Doing interesting things with electronic keyboards
Provoked into Yet Another Project, fiddling with the Yamaha PSR-6700 Portatone we bought over 20 years ago, for my wife to have fun with. This is a solid unit, quite heavy, well thought of even now, with 76 keys - was top of the range, and was the best sounding of the brands and models we looked at the time, in that type of thing. Sometimes called an arranger keyboard, because it can do fancy backing accompaniments, the one-man band thing ... ;)
For those who are not into such, this is an all in one box, very sophisticated synthesizer with internal amp and speakers. Think of it like a reasonable hifi system, where the source material is computer generated, and can get as fancy and realistic as one wants, especially these days. Even in bygone decades remarkable music was created using such devices - Peter Gabriel's well thought of 4th album, Security, was based extremely heavily on sounds from the Fairlight CMI, an Australian made pioneer of this technology.
As just mentioned in a post, the quality of the sound from this is, Yet Again, dependent on everything - when we first bought it it took days of constantly running it on auto for the best sound to emerge, when real sparkle and life in the music happened.
Was just fired up a few days ago, after it had had a very long vacation, :D, and, same old story: from cold, a rather dead, flat, pretty uninteresting quality - so, lots of pounding, to condition the beast!
What makes it "harder" to get the best sound this time, is that now we are surrounded by vast amounts of digital hash, trash - when the instrument was new we were living in the country, neighbour's take off of mains power was a mile away, and zero mobile phones, etc. I just tested the impact of a very basic mobile phone, by switching it on and off right next to the machine playing, and same old story: when digital muck is close by the sound goes grey, loses sparkle and treble openness, instantly turns boring to listen to ...
Why should there be a problem like this? Well, the basis of operation of the Yamaha, and all of its type, is that it is a digital audio system, just like a music server setup. Only difference is, that the digital signal is being made up on the fly, is not pre-recorded: samples of instrument sounds as digital waveforms are combined right there and then in patterns, and fed to a classic DAC, amp, speaker chain. But once this pure, digital signal hits the DAC all the same old problems rise up, Yet Again, to cause issues.
That everything is in a very solid, metal box, fully engineered by the original manufacturer, helps in many areas - internal cross-interference should be fairly well controlled. And this was indicated by the quite impressive SQ when fully conditioned, years ago. So, I want to try and get that back, using the extra understanding I have gained since then.
Never got there before, but aiming to get MIDI fed from a laptop happening, and make this sound as good as it can. The samples as inbuilt are very good - I have had the unit do some pretty impressive drumkit thrashing - no, not convincing, :), but very satisfying to listen to, well past sounding like a toy ...
For those who are not into such, this is an all in one box, very sophisticated synthesizer with internal amp and speakers. Think of it like a reasonable hifi system, where the source material is computer generated, and can get as fancy and realistic as one wants, especially these days. Even in bygone decades remarkable music was created using such devices - Peter Gabriel's well thought of 4th album, Security, was based extremely heavily on sounds from the Fairlight CMI, an Australian made pioneer of this technology.
As just mentioned in a post, the quality of the sound from this is, Yet Again, dependent on everything - when we first bought it it took days of constantly running it on auto for the best sound to emerge, when real sparkle and life in the music happened.
Was just fired up a few days ago, after it had had a very long vacation, :D, and, same old story: from cold, a rather dead, flat, pretty uninteresting quality - so, lots of pounding, to condition the beast!
What makes it "harder" to get the best sound this time, is that now we are surrounded by vast amounts of digital hash, trash - when the instrument was new we were living in the country, neighbour's take off of mains power was a mile away, and zero mobile phones, etc. I just tested the impact of a very basic mobile phone, by switching it on and off right next to the machine playing, and same old story: when digital muck is close by the sound goes grey, loses sparkle and treble openness, instantly turns boring to listen to ...
Why should there be a problem like this? Well, the basis of operation of the Yamaha, and all of its type, is that it is a digital audio system, just like a music server setup. Only difference is, that the digital signal is being made up on the fly, is not pre-recorded: samples of instrument sounds as digital waveforms are combined right there and then in patterns, and fed to a classic DAC, amp, speaker chain. But once this pure, digital signal hits the DAC all the same old problems rise up, Yet Again, to cause issues.
That everything is in a very solid, metal box, fully engineered by the original manufacturer, helps in many areas - internal cross-interference should be fairly well controlled. And this was indicated by the quite impressive SQ when fully conditioned, years ago. So, I want to try and get that back, using the extra understanding I have gained since then.
Never got there before, but aiming to get MIDI fed from a laptop happening, and make this sound as good as it can. The samples as inbuilt are very good - I have had the unit do some pretty impressive drumkit thrashing - no, not convincing, :), but very satisfying to listen to, well past sounding like a toy ...
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Comments
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Very pleased at the moment ... without doing anything too specific to mitigate interference so far it's finally broken through the quality barrier - the essential trick was constantly running it, over many days, most of the time as loudly as was reasonable, allowing all the capacitors and circuitry to stabilise. Hence the quick follow-on update, this only just came about in the last hour or so ...
Basically this now allows the unit to run at full volume, and still sound extremely clean - the cymbals and drum strikes sound pretty authentic - remember, these are just sampled sounds - and all the layering of the instruments nicely separates, subjectively. Rock styles are very punchy and full, good clarity - even the boring, me-too rhythms work; meaning interesting to listen to - good signs ...Posted 30th July 2014 at 03:23 AM by fas42
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Okay, just looked up YouTube, a few people demonstrating the unit, the best one to get an idea, so far, of what it can do is this - [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDKnFiJde_A"]Yamaha PSR-6700 Keyboard 2 Demonstration Songs - YouTube[/URL]. Note the range of sounds and effects -[I] and[/I], that what you are hearing is a straight capture of the analogue signal, NOT what is coming from the speakers - you can pick this because the camcorder switches back on with noise at the end.
Imagine an infinite combining and selecting of everything you can hear in that video, plus much more, to give one an idea.
Now as regards SQ, how it comes across from the inbuilt speakers almost perfectly matches how the video sounds, on my PC speakers. But, now imagine that running at serious high end speaker levels, near maximum volume, and still sounding as crystal clear - won't do it from cold, needs serious running in to make it happen ...
For a complete contrast, [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4clCUe14kOU"]Kris Nicholson Demos His New YAMAHA PSR 6700 Arranger Workstation Video 1 - YouTube[/URL] and the following videos show what it can do, but the sound quality is appalling!! Just listen to the first voice the chap plays, a grand piano - a million miles from anything worth listening to! So, why is it so bad? Firstly, the camcorder is picking up the sound from the speakers, there's no fudge involved, two losses of quality right there; but mostly the instrument has likely just been switched on, and no effort has been made to improve the quality of the internal sound system.
That grand piano sound ends up pretty damn good when the instrument is fully wound up to optimum tune; it won't fool anyone, but it doesn't sound like the tinny nonsense in that video ... and that's where the tweaking becomes very important ...Posted 30th July 2014 at 04:59 AM by fas42
Updated 30th July 2014 at 05:29 AM by fas42 -
I've been inspired to use this particular exercise as a way of showing how I go about dealing with issues, and Yet Again, the no. 1 lesson is - [I][B]LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR BLOODY EARS !!![/B][/I]
There now, was that loud enough for everyone, ;)? It's a simple thing, but I note that so many run off to their oscilloscopes, and other assorted instruments, or DBX exercises, so that they "know what's going on" - and I suspect their chances of picking up anything of real significance are so close to zero that way ... why bother??
This is a lead-in to remarking that a fancy keyboard makes the job of learning how the sounds change by doing little things, when the objectivists most likely will insist that they don't and can't, so very easy ... it's trivial to make the electronics repeat a sound pattern over and over again, and for that pattern to be as complex as you care to make it - it's a signal generator, all nicely bundled up in a single, solid box, producing acoustic output. Set up a musical pattern, and then hit the beast - not literally, :) - with bits of electrical nastiness, and see how it responds. Since it's a "black box" it's somewhat hard to probe various bits - so, fall back to using your ears!
Right, this all came about because our fridge is on the same circuit as the keyboard - and, it disturbs the audible sound. Not by causing audible glitches, the usual obvious stuff people mention - but the quality of the sound is degraded. As something people can relate to, it's like the difference between using a really 'musical' amplifier, and a so-so one, in a normal audio system.
So, this post is not about "how to fix this problem" - there are obviously a myriad ways of going about that; it's that one should [I][U]learn[/U][/I] to recognise that this type of thing is going on, and therefore something has to be fixed!! Not, "I don't like the sound of my system - I guess I'd better design and build a better amp" - talk about doing it the hard way, :rolleyes:!
Anyway, enough bluster for the moment ... :DPosted 1st August 2014 at 12:03 AM by fas42
Updated 1st August 2014 at 12:57 AM by fas42 -
A quick note just to emphasise that when the Yamaha is in the "zone" - like just now - that it passes the Listening In Another Room test. I've got it running its auto Rock accompaniment with solos sequence, and from the other end of the house it's got the bite and kick of something close to being taken seriously. So, how can a miserable 10W amplifier do that? Well, because it's been engineered to work well, and because I've taken some steps to ensure that its full potential is actually realised in the now ...Posted 1st August 2014 at 01:08 AM by fas42
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Okay, have run enough simple tests to demonstrate that the two issues to be addressed are:
* Warm-up conditioning, and
* Interference
The unit was made well enough so that it achieves acceptable, for me, quality if those items are taken care of - I don't believe in fiddling just for the sake of fiddling, I have no desire to get under the hood and possibly cause problems, by doing things that typically people want to play with - only if I believe a genuine major benefit is possible would I venture further.
The warm-up I can solve merely by running 24/7; and work out strategies for fastest recovery time after the unit is powered off, for any of the obvious reasons.
Interference is the key concern, so I'll try simple solutions first, and build up to more complex approaches, depending upon how it progesses ...Posted 2nd August 2014 at 12:17 AM by fas42
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Have I mentioned I hate software? ... :rolleyes:
Took the plunge, got a USB to MIDI adapter, and brought a decent MS Vista laptop into the fray. Of course, Vista doesn't know anything about such devices, :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:, so had to hunt around for a kludge solution; a good one was found - but there was a lot of trial and error, and cursing, backward steps, until all was happy. Which means, the Yamaha was happy to be driven by MIDI, and so far I'm very pleased with how it sounds.
There are milions of MIDI files out there, but the next glitch is that most are set to drive a General version of MIDI, which the Yamaha is too old to know anything about - wrong sounds come out: clarinet rather than pipe organ! Straight acoustic piano is easiest to guarantee a good fit, and so I've tried classical, boogie piano, jazz - works nicely. The grand piano sound is pretty authentic, does an excellent Satie for example.
The fact that there is an MIDI link may impinge on SQ, but nothing too obvious so far - I'll do some experiments, checking to fine tune this - and work out an easy way to map all the standardised MIDI files to the Yamaha's configuration.Posted 5th August 2014 at 10:47 AM by fas42
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Quick comment about conditioning again - I don't know what the underlying cause is here, whether it is a Yamaha thing, an early '90's DAC issue, or that you have a very complex nest of electronics, digital plus analogue all in an integrated environment - but it's quite severe on this unit. Last night got powered down for a number of hours, about 4 or 5 - and the sound had degenerated right back to toy keyboard quality, the treble was abysmal, cymbals were like a hashy, random noise.
This terrible treble quality in digital sound used to be quite severe years ago - much better in raw gear these days, but still an issue always needing very precise attention to get the best sound ...Posted 6th August 2014 at 11:37 PM by fas42
Updated 6th August 2014 at 11:40 PM by fas42 -
Running the keyboard at realistic volume levels, say for solo piano, works well - but also highlights the strong need to get the interference issue under tight control. Without going the extra steps - at the moment which is shutting everything electrical down which can be heard to affect the sound - then it produces "OK, but ultimately fatiguing" quality ... the hardest step is ensuring an "effortlessness" to the sound. Otherwise, the mind tires of filtering out the residual "edginess" - you lose interest in listening ...Posted 7th August 2014 at 03:17 AM by fas42
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We have a typical cordless home phone setup, and this, as usual, is a problem child. For those who are into hifi terminology, :D, the sound goes from 'organic' to non-organic - lots of nasty additives, pesticides, msg type stuff, :p - when this is operating, :(. Usual solution has been to pull the plug on it, and go back to the old-fashioned variety of handset, just a bit inconvenient!
Since we're talking about GHz signals here it is not trivial to work out a "smart" solution ...Posted 11th August 2014 at 02:54 AM by fas42
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I need a good laugh every now and again ...
I'm learning to mangle MIDI files - the raw source that makes keyboards dance to the tune - so that they actually do what you want them to do - so I looked at a couple of programs, not particularly impressed so far. So, looking around I found this, [URL="https://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Keyboards/acapella-18/315270-"]Decent, free, open-source MIDI editor for Windows: Sekaiju! - Forums[/URL], and it made my day, :D - it reminds me of my experiences with Audio DiffMaker, :p.Posted 30th August 2014 at 05:31 AM by fas42
