#but once I got all my keyboard shortcuts sorted this is much much nicer

[airborneice]

btw if anyone is thinking abt changing art programs i'm here to declare my new undying allegiance to clip studio paint. i was taught on photoshop at uni so it's what ive been using for the past ~5 years, but they've now pivoted to AI and have been shoving ads about it in my face for months while i try to use their shit to make something original sooo i very anxiously switched to CSP!! and i have not regretted it!!!

from what i've seen so far CSP does all the things i used photoshop for and has a few more really helpful functions besides, like i can finally move around parts of my sketches without cutting them to a new layer and re-merging it each time and it makes things sm faster!!! i can mask and re-colour lineart more easily and not get horrible stray pixels left over. it's great!!

also it turns out that unlike psds, clip files show you what's inside, so i don't have to open up all my extremely heavy canvases to find out wtf i was working on which makes it sm easier to remember what i was doing and finish it lmao.

i've converted all my canvases now and look at all this stuff i straight up forgot i was working on bc it was just a blank square with PSD written on it before. its neat!!!!! i love it!!!! in this house we stan CSP thank u for ur time

[merriammusicinc]

Casio Privia PX-160 Demo & Review - AiR Sound Source & Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer Action II

Introduction

Welcome to a video review and article on Casio's Privia PX-160 digital piano, presented by Stu Harrison for Merriam Pianos. We'll be discussing this high-value, entry-level piano that's receiving use as a stage piano for professional musicians, as well as home-based starter instruments all around the world. It uses Casio's Award-winning Tone Generator the multi-dimensional AiR proprietary sound source, which delivers realistic dynamic levels, improves upon Casio's previous generation of tone generator, and triggered by the remarkable tri-sensor hammer-action keyboard. It squeezes out a 128-note polyphony for a sound quality that delivers a surprisingly powerful performance.

Casio Privia PX160 Review Video Transcription

Hi, everyone and welcome to another piano review. My name is Stu Harrison. We're here at Merriam Pianos just outside of Toronto, Canada in our beautiful Oakville showroom today. And we are looking at Casio's PX-160BK, a product that has been out on the market already for a couple of years, but quite frankly is still holding its own in a very, very competitive market and a competitive price range, that of the under $1,000 88-key digital piano keyboard category.

So we wanted to give you a freshened up 2019 perspective particularly on how it compares now to the new boys on the market, namely the Roland FP10, and the Yamaha P45 digital pianos. And just gives you another chance to hear what still is a great sounding, great value instrument for its price range. I know in Canada and the United States, this instrument floats around the $600 range.

Now, there are lots of things to like about what this still delivers in 2019 for its price. One of them has absolutely nothing to do with the functions or the keys or the instrument, which is the available keyboard stand (CS-67 stand) with the optional SP-33 pedal system. You can still get it just as a slab with a sustain pedal / damper pedal but for such a small increase in price, the keyboard stand + 3-pedal unit is almost a no-brainer. This is essentially a nice starter home digital, great for your son or daughter who might be considering their very first foray into piano lessons. They're not too sure how serious they are and so you want to make sure that you keep your budget, you know, in line with reality until they really start to take off and become little Mozarts. Or maybe this is just for yourself to have at a cottage. You've already got a great instrument at home and you're looking for something to have as a secondary instrument.

We're going to be looking at the action. We're going to be listening to the instrument. We're going to be talking about the sounds that it has, and of course reviewing all of the features, both the basic and the more advanced features on this instrument, giving you a better look at home so that you could maybe do a bit of pre-shopping before heading out to showrooms. And as I said, right in the preamble, give you a little bit of perspective on how this compares in 2019 to the other items on the market. So once again, thank you for joining us. We're going to get started right away.

Piano Action

When the Casio PX-160 digital piano came out, and this I think is going back two or three years at this point, there were several things about the key action that brought some innovation to the marketplace, you know, particularly for the price range. One of them was that they came with textured keys (both ebony and ivory) and the keys actually had a pretty decent hammer weight to it. When you feel the black keys on here, when you feel the white keys, the texture is very obvious. When nobody else was doing it, it was kind of a nice differentiator. Now that you've got players like Roland and Kawai that are starting to introduce texture on their keys at these lower price points as well, you know, the differentiation is no longer whether it has it or not, it's what feels right to your fingertips. So you're just gonna have to figure out for yourself what level of texture. Of all of them, the Casio has the most extreme texture on it, so there's absolutely no doubt when you touch it, it is like, "Okay, yeah, it feels like there's a woodgrain there. It feels like there's, you know, some sort of, well, a texture on both the black and the white keys."

The second thing is there's a little more lateral motion in the key on the Casio PX 160 than what you might be used to getting in some of the more expensive ones. But I have to keep reminding people at home who are looking at this as an option in the $500, $600 range or maybe considering this as an alternative to going with a used one that was at one point more expensive, for the price range, the only other digital piano that really for my money competes with this would be the Roland FP10.

And I can't tell you over the camera what's going to be more satisfying for you. You really have to get into a showroom wherever you happen to be around the world and try these two instruments side by side. In fact, we've done a comparison video for you between the Roland FP10 and the PX160. You can find the link either in the playlist or in the description below, and that might be something you want to check out.

The sensor technology on here is decent and respectable, there's a tri-sensor that puts its accuracy into the same range as the Roland FP10 / FP30, meaning that the key is measured at three points in it's keystroke to ensure a proper 'capture' of the motion before it gets translated into sound. You are able to get a pretty nice dynamic range and a range of expression out of this instrument. Now, I think probably to protect the amplifiers and the speakers on here, you can almost hear a bit of a limiting or a compressing effect going on when you really, really punch it. You can feel that the sound sort of hits a bit of the ceiling, and so it plays tricks on your mind. You almost feel like the key itself is kind of hitting the bottom of the keyboard really hard. I don't actually think that that's what's happening. I think that's actually more of a digital limiting effect that's happening.

Tone Engine and Piano Sound

Moving on to the sound and the features in the instrument. And I make mention of this in my Roland FP10 video, the fact that they've got all of your shortcut commands nicely and cleanly printed on the front, I really appreciate that because who likes looking through manuals to try and remember a function that you might only use every couple of weeks. There's no way you're going to memorize that unless you've got a photographic memory. So having it right there makes it easy, it makes it intuitive, and it limits the amount of frustration that you might have navigating some of the more complicated features of the instrument.

And then you've got your acoustic piano sounds (concert grand is the default), your electric piano sounds, and some of your other supporting sounds like your strings, harpsichord, string ensemble, and your pipe organ. You can tell, or at least it's my impression, that Casio has spent the majority of time focusing on the acoustic grand piano sound and piano tones generally, which pairs with a nice reverb engine, and a polyphony of 128. You can hear some of the other ones don't have quite the same gusto or quite the same focus or level of sophistication in the sound, but they're still very much functional.

So you've got a function button right there, and then pretty much everything is laid out right in front of you. You've got sort of a number pad to drill in your tempo and metronome settings, transpose settings, sensitivity level adjustments, and some more advanced settings such as damper resonance and hammer response, as well as your music library select. That's to playback some of the more popular classical music that it's already got packed inside, either to play along with it or just listen to, just kind of a nice feature. All of this provided by the stellar 8w x 8w speaker system giving you with remarkably rich tone and projection.

There's a duet mode which permits the instrument to be split into two equal-pitched sections, as well as a track recorder function which allows for some basic recording and playback.

Features, Ports, USB Connectivity

Now, in terms of other features, some of the most basic but most convenient would be the included music stand, the AC Adaptor, the ivory keys as we mentioned before, an octave shift function (really handy in duet mode particularly), and dual headphone output (stereo mini jacks on both, fyi). Also, you've got a USB port on the out so that you can send MIDI through USB to either a laptop, Mac, even an iPad, if you've got a hard connection there. One of the nicer things that I really, really appreciate that Casio has done here is they've actually got discreet audio outputs. So if you want to send quarter-inch left and right line outputs to an amplifier or to a stereo, you can do that without having the stereo mini headphone jack defeat all of your local sound production, which is really honestly annoying. I'm not sure why all manufacturers still have that happen without some sort of an option to manage that function. However, you don't have to worry about it on there. You can still have the local speakers working and send this to an amplifier or a speaker, especially if you're using this to gig with, which quite frankly if you're looking for an inexpensive light instrument to do that, this isn't totally off the map.

So to summarize, with the PX160 you've got an instrument that is still a worthy consideration in the price range. Just because the Roland FP10 digital piano is out now, it does not wipe this off the map. The PX160 still has its place in the industry. And quite frankly, if you go back to when this came out, this really spurred a lot of innovation from both Roland and Yamaha to produce an instrument that would properly compete with the Casio PX-160 in this price range. And so I think it's done everybody a great service, the fact that the 160 was there in the first place and that it's still going strong as a great instrument.

So my advice is if you're thinking about $400 or $500, either for a used instrument or you were sort of in a Best Buy or a Costco and you've got something that you were somewhat compelled by in that price range, hold off on buying until you at least have a chance to get into your local dealer and try one or both of either the Casio PX160 or the Roland FP10. Those are definitely my two favorites for under the $1000 range.

The post Casio Privia PX-160 Demo & Review - AiR Sound Source & Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer Action II first appeared on Merriam Pianos

2359 Bristol Cir #200, Oakville, ON L6H 6P8

merriammusic.com

(905) 829-2020

[hydrus]

Version 395

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a good work week. I fixed a variety of bugs, improved the feel of the suggested tags columns, and made zooming in the media viewer nicer.

suggested tags quality of life

I recently did some work on the different 'suggested tags' panels the manage tags dialog can support. This week I worked on some of the feedback from that pass, hopefully making it a bit easier to get what you want done. As a reminder, you can set these columns up under options->tag suggestions.

The columns are now 'synced' with the current media. They all refresh/repopulate reliably when you move to another media in the media viewer. Also, all columns now hide tags that all the selected media already have, and they update this ~as you edit~, so if both 'favourites' and 'related' suggest 'character:samus aran', and you add that through any means, both lists will remove that tag! Furthermore, if you remove a tag that one of those lists would show, they now re-show that tag instantly, without having to do any new lookup.

Furthermore, the tag lists now try to retain the selection location when you add a tag through the keyboard enter key, so even though a tag you hit enter on will disappear, the focus should stay on the tag above or below. I hope this makes it easier to work with these columns with just the keyboard. As a second remind to keyboard users, you can currently set up some slightly mickey-mouse shortcuts to move focus around here under the 'main_gui' shortcuts, the actions starting 'show_and_focus_manage_tags_...'.

zoom center

When you zoom a file in or out, there is a 'centerpoint' about which the zoom happens. This position 'stays still', while everything else grows or shrinks around it. Until now, this has been hardcoded on the media center, which was sometimes unhelpful when the media had been panned. This centerpoint is now customisable under options->media. It now defaults to the media window centerpoint, which means the image will always grow and shrink around the center of what you are looking at. This makes it much nicer to pan and zoom in the duplicate filter. You can change it back to the media centerpoint, the media top-left corner, or even the current mouse cursor position, for RTS-vidya-like zooming.

fixes

'character:aran' matches 'character:samus aran' again in the Windows build (or anything else running python 3.7). It was a regex library version issue.

The hover windows in the media viewer are now aware of the new shortcuts system in Qt and should pass uncaught regular keyboard shortcuts up to the media viewer. So, if you click the top-right hover to set a rating or the center-right duplicates hover to do a skip, you should now be able to hit custom keyboard shortcuts to add tags or set ratings and so on without having to click back on the media viewer. Where this will not happen are simple things like the taglist on the left eating up/down arrow keys to do list navigation and a handful of Qt-hardcoded shortcuts like tab and space, which can intercept and do panel navigation and currently-focused-button pressing.

If your mouse has back and forward buttons, these should now be caught by the shortcuts system, for those shortcut sets that can currently do mouse events. I assume there is no such thing as a double back-click, but let's see what happens!

The client now tries to avoid large analyze and vacuum database maintenance jobs in the normal maintenance cycle. Too many users in unusual situations have been hit by unreasonably big jobs here, and the benefit is not worth it.

Dialog messages that intercept ok and cancel events, the 'hey, are you sure you want to cancel, there is some uncommitted stuff, yes/no' sort of thing, now have improved logic. They fire off in better order and shouldn't ever bother you twice in one action.

deleted tags overwrite

This is an important bug fix, but it is technical and not a priority for non-advanced users for now.

Some users recently reported some unusual deleted mappings counts on the PTR, not matching that of other users. I also had a job to check that deleted tags were being filtered correctly out of local tag domains, so I went into it this week. To my mild horror, I realised that deleted tags were not being filtered out of tag parsing at all, so any time files were being re-parsed, any previously deleted tags were being overwritten. In the case of tag repositories, deleted tags were still being discarded at the server level (and hence not overwritten for other users), but the overwrite was happening to the local client that did the 'late' reparsing.

I regret this oversight, and I am sorry for the transactions of inconvenience and difficulty this has likely caused, even without us ever realising directly what was going on. The issue is unusual, with numerous technical caveats that make it apply to different users in different ways, but I believe it has not hit most users too much. It is also retroactively fixable for tag repositories.

The parsing is now fixed. Tag import options will now filter out the currently deleted tags from their importee file's parsed tags. If you wish, you can force an overwrite using the tag import options cog menus. Hard drive imports and tag migrations continue to overwrite deleted tags, as these are still considered 'human, manual' actions that can take responsibility for overwriting a deleted tag.

For tag repositories, particularly the PTR, a 'reprocess content' run will fix the historical record, re-deleting things that should be deleted. Advanced users can do this now from the review services panel if they wish. This is an expensive job, so I have not queued it up automatically in today's update. I think I will write a separate targeted maintenance routine for it in the coming weeks.

full list

some more suggested tags fixes/qol:

favourite tags now correctly refreshes on new media

the tag suggestion lists in manage tags now discard current and pending tags that _all_ the current media already have, and all tag suggestion lists update this filter any time the media gets a tag content update! they _should_ update live now

all tag and predicate taglists now try to move the selection to a 'nice' neigbour when a keyboard enter activation results in the current selection being removed (e.g. as in these tag suggestion lists). the nice selection should be the tag after, before, or at the top of the list, and should make it nicer to keep navigating the list and add tags with your keyboard

all tag and predicate taglists now try to preserve selection on simple clear-and-set data refreshes

.

deleted tags overwrite update:

due to an unfortunate oversight, until now tag parsing has not filtered out previously deleted tags from the tags it parses and sends to the local database

as the majority of downloaded files are parsed once per site per user and in a similar time window before manual editing ever occurs, and most non-tag-sibling-eligible bad tags are site specific or not parsed to begin with, and as these undesired tags were not broadcast up to the tag repository, this problem has not been very obvious and I believe has not affected most users too much. this is however a reason why some users who have more recently downloaded many older files are seeing smaller 'deleted mappings' counts on their ptr review panel (and some low quality tags in their db), as they have been re-adding previously deleted tags to their local store

this has been fixed. tag import options now load the pending importee file's metadata before tags are filtered and discard currently deleted tags from those to be added or pended. this applies to parsed tags, additional tags, and those tags added through special other means, such as from a parent gallery page.

if you do wish to allow parsed or additional tags to overwrite currently deleted tags for a particular job, the cog icons on the edit tag import options panel now allow you to permit overwrite for either

tags added via hard drive imports or the migrate tags tool still overwrite deleted tags as before

as this is a local-only problem, there is thankfully a retroactive fix for this issue for tag repository domains, involving a content reprocess run to re-apply deleted tags. I am not activating this automatically this week as this is a heavy job for the ptr and I need to study the true fallout of the problem more, but I may in future, likely as a smaller and more targeted maintenance job. advanced users can do it now under the ptr's review services panel

I regret missing this, and I am sorry for any inconvenience. I only discovered it through the serendipity of some users recently reporting unusual deleted counts and a personal item in my todo to check the reliability of deleted mapping filtering for local tag domains--turns out it never got added, and we never specifically noticed, fugg

there are now unit tests for the improved tag filtering pipeline and both of these new overwrite options

.

the rest:

hydrus can now use several different zoom 'centerpoints' about which to expand and shrink a zooming file. this was previously hardcoded to the center of the media. under options->media, you can now set it to be the media window center (the new default, which feels much nicer after a pan), the mouse cursor, the old media center, or the media top-left corner

cleaned up the related zoom positioning code, and removed the jarring old re-centering off-screen rescue hack when zooming out to canvas zoom

added a warning about big zooms to the media options page

fixed tag autocomplete filtering in python 3.7 so 'character:aran' matches 'character:samus aran' again

when the hover windows on a media viewer have focus, they _should_ now pass up all options->shortcuts shortcuts to the media viewer

mouse back/forward buttons _should_ now be supported in the shortcuts system, as much as your OS allows them to work like regular clicks

fixed a rare crash with the 'clear trash' button

the client will now not re-analyze tables that have been previously scanned with at least 100k rows in the normal 'soft' maintenance cycle, as this is an expensive operation with limited benefit

the client will now not vacuum database files greater than 1GB in the normal 'soft' maintenance cycle, as this is an expensive operation with limited benefit

the new 'cannot vacuum because xxxx' log entry is now only ever printed once per boot. however due to the above change, it likely won't appear in the normal maintenance cycle anyway now

cleaned up some vacuum code

reworked the panel system to better test data validity vs 'woah, you sure you want to do this?' tests and generally cleaned and simplified the canok/cancancel/isvalid testing logic for all panels. panels like manage siblings will now not produce two message boxes if you try to ok them on an uncommited pair and then back out of the ok

refactored the top level window code and improved scrollable panel code typing

more standalone gui function code refactoring

fixed a click-selection-test bug when clicking on certain whitespace in certain predicate lists

the text of the cloudflare-specific error when encountering a captcha page is improved

cleaned up some tag list menu copy and select code, both the menu labels and the copy action, for unusual tags. the 'copyable tags' fetching code is now flexible and unified for menu and action

cleaned up the taglist sibling copy code, eliminating the chance of dupes

fixed a _little_ of the wording on the discard/exclude tag list menu labels for negated predicates, it still feels a bit awkward and I will keep working here

cleaned up some old media metadata fetching code

misc import code typing

misc list/iterable typing improvements

added some misc media-tag tool code

unified the tag import options tag filtering pipeline somewhat to deal with the deleted overwrite situation

improved a debug ui test to no longer need window focus

misc help cleanup

next week

Next week is a 'medium-sized' jobs week. I would like to finally get to an expansion of the prototype 'file notes' system. I would ideally like multiple named notes, note parsing support (so you can pull an artist comment from a web page), note preview on the media viewer background, and note import/export. This is a ton of work, so I don't expect to get it all done in one week.