Topic by Bigs

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Topic: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Hello everyone,

I'm playing with the Pianoteq trial at the moment, and I can already tell it sounds great. However I'm having trouble getting it to sound good through the speakers of my digital piano.

Setup:
- Macbook Pro
- Yamaha CLP 265 GP
- MBP Headphones out to Piano Aux in (with proper cable)
- MIDI USB Connection

All the presets sound kind of muddy over the entire range. When I use the 'C3 bright' the top 2 octaves sound OK, but the rest is just really dull compared to the built-in sound of the Yamaha (which is, of course, really bright). Also there's a lot of reverb. The piano sounds as if it's 2 meters away (which is strange if you're sitting right before it).

What I've tried so far:

- Playing around with the velocity settings, I think I've got these down now
- Turned down the reverb (this helps and seems to be required in order to get a believable sound through the Clavinova)
- Tried boosting the higher frequencies with the EQ (this hardly seemed to make a difference)

Does anyone have any experience with this and prehaps a suggestion? I know I should get a decent audio interface, but piano recordings (even those of sampled piano VSTs) played through iTunes sound quite allright so I think I should be able to get Pianoteq to sound clearer too.

Last edited by Bigs (03-04-2009 10:16)

Reply by mimoviz

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Hi Bigs. I own a CVP-309 which have the same connections for input-output. From what I can tell, there must be some issues with your headphones, or, perhaps, PTQ needs to be adjusted in terms of sample quality (44.1 Khz at the very least). Have you tried to use the built-in speakers of your instrument? You might need a special kind of cable. Try this one which will give you the highest possible quality in signal from the mac to your instrument speakers
:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4...le_to.html

Guillermo

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Reply by Bigs

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

I'm sorry, maybe my post wasn't clear. What I meant was I connect the headphones out jack of my Macbook Pro to the piano and then use the built-in speakers of the piano.

The sound with headphones directly attached to the Macbook is fine, so the problem is in the combination with the speakers and the piano cabinet (since there are only speakers under the lid of the piano, no tweeters on the front or anything).

Last edited by Bigs (31-03-2009 18:10)

Reply by mimoviz

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Just lower down ALL output from the piano itself via the button panel in your console and that should do it. There must be some signal perturbing the speakers... or that's what I can surmise....

Anyway... Im sure youll be able to fix it..;)

Guillermo
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Reply by Bigs

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

mimoviz wrote:

Just lower down ALL output from the piano itself via the button panel in your console and that should do it. There must be some signal perturbing the speakers... or that's what I can surmise....

Anyway... Im sure youll be able to fix it..;)

Well, I have the 'Local' setting of the piano turned off, of course. If the bright Yamaha sound of my digital piano would be mixed through the Pianoteq sound, the result wouldn't be a dull, muddy sound I think But thanks for the advice.

After reading through the manual, I think I'll try fiddling with the soundboard settings (resonance, Q) and the spectrum profile. One of those should give the result I'm looking for.

Reply by mimoviz

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Bigs wrote:

After reading through the manual, I think I'll try fiddling with the soundboard settings (resonance, Q) and the spectrum profile. One of those should give the result I'm looking for.

Hmmmm... it seems your issue is more complex than I thought.  Are you trying to emulate a particular sound of an instrument of your liking, or the distorsion you percieve is more a distorted "quality" of the PTQ sound? Normally, one has to disable the main piano instrument in the midi assignment panel on Clavinovas in order to prevent local sounds while enabling you to pump the volume up; however not all of them work exactly the same.

Got to think of it a little more. Sorry for not being helpful..

Guillermo
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Reply by Jake Johnson

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Do the i-tunes things, or samples played through Garage Band or another sample player, sound good when played through the Yamaha's speakers?

Reply by mooks

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Jake asks a good question. Try playing some ordinary music through the piano from your Macbook. Does that sound just as bad?

My immediate thought is that the 295 has "iAFC" instrumental active field control, which uses microphones to pick up the sound from the room, and do a load of signal processing on it to modify the sound generated from the speakers! Sounds like a great recipe for making a mess of the sound to me. Obviously works well for the Yamaha built in piano sounds. Can you turn this off? It could easily explain the muddiness and extra reverb you're hearing. Turn off any other signal processing you can.

If none of this helps, it may just be that the speaker system significantly colours the sound played through it. I know this was true of my old CLP-970. I once tried playing the sounds through external monitors (MSP5s) and it sounded much better.

Reply by Bigs

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Ok, I tried playing some music through my piano's speakers. At first it sounded pretty good, but when I started comparing it to the sound of my stereo I realized a lot of overtones were missing. Playing Pianoteq through my stereo also sounded a *lot* better then through the piano.

So I guess the speakers in the piano are just really only meant for the built-in sounds (which in turn are probably optimized for the speakers). Too bad, because a sound upgrade (without any exta speakers) would have been cool.

AFAIK this Clavinova model isn't equipped with iAFC and the Reverb + Effect controls on the panel have no effect on the sound through the AUX in busses. So there's nothing I can do on the piano side.

Reply by Beto-Music

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

I play pianoteq using my roland F- 90speakers, ans it's made for piano sound. I remamber I called Roiland suport and they said the speakes were balanced to piano sound, and maybe other instruments would not get a good sound.
F-90 when was realised was interesting for the good sound quality.

Playing pianioteq on F-90 speakes I feel some resonance get more reflected on the walls of the room. strange...  Maybe it's just the fact pianoteq are very rich in harmonics.

Reply by kensuguro

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

It also may have to do with the micing on many of the default patches.

Can you try downloading the p250 emulation patch I made and tell me what you think, especially in terms of presence? 

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...35d44fffaf

It's miced to sound very close, like the yamaha piano samples when dry.  The tone of my patch may sound different, but the spatial "feel" should be quite similar.  I play it back through p250's built in speakers.  That patch is made to react similar to p250's piano sound, so it may sound a little clunky, but let me know if it sounds right spatially.  I'll be posting a more natural sounding piano patch soon with a similar sound.

Also, pt3's sound in general is quite boomy..  It can be taken as warm, "full", or just boomy depending on the room.  One you thin you can try fiddling around with, is to lower the first harmonic in the harmonics mixer..  drop it about -1.7db and see how it feels. 

To me, the EQ sounds like it's doing some sort of relative changes, so I always leave it alone.  If you want to do post EQ, you might want to try using a plugin after pt3 in your vst chain and see how that effects the sound.  From my limited experience, changing the first harmonic is usually more effective.

Last edited by kensuguro (02-04-2009 06:40)

Reply by Bigs

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Thanks kenuguro, I'll try your patch when I get home tonight!

Reply by mooks

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

Bigs wrote:

AFAIK this Clavinova model isn't equipped with iAFC and the Reverb + Effect controls on the panel have no effect on the sound through the AUX in busses. So there's nothing I can do on the piano side.

Ah, you said you had a 295 above, but I guess you meant 265. So much for that theory then!

Reply by Bigs

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Re: Using Clavinova grand speakers

mooks wrote:
Bigs wrote:

AFAIK this Clavinova model isn't equipped with iAFC and the Reverb + Effect controls on the panel have no effect on the sound through the AUX in busses. So there's nothing I can do on the piano side.

Ah, you said you had a 295 above, but I guess you meant 265. So much for that theory then!

Woops, it's a 265 indeed. The 295 was a bit out of budget