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I finally made the move to Ivory. You might recall that I tried it last year ... but that was running on my work computer. I could not keep Ivory there for long, so that effort was just a try-and-see.

Now I have a laptop dedicated to the purpose. I'm really pleased with it. (It's version 1.5 ... I don't feel like spending a fortune on the new v2.)

I have a Clavinova CLP240, but the sound of Ivory just blows away the native sounds. The difference is breathtaking.

I was able to tweak/calibrate the velocity curve and I got even more benefit. I'm seeing a HUGE improvement in the responsiveness and expressiveness. Why does Yamaha not do this inside the piano?

Ivory's 40 GB installation offers a bunch of piano sounds, each with pre-defined variations ... plus the many tweaks on the control panels. I've not yet tried them all, so I haven't decided which I'll use most. But for now I'm using the "Warm Bosendorfer Imperial". It's very good. The Clavinova sound simply cannot compare. Not even close.

The laptop has an Intel Core2 T5300 processor, 1.73 GHz with 2 GB RAM, and an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive. It runs Windows XP.

It has a cheapo built-in sound card. I can't complain about the sound though. Between the superior samples and the corrected velocity curve, the improvement is tremendous. It's hard to imagine that it would get much better with a high-end sound card.

I use the ASIO4All interface. I have the ASIO buffer size set to 320. I left the Latency Compenstion "In" and "Out" at the default values of 32 each. The Latency Compenstion doesn't seem to have any effect, but the ASIO buffer setting does. If I go a little below 320, the sound cuts out here and there. Much below that it just makes gurgling sounds.

To minimize latency I've shutdown and disabled many Windows services (print spooler, media center stuff, indexing, Java quick start, Net Meeting). I've also defragmented the drive.

The latency is just slightly noticeable. I'd like to reduce it further, but I'm not sure how. Does anyone know?

maybe you need now a sound card that support asio drivers natively

but try to reduce more the buffer, i have a worst cpu than you, and i can low the buffer to 200 without experiencing big glitches for playing with a library like alicia keys piano or the galaxy pianos suite

You could do what I did and buy an iMac i7. Ivory II absolutely rocks on that machine. I'm still not able to get the Bosendorfer to be as expressive an instrument as the Steinway and the Fazioli. I plan to spend some time with the Bosie this weekend trying to get the sound close to the Bosendorfer on the Leif Ove Andsnes recording of selected Haydn sonatas from the late 1990s. My recollection is that that recording is gorgeous.

It's of course true that the costs start to climb when you decide to plug your keyboard into your computer, but it's truly remarkable to me what can be achieved with these machines now. Yet, when I talk to most pianists about my "gear," I generally just get a big yawn. They know, of course, that only an acoustic piano is a musical instrument.

Tried that. Crackles.

This is a laptop, so there are no board slots.
What should I buy and how do I use it?
How would such a card connect to the laptop?

Try a Prosonus audio interface: http://www.guitarcenter.com/PreSonus-AudioBox-USB-2X2-USB-Recording-System-104841978-i1388074.gc#.

That worked for my laptop. Since it has headphones and main outs it fits the bill. It helped get my latency from 11.2ms to 5.2ms.

If it doesn't work - return it! It should help. The Synthogy tech said that the buffer is bigger in the Prosonus and that helps to get the latency down to realistic.

To maximize your laptop performance, you also need to stop any Power Management feature in your system. This will help you a lot. Regarding External Sound Cards, they are standalone devices that usually can connect to your laptop using a USB or FireWire port. If your laptop already have a FireWire port, chose a sound card that uses FireWire as I/O port, FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

The PreSonus AudioBox costs $150, but it's available cheaper/used on ebay.

I was also looking at the M-Audio Fast Track Pro. This one is $200, but also available used, for less.

Does anyone have anything to say about the M-Audio Fast Track Pro?

The Audiobox is nice. I have one and it has exactly everything i want. However the only down side is sometimes I experience issues with the input levels, and I have read the same from other users. So depending on what the typical levels are that you plan to put into it you may never notice a problem or you may be annoyed all the time.

I own NI Audio Kontrol One and I am using it in similar setup. I am using Reason Pianos Instead of Ivory. The product now discontinued and replaced by Complete Audio 6 model. You may want to check them also.

Presonus audiobox usb. You'll surely get under 10 ms latency.

I've found firewire stuff to be weird on Windows sometimes.

Yes Ivory hooked to a $300 Casio and good monitors blows the sound of Yamaha's $15,000 digital offering out of the water... why Yamaha can't be bothered to buy Ilio/Synthogy and put an SSD with Ivory samples into their high-end digitals I don't know.

I had very difficult time getting the ASIO4All driver work with my built-in Realtek audio chip on a windows 7 64 bit desktop. No matter what setting I chose, there was just no sound output. What I want was to play back a MID file with Ivory sound. Eventually I installed Cubase and it works with Ivory I. I am just curious if anybody get the ASIO4ALL work with Realtek chip. And what VST host program do you guys use?

romeogg, make sure that no other audio programs are running before starting the application that uses ASIO4ALL. It may also be necessary to configure the VST host to use ASIO4ALL first, quit, then restart.

It's been a while since I dabbled with VSTs, however VSThost was a very nice lightweight host on my old XP laptop.

Cheers,
James
x

AlphaTerminus: Thanks for the suggestion. I'm looking at a Presonus on ebay.

And, yes ... Ivory is awfully good. I don't know how to compare it to the sound of "Yamaha's $15,000 digital offering" because I haven't tried one of those. But if Ivory's basic set of a bunch (how many I'm not sure) of pianos can fit into 40 GB of files, then surely Yamaha could squeeze just one of those pianos into a piano. But they don't. Sux.

I have tried it. The N3 is is beautiful and has perfect action but the sound is "meh."

i use cantabile lite, it's free and fast

Romeogg,

Well your question is timely -- last night, at the suggestion of the tech at Ivory, I downloaded the ASIO4All driver to run on my Windows 7 64 bit (laptop in my case) -- using a Realtek audio chip. This morning I had my first breakthrough getting my Ivory II up and running using the Cantabile software that came with Ivory. For the first time I got an audio signal of the Ivory samples to my headphones (connected to the notebook), by mousing over the keyboard in Cantabile. So it can be done. I'm hardly a technical expert, but am happy to provide any details you need that I might have. This weekend I hope to get my new AudiBoX USB running to play Ivory from my Yamaha CP 33. I been told I need to disable the RealTek chip (in the Device Manager) and that AudioBox will handle both in coming MIDI and outgoing audio data to my powered monitors or headphones. This is the bit I'm still struggling with (about an hour a night for a week now).

Good luck (to both of us),

Walt Brooks

I don't think you need to disable the realtek chip. In the cantable setup just select "presonus usb asio" for the audio driver.

(But I plug the CP33 usb directly into my computer, not using the Audiobox midi in connections)

AlphaTerminus,

That's a revelation to me! So, you go MIDI - USB directly into the computer, not through the AudioBox, and I assume you use the AudioBox only for the higher quality audio outputs (to monitors or headphones), is that right? That might solve my problems.

BTW, I was planning to write a thank you note to you once I got all set-up (and would be able to report success). You may recall our correspondence on a different thread about a month ago on this subject. So thanks again.

Walt

Yes, for the audio and low latency. You could do the midi through audiobox, I have just never tried it.

Any progress this weekend?