🎹Casio CDP-S350 Compact Digital Piano Review & Demo - Value Packed Arranger Keyboard🎹

[Music] hi everybody and welcome to another digital piano review here at the miriam pianos youtube channel my name is stu harrison and in today's video we are going to be looking at casio's cdp s350 it is a portable 88 note weighted piano with auto accompaniment hundreds and hundreds of on-board sounds and it's battery operated very cool uh it's also quite new to the markets the first time we've ever had a chance to take a look so we hope you enjoy if it's the first time that you're joining us here on the channel we would really appreciate if you did subscribe hit that notification bell so that you can come back and watch other videos as we are constantly producing new material so without further ado let's get started with the cdp s350 right away [Music] so let's start with the sound on this brand new cdp s350 this is a fairly new unit from casio and it's the first one i've had a chance to play they just started to creep into various markets around the world just a couple of months ago it's the first chance we've really had a chance to get in front of it and this replaces in a lot of ways uh casio's px160 uh the px160 i don't think it can be really understated the influence and the impact that that instrument had on the entry-level digital piano market it was one of those uh sort of kick in the pants from an unexpected competitor uh sort of in the way that hyundai and kia have done with a few models over the years to you know honda and toyota uh that just reminded uh the whole world that there was still innovation that was left to do that there was still new uh kind of value points that were left to be uh you know seen and tackled and the px 160 came in around the 650 canadian mark 499 us i think was was really where it debuted and there was not a lot of great stuff in the 88 note weighted market prior uh to this instrument it was kind of a a zone that for sure kawhi and roland had pretty much entirely ignored because the expectation by the vast majority of the marketplace was they weren't even looking for or expecting a decent digital weighted 88 no piano down in the price range well here came the px 160 and it just blew it out of the water it had decent speakers on it the piano tone was actually pretty quite convincing especially if you're using headphones the reverb engine on it was quite decent and one of the things that was most remarkable to me was the action the action on that instrument played more like a thousand dollar instrument it had a triple sensor on it uh it had uh you know really great texture it was weighted properly it was the first generation of that type of uh action for for casio so yes there were some growing pains they've made improvements on it but it did really redefine what should have been possible in that price range for buyers and it wasn't that long after that that all of a sudden roland came out with their fp10 yamaha had refreshed their entry into that market really with the p45 um that that you know delivered i think a better bang for the buck and and got into that price range and competed for the casio this in a lot of ways carries that mantle forward for casio um and because the px160 is now discontinued and we are into the cdp s350 this is a complete rethink it's a total redesign of what the px160 was in fact in some ways the control interface that you see on the px770 has more in common with the px160 than this does this is like a totally new style of control interface for casio at least as far as i know it is i haven't seen anything like this with the lcd screen and the way it's laid out um i had to look a couple of things up but for the most part it was fairly intuitive and so let's start with the sound first of all this has been uh they have really i think dispensed with the notion that they're trying to create uh some sort of a home a home unit that looks like a real digital piano with triple pedals in this price range or at least this is certainly what it feels like i think they realize that for the most part people in that price range are looking for something that's useful that's light probably something that's portable and where you want the majority of that spent going towards guts and quality of the the musical quality part quality versus having too much money going to cabinetry triple pedal and things of that nature so in the canadian market uh this instrument is selling for around 750 dollars so i imagine that this is probably something in around five six hundred bucks down in the states for those of us south of the border who are watching this um or around the world hello by the way so from a tone standpoint this instrument produces uh it's a pair of eight watt speakers uh and i've cranked it all the way up to the very very maximum on its most uh boisterous piano patch and even up in the treble there's only a very very slight level of distortion and i would say through the most part of the instrument even on max volume this thing doesn't really break up and you get the sweetest roundest tone anywhere from about one quarter to about three quarters volume which is pretty good again given the price point and given the size of the speakers uh this instrument is equipped with battery power so you can take this on the road even without any sort of ac power source uh and so to get the kind of punch that you're able to get out of those two speakers um with with batteries on a instrument that you can throw under your arm pretty easily it's pretty cool it just means that this is actually a great portable musical partner perfect for taking on road trips uh taking into the park for an afternoon of writing or anything like that of the sort i i was really quite impressed with what this is able to deliver for the price certainly it's on par with the quality of the tone that you are going to get out of say the yamaha the roland in a similar kind of price range and the one thing that is goes beyond that is that the quality of the piano sample i would say is probably richer and a little more complex than what i'm used to out of this price range as well and here is a quick sample of it [Music] hmm [Music] whole lot of just b flat why not sometimes it works so that's the grand piano sound that you just heard [Music] casio doesn't specifically say i think this is the same action that you find on the px s1000 i think of course casio if you're out there you can always update me in the comments if that is incorrect they keep it a little bit vague they say it's an all-new action design but it feels suspiciously like the same one that's on the pxs 1000 they can they can update me on that which means [Music] it feels pretty good and getting back to the tone because that is the first part that i really always like to deal with and talk about one of the biggest specs that jumps out at you as you are reading through the information on this is the fact that it has hundreds and hundreds of on-board sounds and that's not just general midi 2 sounds these are pretty high quality sounds that they've got loaded in here and you're able to access them in a nice and organized way so there are several modes that you can use this instrument in you can basically there's a tone button that allows you to pick the various sounds that you're going to be playing it with there's a rhythm there's a song bank and for every one of those there's a category button that allows you to better navigate through the whole sea of things so if i pick tone that's what i'm on right now and then i hit category you're going to see the piano category grand piano bright piano it you know yada yada yada and then the next category is e-piano next piano is organ accordion guitar that's a pretty good sample [Music] with some velocity triggers in there [Music] and some bass some strings those are a little bit woofy for my liking it's a bit nicer my favorite so far that's bright strings and just like most other digital pianos you can layer it this has both two upper layers that you can do but you can also do a split end layer at the same time so your left hand has one tone and your right hand actually has two tones layered so kind of it's like a triple layer but sort of not sort of yes uh what other categories do we have on here brass [Music] not bad some very enthusiastic uh vibrato on there [Music] some good old synth brass [Music] so quite a few brass in there uh reed [Music] yeah i mean [Music] honestly especially with some of those reeds and some of those guitars uh these aren't just passable i would say these are some of the best keyboard loaded into a keyboard sample quality that i've heard in anything outside of a full workstation this is really quite impressive [Music] uh and of course helping with all of those is the ability to register some uh you know presets for easy recall because i know some professional players who would probably lug this along as possibly an 88 note controller and some easy you know main piano sounds to keep cost down and just get a you know an inexpensive portable rig uh for gigging whenever gigging comes back because whenever we're filming this still in the middle of the whole covet thing so perhaps uh at some point we'll be back to playing music live um so we've got a huge amount of sounds and as you're hearing just a sample because there's no way we can go through you know 400 sounds on here the quality of those sounds is quite impressive right from the acoustic sound all the way up one of the limiting factors here is that the polyphony is down to 64. and i have a feeling that's because each of the patches is using up a good amount of processing you know juice processing bandwidth and so having too much of that happening simultaneously is going to be a little bit tricky for whatever you know the the overall processing bandwidth is inside this machine so i could see 64 being used up pretty quickly as soon as you start using some recording that's definitely one of the weak spots of the instrument if i had to identify one but certainly this to so far the two strong points here is that the speakers actually put out a pretty big kick for something that's portable battery operated and that the quantity and quality of the tones on here is quite impressive i think the other functions that we're going to talk about that sort of have to do with tone but overall functionality on on this another really fun part of this keyboard is the auto accompaniment and there's a few different parts the auto auto accompaniment system there's the rhythm only part you can access that by just hitting the rhythm button and that is going to allow you to basically access all of the different categories of rhythm and so you've got [Music] 16 beat for rock dance jazz all this kind of stuff uh let's go jazz and then there are all sorts of i'll play it so you can hear it [Music] you've got the jazz uh you can tempo you can tap the tempo in so which is a really handy feature and then the second part of this would be the auto accompaniment the harmonic parts so in other words like a harmonic backing instrument plus a bass and you can access that by pressing the accompaniment key and that is going to let you pretty much as soon as we hit a chord it's just going to do its thing [Music] [Applause] and your left hand below a certain split point is going to control the harmonic motion [Music] and then there are other buttons that allow you to segue between uh variations in that so if we go we're going to do variation [Music] do [Music] uh so that is the oh so that's the rhythm and accompaniment portion of the instrument there's also the ability to play it and duet mode which is really easy to access so you can have that be kind of two people playing duet at the same time obviously you can get it back to an acoustic piano sound pretty easily [Music] and then back again [Applause] there's also a recorder function on here as well which lets you do i think five or six tracks and so uh this gives you a little bit of everything it for somebody who is using this uh to accompany a singer to a company themselves in a portable low-cost instrument that sounds good enough to be used in some professional settings this is a really quite a nice combination of features where this is going to become a bit of a debate for people is is this an instrument that you would want to have somebody start learning piano on because there's lots of functions here that make sense for people who are already players who already know what they're looking for may have a need for a portable instrument may have a need for some sort of a low-cost gig alternative uh or a rehearsal instrument or anything like that i see all of that as an instrument for somebody just starting out this would be a fairly complicated instrument to learn how to use and in that regard i think casio's px s 1000 is probably a better fit or 3000 is even you know in my opinion a better value than the 1000 or something like a role in fp10 very easy to use where the focus is really on the action where say a classical teacher would want it for an early student so i i'm not sure that this is an instrument for absolutely all players in all contexts in every single setting you could imagine in this price range but it definitely does deliver a really huge punch and it's a cool combination of features but like i said i think this almost feels as though it's geared more towards people who already have some type of piano experience than it is geared towards complete beginners having said that for beginner if you were a young beginner and you had an adult to show you how to navigate this i could still see it working it's not like this is as you know inappropriate for somebody just starting out it just the control interface definitely is yeah it's it's focused towards somebody who is is probably an older learner or somebody who already has experience with piano um this works as well with the cordana app and there's two ways that the cordana app works it's kind of an interesting setup one way that it uses an audio cable to deliver data back and forth and then the other way is more usb where the usb is kind of just delivering midi information so i've been experimenting with the cordana app with the midi cable connection it's not it doesn't sound like it's nearly as useful as when you use it with an audio cable the trouble is i have an iphone there is no audio cable jack with the iphone i know you can use it with that adapter but if you want to be using have it plugged into usb at the same time you're a little bit out of luck so or i guess there is an adapter that would split it off and still give you the data so maybe i spoke too soon there is probably a way to accomplish that if you if you really wanted to anyway uh that was really a fairly large discussion on all of the different functions that it has that involve tone we're going to take a quick break put up those specs and be back and quickly discuss the action and some of the other non-musical features of the instrument thank you so much for joining us for the cdp s350 casio review we'll be back in just a second [Music] all right so let's talk about the action now i mentioned right at the beginning of the video my impression is that this is the same action that they're using in some of the other px they describe it as a brand new action for the s350 it seems pretty similar but all casio actions in their px line and their cdp line or at least this particular one have a few things in common and they're worth pointing out one of them is the exaggerated textures that they use on the keys because this is uh a little uncommon it's not necessarily a good or a bad thing it's just a bit takes a little bit of getting used to and it's something that if you have an opportunity to play it in a store and you already have some experience on a piano it would be worth doing just to make sure that it doesn't turn you off if you don't have any experience on piano there's a very good chance that you're not going to notice and or care one of the things that i do notice particularly about the black keys on some of these new casios is until you've had a chance to play them in for an hour or two the black key does come come off as a lot slipperier than you'd probably like it to be as soon as you start to get a little bit of hand oil on those black keys they settle right into the appropriate level of grip shall we say and it it stops being an issue but if you play this and it's right out of the box and you're thinking wow that black key is a little bit slippery trust me it gets a lot better very very quickly as soon as you get some of your hands all over it but it could be a little bit disconcerting right off the hop white keys feel great and in terms of the weighting of the keys i'd say that they feel a little bit lighter generally than what you would see out of a comparable roland for example i know the pha 4 action is going to feel a little heavier than this and actually it doesn't feel that dissimilar to the yamaha ghs action with the exception of the texture the ghs action is shiny white plastic and i think there's a very very slight uh texture on the black key on the ghs uh like as in what's on the p45 or the or the p125 so in that regard i guess it fixes the one thing about the ghs that sometimes bothers me which is the keys are so grippy uh that playing uh in certain styles becomes a little bit problematic this kind of gives you the right level of slip and grip on those keys nothing fancy like a triple sensor on these instruments i don't think they were hoping that this would be used for high level recording or anything like that or high level classical so usually if those two things aren't factors the triple sensor is not as big a deal and certainly they don't advertise it as a triple sensor other things this instrument comes with one of those small little plastic pedals you can upgrade that i would say if you're going to be playing in one place in a stationary way for a long time you're probably going to want to upgrade the pedal from from the little plastic switch this doesn't have any audio outputs other than the headphone jack but it's got the headphone jack you can use it it's one of the 3.5 mil jacks if you need to put this out to an amplifier you're going to have to get yourself an adapter just as we are doing uh here for the review and unlike the px160 this is not available with sort of an integrated stand with the triple pedal system this really is built to be a slab unit just as you are seeing it here so i hope you have enjoyed learning a little bit more about this cdp s350 it's a really unique combination of features for this price point it's very unusual to get something with a decent weighted 88 note action with a really comprehensive set of onboard sounds that are at that quality that has uh the auto accompaniment and rhythms uh in there it's got a pretty extensive uh you know repertoire of songs that can work as a part of a lesson system and we didn't really cover that much uh in there but it's it's certainly in there uh and then the app that you're able to use along with that that could the cordana app so all of those things together make this an interesting choice i think there's less of an emphasis on having the action be super super authentic it's a little lighter than what i would prefer but it still feels pretty good to play especially for the majority of casual playing pop playing you're not going to have any issue with that whatsoever and i do like the fact that even though on paper the speakers aren't super super powerful you get a lot of bang for your buck for those speakers especially given they can be battery powered and you can untangle yourself from all cables and just take this to park and write [Music] hope you've enjoyed the review but please let me know what you thought add comments add anything else about the instrument that you think that would be helpful to the rest of the community and if you have not done so yet we would really appreciate if you also subscribed we'd love to have you join a part of our ever-growing community of music lovers from all around the world we've got subscribers from the united states from canada from britain from australia india we know we've got some from uh korea i've seen in the subscriber list pop-up like just all over the world it's so fun to connect with people everywhere who have a mutual love which is making music and usually on a piano so we will see you back for more videos in the future my name is stu harrison this is miriam pianos on youtube take care and have a great day

Channel: Merriam Music

Views: 24,840

Rating: 4.8949342 out of 5

Keywords: Merriam Music, MerriamMusic, MerriamPianos, Casio cdp-s350, casio cdp-s350 review, casio cdp, cdp, casio, piano, digital piano, casio cdps350 digital piano, hammer action, polyphony, digital, keyboard, acoustic piano, reverb, headphones, sustain pedal, android, ios, casio pianos, hammer action keyboard, piano arranger, demo, review, piano keyboard, 88 key, compact, affordable digital piano, cheap digital piano, cdp-s, key arranger piano

Id: sjz_-2Jy3MA

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020