Are you a performer in a band or a solo performer and you’re looking for a stage piano or keyboard that won’t break the bank?   You’d love to get a Nord Electro but you don’t want to spend $3000 USD; and you’d love to get a Yamaha CK88 stage piano but don’t want to spend $1500USD?  Well, I have a GREAT option for you – this is my introductory review on the Studiologic Numa Compact 2X stage keyboard, which sells for HALF the price of the CK88 at about $750USD.   Let’s check it out!

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Numa Compact 2?

Now a couple things I should mention before I get started – there is also a less expensive version of this keyboard, which is the Numa Compact 2:

These 2 models are EXACTLY the same, except the 2X adds in separate organ and synth engines in addition to the purely sample based engine on the 2.  So with the 2X, you get a ton of organ functionality like a full set of organ drawbars (which double as sliders for the synth engine), chorus, percussion & rotary speaker controls.  So, if you play just piano and electric piano and you don’t care about all these extra organ features, then the Compact 2 might be plenty for you. 

Numa Compact SE & X SE?

And the second thing to mention is that this review is a bit late – the new versions of the Compact 2 and 2X were announced at NAMM 2024, but aren’t readily available at the time of this review yet – the new versions are the Compact SE and x SE respectively.  I haven’t seen any reviews on these models yet, but after watching the promo videos from Studiologic, I have to say they look REALLY similar to the existing models; there are some new sound samples and more polyphony, but the main features and the menu system & user interface appear to be identical; and I should also note, there appears (so far at least) to be a big price increase with the new models.

What IS A “Stage” Keyboard?

Ok, so . . . “What IS a stage piano or stage keyboard?”    Well, you would be correct if you assumed (from the name), that a stage piano or keyboard is MEANT to be used in performance situations; but . . . what does that actually mean?   Well to sum that up in . . . just one KIND OF long sentence, a “stage” keyboard or piano SHOULD have: extensive connectivity options, a great user interface so you can do all the things your performance requires, quickly and easily, AND you should also be able to glance at your keyboard and immediately see WHAT your current settings ARE; it should have registrations so you can store your custom setups for quick and easy recall, it should offer a level of portability that’s appropriate for your intended playing situations, and it should have the voices and other options like key action that meet whatever your personal needs are as a player.

So, while there’s absolutely NOTHING keeping you from using ANY instrument in a performance situation if you WANT to, would I consider any of the entry to mid range keyboards or digital pianos I’ve reviewed in the past to meet the requirements for . . . being a proper stage piano?  I would have to say definitely no – but the closest I’ve reviewed would be the Yamaha P-125 & Yamaha P-225 digital pianos, the Casio PX-S3000 & PX-S3100 digital piano or the Yamaha PSR-EW425 keyboard.   But even with good connectivity, sounds, portability and good user interfaces, each of those are still lacking in some key areas that a true stage instrument really should have.  And something like a Roland FP-30X with a really basic user interface?  In my opinion, not even CLOSE to meeting the requirements for being a stage piano.

Feature Summary

OK so what makes the Studiologic Numa Compact 2X a fantastic budget stage keyboard? Well, I’ll give you a quick summary then I’ll go into some more detail:

• It has a good selection of decent to pretty good quality voices, including the ability to download new voices from Studiologic’s website
• The 2X has actual organ and synth engines with live controls as opposed to being limited to just sampled organ and synth sounds
• There are upper and lower voice banks so you can easily layer, split and configure your voices to your liking, AND each of those banks has it’s own dedicated effects section with clearly labelled physical controls for realtime adjustments as you play
• There are also upper and lower MIDI banks for MIDI sounds (the Numa has traditional 5 pin MIDI in AND MIDI out so you have a ton of options there)
• The user interface is nothing short of fantastic; you have quick and easy control of all your settings right at your fingertips, and you can easily see what your current settings are; setting up and recalling up to 99 registrations, adjusting sound bank specific or global effects on the fly with physical controls, and even though the menu screen is tiny?  Studiologic has put the most important context sensitive info on there and it is super easy to read; and you also have 2 easily configurable joysticks on the left (one snaps back to its starting position, and the other is more like a mod wheel)
• The key action is a semi-weighted key action with aftertouch that is a great compromise between a fully weighted piano action and a lighter faster action that is appropriate for organ playing
• You can connect both an expression pedal and a sustain pedal, and easily configure what they do and what voice banks they are enabled or disabled for
• The connectivity is amazing; you have all the usual connectivity including LR line outs, AND you also have 5 pin MIDI in and out ports, AND an audio interface built into the USB port which is an amazing feature, especially for a keyboard with good MIDI functionality
• For an 88 key keyboard with full size keys, it is insanely compact and light at only 15  pounds, can run on batteries, or if you don’t use the speakers can also be powered via USB

User Interface

I LOVE this user interface – it is SO intuitive & easy to use interface with all your settings at your fingertips. Over on the left you have all the controls needed for your organs: chorus, vibrato, percussion and your drawbars, and you can easily configure one of the joysticks over on the left side to control your rotary or Leslie speaker:

The centre section is where you setup your sounds & combinations and save them as registrations for quick and easy recall; there are 99 registration slots available, with the first 50 coming preloaded from the factory with some common setups; I can use the knob to scroll through the registrations super fast, or I can press it and then scroll through a list of them instead; I’ll go back the first registration. And while the screen is tiny?  Super useful – you can see I’ve got a piano for my upper voice and a bass for my lower; right now you would only hear the piano but you’ll notice the lower light isn’t lit – if I press that button it lights up and now would hear the bass and cymbal along ßwith the piano, so they’re layered; what if I want them split?  Press the split button and now they’re split; and as I mentioned earlier?  Just takes a glance at the user interface to immediately know what your setup is – this is awesome!

Now something else to quickly mention – in addition to the 2 sound banks for built in sounds, we ALSO have 2 sound banks for MIDI sounds, zone A & B – the Numa has 5 pin MIDI in and out ports, as well as an audio interface built into the USB port as an option to send MIDI sounds from a MIDI source back into the Numa without any lag – so a ton of MIDI functionality here – I even configured a registration to use the Numa as a controller for my Hammond M-Solo keyboard – and what’s even COOLER than that?  I can set the MIDI CC numbers for the drawbars or the 3 buttons to control settings on the Hammond!  For example, if I go into edit mode on the MIDI bank, I can customize all sorts of MIDI settings, including setting the CC numbers and values for the drawbars so they control the drawbars on the Hammond . . . and you can also set CC numbers and values for the 3 buttons to control settings on the Hammond – I’ve set one to control the Hammond’s Leslie rotary speaker speed.   SUPER cool!

So as far as selecting voices for your zones, super easy, there are category buttons in the middle for that and then you can scroll through the options. As far as editing goes, once again SUPER easy – if you press the EDIT button while highlighted on one of the voice banks, you go into a PART edit menu – this is where you can configure tons of stuff separately for the 2 voice banks: relative volume, transposing, octave shifts, tuning, what each pedal does and whether or not it is enabled for each part, as well as what each of your joysticks do, and whether they are enabled or disabled for each part.

If I instead press EDIT while highlighted on the registration bank, then I can edit all sorts of things at the registration bank level, like a custom name, the split point, some cool rotary speaker options like overdrive and mic position, and there’s a mixer for relative volumes

Now over on the right is the effects area and I love how Studiologic did this: there are 2 effects sections, with just a handful of the basic effects as options you can cycle through, and you can easily choose or even disable FX1 and FX2 for each of your upper and lower voices, and use the knob to set the effects level (or choose none to disable the effect) and then do the same procedure for FX2 – so super cool how Studiologic implemented this, and as a guy who couldn’t be bothered spending TOO much time deep diving into keyboards with hundreds of effects?  I like this – bread and butter effects right in front of me – easy. 

Then there is a reverb section with types to choose from and a level knob (the reverb applies to the whole keyboard) and to the right of that some EQ and volume settings that are also global for the whole keyboard.

Key Action

The key action on the Numa Compact is a really cool semi-weighted action from Fatar, it’s their TP/9 Piano action.  So while it’s not fully weighted or graded, it is semi-weighted, and the keys are true full size piano shaped keys.   Because I play piano, electric piano AND A LOT of Hammond organ in my band, I’ve tried TONS of keyboards out, and almost all of them are great at one of those needs, but NOT great at the others, which makes total sense – my Yamaha CK88 stage piano with a fully weighted and graded GHS action was spectacular for piano songs but when I went to play Hammond organ songs?  NOT so great. 

And that is what I LOVE about the Numa Compact’s semi-weighted action; it is a FANTASTIC compromise for playing piano, electric piano and organ songs effectively; it responds well enough to be able to play piano pieces expressively, but you can also play Hammond organ pieces easily, things like organ smears and slides are actually smooth and easy to do (which was NOT the case on my fully weighted Yamaha CK88 stage piano). 

So far, out of ALL the keybeds I have EVER tried (to use for both piano and organ), the Numa’s is my 2^nd favorite overall; the only one that is even better in my opinion is the semi-weighted keybed on my Hammond SK Pro, although that keyboard costs a LOT more than the Numa does.  My Hammond and the Numa are actually the ONLY keyboards I would consider using with my band by themselves for both piano and organ; for anything else, like my Yamaha CK88, I would need a 2^nd keyboard with an organ action.

Voices

The Numa Compact 2X comes with a really good selection of voices (There are 100 built in sounds that include:

• 8 Acoustic Piano
• 8 Electric Piano
• 8 Keyboards
• 12 Bass & Guitars
• 16 Organs
• 20 Synthesizers
• 12 Orchestral
• 16 Other sounds
• NOTE: Additional voices are available for download on Studiologic’s website – and it’s important to note here that the pianos and EPs that you can download from the website are noticeably better than the ones on the keyboard out of the box so you definitely need to check that out – I’ll indicate that in the upcoming demo)

Now as I mentioned, the Compact 2 has a sample based engine, Studiologic’s TrS “True Sound” stereo sample based engine, so this engine provides ALL the voices on the Compact 2.

The Compact 2x adds two more sound engines, so the organ and synth voices on the Compact 2X come from those sound engines:

• their Tonewheel organ engine from their retired (sadly) Numa organ series
• their synth engine from their Sledge line of synthesizers

So here’s a demo of some of the main voices on the Numa Compact 2X – I’ll include some layers & splits, I’ll demo the built in vs. extra piano and EP voices & I’ll also demo the organ engine – I don’t know the first thing about synthesizers so I won’t be going into those in much detail.

Connectivity

Next thing to talk about is the connectivity which is ALMOST perfect – I do have one complaint though which I will get to in a bit.   The Numa has:

• ¼ inch stereo headphone out
• ¼” L&R line outs for connecting to external audio equipment like amps, mixers, PA systems etc,
• 2 x ¼” pedal inputs:
  • one for a sustain pedal for your piano patches
  • one for an expression pedal port
    (there are no pedals included with the keyboard)
• The USB to device port transmits not only MIDI but also audio thanks to the built in USB audio interface – this is a fantastic feature I’ve talked about in tons of my videos that Yamaha has been including for ages in most of their keyboards, Roland has FINALLY started following suit and including them, and yet Casio still ignores this feature which makes no sense to me.  Anyways, what’s the functionality that this feature provides?
  • You can send high quality audio DIRECT to your DAW like Garageband without an external audio interface
  • You can record a high quality piano video with DIRECT digital audio just by connecting your piano to your phone; your phone’s camera app will use the direct audio from the piano instead of it’s built in mic when you record a video
  • You can play external audio from your device (so YouTube videos, backing tracks, online piano lessons etc) and hear it through your piano’s speakers or headphones and play along just as if it was a normal “audio IN” port
  • And if you are using your Numa Compact as a MIDI controller to trigger sounds on a VST app on a device, instead of having to listen to those MIDI sounds on your device, those sounds will get sent back through the USB connection to your piano’s headphones and speakers WITHOUT any lag (so this opens you up to an unlimited number of sounds you can use with your Numa!)  And this is ESPECIALLY useful on the Numa Compact, because of the advanced MIDI functionality provided by the 5 pin MIDI in and out ports, and the ability to customize MIDI CC numbers for controls like the drawbars etc. as I mentioned earlier in this review

So what is my one complaint?  Well it has to do with the LR line outs, which are used for connecting to external audio equipment.  In every keyboard I’ve ever tested that has LR line outs, the left signal is sent out of the left and the right signal is sent out of the right; but if you ONLY use the Left port, the keyboard will send a mono signal that is “summing” the left and the right together.  This is so you can easily connect your keyboard to an amp or mixer or sound system with only 1 available input port, and still get (sort of) both your left and your right (and a lot of people working sound and a PA system at a venue you’re playing will often tell you “sorry you only get 1 port, you’re going mono not stereo). 

Now the issue with this that a lot of those same sound people will shrug off is that a summed signal is never as good as a separate left and right, because of something called “phase cancellation”  – that’s VERY much a topic for another video, and to be honest is not something I’m claiming to be a specialist in, but if you combine 2 sound waves (like a left and a right) into 1 signal and there was a spot where those sound waves intersect each other?  They can cancel each other out and the result is . . . you get nothing, which can make a summed signal from a keyboard sound . . . weird. 

But anyways, what’s my complaint about the Numa?  Well unlike all the other keyboards I’ve tested that sum the signal when you only use the left out?  The Numa does NOT do that; so you ONLY get the left – well to be honest, that will often sound even weirder or worse than getting a summed signal with the potential of phase cancellation, so not sure why Studiologic did that.  In any case, what’s the solution for that if you’re in that situation at a venue?  You either live with just the left signal, or you get a mixer that you can connect the left and right signals from your keyboard to that has the ability to sum those into a mono signal, OR you use the stereo headphone out instead of the LR line outs.  Not the end of the world or anything, but . . . just a little strange.

Speakers

The Numa Compact 2 and 2X have 2 x 10W backwards facing speakers that are fine for practice, but to be honest?  I have mine off all the time, and just use headphones, or if I’m playing live with my band I also have them off because there is no way I would hear them; If I was playing a café or something small with just a tiny amp or something I might enable them as monitors, but to be honest since they are backwards facing I probably still wouldn’t hear them; I’m not a fan of backwards or downwards facing speakers on keyboards. 

But, here is a quick speaker demo showing what they sound like just as picked up by the internal mic on my iPhone.

Other Features

• Portability:
  • the Numa Compact 2X only weighs 15 lbs and for an 88 full size keys keyboard is super thin, and narrow
  • It can run on batteries, and if you have the speakers disabled you can even power it with USB from a device. I’ve never done that because I actually have a Talentcell battery pack I reviewed a while back that can power the Numa for HOURS
  • When I use the Numa and my Hammond M-Solo with my band? The 2 of them together weigh the same as my Yamaha CK88 piano did, so . . . super portable!
• Numa Manager App (for pc or Mac; it’s not for mobile devices)
  • this app isn’t used for CONTROLLING your keyboard or changing settings etc; it is purely used for managing your keyboard’s voices and registrations, for transferring new voices you’ve downloaded from Studiologic’s site to your keyboard, and for updating your keyboard’s operating system when Studiologic releases updates – it’s a pretty basic app, super easy to use and helpful for managing all of this stuff

The Competition

So what’s the competition for the Numa Compact 2X?  Well to be honest?

I personally don’t know of ANY stage keyboards with this much to offer in this price range!

The Numa Compact 2X really does provide the same kind of functionality you’ll find on stage keyboards that are WAYYYY more expensive like Nords, or the Yamaha CK, CP or YC series.  Are the sounds as good on the Numa?  No, but they’re not bad and are totally usable.  Are the effects as good and are there just as many?  No, but they’re not bad and are totally usable. 

So for the price, the only keyboard in the same price range I can think of that COULD be considered competition as a budget stage keyboard would be my Yamaha PSR-EW425, but even then . . . not really.

The Verdict

I LOVE this keyboard – this is one of my favorite products I have ever owned!

If you’re looking for a super portable, easy to use stage keyboard with a ton of functionality and good quality voices for a FRACTION of the price of most stage keyboards at only about $750USD?  You really can’t beat the Numa Compact 2X. 

Main thing to keep in mind though, is this is a SEMI-weighted key action so if you absolutely MUST have a fully weighted keybed?  Then you won’t like the Numa Compact – but if you’re like me and you’d love to have a keybed that works well enough for piano songs but ALSO works well for organ?  Then this keybed is awesome.  

If you follow my channel, you probably know that I often trade in my keyboards after a while on new ones to review and use with my band, but I don’t ever see myself doing that with the Numa, it just has too much to offer for the money.  I used it in conjunction with my Hammond M-Solo with my band for months, including using it on a cd we recorded and it was awesome.  I have recently upgraded to a Hammond SK Pro for use with my band because I really wanted the best Hammond organ sounds I could get, but I will still be using the Numa instead of my Hammond for the more casual gigs like playing in a café or playing outside etc, where portability is more important. 

So that’s pretty much it for this review, please feel free to smash the like button and subscribe to my channel, that does really help me out.  I’ve left links below to check out current prices in your area on the Numa Compact 2 and 2x as well as the new versions recently announced at NAMM, and as usual I’ve also left links to some online piano training that I’ve taken that really worked well for me.

Thanks so much, and happy piano playing! (and piano shopping 😉 )

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I have included links below to Amazon so that you can check current pricing – please note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

Studiologic Numa Compact 2X

Studiologic Numa Compact 2

Studiologic Numa Compact Gig Bag (I have one – it’s awesome!)

Yamaha PSR-EW425

Studiologic Numa Compact X SE

Studiologic Numa Compact SE

Piano Training I Recommend

I’ve taken a number of online piano courses; the ones I’m listing here are my favorites and I can highly recommend any of these if you are looking for some online training to get started on learning piano, or to take your current skills to the next level.

Video Version Of This Review

https://youtu.be/9YgHLg7CUhs