ESL's for VST piano reproduction

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I have an old baby grand cabinet I'm trying to set up for playing sampled piano VSTs. Others here have said diy ESLs are the way to go.

These are new technology to me, but it seems they could be easily made in any shape. How about making an ESL shaped like the soundboard and mounted where the soundboard used to be?

Should I also have a sub in the cabinet or would the ESL cover the low frequencies? Any amp suggestions?

My goal is for the thing to sound as real as practically possible.

Thanks!
 
I am thinking over making a full range planar in the shape of a half size baby grand, after seeing a query on this forum. I love piano music. I think it would be better to use a planar design than an electrostatic. You will get better bass with a planar.I am still in the process of thinking about the layout of the magnets etc. The planars would be easier to build. Bye the way what is a VST?
 
You want to take a baby grand case, without the harp and make it play piano sounds??

Well, it can be made to make sound.

There are a number of things that make this idea - the ESL in the shape of the interior, where the harp went, somewhat problematic and unknown...

The first thing that comes to mind is that the ESL generally is set up as a dipole - open back. You don't have an open back in a piano with a sound board.

Also the sound board is designed to *sound*, and you don't want that in a speaker.

One could still do it and put absorbing material between the sound board and the ESL, but then you can't see the spruce sound board, and it will not be totally effective at lower frequencies.

An ESL that size will have substantial bass.

A planar magnetic unit will be very expensive and heavy, and not full range in one unit.

So, the question of what sort of speaker to use resolves down to how important is cost and shape.

Other than it being kind of a neat "art" installation, and unless you have a very large space/house, it would be better to merely have good ESL speakers in a room, imho. (even if you can solve all the acoustic and mechanical issues...)

_-_-bear

PS. bass is neither better nor worse with an ESL vs. planar magnetic, it all depends on the specifics of the implementation.
 
Didn't we already have a discussion like this a while back ?!!!

Henry~ VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology.
The world of VST's is an amazing and wonderful world.
Very simple to use,I have over 1000 free VST's and many are very awesome sounding.
They range from filters to reverbs, delay units,samples and players, amp and cabinet simulators and crossovers and such all done within the realm of the PC.
There are tools such as tuners, frequency counters,meters and spectrum analyzers as well.
You name it, it's out there,lots of very cool stuff.

jer :)
 
Thanks for the replys.

bear, the soundboard has been removed from the case. I would be putting the ESL in it's place, allowing sound to reverberate from both sides just like the original board.

The piano is going in a fairly large studio space. Does this seem at least semi-practical? Would the highly directional nature of large ESLs make for a poor sound when placed horizontal inside the case?
 
Here they are,

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/plan...ere-about-wooden-soundboards.html#post3054055

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/inst...peaker-reproduce-piano-sound.html#post2546959

ESL's are quite involved I would suggest that you build a set and learn about there construction and what it takes to drive them before considering mounting them in a piano frame.

A magnetic planar my very well be an easier and safer way to go,But with a large Diaphragm that size, sag will be a facter with the weight of the voice coil if it is to be laying flat.
Not mention the weight and cost of the magnets as Bear pointed out.

Having the diaphragm the shape of the sound board won't gain you anything,IMHO.

Also if you are planning on making the diaphragm one large size there will be issues with the stability due to the sag as well as with the dispersion qualities as with any planar driver.
It is suggested that you use many smaller width panels for which ever method you choose to drive them with.

As Bear mentioned ESL's are dipole devices and my past experience shows that any reflected pressure from something being to close to the diaphragm can hender the detail quite considerably.

Even a very thick (6 to 8 inches) fiberglass insulation can do this if it is within a foot at least to the diaphragm.
I know this because I have done such experiments trying to reduce the backwave of the the panel.

You might want to consider an open bottom for such a project.

Just a few things to think about.

jer :)
 
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Didn't we already have a discussion like this a while back ?!!!

Henry~ VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology.
The world of VST's is an amazing and wonderful world.
Very simple to use,I have over 1000 free VST's and many are very awesome sounding.
They range from filters to reverbs, delay units,samples and players, amp and cabinet simulators and crossovers and such all done within the realm of the PC.
There are tools such as tuners, frequency counters,meters and spectrum analyzers as well.
You name it, it's out there,lots of very cool stuff.

jer :)

Wow! I'm curious to know what your sources are for free VSTs, particularly for the utilities you mentioned such as tuners and frequency counters. I'm looking for one that's just a plain old oscilloscope as well, for monitoring my left and right channels during mixing.

The piano emulation thing sounds like an awesome idea, but as it is I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able to comment on the ESL/planar discussion or how you would rig it. [/stillinschool]
 
Hi,

If you want to reproduce a trumpet sound sample you don't set about
fitting a transducer to a trumpet for the ultimate trumpet sound, the
sound sample is clearly unsuitable to drive the planned reproducer.

Same with an electrostatic panel inside a real piano case. Its not
simple at all, and only the ill-informed will suggest that it is. "As
real as is practically possible" is way beyond any understanding and
analysis so far presented, and very likely any further suggestions.

If you come up with a real answer, you would make a fortune.

How you plan to add velocity sensitivity to a physical keyboard
is beyond me, though plain key detection is not complicated.

rgds, sreten.
 
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Oh, ok... VST it is... digital stuff... sort of real. Ok.

Well there is the piano lid that could act as a nice diffuser and reflector... might be more realistic than one might expect.

One problem is that the SPL output of a piano is far higher than one might expect, especially on peaks. Very hard for a speaker to reproduce.

Very difficult for a speaker to reproduce the sub sonic and very lowest frequency artifacts that a real piano produces also. It is a big mechanical device. Merely opening and dropping the sustain pedal produces a percussive output... most people don't notice this unless they either play the piano or spend a fair amount of time around one being played...

the dipole effect with the soundboard missing is interesting.

as jer noted, the sag (gravity) effect will make a difference on *any* speaker - at the moment I can't think of one where it will not.

I'll throw this out, and maybe get laughed at, but *if* you have the lid, you might consider a line array of dynamic drivers. Carefully chosen you might be able to do a credible job of making it sound plausible. Think about a Bose 901 reflecting off a wall... (don't laugh folks). You may need something for the HF to augment, and EQ for the bottom end. Or else some decent sized woofers, high Q, arrayed for the bass...

you will get a bit of horn effect from the lid...

the key to this idea is to be able to handle a TON of power and also be capable of significant SPL... you want to be able to get above 110dB SPL 1m at <1% THD or lower... then it will be credible, assuming you've got drivers that are selected for the job. Which is not easy.

But the good news is that you can do this with a board (got to be stiff) and drivers, and those can be replaced or upgraded later, as you learn from the experience...

Imo, an ESL cleverly done, with enough surface area will sound good too...

_-_-bear
 
I do have the lid. The action will be replaced with a weighted hammer-action MIDI keyboard. I plan on playing Synthogy's highly sampled Steinway D and Bosendorfer through this thing.

A stiff board and drivers was my first thought. Probably the direction I'll go. I also thought about facing some of the drivers towards the floor to help simulate the dipole nature of a soundboard.

Would you have any suggestions for a driver that meets your specifications? How about putting a ribbon tweeter in there? I hear those are nice on piano highs.
 
What are we talking about here?

Even with a "down the hallway" test, I've never even briefly thought I've ever heard a piano simulated. (Of course, I'd say that about every instrument or voice but the penny-whistle.)

To make piano sounds, you'd need something a whole lot more "out of the box" than most of the posts here that stick a driver into a piano frame.

Ben
Footnote: at Bell Labs, 45 years ago, the guys in my department (Max Matthews' group) used to show off their latest violin, flute, and voice simulations on KLH6s. Seemed great. In retrospect, kind of like Edison amazing people with the fidelity of his cylinders.
 
"a ribbon tweeter" will likely not even come close to what you need...

Think about it this way, you will need what passes as a very high fidelity PA system, with the power to back it up. You don't want to *play* it super loud, but you need to have the *headroom* so that you are not clipping the peaks, and the distortion is low.

It's complicated.

I'd try to make sounds out of standard speakers first, or play through standard speakers first with your midi unit and appropriate amps, and see just how that sounds, and how much power it takes (acoustic power, which is the output of the speakers and electrical power, which is the amplification) to sound halfway ok... as in somewhat believable.

Only then commit to this in the piano box experiment...

You don't need to aim speakers "down" if you are building a "dipole" type speaker system...

Btw, take a look at the HF planar ribbon units used by Alcons in their pro sound reinforcement arrays... they don't sell the drivers, but that is akin to what you might aim for.

_-_-bear
 
Companies like Yamaha and Technics have been "faking" it for years; they sell a reasonable number of these pretend items without having everyone laugh at them, so it must be possible to do using relatively normal technology.

Maybe someone should buy a top of the line Yamaha digital piano, and then pull it apart to see how they did it ...

Frank
 
Companies like Yamaha and Technics have been "faking" it for years; they sell a reasonable number of these pretend items without having everyone laugh at them, so it must be possible to do using relatively normal technology.

Maybe someone should buy a top of the line Yamaha digital piano, and then pull it apart to see how they did it ...

Frank

Sure... organs have had stops with names of the whole orchestra for hundreds of years. Yup, can't miss the similarity but can't say it is anything but an organ.

There was a thread about "down the hall" tests (if you were listening to your speakers from down the hallway in your home, would you think you were listening to the real thing?") a few years ago.

Ben
 
Sure... organs have had stops with names of the whole orchestra for hundreds of years. Yup, can't miss the similarity but can't say it is anything but an organ.

There was a thread about "down the hall" tests (if you were listening to your speakers from down the hallway in your home, would you think you were listening to the real thing?") a few years ago.

Ben
Have you actually heard the best of the best from say, Yamaha of late? They do things like simulating the appropriate strings of the soundboard resonating in sympathy when the sustain pedal is down, for example. Their engineers actually wheel in an acoustic grand, side by side with the copy, to see how well it can fool someone. But the real point is that relatively conventional speaker technology is used to produce the sound, and using relatively low powered amps,to add insult to injury ...

Frank
 
Right. Has that "experiment" been published anywhere reputable?

Edison's audience said they couldn't tell the difference either (or at least that's the way Edison told the story).

Let me try to be clearer and I have few professional recollections as delightful as the late night demos at Bell Labs. Not that Hammond wasn't trying what Yamaha was trying many decades before Bell Labs too.

I have no doubt that the waveform picked up by a mic from a piano can be exactly reproduced by Yamaha before too long, pedals, cover up and down, etc.

What I don't think is feasible is to reproduce the sound of a piano in a room using a non-infinite number of loudspeakers, even ESLs, even when listening down the hall. I am not a golden-ear type. I just believe it is simplistic to think the sound of a piano in a room can be captured and reproduced with a regular kind of sound system.

I believe you can reproduce a cello very satisfactorily using a 15 inch Karlson enclosure. Prolly can do a good job with flutes using horns. Drums using motional feedback speakers. Maybe one or another instrument. Just not a piano, not even down the hall.

A tricky part of this debate will come up at some point since the "discriminators" can always accuse the non-discriminators of lousy hearing, in the absence of objective evidence.

Ben
 
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