CME VX7 Intelligent keyboard

My VX Experience

My First impressions on opening the box were really good; the build quality of the VX7 is superb, the knobs and sliders are sturdy and the velocity sensitive pads (whilst not quite as comfy as the MPC pads) are firm and quite a joy to tap on.
There were a few buttons on the number pad which appeared to have shifted slightly out of place but this was nothing too major. The actual Keys on the VX7 also felt quite good to the touch, suggesting a promising match between hardware and software;

At the back of the Keyboard I was pleased to see a myriad of connections including 1 MIDI In Port, 4 MIDI out ports, two pedal control inputs, 2 Audio Inputs (with a gain conrol knob) 2 Headphone out ports (also with gain control knob), 2 Line Audio Outputs, a USB Host Port, and two USB hub ports; It is worth noting that the USB hub ports are USB1.1 not USB2.0.

Well as we know, it's not just the features that make the product (though this helps) it's more about how the software integrates the features and how accessible they are to the musician, better still it's about their stability in practical use. So after admiring the beautiful aesthetics and realsing that this keyboard cannot be fully powered via USB alone, I reached for the power cord (which is a wall wart type) and powered her up;

On power up there is an impressive display of all the motorised faders jumping up and down, and the small but adequate LCD screen is lit up and displays the master preset mode. So it was time to dive into the menus and begin my VX playing experience;

Unfortunately here is where my experience went slightly downhill; My unit was faulty; it had various malfunctions including non-working musical keys, non-functional pads and the buttons responsible for scrolling between menu screens () were also not working. In addition to this whenever I did try and play something I realised that the keyboard would sometimes trigger my samples at random velocities, clearly not matching my playing. Thankfully, I was able to return the unit and get a replacement, but I mention this because a quick look at CME's forum shows that there are other reports of users who have had faulty units in one form or another. You might want to make sure your unit is ok before taking it out or at least that you buy from somewhere with good aftersales support. My replacement unit was a lot better;



I plugged my VX7 into my desktop (running windows XP) using the supplied USB cable and windows did the whole plug and play installation, and then I opened up an instance of Akoustik Piano and tried to find the CME in the MIDI port list; CME uses windows inbuilt USB MIDI and USB Audio drivers, so the CME simply appears as "USB AUDIO DEVICE" in the MIDI list; I know this can be confusing but this is what is to be selected; I figured since it also has onboard Audio I might as well try this at the same time too, but .... NO! The Audio inputs and outputs of the CME were nowhere to be found under the list of routable Audio Devices; After trying to install and re-install, I took the USB cable over to my laptop (running windows MEDIA Center) to try it there, Windows recognised and installed the drivers, but this seemed worse, on my laptop I could see neither the Audio or the MIDI ports; So I paid a trip to the CME Forum and found that I was not alone in this problem; It seems windows itself has a few registry problems with the default USB AUDIIO and USB MIDI; There were two main solutions given; Firstly their is a freeware ASIO driver available called ASIO4All, CME recommends that if you cannot see the Audio functionality in the list to try using this driver; I installed this on my laptop and using this I was able to route AUDIO through the CME but only after deleting some registry entries. (There is a link on RME not CME but RME's website about problems with inbuilt USB MIDI)
However, to date I have not been able to get my laptop to recognise the MIDI features on the keyboard, but MIDI works fine on my Desktop PC, suggesting windows is partly to blame here. After getting very frustrated I resorted to using my KORE soundcard and linking this to MIDI Out Port 1 on the VX7. This is unresolved for now, but I plan to install Windows XP on my laptop to try and see if that makes any difference.



So in Akoustik I dialled up my favourite preset on the Bechstein and began to play away but I was not best pleased with the mapping so I immediately went looking for the velocity curve edits; After scrolling through all the presets I found myself wishing that I could edit the velocity curves myself; They were either a little too heavy or a little too light, I thought I was going to have to use two different settings for soft play and hardplay, the "Hard 1" setting seemed to be the best trade off. But just as I set my mind to accept the default, it seemed CME had read my mind, they released a firmware update that as well as fixing some other stability issues, allows the user to define their own velocity curves and download them to the unit. Wow uncanny eh!

I got the update and applied it to my VX7, but the first time I tried to upgrade it seemed to go awfully wrong, it left the unit in an odd state, with Odd Chinese characters, but this was soon fixed by re-writing the firmware uprade a second time. I am yet to try the editable velocity curve, I am a bit weary of programming again for now, furthermore the upgrade can only be done via my Desktop as the CME plug and play MIDI is not working with my laptop.


Mapping and editing buttons on the VX7 is pretty straightforward, there was barely any need to open up the manual to seek instructions, it is all pretty simple. There is an assign mode, through which you can access and program nearly every button on the keyboard, all settings made can be saved to master presets allowing instant recall of every button setting in no more than two clicks and a spin of the dial. One of the most important features for me was zoning, I regularly have four zones all on seperate MIDI channels, (1-4) and I normally have a slider assigned to each zone to fade the different channels in and out, I immediately tried this out. to set up my zones I clicked on the ZONE button and activated each zone using a simple on screen menu, a further scroll through the menu allowed me to set the channel and port (remember there are four MIDI Out Ports) that I wanted each zone to play out on; There are also other settings available per zone such as transpose, velocity range, key range, transpose and octave; To edit the sliders, was just as simple, and was done by clicking the Assign button moving the relevant slider and then the assign menu for that slider comes up on screen and from then on it was a question of selecting MIDI CC 7 which is for volume ( CC numbers are already prenamed for you so no having to remember which CC does what) then the port number (1-4) and the MIDI channel; to programme the other sliders, I didn't have to go to any other menu, you can move the slider you want to edit and the menu automatically updates or you can simply highlight the slider number in the menu and select 2 (or the number of the slider you want) and then edit away. Impressive!


I then loaded up a Kontakt Preset, and tried to control my four different zones with my sliders, but again there were problems, each slider was sending out on every channel, so when I moved one slider all volumes were affected, I got round this by assigning the Slider 1 to a setting called Z1, I am not sure why this fixes it but it did, I asked on the forum but no answer yet.


Overall, the VX has it very goods and quite bads, for somebody who might possibly buy it for its integrated audio features, and plug and play feature set, I would advise to tread cautiously. Personally I am looking forward to a fully working keyboard (including plug and play MIDI and AUDIO), not withstanding, I am willing to put up with the gripes because I think they are all software related issues which could probably be ironed out with future firmware upgrades. The VX to me is a promising keyboard and I am looking forward to what it brings, like any new product it has teething problems but I am confident that CME are working to iron out such problems and continue to support it with firmwar upgrades such as the one they released recently.