Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Advice re Ivory II

Hi Guys,

I'm a new member but have been reading threads for some time. Clearly there are some really knowledgable people out there.

On the other hand, I am not very knowledgable on this topic, nor do I think I have the educated ear that many of you have.

Anyway, I am replacing my 15 year old Technics SX PR305 with a Yamaha CLP480. I enjoyed the Technics but really love the CLP480, so not worried about the resevations that some have about quality v cost.

Having said that I have a core I7 laptop that is not currently used. What I want to know is, if I load up Ivory II (using an external SATA drive if I need to), use the 480 as driver and play the sound back through the 480 will I end up with a noticably better sounding instrument?

Hope you can help.

Yes.

Through a set of quality headphones, I think you may notice an improvement (I've never played the CLP-480, only the CLP-380). I like the Italian Grand quite a bit, and it's cheaper than the other Ivory options. I have not spent much time piping sound from my computer into my AvantGrand N2, or its predecessor (for me) the CLP-380 (I traded up to the AG, when the AGs were released shortly after I had purchased the CLP-380). The sound through the Sennheiser HD-600 headphones I have is always going to be better than the speakers I have (in the N2 or otherwise), so I never bother with speakers.

You are fortunate to have an i7. You will be able to get Ivory running with very low latency on that. It works very well in the Windows environment running through Cantabile (provided with Ivory). On my MacBook Pro, which is a core 2 duo, it's a little more temperamental. Windows allows Ivory to run as a 64 bit application, and I wonder how much that helps to improve performance.

Thanks for your speedy response Kawai James. I must say I have been impressed with you responses in this and other forums. You never seem to 'push' the Kawai product set. Having said that, it probably wouldn't hurt if someone did in the UK. we seem to be a Yamaha dominated market.

Thanks kippesc. I must say I rarely use headphones, but that's probably down to the quality of my current DP and headphones.
Those HD-600's certainly get great reviews. If I go the Ivory route I may well upgrade - assuming budget available.

Hello Adro, thank you for your positive words.



PianoWorld (specifically this digital piano area) is the only forum I post on, however as a Nord Electro owner, I often visit norduserforums.com also.



Well, I'm confident that the instruments stand up on their own merits - they really don't need me to sell them. My role is primarily to provide information and correct misinformation.

Kind regards,
James
x

To answer your query in a little more detail, yes, I believe that the sound of Ivory II running on your laptop will be a significant improvement over that of the CLP-480.

That being said, the software route isn't always plane sailing. Achieving an acceptable latency can require a little bit of fiddling around (the ASIO4ALL audio driver makes a big difference), while some users find that software pianos lack the feeling of 'connection' found with digital pianos.

I would recommend just enjoying the built-in sounds of your CLP-480 initially, as there will undoubtedly be a significant improvement in quality over your older Technics. Then, when you perhaps wish to experiment with software instruments, try hooking the laptop up to the Clavinova's line in jacks - routing the computer's sound through the DP's powerful speaker system.

Best of luck!

Cheers,
James
x

The built-in speakers are the weak link. You will have upgrade the audio system (speakers and amp) to make a dramatic improvement. Of if you play mostly using (good) headphones, then yes you will notice right away

But having a few software pianos is good. it gives you a choice of sound. That alone is a good thing even if you use the built-in speakers.

I think the first thing to do if you want better sound is to improve the speakers. Then the next step is software. How to select speakers? You first have to decide on the kind of sound you want. Are you trying to recreate the sound of an acoustic piano. Are you recording and need to hear what's going into the mix? What volume level do you need?

He/she will be using a CLP-480, not a P95.

Cheers,
James
x

I'm guessing you will hear a HUGE improvement using Ivory II (and other virtual pianos) with the speakers and amplifiers in your CLP-480. Your speaker complement is not a lot different than in my CVP-409GP (albeit with different baffling and dispersion in my mini-GP case which may make a significant difference - hence I'm admittedly guessing about your specific results), and I route my virtual pianos back through those speakers.

I've tried a number of very expensive external speakers and have preferred the balance and particularly the dispersion characteristics from the player's perspective of the built in speakers. Yamaha chose those speakers and mounted them rather carefully to do a very specific job, which was not to be hi-fi speakers or general purpose studio monitors.

In any case, it won't cost you that much to give it a try.

BTW, I run a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo and use a 32 sample buffer on Ivory II. There is no noticeable latency and never the slightest audio hiccup. But I do believe you would need a 7200 rpm disc drive with Ivory II. So you might need the external drive if your laptop has a 5400 rpm internal drive. I actually use a FW800 external drive for all my virtual piano samples because I don't want to wear out my piano iMac's internal drive (too hard to replace).

Thank you all

This is great. I feel I'm hooked up to people with real experience and expertise. I'm sure Kawai James has it right - start by enjoying the native sounds and then experiment. I'll probably get Ivory up and running on the laptop as you have given me confidence that the results could be worthwhile.

It will be interesting to see how the feeling of 'connection' with the instrument changes when the laptop is connected.

My thought is that, as I'm still initiating the sound through my interaction with the keyboard and as the sound is still output from the instrument, there should be no difference. The thing that may make a difference is having the laptop in view so there's no way of ignoring the fact that a computer is in the chain somewhere.

But should that worry me? I already know that the DP is not an acoustic piano i.e. no hammers, strings etc but I'm satisfied with the piano sound. In fact I've played one or two poor quality and ill kept acoustic pianos in the past that have sounded horrific, just a mass of uncontrolled noise and vibration with some notes in there somewhere.

With that in mind I'd prefer to play a decent DP to a poor acoustic any day 'cause the piano sound is much cleaner. But, as I pretty much use the DP as piano only, I'd still be a sucker for a really good acoustic grand (if I had the space, money, never needed headphones and didn't want to record).

So, DP with a good action and feel, software piano in the loop if it sounds great....sounds like a plan to me.

You can't compare an iMac's performance to a Windows PC. Of source the Mac can play perfectly with a 32 sample buffer, and likely run a web browser and video teleconference at the same time. My older 2.16Ghz iMac would run eight copies of a virtual piano simultaneously. My new iMac is 4X faster. A Windows PC notebook is not going to do that.

Cheaper than an external drive is just to go buy a 500GB 7,200 RPM internal drive it might cost $80. Most PC notebooks lack a Firewire port so he'd be stuck with USB. Better to use internal drive then USB. A fast drive and lots of RAM really does help.

That said, likely any computer is good enough already with no upgrade. Running with a larger buffer is not that bad 128 or 256 is not to bad and you only need the fast disk if you do very high polyphony.

He said he had an E-SATA port for an external drive so he has the option. Most virtual pianos perform better with the samples on a separate drive from the OS and sometimes with the samples on a separate drive than the piano software itself. I don't know about Ivory II, I've always run it on a separate drive than the samples.

I do indeed have an E-SATA port. The sensible thing to do seems to be to load up Ivory II to the Laptop as it stands and see what happens. That should give me an indictation of whether the exercise is worthwhile. If latency / performance prove a problem then I'll tackle the sound card driver and then the hard drive in that order. Does that sound OK?

Not sure about Ivory 2 ... but I ran Ivory 1 with no problems on a rather modest PC laptop:

T7300 dual-core, 2 GHz
2 GB RAM
Win XP

No latency, no problems.

Thanks MacMacMac,

Sounds encouraging

Hi all, update to this old thread and further questions.

In the end I went for Ivory II but did not replace the old Technics. After some fiddling about getting the a suitable external HDD through an appropriate interface (7200rpm over USB3) I'm a happy chappy. I have a SSD and a esata iii card, but couldn't find an esata iii compatible dock at the time. Anyway the current set up works - sound is routed back through the piano and the whole things sounds infinitely better than the original 15 year old DP sound.

Having stuck with the Technics I'm now conscious that the piano action, amplification and speakers could probably be a lot better. It's post Xmas sale time and there are some bargains to be had, so I'm considering replacing the DP.

Q1 Given that I'm happy with Ivory II and I'm not therefore bothered about internal sound production. Is there a DP out there that has a great action and decent amp / speakers that would be cheaper than going for a CLP407 / 8?

Q2 What DPs transmit midi data that will get the best from Ivory

Q3 If midi allows for velocity values 0 - 127, does this mean that good DP's actually recognise and transmit up to 128 different different values and does this further mean that they can claim to have 128 levels of touch sensitivity.

Thanks in advance. Really look forward to you thoughts.

what are you willing to spend on a new DP?
Sounds like you want a DP with onboard speakers and line-in capabilities to play ivory sounds through the onboard speakers right?....The Yamaha P-155 has pretty good action and it might be going through a refresh soon so you might get a very good price as they clear them out. If you are really action -sensitive- i think the Roland FP-7F has their best DP action and a decent onboard piano and would be a good controller choice under $2K. I love using the VPiano as a controller for Ivory II and the FP-7F has a very similar action. i don't have experience with Kawai's so can't really offer comment. The Korg 250- if they are still around- might make a decent controller with onboard speakers- they are dirt cheap now.

on the velocity- its not dependent on the keyboards 128 midi values, but on the number of layers of recorded samples. Most Ivory II pianos have 16 to 20 velocity layers- which are triggered at various levels of pressure along that 0-127 value curve.

pretty much all DP's transmit midi data using the same standards- you just have to neutralize either the velocity curve on the DP or the velocity curve on the sample program so they aren't working against each other.

Thanks bfb I'll check out those options.

That's interesting re midi and touch sensitivity. I think i partly get it. As I typically use Ivory II GP's German D 18 layers, that means the software is capable of playing 18 different degrees of loudness & nuance based on the velocity of key strike. I.e 18 levels of touch sensitivity.

What I'm not sure of is how many values the various DPs can send. Are all DP's capable of recognising and sending 128 different velocity values or do some only send a limited number, e.g might a low end DP only recognise and send 5 values - say 5, 35, 65, 95, 125 for arguments sake.

If this were the case, then the midi data received by Ivory could only ever invoke a max of 5 of it's layers. Again, if this this is the case, I need to be sure that I have a DP that is sending many more than 18 values so that manipulating the curve in Ivory is effective and makes best use of the software.

Roland HP-307 is a discontinued model which is sold with a good discount now, below $3K.
It was the highest model in Roland HP line just a year ago.Probably you can find other previous year models at a good price from other manufacturers as well.

Roland FP-7F mentioned earlier has all the same features, but is a stage model with weaker on-board speakers and the amplifier, and is cheaper.

There are a lots of models at the price or below Clavinova 480 which have good touch and sound - many of them were mentioned here, like Kawai CA-65 and 95, or Roland HP-505 and 507.