Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Synthogy Ivory and N1 - Do I need an amplifier?

Hi all,

To those running Synthogy Ivory... do you run it with an amplifier before feeding it back into your piano?

I have everything working perfectly, however I need to have my piano's volume set to 11 and bump up the gain in Ivory to 10ish for it to sound somewhat loud.

Curious. You have one of the most expensive digital pianos, yet you're using Ivory to generate the piano sounds? Ivory is good, but I'd expect the N1 to be even better. (In any case, you could do the Ivory thing using a mere $500 keyboard!) Or am I wrong? Perhaps you like the Ivory sounds better?

To your question: I presume you're feeding sound into the N1's line inputs? And you're getting that sound from the computer running Ivory, yes? The latter's output level will depend somewhat on the sound card's ability/limitation, but is also affected by the volume control on the PC audio mixer/panel.

Also, Ivory has it's own volume control. I have the older Ivory v1.5 ... it's volume control can set the output ridiculously high. I have it set to mid-position (12 o'clock). What setting do you use?

Hi MacMacMac,

I had the opportunity to pick up 1.5 for peanuts so I took it based on the gushing feedback everyone here has been heaping on it. Coupling that with the fact that I am a computer guy by trade and you could say many of my fancies were tickled on the prospect of this project.

You nailed my set up. The mixer is set full blast on the computer. To get it sounding loud, I set the gain to 17ish+ and am getting clicks & pops & distortion.

I'm using MiniHost right now if that matters.

Are you sure you didn't miss any volume controls hidden in the host program, or Windows, or the ASIO driver, or in the N1 settings?

I don't have the N1 but my Roland does the amplification of the Line In signal just fine and I'm pretty sure so does the N1. You should not need an amp of any kind.

I agree with Bunneh. You shouldn't need an amplifier. (Unless the N1's line input is less sensitive than standard? Who knows? I doubt it. But no one here has ever mentioned feeding audio into the N1.)

It seems we're using mostly the same setup: laptop, Ivory 1.5, and Mini Host (but I don't have an N1)

Ivory has a gain control. Give that a try.