Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kawai ES100 and MIDI-USB adapter problems

Hi,

I have recently bought the Kawai ES100, partly from the praise it gets on this forum, and so far I am very satisfied. Yesterday I bought a Roland UM-ONE mk2 MIDI-USB-adapter, in order to connect the piano to my computer. The manual told me to go into the "MIDI Studio" app on my Macbook, and manually drag the UM-ONE and the ES100 icons in order to connect them. Then, it told me to press "Test setup" and push one of the arrow-buttons on the screen (the one going from the computer to the keyboard). Supposedly this would make the interface light flash and a sound signal would come out of the piano.

When I followed the manual and pushed this "test" button, an extremely loud bang came out of the keyboard, loud enough to startle all people in my apartment. I was immediately scared that the speakers in my keyboard had broken due to the sudden sound, and now I am not sure on how to proceed with this. I have not found any information online about someone having a similar problem, and thus I am unsure wherein the problem lies. Could it be that the adapter malfunctioned? Can I be sure that the keyboard speakers didn't take any damage (they still sound OK to me)? This is extremely disappointing since the reason that I chose to buy the more expensive Roland adapter was that I wanted to avoid problems, and now this happens. Is anyone else using the ES100 with a macbook?
Regards

Where did the loud bang come from?

The bang came from the digital piano speakers weirdly enough, and sounded pretty much like all keys pressed down at the same time on highest possible volume. Guessing something malfunctioned when the computer was supposed to send a "test signal" to the keyboard.

I just bougt a similar adaptor for my Roland, but not tried it yet. . .it was real cheap from China. . . Ill try mine thro equally cheap headphones now!

Hope you xort it soon. .

Hmm. Did it sound like a piano to some extent?. Like many piano keys being struck all at once? Sometimes when midi note on messages get built up and delayed for some reason they might trigger all at once at the receiving device. I'd suggest turning the volume down on the es-100 or at least very low when hooking it up to other devices.

You'll know if your speakers got buggered if you go to play now and they fart all over the place. Distorted, rough sounding, unclear reproduction of the piano samples. If that's not happening then you're fine.

Yes, I think that that is an accurate way to describe it, like all the keys pressed down at the same time, even though it was super loud so kinda hard to tell. The weirdest part is that the volume on the keyboard was on like 20%, nowhere near high enough to cause that loud effect. And this is also why I am hesitant to use it more.

Thanks for the info on the speakers, then I am probably fine since I was playing more yesterday and did not really notice a difference.

Chess_man, I'm afraid I do not have any direct experience with that particular MIDI interface (I use a Yamaha UX16 for such purposes), so am not sure what the cause may be.

Does the ES100 still sound okay?
Did you try using the connected ES100 with MIDI software on your Mac to see if the devices were communicating correctly?

I don't believe there should be any incompatibility with the ES100 and Roland MIDI device, however it may be worthwhile contacting the Kawai distributor in your region to seek assistance.

Kind regards,
James
x

Chess_man,

Does someone in the household have a Windows laptop you can try it on? Follow the Windows install procedure and then at least test that the Roland unit is not faulty.

The Roland interface works fine for me on Windows but with more lag than I would like, even with Asio4all. The Mac should be much better.

Phil