Topic by dklein

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  • dklein
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Topic: Yamaha Transacoustic

While staying for the Labor Day weekend at my parents' house, I went to the local Yamaha store yesterday while my dad was going to a Lowrey Organ group lesson.  While there, I played various pianos and synthetic/sampled pianos.  My favorite was the Transacoustic, a parlor-sized grand that has an electronic component where it can play 19 different voices (amongst them a 9' Yamaha CFX as well as  four different pipe organs) via two transducers mated directly to the bottom of the soundboard.  These can be played at varying volume levels either instead of or in addition to the 5'3" acoustic piano that is the heart of the system.  The richness of the combined acoustic piano while mated to the CFX sampled piano is luxuriant in a way no real acoustic piano is, yet it is barely detectable as anything other than an acoustic piano to the unsuspecting ear.

If they are open again today, I will see if I can bring in a set of MIDI cables and see if they let me use Pianoteq from the MIDI out, running it back into the soundboard-speaker as the output from Pianoteq.  Now THAT should be something to behold, especially amongst the variety of Pianoteq models to play.

- David

- David

Reply by Klangschmied

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Re: Yamaha Transacoustic

dklein wrote:

...

If they are open again today, I will see if I can bring in a set of MIDI cables and see if they let me use Pianoteq from the MIDI out, running it back into the soundboard-speaker as the output from Pianoteq.  Now THAT should be something to behold, especially amongst the variety of Pianoteq models to play.

- David

Did you check it? How does it sound?

Reply by dklein

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Re: Yamaha Transacoustic

You know, I did and it sounded, well, different than the Yamaha's sound.  That was my experience when doing the same thing with all-electronic Yamaha Clavinova.  I believe, then, that there must be some equalization tweaking of the sound to make this play out realistically in both cases, much as we do with the different presets in Pianoteq to drive all of our varied speaker elements in our set-ups. 

I have been threatening to install transducers on the back of my old Steinway Model F 1885 upright, but I've yet to take the plunge (even though using something like hot-melt glue should make the attachment removable with some alcohol).

- David

Reply by Klangschmied

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Re: Yamaha Transacoustic

Thanks David for your infos.