Seriously? lol

44 views and no one? 🙁

G,

Don't want you to feel that nobody cares, so here is my comment. I don't know anything about a new version or even if there is one under development. But if I may include in this thread a wish list, then I have some comments. First, I think the CP4 is great and needs no improvements either in the piano voices or physical design. But, having said that, I would like to see these 2 additional features: (1) and A/D input with separate physical volume control so that a vocalist or acoustic instrument could play through with effects and EQ added to the input; and (2) onboard MIDI recording, even if it does not have MIDI editing. At least you could record MIDI on the fly, save it and transfer the file later into an iPad or computer for editing. The audio recorder is great and I use it to immediately capture fleeting improvised inspiration before I lose the feel when I try to reproduce what I just came up with. I would like to have the ability to also edit this fleeting inspiration without having to try and figure out note by note what I just did/recorded. Been there and it's a pain to manually convert an audio file into notes on a staff and figure out the chords and voicings.

In other words, at times during extended improvising, I played something that I and my wife and dogs (by their howling approval) thought was great. By the time I turned on the tape recorder to capture it, the notes were somewhat the same but the feel was lost. With the CP4 audio recorder, this doesn't happen because I can immediately record the inspiration and feel before it is gone. Now I would also like to have the notes recorded in MIDI as well so that I can further tweak the moment that was recorded.

Getting back to the basic thread, I am glad you opened this discussion and hope someone at Yamaha is listening.

Well, that is just it... they sorely need a redesign.

They are very "boring" - aesthetically.

Look what Yamaha did to it's newest synthesizer - the Montage - it is beautiful.

And, I know that some don't really care about the aesthetics - but I would guess that even more do (even if it is subliminal).

And Yamaha's top competition, Roland, just announced their new stage piano, the RD-2000 - and it is beautiful.

The fact that, in reviews, by both "professionals" and average users - one of the comments on both the new Roland and the new Yamaha Montage is how good they look.

Let's face it - Yamaha has the best "sound" - why not give the people who want both a great sounding and great looking stage piano what they want?

Just my .02

I think it looks great as it is, for what it is: a stage piano. The Montage looks great for what it is.

A bigger panel rather than the small LCD display would be great, but I don't know that I'd want to pay more for it.

The only feature I'd really like to see added is the ability to mute internal voices for any zone, in the master keyboard section. This would allow setting up 3- and 4-zone layouts where one or more zones are provided by external modules. Currently there's no way to do that other than by putting the CP4 in local-off mode and doing all the zone control externally -- something that many MIDI instrument modules can't do.

That relegates the CP4 to what it is marketed as: a stage piano, but sadly, not very useful as a master controller. When I bought the CP4, I chose the piano with the best action, and got a piano with one of the best sounds to boot. But I'd planned to add missing features in the future by adding something like an iPad. Well, I will still probably be able to do that, but not until years later, and in a much more complicated way, with all the layout being programmed on the iPad (or whatever.)

A simple built-in MIDI recorder would indeed be great. One really nifty feature of my trusty old Ensoniq MR76 was that it was always recording MIDI, and after you finished playing, if you wanted to save what you just played (as MIDI), it was just a few button pushes!

I absolutely concur with Jeff. From my post above: "I would like to see these 2 additional features: (1) and A/D input with separate physical volume control so that a vocalist or acoustic instrument could play through with effects and EQ added to the input; and (2) onboard MIDI recording, even if it does not have MIDI editing."

Presently to record MIDI, I have to set up my iPad, open Cubasis, create a new song, insert a blank MIDI track, confirm Cubasis MIDI is set to receive MIDI via my wireless MIDI devise, take my hands off the CP4 to start Cubasis recording, play the CP4, then go to the iPad to stop recording. Not only a lot of steps and a hassle, but most of the time my iPad is not set up so I can't record MIDI. The audio recorder is great and plays back almost better than the original recording, but MIDI recording is essential for correcting notes, etc., even if I have to after the fact load the MIDI file into Cubasis when I have the time. At least I have my inspired on the fly improvisation saved for future editing with the actual notes I played.

Now in a perfect world, MIDI recording could be added by a firmware update. 😉

Well, we have 3 days until we see what Yamaha has to offer!