manufacturers bend over backward devoting as much power as they possibly can to the piano sounds simply because those are the benchmark by which most reviews live or die.

Kurzweil became famous a few years back for introducing their Triple Strike pianos into their keyboards. Then Casio and everyone else jumped on the Triple Strike bandwagon and upped it with their AIR synthesis technology. Likewise Roland created their Super Natural synthesis to create some very credible acoustic sounds.

Today Kurzweil introduced the German Piano samples on their Forte and Artis and PC3A models which use a 4 gig sample ROM.

The point is, that none of these technologies comes even close to approaching the capabilities of some of the modern VSTi instruments which can literally use GIGs of ram for every sample.

Final word is, the more you spend on a keyboard and the more RAM and ROM it has, the better it will sound in a performance, but if you compare even the bottom end consumer models with some of the best instruments available 40 years ago, I'd have to say "learn to live with it."

Compared to some of the horrifying instruments used throughout classical history Mozart or Beethoven would have given their left nuts to play on a modern CTK or PSR no questions asked

Gary