More than very interesting, that's totally WICKED! Wonder what Yamaha have to stay in the game?
So the Roland is calculating all this on the fly?
It's the tuning thing that caught my ear on the V-Piano. Pretty amazing.
Years ago I had a chance to work with high level piano tuners, the type who work for A-list concert pianists. What they did was mind boggling (to me). It sure ain't just tuning! So much of it is harmonics, pulling out the ones that the pianist wants, getting the tone right. Harmonic structure and adapting to the piece of music, the pianist, even the hall. Tuning a little "tight" for the bangers, neutral for the more gentle players.
Then there are all the little tools like the alcohol lamps to heat and bend the hammers. It's quite a craft. Now with this gadget a lot of that can be done at the push a few buttons. As long as you know what you're doing!
It's the tuning thing that caught my ear on the V-Piano. Pretty amazing.
Years ago I had a chance to work with high level piano tuners, the type who work for A-list concert pianists. What they did was mind boggling (to me). It sure ain't just tuning! So much of it is harmonics, pulling out the ones that the pianist wants, getting the tone right. Harmonic structure and adapting to the piece of music, the pianist, even the hall. Tuning a little "tight" for the bangers, neutral for the more gentle players.
Then there are all the little tools like the alcohol lamps to heat and bend the hammers. It's quite a craft. Now with this gadget a lot of that can be done at the push a few buttons. As long as you know what you're doing!
Do you mean that a real piano, will sound as an electric one, if it relayed through a PA system?
B.L.
Seems that way yes, the guy in the demo repeated that there are no samples in the thing. I'm rarely as impressed by technology as I was watching that vid.🙂 Although the price is around $6k now, a totally software piano should scale with Moore's Law - I'd dearly love to know how much DSP grunt it takes to do what they're doing. The silver strings thing was mind-boggling...😱
One problem with digital pianos is they use only have 16 bit DACs. The Roland is no different. And only uses 48 khz sampling rate. Yeah supposedly they don't use sampling, but it still has 16/48 DACs so it's limited.
You have the tech specs of all the world's digital pianos? Just wondering how you know they all use 16 bit DACs? How many bits would they need to use do you think not to have any problems?
Not just 'supposedly' - they do not use piano samples. That seems perfectly clear from the vid.
Well, Roland's product seems SOTA and uses only 16/48 so I think one could safely assume everyone else is doing the same or less.
Since piano is one of the hardest sounds to reproduce as it is on CD, I would think a much higher sampling rates would be needed for natural sound. Whether "sampled" or not it still has a sampling rate like every digital audio product. Thus has the same limitations. While this may be convenient for live performance, I'm sure it's pretty easy to hear the difference.
As far as "sampled" or not in the text book definition, the video says they are not using looped samples. Yamaha claimed they weren't using samples with the Clavinova, but at some point they started with recording the piano sounds.
The missing link in digital pianos, CDs, and analogue recordings is the sensation of sonority. Having said that, I do own a CD of solo piano that exhibits very realistic sonority, better than almost any other recording I've heard. Not only that, this particular CD demonstrates a masterful level of preparation of the keyboard.
I've never heard a master tape recording of solo classical piano.
John
I've never heard a master tape recording of solo classical piano.
John
While we're a bit OT, some years ago one of the members of the old Bass List, who happened to be a Recording Engineer, opined that recording Bagpipes was perhaps the most difficult and frustrating challenge faced in recording.
He claimed that the pipes were nearly impossible to record indoors and with such a distinctive sound, most people could hear the flaws in the recording.
(OK, some will say that even recording Bagpipes is a mistake in itself!) 😀
He also mentioned that, if one could stand it, that a good recording of the Bagpipes made an excellent test for any system.
Best Regards,
TerryO
He claimed that the pipes were nearly impossible to record indoors and with such a distinctive sound, most people could hear the flaws in the recording.
(OK, some will say that even recording Bagpipes is a mistake in itself!) 😀
He also mentioned that, if one could stand it, that a good recording of the Bagpipes made an excellent test for any system.
Best Regards,
TerryO
Terry, your acquaintance didn't happen to say why it was such a difficult job recording pipes by any chance? Instinct might suggest that with a relatively transient free sound this would not be the case.
I'm certainly not a recording engineer, but I remember that he was pretty specific and that a couple of the other recording engineers on the "List" agreed completely with his statement. Now I wish I had saved the whole thing, as it was an interesting notion, but I "think" it had something to do with the interaction of the overtones and harmonics produced by the Drone Pipes (is that the correct term?).
Best Regards,
TerryO
The drones certainly produce a very strong 2nd harmonic(perfect 5th). If different drones are tuned to a tempered scale(I don't know if they are or not,I always make a quick getaway) then there will be very strong beating-which may be the sound we all love to hate.Why is this difficult to record? -maybe one of the signal theory experts could explain. The same problem exists on the piano with very audible harmonics from low strings interferring with their adjusted counterparts further up.
The digi it would never produce an acoustic output so to mike it up next to a mechanical piano and compare apples to apples. We only referred to the additional complexity for the digipiano having a voice only through speakers. We could see that creatively even, in studio. In PA there are things like noisy stages and high echo and crowd cheers that would not be a place to really say. A DI might be handier to pick up cleaner signal there and give skewed impressions enhancing the electronic one's position some notches even.
This is utter nonsense. Wave files are data files with proper error correction. Do your MS word files, or your accountants spread sheets stored on a HD degrade? (maybe over decades). What is it with you guys and audio? Why do you thing audio files are special?
Recording bagpipes? Dynamic range. Those frikin things get louder than any acoustic instrument.
To the untrained ear,it might be possible.
In my formal training(Radio Officer),the first and most important lesson,was to "communicate"with the sound.It is the small details, the subtle delicate nuances,that define the character of a signal.If you can feel the sound ,and succeed to "lock" to it,it is a winning situ. If not ...
B.L
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