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Hi Petike. Have you tried Galaxy and True Keys pianos? They compare very favorably with Synthology and are cheaper, per piano sample set.

http://www.galaxy-instruments.com/vintage-d.html

http://vilabsaudio.com/true-keys-american-grand

Ivory II is the original suite of three pianos that most people have. It has a recent German Steinway D, a Bosendorfer 290, and a Yamaha c7.

Ivory II Italian is a single piano (Fazioli)

Ivory II Upright is a suite of 4 upright pianos.

Ivory II American Concert D is a single piano (Vintage American Steinway)

The reason American D is often talked about is that it is Synthogy's most recent and most technically advanced piano--basically introduced to compete with Galaxy's Vintage D, it seems to me. It has been pretty popular. They are all outstanding quality, though.

Notice that if you buy Ivory or TrueKeys you will also need to buy an ilok device. Not so with Galaxy.

Hi Petike,
you are right. I asked similar question to Kawai James and here is his reply
"Some DPs feature 'Line In' or 'Stereo In' connectors, allowing an external audio source (such as a computer) to be mixed with the instrument's own sound.

However, I'm afraid the MP6 does not feature these connectors, therefore it will not be possible to hear the Ivory II sound when your headphones/speakers are connected to your MP6.

My recommendation would be to purchase a small external mixer, allowing you to connect both your computer and the MP6 to the speakers/headphones simultaneously."

So I set up may MP6 in the following order:
MP6 -> Cakewalk UM-1G ->Laptop ->Creative soundcard -> mixer -> speakers or headphones.
I use Yamaha HS-50M monitors and Sehnnheiser HD 598 headphones. With this setup I can play either internal MP6 instruments (since MP6 is directly connected to the mixer sa well) or Ivory II. While using the headphones I connect them directly to MP6 or to the external sound card and the sounfd is beatifull. I recommend balanced cables and a hum killer if necessary (I needed one).
I hope this helps.

All the best,
Romek

Thank you very much gvfarns for your detailed answer. Now I finally know the differences among those four products.

You said I will need an iLok "device" - so iLok is some hardware (what I can physically touch )? I thought it is just some software to install. And if it is a hardware, what is the purpose of it?

ILok is the USB flash disk with the security system which allows you to use the software (basically it is the "password" to your software. The downside of this solution is that when you lose it you cannot run the software. And of course, you have to buy it separately. The upside is that you may install the software on many computers and use Ivory II with your ILok. Galaxy software does not require ILok.

Romek

I didn't know I have to buy 1 000 000 different things to get additional sounds to my Kawai MP6 .

It seems that I will stay just with the Kawai MP6 internal sounds for now.

I fully agree with you :-)

Enjoy!
All the best
Romek

Hello, I have a question how to achieve one specific sound on Kawai MP6.

There is a video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61OzwXZiDo8 with the song Beneath The Surface from Dream Theater. From 3:20 to 3:48 there is a solo. Is it possible to achieve that sound on Kawai MP6?

I tried some settings but my resulting sound was not as good as in the mentioned song, but on Kawai MP6 there are lot of different effects that can be added to sounds and I can mix maximum four different sounds together, so maybe some Kawai MP6 users would know some hacks how to achieve that sound (the mentioned sound seems similar to some sounds in PAD/SYNTH section in Kawai MP6).

Any suggestions?

It would be nice to be able to see and play one of these one day. On paper it sounds very much like what I need, but no way I'm buying one online sight-unseen (touch-unplayed). The Kawai site shows no dealers in Florida for their stage pianos, let alone Orlando.

Big McLargehuge, even if the Kawai America website does not list dealers in your area, it may still be worth contacting the company to enquire about availability locally.

Kind regards,
James
x

As mentioned earlier, the computer is not the only way to add sounds, there are also standalone sound modules you can attach. But for a better piano sound in particular, computer would be the way to go. If you need to hear Kawai sounds AND other sounds at the same time, then yes, you need a mixer, or an amp/speaker system that has multiple inputs. If you only need to hear one OR the other, then you can just move the cable. For example, if you're using headphones to listen to the MP6 piano sound, and instead you want to listen to the Ivory piano sound, just plug your headphones into the computer INSTEAD of the MP6. You only need a mixer (or multi-channel amplifier) if you need to hear both sound sources at once. And even that is not a big deal, you can get a little mixer for well under $100.

Guitar Center says they're a Kawai dealer, and they have locations in Florida. But you'd have to call them to see if those particular locations have Kawai on display. If there is really no way for you to check them out in advance, you could order online from a place like musiciansfriend.com who has a good return policy. Yes, shipping it back if you don't like it won't be cheap, but at least you save the gas to the store. ;-) Plus you can live with it for 30 days to really learn it and see how much you like it, which can tell you more than 30 minutes in a store. Of course, that doesn't help if you can tell you don't like it the first minute you play it!

I would like to ask something to this setup. I googled that "Cakewalk UM-1G" is a usb-midi "interface". I also found that there exist just usb-midi "cables" - is there any difference and can this device influence the resulting sound? Because if it is just a way to connect usb on my computer with midi on my Kawai MP6, I would buy the cheapest usb-midi cable available . Or am I wrong?

Next thing, is creative soundcard necessary? Because I think, I have some integrated sound card in my computer already. By the way, I own the computer "Lenovo Thinkpad T530".

And finally, could you recommend me some cheapest but such mixer, where I don't loose any sound quality ? I asked in one computer store to this, and they were offering me some Behringer with 4 inputs for about 40 euros. Is that enough?


Sorry for my dumb questions , but I am very inexperienced in this area.

I found some even more cheaper mixer Bespeco MIX 30 with 3 inputs for 15 euros. Is that mixer enough for me if I just want to connect my computer and Kawai MP6 to it, just to be able to hear both devices in my headphones or speakers?

I think you can use a simple MIDI - USB cable without any loss on the quality, the UM-1G has some additional features (MIDI through, low latency driver) but these are not necessary. I use Creative external soundcard just because I had one which was dying in the dust on my shelf :-). You can use your laptop's internal soundcard, however, I hear a significant improvement in the sound quality when using the external one. As for the mixer, I use Behringer Xenyx 802 with 4 inputs (probably you were offered the same thing) and I do not recommend it. It is very basic, and I am not happy with the sound, which is of much lower quality when compared with the sound directly from the soundcard. . I don't complain much, it was on sale . Furthermore, there was an annoying buzz in one of the channels and I had to use a hum killer to get rid of it. I don't know if it was the mixer that caused this noise, anyway it took me a while to figure out how to manage this. I cannot recommend anything else in terms of mixers (this is not my field) but I am sure there are much better performing ones than mine which will not ruin your budget
Maybe someone else has more experience in this area.

I hope you will find it helpful.
Romek

Thank you for your answers Romek, you are always very helpful .

If anybody else could recommend some good not-so-expensive mixer, I would be happy .

Hi, I'm thinking about buying an MP6 (over the ES7) because of its large onboard sound library.

I'd like to be able to play GS/GM general midi files from a USB memory stick plugged into the MP6 and have it play them as near as possible to the right instruments. Does it do this already? If not, can anyone tell me what edits one needs to make to the midi files (is it more than just changing instrument patch** numbers?) and which sequencer software you know for sure can do it. Any experiences you could share as to how easy or hard you have found it to get a faithful rendition of general midi files would be useful.

**To specify a unique sound it appears you need both a "program" number and "bank" number. The MP6 user manual lists the sounds or programs grouped into several banks. Each sound has a program number (1-128), and a bank number split into two bytes MSB + LSB (most and least significant bytes).
How do you select a bank and program in your sequencer software?
Can one midi file play instruments simultaneously from any banks?

Thanks for your help.

The MP6 manual seems good at 'what this button does', short on use cases. I wish the ES7 user manual author could be called back from his holidays to write an MP6 2nd edition!

Thanks to HisKidd for starting this forum.

Ratchetmaninov, the MP6 does offer a large selection of sounds, however it is not fully GM2 compatible. Therefore, MIDI files may not play exactly as intended.

There are a number of MIDI sequencers that allow instruments to be remapped - here is list from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MIDI_editors_and_sequencers

I believe the procedure to selecting instruments will depend on the software used.



The MP6 documentation does read like a Unix owner's manual, however I'm rather busy with other projects at the moment, and simply do not have the time to rewrite it, unfortunately..

Kind regards,
James
x

Lol Kawai James, I didn't know, you wrote the MP6 manual

I didn't really...I just added the new features to the existing MP5 manual (which was based on the MP4, which was based on the MP8, and possibly previous models before that), and tidied up the layout a little.

I definitely wouldn't consider the MP6 owner's manual to be one of my pieces - hence the my name is not in the 'Author' metatag.

Cheers,
James
x

I have a question to recording of external sounds. So far, I have played only MP6 internal sounds and when I wanted to record them, I plugged my USB flash disk to MP6, pressed "RECORDER" button and stored the played sounds to the USB flash disk.

In the future, I am planning to play some external sounds from my computer (MP6 -> USB/MIDI cabel -> computer). Will the external sounds be also recorded with my internal sounds to the USB flash disk?

P.S.: My computer has lot of USB inputs, but on MP6 there are many different inputs/outputs (http://www.m-music.at/files/upload/b54_328741e848.jpg):

---------------------------
--USB to DEVICE section
--->USB to DEVICE

--MIDI section:
--->THRU
--->OUT
--->IN
--->USB to HOST
---------------------------

So what type of cable do I need to connect MP6 with the computer? USB/MIDI? USB/USB? USB/MINI-USB (or which type os USB is that "USB to HOST")?

(My intuition says that "IN" could serve to transport MP6 key strokes to computer, and "OUT" could bring the resulting sound from the computer back to MP6. And what is the purpose of "THRU"?)


Thanks in advance.