My Piano sounds great in headphones

[mjmoody]

My Piano sounds great in headphones and like cr!#! running through my speaker. There are some very smart people here at Motunation, so, maybe someone can help.

I am on this quest to do gigs with DP running tracks while also playing live. Over Christmas I got Komplete, and also a controller keyboard - 88 weighted keys - real nice. In Komplete there are four really nicely sampled keyboards that sound pretty good over earphones. I'm liking the New York Grand the best of the possibilities in the Komplete package.

My old jazz gig set-up was pretty straight-forward. I hauled in my amplifier and my JV-30, and I was all set. The piano sound in the JV-30 was really good. It doesn't have weighted keys or anything, but I play the piano, and it sounds like a piano.

For some reason, no matter how I make the equalization settings with Kontakt or on my speaker, the piano sounds like it is muffled or something - especially the mid range. I've spent hours trying to tweak it to sound right - but it doesn't. As an experiment I plugged up my old JV-30 and played it through the amplifier, and it sounded like a piano again - not muffled. Am I missing something?

My amplifier is a Roland KC-550, which is pretty common. Why do these vast sampled libraries sound so good in headphones and so bad with the amplifier? I am sure that the sampling technology is greatly improved from when they made my JV-30, but the sound of the piano through my amplifier is better when I use the JV-30 rather than the expensive Kontakt sound (or any other VI piano I have).

I'm thinking maybe the piano would sound better through a PA speaker system rather than through my one speaker - which is rather low and on wheels, but I don't know.

John

[HCMarkus]

The piano produces sound across the full audio spectrum. You need a quality sound system to amplify it accurately. Try two full-range speakers, in stereo.

Workstation pianos tend to be heavily EQ'd to cut through dense mixes. Your Komplete pianos are not nearly as bright. They also may have a convolution reverb on them, which will add mud in a live setting. They may also not fold down to mono very cleanly.

I have used the pianos in Komplete in a number of recordings, particularly when a dirtier piano sound is called for, but find Ivory much more playable than any of NI's pianos. For live use, I find it hard to beat my Yamaha S90ES. It, too, sounds much better thru a stereo rig.

[mjmoody]

Thanks for the advice. So, any recommendations for speakers? Also, the Ivory is definitely worth it? I've spent all kinds of money lately - but I need a good piano!! I opted to get a controller rather than piano. I've been real happy with my old JV-30 as far as just regular "Bb" jazz gigs. A controller is less expensive than a piano that can "control" and have sounds, and I thought certainly these sampled pianos that are in Kontakt would be better than my JV-30 sound. I think they made that piano back in the 90s - but, at least out of the speaker these Kontakt pianos sound muffled, especially in the mid-range.

It seems that Sweetwater is having a sale on the Ivory II Italian piano.

Will the Ivory II load in Kontakt?

I am planning on having a bank loaded in Kontakt for the Rhodes Sound, an Acoustic piano sound and a DX-7 sound. Then, I have a smaller keyboard that I plan on running Omnisphere with four patches; Strings, Organ, the Lyle Mays Ocarina-like sound, and a Brass patch. I think that would keep me set for most gigs that I can think of. However, I am worried that I will have memory problems, because I have heard the Ivory system is taxing on CPU.

[Frodo]

My Piano sounds great in headphones and like cr!#! running through my speaker. ....

For some reason, no matter how I make the equalization settings with Kontakt or on my speaker, the piano sounds like it is muffled or something - especially the mid range. I've spent hours trying to tweak it to sound right - but it doesn't. As an experiment ...

... As an experiment, find a professional recording of a real piano that sounds great in your speakers as well as your headphones-- and in your car stereo, and in your iPod's ear buds and through any other listening media at your disposal.

Use a real time analyzer to study the EQ curve of that piano. Take a snap shot of the curve (a screen grab or use the analyzer's own A/B feature if it has one) and compare it to that of your piano. Use a multiband EQ to match the curve of your piano to that of the reference piano.

Sometimes it's necessary to "see" what you're hearing before the ears recognize the most important sonic differentials. Eventually, the analyzer will not be needed so much and the term "use your ears" will eventually make a lot more sense. Using your ears can be difficult to do if what you want to hear is camouflaged.

Also, if you've already identified "muddy" as a trait there are two things to consider. The first is to try ducking the "mud in the mids". Start out with 200Hz as a center frequency and go 1/4 octave on either side to scoop out some of that mud. The second thing to try is to give a little nudge upwards in some higher frequencies. 4-8k would be the range to play with clarity and sparkle on a piano. Too much is undesired, but the same effect might also achieved if you try rolling off a couple dB from 120Hz downward. A high-pass filter should do this quite easily for you.

These are only starter suggestions and others will likely have better ones to offer.

[SixStringGeek]

The piano produces sound across the full audio spectrum. You need a quality sound system to amplify it accurately. Try two full-range speakers, in stereo.

The KC-550 is a full range keyboard monitor - actually a pair of them makes a dandy stereo sound system for a small to medium sized club. I can't imagine that's the core of the issue (I have a KC550) but you may need to do some EQ-ing and possibly add a bit of reverb. I think the pianos in Komplete just aren't that good IMO.

For live use I like TruePianos - light on the CPU but plenty realistic considering they're going to be played through a live PA. Also, much cheaper than Ivory. Bonus it is on sale for 33% off until the 22nd.

http://TruePianos.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Download the demo and try it before you shell out.

[David Polich]

Have to disagree about Roland KC amps "quality". Whenever I hear that
someone is using a Roland keyboard amp, my first response is "sell it and
get something like a Barbetta or a York,or a Bag End". Or something
that has a full range. Ideally a separate sub and pole-mounted midrange-high
combo works the best, in my experience. I currently use the Yamaha MSP system
and it rocks for live.

I sold retail for five years and never heard a Roland amp, of any type,
that ever sounded any good. They're all "muffled"..Roland amps will hold
the bass, but forget about high-mids and highs projection or lack of breakup
when you push them.

I could go into the technical reasons for the problems with keyboard amps in general (lack of adequate power, cheap high-end drivers/components,etc.).
But even more important is that any amp/speaker combo that is below your knees on the floor is going to sound dark and muffled. If you wear earplugs (don't know about you, but I do) during rehearsals and gigs, then forget it - muffled is a way of life. I'd rather hear muffled for a few hours than
lose my hearing.

I could count on three fingers of one hand the number of times I've experienced great onstage live sound. In-ear monitors have improved the
situation somewhat (if you or the band or the tour can afford and provide them). Otherwise, just count on live sound sucking.

[SixStringGeek]

Have to disagree about Roland KC amps "quality".

I agree with this for every KC series amp below the 550. The 550 seems to be in a different class though. JMO.

[Frodo]

...or a Bag End"...

[David Polich]

...or a Bag End"...

The first choice for musicians in the Shire...

[mjmoody]

I've been reading and heeding all the great replies to this topic, and realized I have not "checked in" in a while.

I went to the TruePianos site and really liked the demos. I was pleased that they offered the "sympathetic vibrations" that Ivory II was talking about, and they were having a sale. The piano really sounded good on my earphones, so I bought it (while they were still on sale), and it still sounds like cr@$#p on my Roland! I think it was probably a good purchase, I just need to modify my set-up for live gigs.

I loved Frodo's advice, but I don't know exactly how to go about doing that. I don't have a spectral. . . device. Maybe there is one within DP or something, but I don't know how I can accurately get a spectral analysis of what the speaker is doing (I would have to have good mics for that).

Almost all the "high end" pianos sound "muffled" to me in my speaker. Now, I am using the Roland Amp, and it is, basically lower than me (only having wheels). Another thing I am wondering is if somehow the "stereo feed" is messing with things. I am routing the soft synths through two 1/4 inch cords from a MOTU Ultralite. I wonder if somehow the stereo signal makes things sound out-of-sync when the two sides are so close together - as opposed to having two speakers on either side of the room/stage channeling the left and right signals.

The odd thing is that even though all the really good sounding keyboards sound horrible through the speaker, my JV-30 piano patch really sounds kind of like a piano. I would always only use one 1/4 inch out from the JV-30.

So, yesterday I listened to the TruePianos, the Kontakts, recordings of Ivory II, etc. They all sound muffled and garbled in my speakers - but really good in my earphones. I'm beginning to think the selling the speakers idea might be really good for me.

This topic is real important to me - but it reminded me of when the Makemusic team changed the default piano sound in Finale. I have complained big-time to the Finale people about that, but they have just shrugged it off. The default piano sound in Finale used to sound, really, pretty nice. It was a "mono" sound - but it sounded like a piano. Then in the Finale 2007 or there-abouts, they changed the default sound to this stereo piano that, to me, sounds like a "toy." I can't figure out how people can like this new piano sound. I know it's kind of off-topic, but what are people hearing??? This kind of bothers me, because the JV-30 sound is pretty "old" too, but to me, it sounds pretty convincing.

I think I may need some new speakers - but why, with little tweaking, would an old JV-30 piano sound better than all these new, highly sampled keyboard libraries??

John

[SixStringGeek]

Might be your amp.

One more thing you can try before ditching the thing. Can't hurt.

Sounds like you are mixing the left and right outputs together into the amp.

This could be the source of your problem. Try just feeding the left or right channel to it. You may be getting phase cancellation when adding the two signals and that is causing the problem. Or, if you're using DP - hit the "fold down to mono" switch on the master fader and see if it sounds bad in the headphones now.

Worth a shot.

Also, apparently you are not alone in being dissatisfied with the sound of acoustic piano through most amplifiers. http://acapella.harmony-central.com/arc ... 59648.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[HCMarkus]

Any of the full-range powered PA speakers that are now all the rage should do very nicely. I've got the original Mackies, and they sound better than allright, can be pole mounted or set on their sides as stage monitors, and are loud enough to overcome even the most out of control drummer. For smaller gigs, a pair of Yamaha full range speakers augmented, if necessary, with a single Mackie used as a psuedo-sub, works great for me. Hearing yourself thru a nice stereo pair (of speakers? ) really ups the enjoyment quotient during gigs. Another thing is, if your speakers are serving both as monitors and front of house (intimate casuals), placing your speakers a little further from your ears can really help you get a better feel for the room sound. Or you can shine it all and play a Rhodes thru ANYTHING and it will sound cool.

[David Polich]

Almost all the "high end" pianos sound "muffled" to me in my speaker. Now, I am using the Roland Amp, and it is, basically lower than me (only having wheels). Another thing I am wondering is if somehow the "stereo feed" is messing with things. I am routing the soft synths through two 1/4 inch cords from a MOTU Ultralite. I wonder if somehow the stereo signal makes things sound out-of-sync when the two sides are so close together - as opposed to having two speakers on either side of the room/stage channeling the left and right signals.

The odd thing is that even though all the really good sounding keyboards sound horrible through the speaker, my JV-30 piano patch really sounds kind of like a piano. I would always only use one 1/4 inch out from the JV-30.

I think I may need some new speakers - but why, with little tweaking, would an old JV-30 piano sound better than all these new, highly sampled keyboard libraries??

John

The JV-30 featured the old Roland "icepick-to-the-forehead" piano which
was not only fake, but extremely exaggerated in the high end. It "cut through" alright - but it was in no way a "real" piano sound. Real pianos
don't sound like that.

Part of your problem is, indeed, that you are summing left and right
channels to a mono amp. The other problem is, as I mentioned in an earlier
post, that your speaker is floor mounted and you can't hear the highs
well with it in that position.

I would say it's time to get a new monitor setup as many have suggested
here. Essentially you need a mini-P.A. system, not a keyboard amp.

[Shooshie]

This is an interesting subject, and there are lots of interesting opinions. When the Five-piano concert I directed was going on tour, we agonized over sound. After all, pianos sound like pianos, so how do you keep it all from sounding like one big piano? It's much more subtle and tricky in actual halls than it looks on paper. We ended up going with Meyer systems, which had extreme clarity and projection with none of the ear-splitting tendencies of most of the popular speakers and amps. I remember our studio monitors were HD1, but I can't remember the models of our stage equipment. Doesn't matter, anyway; they've got entirely new models now. We used a center overhead cluster with satellite clusters. Every hall, however, was a different story. One learns a lot about halls from touring and sound checks.

The problem with piano is mid-range buildup, from about 200 hz to about 500 hz. With many bands and shows, the piano sound tends to occupy a range from about 440 to 1600 hz, if not an octave higher. Everything else is taken up by guitars, bass, drums, and vocals -- with which the piano is often in direct competition. So, there's usually this little window of sound that is piano. You don't hear the left hand, or even much of the right hand. That may be why some sound systems don't bother to try to reproduce the entire piano range. Just a guess, probably not correct.

Anyway, when it comes to producing the entire piano range, the game changes. What works for vocals and guitar doesn't work for the piano. It's an entire band in itself. Try five of them at once. It was one of the most challenging sound designs I've ever heard. Also, there is a side of the story that starts in the arranging and playing, as well as the miccing, amplification, and reproduction. That has to do with the decay curve of each range of the piano along with the overall loudness through which the sound must penetrate. If you listen to each note on the piano, you can't help but notice that lower notes sustain almost in a straight slope, but as you go up the range, each note develops more of a parabolic curve, until the top two octaves or so become virtually hyperbolic; percussive or bell-like. Making the entire piano sing takes composition chops as well as some intuitive acoustic understanding. Why did composers like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov use octaves so often, especially with added 3rds, 5ths, 6ths, etc.? To test the player's hand-span? To make it harder? No, I think the answer really has to do with making the piano sing within the context of a loud orchestra.

• If the piano is in a quiet room, you will hear the entire decay curve.
• If the piano is playing deep chords in the left hand and melody in the right hand, the right hand has to be raised in velocity to sing over the left hand.
• When you add an orchestra, it tends to mask most of the lower register
• When the orchestra is more than mp, the overall sound level begins to climb up the piano's decay curve. More and more you hear just the tops of the curve, from the attack to the moment that the decay passes under the orchestra's sound threshold.
• As the orchestra's sound threshold rises to higher levels, what you hear of the piano might be described as "whitecaps," the tips of the waves on a volatile ocean surface. It becomes quite percussive.
• Octaves with added inner voices, or even 12th's, produce a different kind of sound that is reinforced and acoustically altered. The whole three-note cluster, moving in a melody, acquires an identity that literally lifts it out of the orchestra's sound and provides more of a singing quality. It's astounding what you can do with this. But that's for another thread, not this one.

The point is that you must plan for the sound from the very first stage of the concert: the arranging, composing, and orchestration. The great composers were people who understood the difference between salon piano and concerto piano. Likewise, the sound designer cannot hope to give the piano a singing quality by amplification alone. If he does, he's going to create more problems than he solves -- such as what to do with even a lightly-played bass, how to carve out mid-range, and what the heck with those bullet-like bells in the top octave. If the pianist is not competent enough to produce Rachmaninov-like right-hand lines, then one might want to experiment with a harmonizer, sub-harmonic reinforcement, or something that can add overtones to the sound. Probably wouldn't have the same effect, but it might help. I used a Waves C4 as an expander to cushion the rapid decay of the upper range. It delayed the decay ever so slightly, but proved to be just enough to take that percussive edge off and let the ear hear it sing. Five pianos can be incredibly noisy, so this understanding had to come early in the pre-production, and we had to re-write our earlier songs once I had figured out some answers to these problems. Also, I had to work closely with the sound-designer so that he understood the problems, too, and responded appropriately to them. Sound design for piano and orchestra or any kind of band is hard enough. Designing for five pianos was simply one of the hardest things any of us ever did, requiring a similar approach from writing the first notes to getting the sound to the last row of the hall.

Anyway, Meyers played a big part of that. If you're really looking for great piano sounds, there are probably a lot of answers, but I can at least say confidently that Meyers would be one way to go that would produce great results in the hands of a competent sound designer.

Oh yes… let's not speak of headphones and monitors in the same breath. Measure the distance from the headphone speaker to your eardrum. Then measure the distance between a hall monitor and your eardrum. Now look around the room. Every object in the room reflects sound, and the inverse square law says that some of those objects will be much more influential than others. No two rows of seats will get the same experience. Period. No matter what you do. Period. Well… unless you want to give them each a set of headphones. There just isn't much in common between headphones and monitors. Every musician these days should know acoustics. Or maybe not; you can go crazy trying to control sound.

Shooshie

[mjmoody]

Thanks again for all the great ideas on this thread. Sorry I haven't been as "engaged" in the forum for the last few weeks, but tis a real busy time with my high school stuff. I HAVE been trying many of the suggestions, but I have still not come up with something that satisfies my ears.

I went ahead and bought the "True Pianos" sounds when they were on sale. I was stupid and just relied on the "headphone" sounds, and when I tried them with live speakers, I was not pleased with the sound.

I thought that perhaps the fact that I am running everything through the ultralite was the culprit. So, I hooked up my old JV-30 and sent the sound through the ultralight rather than hooking up directly to a speaker - and, there, my good reliable piano sound was - running through the ultralight and all.

The JV-30 sound is a mono piano sound - and I don't know if Roland even uses it any more. I think I purchased my piano in the early to mid 90s. I think the "Sound Canvas" may have used that sound for the default piano sound. I remember I got a Roland synth for my school - a newer and more sophisticated model - and I didn't like the piano sound as much as my JV-30. I'm wondering if the culprit is making "stereo" pianos sounds. I have mentioned this before, but the default Finale piano sound used to sound great, then they switched to a "stereo" piano sound in 2004 or 5, that to me sounds like a toy. I just can't believe that developers would like the new sound over the older one. I'm not talking about the Garritan piano, but the Finale softsynth sound.

So, anyway, I have this new Keyboard Controller with great action, but, so far for gigs, I would rather take my JV-30, with the lousy action - just because I like the piano sound, and I don't like anything I have come up with so far.

I am using DP as "backing" for a show choir. So, I am able to hear all my tracks with raised speakers (that are not Roland). So far, the middle range of the piano still sounds muddy and muffled to me. I've been using Kontakt's New York Piano sound with just a little reverb.

Well, to cut to the chase - are there any good 3rd party grand piano recommendations for the Kontact 4 format? I have a nice "bank" worked out in Kontact where I can press one button and get a nice Rhodes sound, another button and the DX-7, then the Hammond Organ, and then the elusive piano sound.

I'm contemplating getting the "Ivory" pianos - but I'm worried about memory issues. Also, I don't think that runs in Kontakt - so I am worried about how to quickly get from a Grand Piano sound to a Rhodes sound, or something like that. Thanks!

John