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Good one! Beatles used it in 'I am the Walrus'!
It's a keeper!

Very Stevie Wonder!
Maybe a bit much of the reverb thing, I like it dry!
Thanks for another gorgeous patch!

How did you get this idea????

Great settings , however I need to give you a quick lecture on these old instruments!
The clavichord was the predecessor of the harpsichord. It had a single keyboard and sounded of course very different from the twin-keyboard harpsichord.

You're quite right, mixing and blending the name of a clavinet with a harpsichord does not render a clavichord, especially since that voice doesn't even exist in the CA93/C63 soundlist. It does render something else (you'll hear about that one later), but I'd better call it a day for now!

Hi TAD, since the Bechstein last week you're going with 9 new settings in one single week!!! As someone said before: "Man, you are a machine!!! "
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to try all of them, but I'm impatient to take a time very soon...

Since I've the TAKE EX TO THE MAX heavy touch version in the "autoload" (1-10 User Memory) I like it every time even more: this setting have an incredible playability from pp to ff entire range, very good dynamics and tone colors, enough deep bass, "clean" mid and high tones (it makes me to remember dewdrops rolling out of a petal), no "Yamaha bells" , and you can get "soft mellow" sound in pp, and progressively growing to "soft bright" and "studio-like" sound in f-ff ...

This setting is one of the best setting to me. If I should choose, this setting would be one of my top 3 and it's a very nice christmas gift, thanks TAD once again

I would say the previous versions is not for everyone because the p-pp playability is not the best, indeed. But this setting have a very beautiful sound, and what it is very funny is you can get a nice wooden soundboard resonant effect as more as you play f-ff.

I'm still impatient to play "with" this R2.2 new beast

@TAD, thank you, very nice and fresh sounding patches. But you know what - I still love your original "good old" Steinway patch the most! That's what I play most of the time without headphones. With headphones on I usually just take the original single layer Concert Grand with some additional reverb.

You're welcome! Yes, I remember, that Steinway patch was love at first sight for you. It's nice to see that the huge amount of diversity in sound signatures offered now makes every individual make his/her own personal choices.

By the way, just curious: is the Steinway just too much for your headphones or do you experience a fundamental difference in perception compared to playing live?

You're welcome, just take your time to digest all those new and spicy harmonics and report back to us whenever you like.

Thanks, I guess it's your 'fault', look what happened (just kidding), and there's more upcoming (not kidding).

I like the somehow much improved richness and a little bit less brilliant sound character of the Steinway and the way the resonance is sounding through the loudspeakers (remember I have a CA63, maybe that's different with CA93's soundboard). It adds a lot to the otherwise more "neutral" (not really thin) sound. By using headphones, it's, like you said, a little bit too much. So you can see, the perception of sound is quite a bit different depending on using headphones or loudspeakers.

Agree, too much for my headphones (B&W P5) anyway, I play mostly live - friendly neighbour . The Shigeru or EXmax (brilliant patch!) work best for me when playing with headphones.

Mucci and Pinipon (and others of course), at occasion, I would really like to have your view on the new Ambient Steinway Experience R1.0. I'm starting to really appreciate it, a bit less muffled than the Steinway Grand Devotion, but still with the richness and acoustic subtlety, so much a feature of the Steinway GD.
Mind you, I use the Finger Nylon Gt (CA-93) but I doubt it makes a big difference with the Pick Nylon Guitar.

TAD 'The Machine' is doing a fantastic job, isn't he, the guys at Kawai owe you a few beers I guess (why not a Shigeru if they're generous!)

My Grand Piano Top favourites so far in order:

* Steinway Grand Devotion R.2.1 (for live pure classical pieces)
* Take the Ex to the Max R1.0 - heavy touch (half open lid): as an all round versatile Grand (Classical and Modern repertoire)
* Ambient Steinway Experience R1.0: Try it!
* Warm & Fuzzy Fazioli R2.2: ever played Debussy's Clair de Lune on it? Beautiful.
* Shigeru Kawai R2.1 Heavy Touch: much deeper after latest update
* Brutal Bösendorfer R2.2: better than ever but still not my favourite, too aggressive. But it should be different so that's cool.

Helloo Kawai: I need more preset space!!
Last night I was dreaming of Kawai-Ipod/Ipad USB compatibility and a small app to store and load the presets! How nice would that be!

Keep them coming TAD!

Regards,
Jasper

Most of the time I am practising at night with headphones and I find all layered patches unacceptable because of the phasey sound produced in the headphones.

From time to time I play on speakers and I have experimented with TADutchman's patches and it's kind of fun That's say 10% of the time and mostly for the sake of change. As mucci, I prefer the Steinway patch but it depends on the music I am playing.

However, in the other 90% of the time (and regardless of whether I am playing with headphones or speakers), I use the default Concert Grand sound with all settings and parameters with their default values including "normal touch", with the exception of tone set to "mellow 2", stretched tuning set to "wide" and reverb set to "hall 2". As you may know, I used to play with heavy touch because of too harsh velocity jumps, however I realized the better way for fixing that is to switch tone to "mellow 2" instead of using heavy touch.

I have a few questions:
1. What headphones are you using?
2. Do you use an external headphone amp or else do you use low/high impedance settings?
3. Where does the phasey sound come from in your opinion? E.g. it can hardly be the voice layering itself in case of the layered Steinway patch, as there is a volume ratio of 9:1 between the mellow grand and the picked nylon gt (CA63). Simple test: go to single voice mode by leaving out the picked nylon gt. Do you still hear phasing?

My headphones are very humble and cheap Sony MDR-XD300. Maybe I'll upgrade them in future with AKG or Sennheiser.

Regarding the phasey sound, I can't tell you exactly if it is indeed a difference in the sound phases. I can't hear it immediately when playing tone by tone and if I listen to the sound specifically. However when I begin playing real music I get the persistent sensation as if two instruments are being played in unison but rather incongruous. Well, two instruments are indeed being played in unison and that's what layered sounds are But in that case it's rather unpleasant (I am talking about the layered patches which pretend to produce a single piano tone, not piano-pad types and so on). That's not the case with speakers where layered sounds seem OK. And I am able to detect that even on the Steinway patch, despite it having a guitar sound in 1/9 ratio to the piano sound. It may be my headphones though. It would be interesting if other people can detect anything like that with their headphones.

In any case, TADutchamn, I don't want to criticize your patches They are great and as I said it's fun to play with them Keep on doing your great work!

No Cybergene, the layered sounds are all very unison in my case, but I do turn the main volume down to 3,5 when playing on headphones.
Maybe my ears are less developed!

Many inventions actually originate from making a mistake first. Although I don't expect Christofori to have invented the pianoforte by coincidence, for the CA93/CA63 I did!


BARTOLOMEO CRISTOFORI - 1700 PIANOFORTE R1.0

Dual Voice: Clavi, volume 4 + Harpsichord 2, volume 6

1 Basic Settings
1 - 3 Tone control: low +3, mid +6, high +3
1 - 7 Tuning: 427 Hz (min. value, should probably be 417/415 Hz or even lower)

2 Virtual Technician
2 - 1 Voicing: dynamic
2 - 5 Touch: heavy+ (closed lid), heavy (half open lid), normal (open lid)
2 - 6 Temperament: meantone

3 Key Settings
3 - 4 Layer dynamics: 7

Reverb: Stage

Effects: none

.. I can't believe

I already not use the default settings since more than 6 months... I don't remember how it sounds , I'm always playing with dual voices

Hi CyberGene,
I play 60% of time with headphones: I'm using AKG 701 directly plug in the instrument. I only need to set 1-5 Phones vol. = high and don't need to change the master volume [4.5 to 5] when I'm playing with speakers.

Regarding the phasey sound, it's normal you detect both voices in some patches, but you have to hear the overall sound together... keep in mind the main target is to produce a completely new piano sound IMHO much more beautiful than the default settings. Of course, everyone is free to keep their own settings, but I'm sure you will find a good patch to your taste... maybe you could use the Random Preset Generator

For instance, what do you think about the CLASSY KAWAI RX-7 and the GOOD OLD VINTAGE GRAND settings

Right, same here for some patches, but detecting two voices (possible for the Steinway attack transient in the duplex scale if you listen VERY carefully) and hearing phasing for all patches can be two different things and i.m.h.o. it's weird that CyberGene is experiencing almost the exact opposite:

I cannot prove that it's the headphones used, but I have owned at least three pairs of shitty Sony headphones myself in the past, so it's quite hard for me to stay objective when I hear the name Sony, while I'm sure they also build some high-end stuff.

By the way, there are only a few of my patches that, when really pushing it, can drive my HD595s (low impedance setting) to the limit at acoustic grand level (don't try this at home if you want to keep using your ears in the future). So, in practice, I have no headphone issues at all, they sound great!