Trying out the Korg Keystage

When I plugged it in via USB, Cakewalk (my DAW) stopped outputting sound. Upon checking, it turns out all the outputs went by default to the Keystage's audio interface. I had to send audio back to my speakers.

My Keystage is not recognized??

Then I tried playing Mozart's Ah vous dirai-je maman. 61 keys is not enough to play some parts of the piece when the left hand goes low. I also noticed some slight lag. It's exactly what this person said: https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/1bctphs/korg_keystage_proscons_list_returning_it/.

They mention a driver. Let's try it.

https://www.korg.com/us/support/download/product/0/927/

After installing the USB-MIDI Driver, it asks me to restart. I restart. Upon restart, it tells me it found the Keystage and that I should install the driver before using it.

Once installed, it asks me again to restart.

After restarting, I play it again and... I don't know. It still feels like there is latency. Then I tried on my Komplete M32. Same thing. Then I used my Yamaha piano, connected by MIDI cable. Same thing.

Eventually I tried to connect the Keystage again and it stopped being recognized. I've tried rebooting, uninstalling the KORG software, nothing worked. Then I tried it on my MacBook with GarageBand. It worked right away with zero latency!!!

Something is wrong with my Windows desktop. So I went into the Korg MIDI Driver uninstall utility again. Earlier I had uninstalled the midi0 driver. Don't tell me that's why it won't work anymore?

And I see a bunch of duplicate Keystage drivers...

After plugging in and unplugging my Keystage countless times, rebooting a bunch of times, installing dubious software (https://github.com/microsoft/MIDI as in beta. "foo bar" was in the first page of their driver settings tool), I find this piece of information:

https://support.korguser.net/hc/en-us/articles/115004269166-MIDI-Device-is-not-recognized-on-Windows

They say that Windows can't recognize MIDI ports over 10. I don't know if I believe it since the DOREMiDi controller works fine and it's on midi12. Other people said the same thing. That now it Windows supports up to 100 devices.

But then on page 2, they reiterate that the driver has to be in a midi port of midi10 or less. So I tried removing a bunch of unused drivers, and sure enough it worked!

MidiView, which is one other software I downloaded during my attempt to debug the issue, correctly shows both Keystage devices. Hurray!

Mappings

I followed this page.

https://support.korguser.net/hc/en-us/articles/23497828063897-How-to-use-Keystage-with-Cakewalk

In the end only these transport controls are supported:

  • PLAY: >
  • STOP: ◻
  • REC: ○
  • LOOP
  • UNDO: SHIFT + EXIT
  • PLAY POSITION BACK: SHIFT + Encoder Left
  • PLAY POSITION FORWARD: SHIFT + Encoder Right

That's not a lot...