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29 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 both good and bad... Feb 17, 2007
By Awake69
Some of the things about this keyboard are fantastically impressive, but other (omissions) make me want to tear my hair out. On the whole, This is a great keyboard for practicing on/playing at home, or possibly for use in a studio. If you need more than that, look elsewhere. I bought it to have a cheap, very portable keyboard with a great feel and sound in my office. My main piano at home is a Yamaha P-250.
First the bad. It's plastic, and I have some doubts about its durability. But I've only owned it a few months, so so far it's fine. The main limitation of this board is that it has only 32 note polyphony (10 notes with some tones!). This is a crazy, crazy oversight. If you use the auto accompaniment and harmonization features, you can run out of notes fast. There's a 6 (I think) track sequencer built in, but I don't know how you could use all 6 tracks without running out of notes. Even doing a lot of heavy pedaling could conceivably cause you to run into problems on the 10 note polyphony tones.
Also, there are no midi in/out jacks. this doesnt affect me, but I find it a very odd ommision. Midi can be done through USB, and standard midi files can be played from (or stored on) smart media cards.
Also there are no stero jacks for connecting to an external amplifier or sound system. There are two stereo headphone jacks, so one could conceivably run them to an external amp, but I've not tried it.
Also, I have very sensitive hearing, so maybe I'm oversensitive, but I find that the keys make very loud clicks when they are released. 30 cents of felt to soften the sound as they come back up on release would have made this board so much better.
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Now for the good. The keyboard has an incredibly realistic feel to it. If you closed your eyes you might think you were playing a real piano. I would say that the keys have a slightly softer touch than that of my Yamaha 250, but a slightly heavier touch than the Roland RD700SX I've also played. Touch is a very subjective thing to quantify, but I really like how this keyboard feels.
Sounds: The sounds are fantastic. The main piano sound in particular is incredible. But what suprised me is how good most of the other General Midi sounds are. They are comparable (and in many cases better) than the GM sounds on my Yamaha P-250 (which cost about 3 times as much).
I wanted a keyboard I could have in my office with great feel and great sound. This keyboard fit that bill at a very reasonable price. For that I'm happy with it.
Some of the many additional features worth noting: Built in Auto Accompaniment and Harmonization features, Large, backlit display, synthesizer function for editing built in sounds, Lots of DSP effects options, and a built in mixer. etc...
There's no keyboard in this price range that has this many features and such great sounds. It's a bargain. But if you need a keyboard to take out on the road, get something more sturdy.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
GREAT FOR THE MONEY Feb 08, 2008
By pianorman
I've been a professional musician for 37 yrs. Have hauled a Hammond B-3 and a 'real' acoustic piano (yes, all 600+ lbs.!), that I had to personally tune every 2 wks. After retiring the console piano 20 yrs. ago, and the B-3, 10 yrs. ago, I've tried all the replacements, from piano-action to synth-action. I finally decided my choice of professional gear, whether I use 2 or 3 keyboards, is to have that 'weighted' feel on at least one of them. I bought the Casio Privia PX-575R (the 'R' denotes the support stand) last summer, and have very few complaints. No, it doesn't have the midi in/out jacks for slaving rack mounts, tho' one can achieve this thru a USB-midi adaptor, and if one isn't careful when playing - especially while singing, one can accidentally 'bump' a button or two, thereby switching a preset to another sound, but this may be overcome through awareness. As far as weight...this thing can easily be tucked under one's arm at just under 37 lbs., so I don't know what the complaints are on this, weight-wise. Come on! I've played on weighted-key versions weighing 80 lbs. or more! All in all, you're going to get a great sounding keyboard, with great GM sounds, plus hundreds (620) of sounds to choose from. What's greater than other Casio boards, is this model has a keypad (0-9) to navigate around with, plus great sounding stereo speakers to practice with (they cancel after plugging in a cord). And for the price, you don't have to spend $1500-3000 to get great sounds. It's worked great for me in live situations. I'm keeping mine.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Nice overall keyboard with a few shortcomings.... Jan 23, 2008
By RCK
Excellent sounds, nice piano touch, easy to use and understand. The piano sounds are quite good - even better when put through a real PA system. My only complaints are the lack of a separate "line-out". I've been using a "tip-ring-sleeve" to 2 1/4" jack insert cable and it works well when plugged into the headphone jack - just an extra "bothersome" step. Also the lack of Midi In-Out-Thru is kind of awkward - a USB to midi adapter takes care of it, but again, one more extra step. With all the rhythms and sequencer it is a fun instrument to leave out and just play and it records well. Casio is so close to having the ideal performance instrument, but they always seem to stop just short of it - and Korg, Roland and Yamaha are great but always expensive and way more stuff than you can use on the job. (I've taught band and choir for 31 years and have played professionally even longer, so I've tried a lot of stuff over the years)
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Casio Previa PX-575R Piano Pros and Cons (driver issue) Dec 28, 2009
By Mark L. Bradford
"drmbradford"
CONS: Major driver issues make it unusable for fast computers, 64 bit programs, Windows 7...and it's problematic in Vista if it works at all. It WILL work with XP...most of the time.
CON: It is "clackity" when the keys hit the keyboard...a little more felt or rubber under there would help. But quickly, it will be noisy if you play hard. This does not seem to be a problem with some of the rolands I play.
Con: 32 bit polyphony is marginal....if you play a lot of keys it will delete sounds quickly.
Pros: Initially, a feature rich, great sounding full size piano for a reasonable price. Also, feels good to the touch..."heavier" in feel than some of the Yamaha electric's and therefore, it initially had a good feel for a touch pianist. Sure it's bulky to carry around, but it's only about 30 to 35 pounds and not that bad for gigs.
MY MAJOR CON: My biggest problem, is that Casio does not support it with USB drivers, which makes this unit very problematic in my studio for use with a computer via usb-midi. I was warned this, and naively read the positive reviews saying that it had USB. I thought, come on, you guys are just naive about using usb midi. But later after I got it home, and after much frustration trying to hook it up to Vista and my various midi programs, did I learn that there are major driver issues. Several professionals have tried to help me, and they all agree it's casio's lack of drivers. It is as if, Casio never wrote a driver for the piano! Except a mediocre old xp one! And then forgot to upgrade the driver for Vista...which has been out several years now! The people who naively think it works for USB are mostly just naive, or haven't tried it ...or are using an old computer with XP. And even if you DO get it to work with XP, the driver is so slow as to make the unit quite slow to react. Be warned if you are trying to use this for midi scoring and music, it will give you heartache and you'd do well to consider another unit. If you are going to use USB MIDI then read all of the old reviews....it has major problems and major driver issues. People naively assume (as I did) that a USB hook up will surely have regularly updated drivers...but as of December 2009, Casio piano driver for this unit are grossly outdated, suitable only for old XP and will have problems with Vista 34/64 and Windows 7. And the link they have thrown up to promise an eventual driver for Vista 32/64 or Windows 7...is an empty link with no driver yet. Say..it's December 2009. Sorry to ask this, but how many years after Vista comes out before we should expect a Vista driver?
5 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Casio Keyboard wunnerful, save one thing! Nov 12, 2008
By Jerry W. ODELL
I just got a casio pr575 or whatever, and it works well. The only objection I have is that when one lets up on keys, there is sometimes a loud mechanical click! It's very annoying. If I could figure out how to get the thing apart, a bit of felt would fix the problem, but it's a real Chinese puzzle to get it apart. Oh, well, it was only $600
Jerry O'Dell
Later -- I got a real piano! While the Casio is fine, it looks chintzy in comparison to
the real Yamaha. I don't care about all the fancy features, so I think it works well.
But the real piano action is not duplicated. The grand piano sound is glorious if
you hook it up to your hi fi system.
Jerry
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