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Hi, all you digital piano experts. I'm hoping someone out there can help me with a headphone problem.

First, I confess I'm mostly an acoustic player. BUT, I'm in a condo and therefore much of the time I needed to be able to play silently (through headphones).

SO, I got a Yamaha "Silent Piano". (If you're not familiar with this, it's an acoustic piano the sound of which can be shut off with the pull of a handle. The flip of a switch converts it to digital. It has no speakers. The digital component can only be heard through headphones.)

I have Bose noise-cancelling headphones. When I play 1 or 2 notes at the same time it sounds fine. When I'm playing 5 or 6 note chords, it sounds fuzzy. The same holds for the low-quality Yamaha headphones that came with the piano.

Is this problem a function of not having fancy enough headphones? If so, would the problem go away with high-end Sennheiser or other high-end phones?

If not, what do y'all think might be wrong? (The piano, a 5'8" C2 grand, is new and under warranty, so if the problem is in the instrument, then they 'sposed to fix it free.)

Thanks in advance for a reply!

try to connect the lineout fom your piano to a hifi and see if the fuzzy result is still there, if it is then it is a problem with the sound module of your slient piano, otherwise it is a problem with the headphone output of your piano.

if you don't have a hifi at home you can just connect your headphone to the lineout directly for testing, it is just to test the quality of the sound module.

probably not a problem with heaphone

Don't use noise-cancelling headphones, they're not created for high quality sound. To cancel noise they filter out most of the highs and lows. Get decent studio headphones AKG K240, Sennheiser HD-280 or Sony mdr 7506 at around 100$ not necessary high end which is way more expensive and not really required.

I can't say whether your instrument might have an audio problem that requires repair or not, but I can say a lot about headphones in general. I had the so called Professional Studio Sony MDR 7506's that sell for around $99 but they sounded thin and artificial to my ears. They give digital pianos a very unnatural sound that's just bad. Very bad. The best ones I have and use every day are the Sennheiser HD600's. They are open backed and give the digital piano a very natural sound that blends in with ambient noise of the room so you feel like you're actually playing at a piano. The bass is deep and full, and the highs really sing. It's the most natural digital piano sound I have ever heard through headphones. I don't know if the cheaper Sennheiser's are the same, but I kind of doubt it. The 600's were the best $400.00 I ever spent for audio equipment. And when you're all done playing the piano you can go listen to your classical CD's with the HD600's. Absolutely stunning live sounding performance. Highly highly recommended. Go ahead and treat yourself. You'll absolutely love them.

Hello,

I,ve too experienced the same with my dp. I think it's some kind of intermodulation distortion. When using akg66 headphones sometimes i hear that fuzzy or ringing unnatural sound in chords. A friend of mine lent me his sennheiser hd595 and it sounded much better, but didnt dissapear completely. I'm investigating if there are better headphones in this regard that doesnt cost and arm and a leg, but reading hifi forums is givin me headaches!

If anybody heard the same that the op and I are describing and found headphones that solved it please, pretty please tell us the model.

Carlos

You can just connect your headphone to the lineout directly for testing, it is just to test the quality of the sound module.

First--thanks, everyone, for your suggestions! Plugging the Bose phones into one of thse Bose CD players did not produce fuzziness, even when multiple notes are played by the pianist on the CD (in this case, the mostly unknown jazz monster Mike Wofford).

I plugged again into the piano and again hear clarity with single notes but fuzziness when multiple notes are played. It might be the piano. I'm going to go to the dealer. They won't have a "Silent Piano" on the floor for me to plug into, but they should have a Yamaha digital with identical specs to the digital component of my piano. I'll let y'all know what comes of this.



I'm not an audiophile (and indeed admit to only playing the digital component of the piano because I have to for the neighbors' sake). Thus, I'm ignorant.

I would have thought that plugging my headphones into the receptacle meant for headphones would have been "the lineout directly" but it sure sounds like that's not so. Where do I plug in to get "the lineout directly" if not into the little hole marked "phones"? (The digital component of Yamaha's "Silent Piano" has very few controls--just a volume switch, an on/off switch, a reverb switch, two openings for headphones, and a place to plug in the cord that plugs the system into the wall socket for power. I think that's all there is.) 'Sounds like I'm missin' something here, ankaka. What is it? Thanks in advance for a reply.

I use the Bose headphones and they sound fine, even with the fullest chords I can possibly play.
Also, I believe that the noise cancellation works not by filtering out the highs and lows but by cancelling certain frequencies that are heard by the microphones in the headphones. I've tried a number of different headphones, noise cancelling and not, and my Bose QC-15s are consistently the best. In my situation, especially, since I live close to a flour mill which has some loud blowers which drone away 24/7, it's nice to have the headphones that cancel out the mill noises.

Given that the stock Yamaha phones are producing the same problem as the Bose phones and you're not having this problem with your Bose phones, it's starting to sound like the problem may be in the digital component of the piano.

What digital piano are you playing, leemax?

Maybe the headphones are clipping? Did you try putting volume lower?

When I was shopping around for headphones I asked two guys, one a personal friend and owner of a well known and established studio in Philadelphia, and another who is well known here in the Netherlands in audio, what they recommend. Both suggested Beyer 770's.

I didn't take their advice but these guys are professional and that was their choice.

I don't know what clipping is, but even with the volume low, there's a fuzziness when multiple notes are played.

I should add the following: when all the chord tones are well into the treble, the fuzziness completely disappears and the sound is clear as a bell. And yet, when I move into the mid range--even into areas where there is no muddy sound at all on the acoustic piano--the fuzziness is audible.

Sounds like a technical problem. But if you don't know what clipping is I don't know where to start

Clipping = distortion from sending something more signal that it can handle.

Since clipping can happen at different points along a signal chain, it is not necessarily tied to high output volume.

I have a Celviano AP-620.

OK--I go to the dealer. He sets me up with a Yamaha Disklavier, the digital component of which is purportedly just like the digital part of my "Silent Piano." Again, with multiple notes particularly as I reach mid range, there is less clarity. As the same thing happened with 2 unrelated headphones (Yamaha stock phones and Bose noise-cancelling phones), it sounds like the problem is either the limits of the current digital piano technology and/OR better headphones are needed to get rid of much of the problem, as someone said above.

Bottom line: sounds like time to bend over, take out the check book, and get the Sennheiser (spelling?) $350 phones. I'll wait before buying them to see what else y'all have to say. If nothing points me in a different direction, I'll order the fancy phones next week. Then I'll let y'all know what the outcome is. Thanks again, everyone!

Ooops. I forgot one important thing. The dealer claims that if I get headphones with a built in 1/4" jack (vs. an 1/8" jack with an added converter to fit the 1/4" hole) I'll get better sound. IS THAT REALLY TRUE?

No.

Thanks, Dave. It didn't sound right. I'm guessing it must have been something ELSE besides this issue that made one set of headphones sound better than another.

Maybe it's time for me to order the Sennheiser and just pay the big bucks, huh?

Headphones for professional use tend to use 1\4" plugs. As long as you're still looking for headphones consider one more property, the ability to easily replace damaged cables\plugs. I bought three sets of headphones this year and the cables for all of them can be easily replaced.