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Gentlemen, any idea what can be done to make my the software instruments in Garageband sound grandeur ?

The piano sound is pathetic. It's really too soft even after I've pulled the volume button to maximum. The rest of the software instruments present in Garageband are hardly audible.

And before you cast aspersions on the quality of my iMac speakers ....Hey, they are absolutely wonderful when I play my MP3 songs.

Never say "There is no such thing as..." because it is easy to be shown wrong simply by pointing to one example. Better to say "I don't know of any..."

USB MIDI Device Standard

Some may choose to go there own way but there IS an industry standard and almost every USB Midi device actually does follow the above standard and can be plugged in and "just work".

These standards are not obscure. Every engineer who has worked on USB knows about device classes. It's "basic".

Yamaha's problem with creating a non-standard MIDI device is that they will have now support it "forever" (literally). Whenever Apple or Microsoft releases anew operating system Yamaha will have to at least re-test their driver and likely change it to work with the new OS. If anew OS becomes popular Yamaha will have to write a driver for it. Yamaha will one year loose interest in supporting their old out of production DP. Had they gotten it right and produced a class compliant USB device then Apple and Microsoft would maintain the driver and we have some assurance the DP will continue to work in the future. One wonders why they've not corrected this with a firmware update. How long will Yamaha spend money on staff to maintain this driver when the CP240 is no longer generating income. Every minor release of every OS requires that drivers undergo new QC testing and then any problems must be addressed.

GarageBand has no claim to be a professional tool for music production. The provided software instruments are merely toys that may suffice for practising or for podcast background music. Those elaborately sampled instruments out there on the market are that expensive for a reason. Try and download the pianoteq trial (though this is not sampled but modelled piano sound) - it sounds way better than the Garageband pianos.

@ChrisA: I didn't know that - interesting.

I wouldn't entirely agree with that. GarageBand is basically a simplified version of Logic and is capable of excellent quality, it's true the samples that come with it aren't the best but they are OK and you can add much better ones for afraction of the price of Pianoteq either using Apples Jampacks (the orchestralpack has a. Pretty good Steinway, Harpsichord and some organs) or by buying samples from other companies like Sampletek, they have excellent samples from as little as 40 dollars.

I'd agree with trying Pianoteq though, it has a long demo, 6 weeks I think and it sounds and feels wonderful. It'll play through Garageband too if you want!

On the poor sound you're getting at the moment it's probably just a matter of adjusting levels in Garageband. There are several volume controls and all will be set around 2/3 by default. Try turning them up but watch out for distortion (clipping) There's a volume control on each instrument track, a master volume at the bottom of the UI and another in the edit section of each instrument.

Some of it is the speakers. Yes they are amazingly good given their size. Whoever designed them was one bright guy to think of using the table top as a reflector. But playing MP3 files is not the same as playing a musical instrument. The MP3 are mixed and mastered to sond good in cheap speakers. Te piano is not processed at all. One inch diameter speakers just can't do much bass. ( For those not familiar with the iMac. It uses 1 diameter speakers that are aimed downward at the table top.)

OK several ways to make it batter...

1) Look at the note velocities. They should range from 0 to 127. 127 is for a note played "fff" and 0 for "ppp". It is not exact but if the note are rangig fromm 4 to 40 that is part of the problem. If they are low. in the editor select al the notes and drag them up closer to fff just to see what happens

2) The piano samples included for "free" with garage band are only of modest quality and are just enough to get you started. Likely the CLP240 has better internal sound. You might want to invest in a better software instrument that can be used inside Garage band. Synthology's Ivory or Piantoteq are two to look at. There are many more. Apple sells "Jam Pack" DVDs with better pianos on them for cheap. but still not as good as the others

3) try headphones. Pug headphone into the Mac. Is the sound OK?

4) as a test, bring up the "loop browser" and click a piaon loop, like "pop piano 12" or whatever and audition the sound. Do these sond better or worse then what you recorded

Note that these are three volume controls. 1) the volume on the track, 2) Garage Band's master output volu at thebottm of GB. and 3) the Mac's system volume at the upper right of the desktop. Set them all to high and see what happens

True - I merely stated that it is no professional tool (while Logic can be seen as such). GB can surely be used as a host for high-quality VIs.

Yes, but that is $40 for one single virtual instrument - this is considerably more than $99 for something like 30 jam pack instruments (of which one is a piano). And yes, admittedly pianoteq is not the low-cost choice among useable VIs - one can get good quality for less than $300 (i mentioned it for it has a trial version).

Unfortunately though, some notes are deactivated in the demo, so that it can only be used to get a basic idea of its capabilities.

True!

When I last checked, it was 101. But there is a difference in volume when I strike the key on my Clavinova vs using my mouse to hit on the virtual keyboard. On its own, ie. without the Clavinova connected, the sound is reasonably clear and loud. With Clavinova connected, it's very soft.



This one I don't understand. Why is the 'loop' for in the first place ?

With respect to the low volume output of software instrument via Garageband, does anyone think that I should download ASIO driver for my Mac built-in soundcard ?

I'm going to try Pianoteq free software later. How do I integrate Pianoteq with Garageband ? Do I need to download some VST host ?

I would rather run clean myself also. You do get additional benefit with the Yamaha USB driver. It gives you much more flexibility by increasing your Midi channels from "1 IN/OUT" to "16 IN/OUT". The driver gives you a Midi grid to manage if you need it. I believe it helps you if you consider using the multi-track mixer that is onboard the DP.

You might want to try adjusting "Keyboard Sensitivity" on the "Midi" tab in Garagebands preferences. You can increase it there, which may give you higher volume default output.

I don't think so c.f. this thread on the pianoteq forum for details - I don't know if it works with the demo though. However, pianoteq also works as standalone program while playing.

You may be right. It's at neutral level now. I will try it out when I connect my DP again.

Garageband is a VST host. However the correct term for "VST" is "AU" or "Audio Unit" if you are working in Mac OS X. Pianoteq can be run as an AU.

Do you think I should download ASIO driver to boost my existing soundcard inside my iMac ?

ASIO driver will not work on a Mac.

The purpose of the ASIO driver in a Windows PC is to reduce latency, you are not complaining of that problem

Your problem does not seem to be audio output as you say you like the way MP3 files sound when played from iTubes.

Have you tried playing music with garage band withou the Yamaha DP? Just click the mouns ooooooooon the on-screen keyboard How is the sound. Try setting key velocity through a range of pp to ff. Try setting all three volume controls up to maximum. When this works then plug in the DP.

Thanks for that bit on ASIO. If you don't mind me asking, is setting the 'key velocity' same as 'key sensitivity' which I can adjust from the preferences section ?

It seems that I can only adjust key velocity when there are already recorded notes in place. Otherwise, when I open a blank page, I couldn't get into the mode where I can see the note velocity slider. Wait a minute, is key velocity same as note velocity ?

BTW, I did also mention. Yes, with the onscreen keyboard, the sound was good. With DP, the sound is decimated and reduced by at least 70%.

Wow...I'm back with my 20-minute trial version of Pianoteq. I've a feeling that I'm going to get hooked to software piano soon, especially the physical modelling type.

I turned on my Garageband before loading launching Pianoteq. I wonder if the sequence played a part in my not getting Garageband to talk with Pianoteq. I couldn't find any traces of Pianoteq inside Garageband, but when I striked the keys on my DP, I could hear 2 notes which are not in unison. As a result, I had to exit Garageband and listen solely to Pianoteq. Without Garageband, the tone production from Pianoteq was so much better.

I think I need to get a new headphone. Any special items that I have to look out ? Is there a difference between headphone built for MP3 and another built for software piano ?

Kind of, Key velocity adjusts the recorded sound, key sensitivity adjusts the signal when recording. Sounds like you need to adjust the Keyboard Sensitivity in Garageband prefs, maybe you need to be playing a bit more forcefully on the keyboard too?

Glad you're enjoying Pianoteq! You actually have two versions of Pianoteq installed one is the standalone that you were running the other is an Audio Unit Module that you can access through Garageband. Sounds like you were running the standalone and Garageband. I mostly use the standalone (Garageband not running) you can still make recordings though with fewer options than Garageband offers.

If you do want to run it through Garageband you need to access the AU and it's quite well hidden! You'll find it somewhere in the edit section of the software instruments but it's location varies depending on the version of Garagband you're using. I'm running 5.1 (iLife'09) on my version I select a software instrument, say Grand piano in the browse panel then switch to the edit panel. At the top of that panel it says sound generator and next to that Piano and Manual. Click on Piano and you get a drop down of all the sound generators available, at the bottom of that list are the AU modules you have installed and that is where you will find Pianoteq 3. Click on it and Garageband will use Pianoteq to generate the sound instead of the sample library it would normally use.

Then you can use "Save Instrument" which will create a new instrument in the Browse panel that you can access more easily in future. You can still access the Pianoteq interface through the edit panel in Garageband.

Hope that all makes sense!

Thanks, BazC.

I'm still on GarageBand '08, so many of the interface you mention I'm absolutely clueless.

Someone in the Pianoteq forum wrote:

- In GarageBand, create a new Software Instrument track. Select the new track and press the 'Information' button (or CMD+I).

- On the righthand panel, access 'Details'. There's a dropdown menu there called Generator. You should find PianoTeq somewhere at the end of the list.

And Yes, I found it ! Bingo....