Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Yamaha P105 potential problem...

Had a P105 for a couple weeks and I’m not sure if this is normal for this model or not but there are several keys below middle C (about an octave worth) that have a strange high pitch sound to them when they are sustained. It’s not the sound of the key itself that is off, but during the decay period where this sound kind of “rings out”. I don’t see anyone complaining about it, so maybe it’s normal. It’s a hard sound to explain but it’s very noticeable and distracting whenever I use the keys even together with others in a chord.

Found this old post which probably describes it better than I did. It kind of supports my thoughts that this "problem" probably isn't too uncommon and I'd be unlikely to solve my issue by returning the keyboard and getting another P105. Was thinking about getting a better keyboard to perhaps avoid the problem, but maybe I'd just be spending more money and still be left with the annoyance.

Here is the post by 80k back in 2004...

"I have noticed that both the P90 and the P120 have a high-pitched ring on the same notes when I am on the Piano 1 and 2 patches (all variations of it). Mainly the F, F#, and G in the octave ABOVE middle C.

I have heard people complain of a "ringing" sound, but I am not sure if this is the same sound, because often i hear them talking about more than the 3 notes that I mentioned. This is a very high-pitched ring that appears when I hit the key hard and sustain it (whether with the pedal or with my finger). I have changed the sustain depth resonance to zero to no avail. It makes my ears pretty uncomfortable after listening to it for awhile. This occurs whether I use cheap or nice headphones, running it through my PA system, or my home stereo, or even on the onboard speakers on the P120."

Based on what you described and quoted it could be in the sampling, captured when the piano was recorded.

Those models probably share the same piano samples.

It could very well be the sampling, but these keyboards don’t share the same sampling. Given the lack of complaints I can find from P105 owners of any kind of issue similar to what I have described, it does make one wonder if my unit is defective. That said, if it is a defect it doesn’t sound like a very rare one.

Can you post a recording?

Note, though, that acoustic pianos do have overtone resonances, and that the looping of samples may make these sound static and unnatural. Moreover, individual hearing is different and one individual may be more sensitive in a given frequency range than another. So what you hear (which we don't know unless you post a recording, and even then we don't really know...) may be totally normal...

Are you certain about this? The processing of samples is different between some models and some replacement models but the actual samples are not necessarily different.

Well from what I understand the P105 is the first in the P series to have the CF3 concert grand sounds, so I assumed the older P models would have to have a different sampling.

I was under the impression that the distinction in Pure CF and AWM did not exclude CF sources in some models using AWM (an earlier thread). However, if Yamaha is stating that the P-105 is the first to use a specific piano source then that would mean the P-90 and P-120 are different samples than what is in the P-105, CF or not.

The P155 features CF sampling. The P105 uses the same sample set as the P-155. Without hearing the actual recording of your issue, I will say that the sample set used in the P-series does have ultra-high frequency harmonics that used to drive me nuts as well. That is, until I began to notice the same harmonics are present on recordings of Yamaha acoustic pianos. Now I realize that it is just the characteristic of the Yamaha sound/string resonance.

Here is an example of a recorded Yamaha grand piano from 1980. If you listen with headphones, you can really hear the harmonics of the string resonance.

http://youtu.be/NPejfpQPRhQ


Now, here is a demo I did using the P-95 and you can hear the same harmonics:

http://youtu.be/8qs22e8Ncu0

Thanks guys.

I can appreciate it could be the nature of the actual piano sound that was sampled. Ringing notes is not an uncommon piano trait. That said, and forgive me because I don't know much about this stuff, but shouldn't the ring exist across most of the keys? In my situation it only affects the octave immediately below middle C. I might be OK with it if it was consistant across the keyboard.

Do you hear it at any velocity or only when striking the keys hard/aggressively? On an acoustic piano, there are various number of strings per key, depending on the octave. Lower octaves have 1 string per key, mid-octaves had 2 strings per key, and upper octaves have 3 strings per key. When each note is sampled, depending on how hard the key is struck for the sample, the strings resonate differently. I'm not certain how many sample layers the P-105 has, but the more layers, the more times each key was sampled at different velocities. In a single-layered sampled digital piano, filters are applied so it sounds soft when you play soft, etc...

So, all that to say this: if you are only hearing the overtones/harmonics at certain playing velocities, it could be due to the sample layers for that particular velocity, or the filter that is applied to that velocity is either masking or revealing the overtones/harmonics. And all that is due to how each string resonated/vibrated at the time the acoustic instrument was sampled.

Thanks.

Not sure how many sample layers the 105 has, but it doesn't matter much to me because it's going back tomorrow. I can say that the ringing is worse when the keys are hit hard, but I can still definitely hear it when they are played softer, but it is much better.

Hi ,
I also bought the P105 a few days ago. I too have the same problem with teh high frequency notes. The high frequency notes are muffled coming out of the speakers. I added the HS5 Studio monitors to it and the sound became worse.

However, with the headphones the sound quality is very good.


regards,
Arnab