Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards New Kawai MP6 and MP10 Stage Pianos

I agree with mucci. Get the bitrate high enough and MP3 is absolutely fine for just about anything. Though I prefer 32 bit WAV if there will be EQ, compression, etc. done to it later.

Besides, we're talking about compressing the output of a DP that is audibly looped - does anyone really care how the sound gets mangled after that? IMO that's the 500lb elephant in the room.

FLAC isn't really a compromise, it's just losslessly compressed. As long as it's the same bitrate as the original WAV then it's identical but smaller.

Aaron

MP3 has some serious flaws in the way the codec works (the algorithms involved, based on early adaptions of psychoacoustic processing - e.g. masking of frequency regions etc). In later incarnations the implemented algorithms have been improved (AAC and others). It is already very hard to record a grand piano and capture all it's characteristics in a good way using 192KHz/24 bit audio or DSD. MP3 just messes this up in many ways. Perhaps it's OK for analysis in the computer of looping and stretching behavior of the keyranges, but for listening and judging the tonal quality of a (digital) piano recording it simply is not sufficient. As a listener you simply cannot know if you're listening to flaws in the piano-sound itself, or flaws in the MP3 encoding/decoding.

You Mr. No Loop are making me loopy with your loopy crusade against loopy looped loops.

Nevertheless, I completely respect your opinion and preferences on the matter.

I am a bit surprised you are fine with 192kbit in general. Although most people won't be able to distinguish it in a double blind test, the eyes might see it differently.

I don't know... I don't think digital pianos have yet gotten so good that we are down to the level of detail where MP3-related flaws would be an issue. Or put differently, if you listen to a good MP3 of a good acoustic piano, you can still tell it's a good acoustic piano.

I understand Dewster's frustration, but I see it slightly differently. I need the illusion of playing a "real" instrument to be sufficiently good that I am not shaken out of the muse by unnatural artifacts. I don't care if it's looped as long as I don't hear it as a loop.

What I think is really annoying in this day of multi-gigabyte samples and excellent modeling, is for hardware manufacturers to ration their comparatively low-end premier technology, and expect many potential purchasers of their "professional" products to make do with yesterday's sound engine. What are they thinking - that we won't notice?

You can't capture the (ultra-fast) transients , highest detail infrequencies and 'room' impression in a satisfy-able way with MP3. And that's what you need if you really want to make a good judgement about the actual sound quality of a recording, be it a an acoustical or digital piano performance. I only started this comment, because the Kawai MP3's sound terrible to my ears ( I hear things I shouldn't hear in the digital domain) and I need to make sure that's it's the MP3 that's doing that and NOT the real Kawai sound. If it is the Kawai sound than it definitely is not for me, but I'm sure it's not that bad ;-)

Honestly, that's pretty much where I am too. But no one is doing looping correctly (5 to 10 seconds attack sample followed by a 5 to 10 second loop sample) so I'm declaring a personal ban on anything looped that we might purchase new.

I agree. This DP/MP3 discussion is somewhat akin to complaining loudly that a woman's makeup is slightly smudged without bothering to note that Jack the Ripper had previously disemboweled her.

Oh, now you're really going loopy; don't you just hate those AvantGrand N3 recordings?
http://www.goingloopy.piczo.com/?cr=4

Seriously, be certain of the fact that I wouldn't have started the discussion if there wasn't a major difference in perceived piano recording/playback quality (I'm not referring to MP3 vs WAV).

I'm only talking about the MP3 demo's of the new Kawai's on the Web! My opinion about the sound quality of those demo's . I hear things that annoy me and that are probably related to the MP3 transcoding. Therefore I cannot make a proper judgement wether I like the pianosound of the MP6/10 , or not. The transients are somehow cut/"faded"...

That's all I'm saying. If the demo's we're crystal clear I wouldn't bother to mentioned it.

This is going to be way offtopic, but you started it... so:

All you MP3 bashers, I'm very sorry to disappoint you. MP3, despite its age and lossy compression, should be ABSOLUTELY fine for piano recordings (and many other recordings)!

I may not be a very good piano player, but I'm a professional in audio recording and mastering and hifi equipment. Todays audio experts do agree that, using a modern encoder like the freely availabe LAME encoder, leads to transparent results you can't distinguish from original CD sound quality. The point where this transparency start differ a little bit individually, but it starts at about 192kbit, for many people even earlier. What does that mean? Well, many people think that they can hear differences between MP3 and CD quality. That's in most cases just their imagination, a placebo effect. You can only prove that you can hear a difference if you perform a so called ABX test, which is a blind test where you get both compressed and uncompressed audio randomly and have lots of time to decide which is which.

I once also thought that I can hear quality differences even between high quality MP3 and CD, but then I did an ABX test and was shocked that I had no chance to hear any differences starting with about 192kbit. The test was performed using high quality HIFI components and a $350 Headphone (which has much more resolution than even high end loudspeakers that cost thousands of dollars).

You can read more about this on hydrogenaudio.org, an audio related website with very high reputation and lots of detailed information about different audio codecs:

wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Transparency

To sum up: MP3, correctly encoded, delivers high quality audio that is absolutely comparable with WAV or FLAC audio. It's just not the proper format if you want to process the audio further.

I hope I could give you some more insight into this very interesting topic!

Chaps,

I honestly don't believe there is a problem with the encoding quality of the MP3 demos, and I'm reasonably confident that 99% of listeners will feel exactly the same way.

However for the remaining 1% of you that insist the MP3 compression is hampering their enjoyment of the demos, or their ability to assess the tonal character of each sound, I'll ask my colleagues at Kawai Europe if FLAC versions can be made available.

As a FOSS advocate, I'd personally love to see direct Ogg Vorbis recording on the the MP6/MP10. However even then, I expect we'd still see a handful of posts from folks who just like to complain about everything:

"OMGZ!!!!! I can't believe you are you using the v1.4.0 encoder...that's soooo lame!!!! Everyone knows that aoTuV beta 5 blows the official Xiph build away - man, you suck!!!!

...

Anyway, Rimmer, may I ask you to please clarify what is wrong with FLAC?

Cheers,
James
x

James, we all know that nothing is wrong with FLAC - it's lossless compression, so absolutely bit-identical with the original file.

And regarding Ogg Vorbis - I would like this as an additional format, but not as the only available format - otherwise I would have to reencode it because most MP3 players are not able to playback Vorbis files.

Well, I agree with JFP that the mp3 demos on kawai.de sounds really bad.

I don't know what is the cause, but sound in youtube videos/playing CA models is much better.

I must be the 1% of whiners who complain about roughly just everything and who has MP3 paranoia , caused by the placebo effect ;-)

Things have gotten a little blown out of proportion the thread I'm afraid ; just wanted to know for sure if some 'things' I heard in the MP demo's were coming from the MP or introduced somewhere in during recording/ encoding /web-posting / decoding. That's all..

The questions I had regarding the Ivory touch difference between Roland and Kawai are much more important to me. Also I wonder if the damper/sus pedal is also limited in resolution, as with the CA13 in comparison to the CA63/93 ?

So forget the MP3 stuff for now (although a FLAC alternative would be really nice...)

Well, maybe my ears just aren't as good, but personally I thought the mp3 demos sounded fine. I just tossed out FLAC as an option because I thought it'd be a nice feature.

Honestly, I'm much more interested in how the MP10 sounds when I play it than in prerecorded demos, so I'm looking forward to when I get to try it out.

Aaron

I received additional information regarding the USB Recorder function from one of the MP6/MP10 engineers and can confirm that the process is purely digital - just like the CA93/CA63.

The MP10's implementation is slightly different however, due to the added LINE IN recording support (i.e. the external audio is mixed with the tone generator). However, when the LINE IN volume fader is in the bottom position external audio mixing is disabled, resulting in a purely digital MP3/WAV output directly from the tone generator.

Cheers,
James
x

Hi. Nothing wrong with FLAC at all, but compressing anything that is as short as Kawai's piano presentations seems unnecessary to me in this day and age. FLAC away then, Mp3? no thanks. I'd rather see Kawai sampling the audio output of their machines, so we can hear the whole thing (D/A and all) as it will sound to the owner, by using a decent audio interface then presenting the resulting audio (unadulterated) on their website.

While people insist on using MP3 year on year, better formats (and you've said it yourself, OGG) don't get much of a look in. Stop using legacy encoders and better ones have more of a chance of becoming a common standard. Even AAC has struggled to some extent. The only reason I suspect it's around in any force is due to iTunes. Apple is quite a fan of FLAC, or certainly was the last time I looked. Mp3 isn't colouring anything in a good way, like a record or a tape machine. It's a digitally legacy product that needs to pass.

The reality of this encoding stuff is, encoding audio or data is generally to reduce it's size though (certainly these days) it isn't as important as it once was as far as audio is concerned (not for data obviously) . Even ten years ago most of us were dialling up to get on the internet and compromises had to be made. Mp3 had taken off and for good reason, but it was obvious at that stage that the compromise was audible.

I simply don't get why people cling on to average when there has been better options out there for years. It's almost like it's more a brand than FLAC or AAC so people feel more comfortable with it. At least use AAC which doesn't contain many of the transient loss and timing issues of MP3 (and is smaller).

The other issue people aren't addressing is, there hasn't been just one MP3 codec in use. Some Mp3 compression apps have clearly been better than others (more obviously so 10 years ago). Just look at .AVI encoding. I've been amazed at some of the .AVI encoding that a friend of mine does. I don't know how he does it but it looks very close to what i'd expect from a DVD. Some .AVI encoded video is poor. Is it the encoder? .AVI itself? Maybe the user?!?

If 99% of listeners feel there is nothing different from the sound of the original material versus a 192k Mp3 then that's totally understandable. If you were to put one of these people in a professional studio or mastering suite and play them a professionally recorded grand either analogue or 192khz/24bit then then play them the Mp3 192khz, they are going to notice. If they don't, they're deaf.

So, 99% of people? maybe but it seems a little high... say 95% of people are happy with Mp3's being used to represent the critical listening of a professional audio device. The other 5% aren't happy and i'm one of them.

I get the feeling you are putting my kind in some sort of 'geek' position in your mind with your "OMGZ!!!!! paragraph which is unfair. It's not really flattering for an employee of a piano manufacturer (particularly one that seemingly struggles to get their DP's in the market place) to be enforcing Mp3 as an acceptable audio standard to represent the company's downloadable reproduction of their instruments. I'd expect you would be of the opinion that it's a dated approach rather than thinking that people that don't think it's acceptable are finickity geeks.

If i'm in 1% of the population that think paying for 24bit audio interfaces over Mp3 recording is worth the money, then i'm happy where I am. I think the reality is many many more musicians appreciate the quality of higher end audio when it comes to representing themselves. The professional industry? no question whatsoever. I'll put up with the Mp3's in this situation but it seems a shame to not make more of an effort, and even more of a shame to feel there is no audible difference worth noting.

Regards. Rimmer

I think I can hear MP3 artifacts in the MP10 demos - I noticed it straight away. I can hear subtle "chuff" sounds right at the beginning of the attacks. I would be very keen to hear higher bitrate versions and/or lossless versions. (MP3 is definitely capable of reproducing pianos with very high fidelity to my liking - I am not knocking MP3 at all) I am not 100% sure that the "chuffs" are artifacts though.

Greg.