Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ravenscroft by VI Labs… First Look and Sound

- just an afterthought. If you prefer to keep your DVD player, most of the SSD manufacturers provide some sort of migration software so that you can clone your existing HDD and replace that instead.

I chose not to do that because I'd ceased using the DVD, didn't anticipate needing it and of course a larger more expensive SSD is required if you're going to clone a 500Gb HDD.

Just the job!

- lol! before I forget..(shocking thread-drift but with VIlabs delays it's all they deserve!)

You'll need to transfer the small bracket at the back (inside) end of the ODD to the same spot on the caddy. Very simple to do - 2 screw-holes are tapped in standard locations. It's the bracket that takes the screw that secures the ODD/caddy to the laptop chassis.

Once you look at it, it'll be obvious....

I see. It's my second favorite. Have been playing it for an hour just now. Maybe it can be made better. Would have any suggestion for improving settings?

I'm working on some Chopin at the moment and my settings are suiting the piece really well - it's sweet at lower velocities and cuts through well when played harder. But this can only be a guide, it's a matter of personal taste and YMMV.

starting with 'basic grand' (can't remember the default so I'll list what I've done that *might* be different)

resonance at 10o'clock
tone/colour leaning to hard at around 1:30
dynamic leaning to less - 10:30

- that's about it! You'd have to sort out a velocity curve that suits you.
Lid is fully open (but I think it defaults to that anyway)

Thank you again for all of your super help, advice, and really, moral support. You're an awesome dude, man.
I'll get along fine without an internal dvd/cd player. I'll get a usb external unit.
Thank you so much for your comment regarding the samsung ssd.
I saw that small bracket, that I'll have to transfer, in an instructional page I found.
Thank you so much for your thoroughness in telling me about it.

Errr, As in "Pre Christmas sale extended to Dec 27th" ?

It would be "tricky";
Encourage a rush of a few more people to save $50 - people who were on the edge and probably wouldn't buy at the full price
vs
Put the price up to full on schedule and get the latecomers for FULL price, but not get the marginal ones.

Yeah, I had HOPED that they wouldn't be THAT devious, but we're not dealing with open source coders here; they have a "Director of Business Operations" handling it.
If it IS a mahhhketting ruse I think they will lose BIG TIME if/when an insider leaks an internal memo or e-mail ?

BTW, their 3 pianos WAS on sale in December for $250, a hundred off.
Individual pianos were $99, fifty off.

I have made a promise to Santa and IF VILabs do the right thing with THIS product I *_MIGHT_* ask Santa to reward me in December 2014.
ALL contingent on the Ravenscroft outcome

Or instead you can use one of these with your existing orphaned ODD.

Beautiful. That's very cool, man. Thank you. Definitely getting one.

Thanks man, actually doesn't fit the kind of music I am preparing to play for tomorrow (songs for a karaoke), as the settings make it brighter, but this gave me an idea of how to experiment with these setting.
Thanks!

PS What's great about Vintage D is that it is very low resource intensive and it's one of the very few pianos I have that (with default settings) manages to run perfectly even on my low-end (atom) Windows tablet. Great software.

I haven't pre-ordered this but I do remember reading on their site that it would be released on or around the 14th. Today was never a definite release.

I'm using True Keys, Vintage D and other VSTs with my main 7200 RPM drive where Windows 7 is. They all seem to work fine, however I'm not playing anything complex since I haven't been playing long.

For the most part Vintage D sounds best out of the box. That's one of its appeals to me. Just don't go too heavy on the reverb or noises. You can alter the tone with the color knob. If need be you can bow the velocity curve a little out or in. Otherwise in my experience it doesn't pay to get too cute with it.

There are other software pianos that require and benefit from tweaking much more.

Digitalguy and Dire Tonic (and whoever else feels like joining in the fun),
I have found out a couple things.
first, my Sony Vaio has a 7200 rpm spindle speed HDD SATA.
(I do not know where I had read that it was 5400 rpm. but its not. it is definitely 7200 rpm.) also, it's a hybrid drive. it has 4GB of SSD. (plus 500 GB of HDD.)

next, (and the main reason for this post), my new HP Envy notebook, has room in it to install an mSATA SSD.
the actual physical installation is a piece of cake.
this is the mSATA I would get:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5BRIF8...d=XCKAGI8T7LL0&coliid=I3AKJWEQI0C8JR

to do so, might void the warranty. might want to do it anyway. (can you say: "I'm feeling froggy!!) lol
anyway you guys, would you please possibly give me any thoughts about this?
what I want to know is, if this sounds like a fairly simple and bullet proof thing for me to undertake.
how difficult would it be for me (who knows not much about computer disk management, initialize, format, partition, name), and all that jazz, to do whatever configuring would be necessary to make this work?
if you think it sounds like a good idea, could you please even tell me step by step instructions on how to make this work?
or where to find out how to do it?
thanks,
Chasman

I took some care with my conversion to make the laptop restorable to its original configuration. Hard to say whether I'll get away with it if I need it serviced under warranty.

Which model HP is it?

hey man,
thanks alot for your reply. it's a:

HP ENVY 15t-j100 Quad Edition Notebook PC

Windows 8.1 64
• 4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700MQ Processor
• Intel(R) HD Graphics
• 15.6-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit Display (1366x768)
• 8GB DDR3 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• 1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
• NO mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache
• No Additional Office Software
• Security Software Trial
• 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery
• No Internal DVD or CD Drive
• Backlit Keyboard
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam w/ integrated digital mic
• 802.11b/g/n WLAN [1x1]


http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/E2E34AV;pgid=Z05gRJtWmw9SRpYnCtRgdAhl0000guiUzXgG;sid=aqc1xPvqN6gbxKkVUMIvSSPlWggJUHxmIGbpfaCc7St_BXVrHnbDBM75?HP-ENVY-15t-j100-Quad-Edition-Notebook-PC-ENERGY-STAR-&&rwCategory=-&rwCatalog=-

could you possibly please give me step by step instructions on how to do this?
I'm thinking I would be happy to have the mSATA SSD as a secondary storage drive. I do not care about making it the boot drive. what I do care about is being able to use it to play Ravenscroft and ACD on.

(hey Digitalguy, I ordered ACD today.)

Sorry, minstrelman, I haven't looked into this before and know nothing about MSata. I'd expect there to be some info out there which will help. At a guess, if the laptop is designed to take such an accessory then I'd expect the fitting to be simple. Not sure about how easy it is to configure but if you're not planning to make it a boot drive it should be plain sailing.

oh cool. thanks man.

my understanding is that the physical installation of the card (maybe its called a card),
whatever, the mSATA SSD gizmo, is a piece of cake.
what concerns this old caveman technology level dude (hahahahaha),
is the configuring stuff. I've jumped through many a hoop in my day, with this computer stuff.
I do need step by step instructions for anything of any complexity.
I'm reading and studying........

You an almost certainly get those details from HP Support.
Chances are they have a LOT more info there that we do here.

Here is ONE known problem, probably a good idea to check your laptop model/serial # against the list;
http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/mostViewedDisplay?javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.prp_efb5c0793523e51970c8fa22b053ce01=wsrp-navigationalState%3DdocId%253Demr_na-c03770681-3%257CdocLocale%253Den_US&javax.portlet.tpst=efb5c0793523e51970c8fa22b053ce01&sp4ts.oid=5298038&ac.admitted=1392465829544.876444892.199480143

If that link doesn't work because of how I got to it try googling
"hp laptop msata support"

Thank you very much.
I thought about calling HP support.
But then I thought that they would just tell me it would void the warranty.
Not so impressed with HP support, so far.
To the extent that, I figured I'd do better asking you guys.
No worries.
I'll get there somehow, some way.

No need to call, you can search their site.

BTW, re mSATA:
It is the slot type that most laptops use for WiFi, so if someone wanted to add an mSATA SSD and could give up wireless communication they could use that slot.
Unacceptable for the general purpose laptop that has to do multiple duty for web, e-mail, etc., but it could work for a DEDICATED music machine.