Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How loud should the DP be to simulate a grand piano?

Since you asked .... upon reading the OP, it can reasonably be blamed upon "My teacher" for the recommendation they made sometime around last September. Given that timeframe others may prefer to blame the Russians.... be that as it may, I find the subsequent tangents onto - for instance - the nuances of mechanical versus electronic soundwaves / dB levels / requisite measuring devicess / power efficiencies and such, interesting and educational........... after all, how many piano enthusiasts does it take to change a volume control of a DP so it matches a Grand AP? 🎶😎

The musicians' guide to decibels says:

How Decibels Apply to Music and Sound
In music, decibels are a measurement of Sound Pressure Level (SPL). When we say the speakers at a rock concert are playing at 110dB, what we really mean is that they’re playing at 110dB SPL.

Since the decibel is only a ratio, 110dB is actually a comparison to a different number: 0 SPL.

0 SPL is the standard air pressure level of the atmosphere (20 micropascals). It is generally accepted as the lowest threshold of human hearing, and it is the reference point by which all other sounds are compared against.

Which is really interesting, but it suggests that dB, when used for acoustics is always dB SPL. So why the difference between the labelling of the two columns?

It seems to me that column two is a peak (or instantaneous) level and one is some other unspecified volume unit. But that doesn't account for the difference between 'dB' and SPL dB'.

Decibels don't matter, as hearing is logarithmic and perception is entirely relative. My DP never matches a grand at any volume setting, it is much quieter.

Among the variables for consideration, dBs are often referencing a ratio of power levels such as volts like milivolts or watts or miliwatts aka dBm. When it comes to efficiency of speakers / monitors, it requires power (volts/current/power in the amplifier being delivered or driven into the speakers as a load) to set into motion the soundwaves "spl" energy leaving the speakers and ultimately reaching human ears.

I find it oddly interesting the HEAR website indicates " normal conversation" and "normal piano practice" generally produce the same range of sound energy. Granted, either can be anywhere from pleasing to noisy sound but either way I would have guessed the latter produces distinctly louder sound.

This is an interesting thread. It's something I have been thinking about often. IMHO all digital pianos should have some kind of mark at the volume knob, or a default number or setting if the volume regulation is digital, to signify that this is the 'default-as-it-is-intended-to-sound-like-a-real-piano' setting. This would be harder to do with the headphone jack I suppose. But often when I play with digitals or VSTs and then proceed to play on a real grand, I find that the real instrument sounds very different in terms of its loudness and volume. It would be great if manufacturers/sound engineers would give us this 'default' setting. But then, I am always confused about volume anyway. When a VST offers several knobs about this (like the Acousticsamples VSTs that have like three or four different settings) I have no clue how to get it right. Same goes for the other UVI pianos, I could never get them to feel right in terms of getting the relationship right between velocity, sensitivity and whatever the other settings are called.

My fault. I came across the thread and posted in it. My apologies if that was a breach of site etiquette.

Depends which country you're in. Some folks are considerably louder in their 'normal' conversation than other

Depends which country you're in. Some folks are considerably louder in their 'normal' conversation than others

Just search YouTube for someone sitting next to his acoustic piano talking then playing while recording both with his camera microphone. The difference is obvious.

I tested my 3 pianos under everyday playing conditions - they all clocked-in around 75-85 decibels . I used a sound meter from Amazon and 3x sound metering apps on my iPhone. My pianos: Kawai upright, Hardman-Peck console and FP-30 digital piano.

Initially I tested the sound because I wanted to make sure my headphones weren't too loud (using Pianoteq). My headphones at a comfortable level clocked-in around 65-75 decibels. To me this is almost equivalent in sound to the 75-85 decibels from the acoustic pianos or FP-30 speakers. When I brought the headphone volume up to 75-85 decibels, I found them to be too loud. My headphones: Samson SR850, AKG 240 Studio and Sony MDR-7506.

Notes:
I get some ear-fatigue with headphone sound. I can play/listen to music for about an hour with the headphones at 70-80 decibels, before I start to feel some ear-fatigue. 60-70 decibels, seems to be a good headphone volume for me. At 50-60 decibels listening on headphones is effortless. In quieter environments, I much prefer 50-60 decibels and I let my ears adjust.

(I also switched from the Sony MDR-7506 to the Samson 850s and finally the AKG 240 Studio headphones which helped alleviate a lot of ear-fatigue)

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My fault. I came across the thread and posted in it. My apologies if that was a breach of site etiquette.
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Duke, I sincerely thank you for having resurrected this thread that I otherwise was not aware of. As far as breaching etiquette, whatever it entails I suspect and hope that someone genuinely giving new life to an old thread is as welcome as someone sniping about the resurection.

Peace.

Yes, of course. Sometimes a thread from many years ago turns up agan like the TARDIS. It's good to glimpse the long view.

A very good point. People get caught up in amplifier Watts RMS specs and dealers find it easy to suck them in. The more important spec is Headroom.

*chuckles* You may think that your DP is "loud" at 50% volume but put s/o next to it that plays the flute and you suddenly realize just how much oomph it misses in order to properly compete.

I have my VST wired into 2 large 3-way floorstanding speakers, sitting behind a consumer Amp (130W per channel @ 4 Ohm) and I have to crank it up to - 5 dB (almost full scale) in order to be heard next to my mothers flute.

My comments will apply mainly to practicing, rather than amplifying DP for an audience, but some of these concepts will carry over.

Imo your ears may well be a better judge of whether the DP sound level is right than a sound pressure level meter. Let me explain why:

1. Speakers are far more directional and so their direct sound is louder relative to their reverberant sound. With an acoustic piano, more of the energy that reaches your ears arrives via reflections (via the "reverberant field). So assuming they are aimed at you, speakers will tend to sound more "in your face" for a given SPL meter reading, and "more in your face" will seem louder.

2. Many speakers have a radiation pattern that changes significantly up and down the spectrum, which results in the reverberant field having a correspondingly different spectral balance than the direct sound. Over time this can result in listening fatigue. The reason is, the ear/brain system is constantly evaluating incoming sounds to determine whether they are "new" sounds or reflections (repetitions of a recent new sound), and it does so by comparing the spectrum of the incoming sound with that of recently-received new sounds. When the spectral discrepancy is large, the ear/brain system has to work harder to make this determination, and the result can literally be a head-ache. It takes longer for listening fatigue to set in a lower SPL's than at higher SPL's because the reflections decay into inaudibility more rapidly at lower SPL's. (This is not the only cause of listening fatigue, as the other items in this list also cause listening fatigue.)

3. There will inevitably be distortion components in the DP's signal chain, whether in the digital-to-analog conversion, in the amplification, or in the speaker system. The ear generally interprets distortion as loudness, and some types far moreso than others. And the ear's perception of most distortions is non-linear; that is, the perceived amount (and annoyance) of most distortions increases as the SPL increases, even if the actual amount of distortion in the signal remains unchanged. So particularly at high SPL's, the perceived loudness through a speaker system will be greater than the same SPL from an unamplified acoustic instrument.

For these reasons (and there are probably others), your ears may well tell you that the correct sound level for digital piano is lower than what a sound pressure level meter would tell you.

For practice, you may be able to mitigate some of these issues by playing around with speaker positioning and aiming.

I’ve found that there’s usually a very narrow volume range to the point it’s a point (no pun intended) that I find comfortable to play. More than that is loud and direct and less than that is artificial. No need to bother with any real piano comparison.

This is a very interesting discussion. Every time I play a real grand (just Yamaha C3, so not a 9 foot concert grand), I am suprised or even overwhelmed by the overall volume. Still, this is different from playing your DP at high volumes, which can be annoying and unpleasant, even with an upgraded sound system like I made for my newly bought Kawai Novus 10:

http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/galleries/2747355.html.

The thing is that you must learn to play ppp not by turning the volume down, but by playing the piano correctly. This also depends on the action, that's why I'm so satisfied with the Novus 10, which has a real Millennium III Grand action. So, to learn to play ppp, you have to turn up the volume, even if that does not exactly matches the volume of an acoustic grand, and let your fingers do the rest....