Those 2 Damper pedals feature half dampering since they both have TRS (Stereo) Plugs.
To be honest i have never managed to make them work as Half Dampers. I have confirmed that both of my keyboards (Le and Extreme) feature Half Damper capabilities and in order not to have any manufacturer compatibility issues i bought Korg Half Damper Pedals.
When i am trying to calibrate both pedals to both keyboards as per their manuals everything seems to go right. After calibration i press "done" and write in global settings.
However when i select a piano program to check the half damper effect it seems it does not work. It works as if it were a simple Damper pedal (on-off without half damper)
Even supposing that either one pedal or one keyboard had some hardware malfunction (a or b)
a:(Broken Tip Ring or Sleeve contact of DS1H itself or faulty potentiometer)
b:(Broken Tip Ring or Sleeve contact of Damper input Jack on the keyboard)
it is probably unlikely that both keyboards or pedals do not work as they should because i tested both pedals to a single keyboard and both keyboards to a single pedal.
As far as the guidelines of calibration given in the manuals are concerned, i think that they are not pretty clear. The calibration screen shows a ratio bar and asks for setting of MIN/MAX.
What does it mean since the process does not allow the user to set MIN and MAX separately? Do i have to fully press the pedal down or not in this procedure?
I have also searched for a specific manual of DS1H since when i bought them new they didn't contain any document in their official packaging. Anyway it seems that Korg has not issued any manuals for this product since i can not find anything on the net as well.
I don't think that there is anything wrong (hardware-wise) as far as my equipment is concerned. I have also doublechecked polarities and even reset the keyboards to their factory settings with the most up to date OS's.
Am i missing anything here? Am i doing anything wrong as far as Calibration procedure is concerned?
Do i have to press the Damper Pedal somewhere in the middle (halfway down) in order for the keyboard to recognize half dampering during calibration procedure?
I know that this pedal sends cc#64 (Damper) varying from 000 to 127.
Normally somebody would expect the following:
MODE A
000 corresponds to Damper Off
1-126 corresponds to 126 different levels of intermediate dampering
127 corresponds to Full Damper
Is the above how the Half Damper pedal works?
If not then i guess that the keyboard responds in Value Ranges like below.
MODE B
From 000 to xxx corresponds to Damper Off
From (xxx+1) to yyy corresponds to a single specific intermediate Damper Level. ("xxx" is always lower than "yyy" and both may take values from 001 to 126 but the keyboard responds to one Specific Damper intermediate Level.
From (yyy+1) to 127 corresponds to Full damper.
An example for the above MODE B could be the following. (xxx=042 and yyy=84)
000-042: Keyboard corresponds to Damper Off
043-084: Keyboard corresponds to one specific level of Damper (Half Damper)
085-127: Keyboard corresponds to full Damper.
In this case the keyboard does not correspond in 128 different levels like in MODE A (1 "No Damper" Level, 126 different intermediate Levels and 1 final "Full Damper" Level) but it corresponds only to 3 different levels according to the range of Pedal Values (i.e 1 "No Damper" Level for the low range, 1 "Single Half Damper" Level for the medium range and 1 "Full Damper" Level for the high range of pedal inputs.
What is happening after all? How does the Keyboard respond? Does it do it like in MODE A or in MODE B?
If it does it like in MODE B then i guess that Calibration Procedure has to do with the setting of xxx and yyy values so as to determine those 3 input ranges. In this case xxx would be "MIN" and yyy would be "MAX" However somebody would expect that the calibration procedure would ask the user to set separately MIN and MAX.
If you check the below images from Half Damper Calibration Screens from Le and Extreme respectively you will see that the calibration is done in a MIN/MAX percentage. This is what i understand as an Electrical Engineer.
KORG TRITON LE
KORG TRITON EXTREME
In this case if you press the pedal and the bar goes up to 90% this mean that MIN:MAX = 0.9. This means that xxx:yyy is 0.9.
So if yyy=110 for example then xxx is 110 x 0.9 = 99.
Therefore the keyboard would correspond as follows:
000-099 (Damper Off)
100-110 (Half Damper)
111-127 (Full Damper)
So we see that the half damper range is pretty "narrow" and perhaps this does not allow the human foot to distinct it. One should be very precise and delicate to achieve that. Also the damper effect comes up after 099 which requires more than half way pedalling.
Lets check another case.
If during the calibration procedure we press the pedal in such a way that the bar goes up to 10% then thinking in a similar way like before we have the following.
xxx:yyy = 0.1. This means that if yyy=110 then xxx= 0.1 x 110 = 11.
Therefore the keyboard would correspond as follows:
000-011 (Damper Off)
012-110 (Half Damper)
111-127 (Full Damper)
This is a more convenient setting making Half Damper Range a lot more "wide" than before achievable without requiring precise pedalling.
Final case
Lets suppose that we set the bar at 50%.
This means that xxx:yyy = 0.5 This means that if yyy=100 then xxx= 0.5 x 100 = 50. Therefore the keyboard would correspond as follows:
000-050 (Damper Off)
051-100 (Half Damper)
101-127 (Full Damper)
I wonder how someone could set the absolute values of xxx and yyy. If my thinking above is correct then it is not clear how the keyboard sets xxx and yyy which determine the ranges of different response.
Could somebody please advise?