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Tyrone you’re in a way our databot

Got it, thanks!

D@mn. That's what happens when one's memory is a big garbage can of useless facts (and musical notes that don't connect). LOL

Apparently you have great memorization skills. I envy people with that ability. I can memorize easily only music. It’s relatively easy for me to learn music and then sing, whistle or play it on the piano. But for all else I’ve always been pathologically bad at remembering. I couldn’t remember a single date or year in history classes. I remember birthdays of only my mom, dad, siblings... Which is why I liked mathematics, physics, etc. where you can virtually deduce entire laws and stuff through logic and equations

I only remember types of things that I'm interested in. I'm especially bad at remembering data. Whether numbers or dates. On the other hand, my wife who is Russian, has a very poor long-term member, but remembers the birthdays of about everyone she knows. I think there is a social mechanism at work there also. In the West, remembering birthdays is not so critical. Among Russians, forgetting a birthday and you will be ostracized from an entire social circle.


I think I am right on the cusp of disaster. Where I still use formulas to derive other formulas or in physics use dimensional analysis to derive things. I have a friend from school who had marginally better memory than me and he already was over the line. Where he would derive nothing and would remember all the formulas. For example, he would remember formulas which would be easily derivable as infinite series, say by mathematical induction. This actually made him less smart. Because whenever he arrived at something not memorized, he was stuck. I could have easily been him had I the misfortune of having slightly better memory....

You'll be happy to hear it's not. As far as I can tell, it's mainly a Grand Feel characteristic to really dampen the sound of the action (can't speak to the ES7). Neither Kawai acoustics nor the NV10 bottom out softly/mushy. They use a thick felt punching at the front rail (I think most acoustics do). Of course, the acoustic actions are nowhere near as quiet as a Grand Feel!

After some more time spent with the N1X I have one impression that I can confirm and one new observation.

The impression:
- The sound through speakers is absolutely fantastic. Even though the CFX binaural is unequivocally a great sound for playing through headphones, the multichannel CFX through speakers is ultimately better because that's what a piano is: you hear sound coming from everywhere, you don't have anything on your head and ears, and you feel vibrations in the air and through your fingers and body. There were previously some doubts as to the quality of the speaker system, placement and direction of speakers. I haven't played a NV10, however I have played all the major digital pianos + NU1X and IMO the N1X is much better than the rest. YMMV but to my ears it sounds and feels exactly like e real grand piano in front of me. I've tested a N1 and a N3 some years ago and I was blown away by the N3 and underwhelmed by the N1. Now, I feel blown away in the same way by the N1X. I guess the N3X would be even better, but I haven't tested it. In any case, I will try to play on speakers as much as I can. Kudos to Yamaha for offering a premium hybrid piano that is perfect both through speakers and headphones.

The observation:
- Real grand piano actions, despite having double repetition lever, still have their limits in terms of how much you should lift the key before repeating it For instance if I play very quickly two notes one after another and it happens that I lift the key very slightly, say only 1-2mm, the repeat will be silent and so I've already had silent notes. Now, before we fully elaborate on "sudden silent note issue", let me clarify this is absolutely normal and I've experienced that on grand pianos too, including a Steinway D in our biggest concert hall in Sofia (which I had the pleasure to play for almost a week many years ago when participating in a jazz masterclass). With that in mind, my ES7 had triple sensors but surprisingly their location is such that it would allow for a repetition that's closer to the bottom than the N1X I guess there are some areas digital pianos might actually be even better than real grand pianos. But once again, that's not a bug or a fault, it's just the way grand piano actions work. They have the double repetition lever to allow keys to be repeated before full release (which isn't possible on upright pianos, hence not possible on the NU1X), but the double repetition lever has its limitations. However it's a "side-effect" that can be worked around. When I had my NU1X I learned to release keys fully. After I got my N1X I reversed my technique in a drastically opposed way, trying to repeat as low as possible, which sometimes resulted in silent notes, so I have calibrated my fingers now to a slightly higher position of minimum repeat. It's unconscious and happens very fast. But I though I'd mention it anyway

The GF/GF-II uses two felts on the front rail under the key stick to absorb the bottoming movement. Their location and thickness seems quite similar to what is found on an acoustic. Are the GF-II felts really that softer than the felts used on acoustic? Or are there other mechanical factors at play besides the stiffness of the felt? On the GF-II I am not sure if the "mushy" feeling is a result of the key pressing against the front rail felt or the "hammer" pressing against the hammer/sensor rail, which also features dampening materials.

On an acoustic the mechanical noise of the action may actually be louder than the noise of the key bottoming out. Of course, at louder dynamics the bottoming out noise will be significant, but it will be lost in the sound of the instrument. But pressing down a key silently on a grand makes the action produce quite a loud "clunk" followed by a rather subdued "thud" when the key bottoms out.

You are simply talking about what he describes @ 3:58, right?

^ Yes, exactly. You need to release the key above the point of escapement in order to repeat. A regulation of the grand piano is done so that the repetition lever hits the drop screw at the same time the regulating screw pushes the jack. So, as a result, the jack would be able to slide back in under the knuckle only when you release the key above the escapement. The relation between the escapement point and the bottom of the key is called aftertouch. You can regulate in a way that the escapement happens very close to the bottom or higher. I guess a technician can share more details about the cons and pros of each one. I've seen other videos where there are three distances of aftertouch - one that is a medium one and most used, another one which is closer to the bottom and one that is slightly higher than the standard. To my understanding it's the pianist taste which one he prefers but I'm still wondering what's the actual difference in therms of cons/pros.

Here's a video about setting the aftertouch: Setting Aftertouch
0.060" (1.52 mm) - very wide aftertouch
0.040" (1.00 mm) - standard aftertouch
0.030" (0.76 mm) - narrow aftertouch (he says some pianist prefer it)

Those distances are the distance between escapement and bottom of the key travel at the guide pin, measured through a plastic bit with the corresponding thickness.

On an acoustic, the escapement point can be regulated to a degree. It's likely the es7 is calibrated to a different point than what you have previously experienced?

I actually think it might be something else. Maybe the escapement point (or in the case of ES7 the repetition depth, i.e. the second sensor location) is set at the same height as in the N1X. However depending on the speed of rebound of the action it might turn out that one presses the key too quick after it has bottomed out and so it hasn't rebounded above the escapement point.

Maybe the ES7 had a quicker rebound which is to be expected since it doesn't have long hammer blow distance. The hammer travels less than in a grand piano, the leverage is different.

This problem can be solved by playing leggiero both on grands and uprights.

I think it could be any of those things you mentioned. When I took the panels off my NV10 to see the action I realized there was a lot I wasn't taking into account in my understanding of how a grand piano works.

Indeed. I have the bare grand piano action for my DIY project at home and I can observe it every day and there are still some situations where I just sit and imagine how it works and then go to test and see myself and realize I was wrong. The grand piano action is a very complex mechanical system that has so many side effects and quirks yet it works so great But there are so many combinations of what could happen... Which is why it's still hard for digital pianos to imitate it as behavior. And which is why the most expensive hybrid pianos use actual piano actions to solve that "problem" On one hand it seems digital actions might be "better" in one way or another but it's that 200-year old design that's almost unchanged and was created entirely as a result of solving particular problems that also turned out to be so good in being so expressive for an instrument that is the best among them all (or at least that's what we pianoworld folks must be thinking, right? )

I totally agree, and I'm humbled every time I try to break the "simple" mechanical system down to try to understand it. And Cristofori and others probably did not have 1000fps slow-mo digital camera rigs to help troubleshoot their designs! In short, it's ingenious, and my hat's off to piano designers from history and at Yamaha/Kawai today, and also the countless technicians and rebuilders out there who work on and improve these actions every day.

The almost but not quite there escapement simulation on the CLP-685 was something I had to overcome when going to play at my teachers studio, I usually start the session by playing and "missing" note for this reason. The CLP was too forgiving, and it's one of the reasons I said earlier that though I liked the CLP for a lot of reasons, it always felt like I was playing a digital piano.

Last week was my first lesson where I'd been practicing on the N1X the prior week and I definitely had fewer "missed" notes but I'm still figuring it out. I've been practicing a lot this week as my family is out of town and I'm finding I'm getting more and more used to it and my fingers are starting to figure out how to not do that.

A few posts back I was talking about having those moments playing the N1X where I was completely convinced I was playing an acoustic (or forgot I was playing a digital maybe.) This is definitely one of the reasons!

Sounds great. So great that I wonder:
- Does the built-in USB sound interface expose the multi-channel speaker system towards the host computer?
- Does that mean that if we have a VST with similar multi-channel sound, it should be possible to use that with the built-in sound system, to achieve more-than-stereo sound?
- Is there any such VST available currently?

Thanks.

USB Audio does support multi-channel audio. Most VSTs also support multiple input and output channels, but the channels available to the VST depend on the (virtual) audio interface/sound card. When using USB Audio, the available channels will also depend on how the driver exposes them.

However, Yamaha should be sending stereo audio over USB. The multi-channel audio on this DP is optimized to be played using the specific internal speaker setup of N1X, which is not a standard 5.1/7.1 multi-channel setup. So, if a multi-channel signal was sent, then the consumer would need a specific driver to mix down this signal in a meaningful way. Sending a stereo signal over USB is therefore the simplest setup to cover the expected use cases.

Yes, I am aware of that. The question is whether the specific device that is integrated to this DP supports multi-channel audio. (Besides stereo, which it obviously does support.)



Yes, I understand that, but if technically, those channels are exposed on the USB audio device, then making them work for us (at some point in the future) is only a question if tweaking the software on the PC side.



For now, yes. For the future, not necessarily ... if we can find out some info about the speaker system, and find a way to meaningfully map the multi-channel output of VSTs to these channels, then I think there is a reasonable hope that we might be able to go beyond stereo, even with the VSTs, just like how the integrated sound engine. Of course this all depends on whether or not those channels are actually exposed to the PC by the integrated USB device. That's why I am asking...