Hey folks, I feel the need to update people here who might be considering the MZX-500.

Currently, that vast majority of my opinions in the review still stand. However, there is an issue that needs to be addressed and I thought I'd share it with the Zone.

At the moment the MZX-500 has two flaws that I've found and reported within the style/pattern recorder and midi sequencer. There is a bug associated with mixer settings being saved for styles used in the midi sequencer, and in the style/pattern recorder.

In the pattern recorder, any mixer settings applied to variations 3 and 4 will not save. You can make the adjustments, they apply momentarily, but as soon as you move to another section, any mixer settings for variations 3 and 4 will reset to default.

The problem carries over to the midi sequencer too. I recorded a style progression within the midi sequencer. I wanted to test to see if this problem was just associated the style/pattern record mode. It is not. All mixer settings made to parts/tracks that contain style date recorded in the midi sequencer would revert back to defaults as each section progressed. You can literally watch the virtual knobs snap back to their default positions.

This IMO is a pretty serious issue. It's an arranger keyboard.., and not being able to have mixer settings properly apply to arranger parts (especially considering we're talking about the most basic form of editing here) can render this board useless to some (myself included).

I purchased the MZX for production. I create my own styles and songs. Currently the style/pattern recorder appears to only function as a 2 variation platform for recording/editing purposes, and any style use in the midi sequencer is plagued by this bug as well due to a mixer bug. I'm hoping Casio addresses this issus ASAP.

A firmware update was released this morning, but did not address this issue. I'm shocked that something so basic was missed in beta testing. It also leads me to speculate that perhaps that's why the demos prior to release were so limited in what was being shown.

Just wanted to share this info.

Sqk