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I scanned the forums and saw plenty of people here who set "Dynamic Range" in the advanced pane to 80-90%. I also prefer the setting higher for my equipment and tastes. . .

I think it's more realistic with a higher dynamic range. I agree that it seems unnaturally "narrow" at the default 50%, kind of like trying to get wide dynamics out of an older upright...

Dynamic range changes the playability and even the touch response. It's not a subtle change. What it makes is replaying the separate samples for a particular MIDI velocity with a correspondingly lower or higher gain. It should be finely tuned in combination with the touch response:

There are basically two maps used by a sample-based library:

1. MIDI velocity -> sample layer
2. MIDI velocity -> dynamic range (i.e. proportional positive gain applied to louder samples and proportional negative gain applied to quieter samples)

The original piano has a fixed link between the sample volume and its timbre and so changing the dynamic range through a gain mapping is in my opinion undesirable. It is what some digital piano makers do to their samples (Kawai comes to mind with an exaggerated dynamic range in some of their digital pianos from the past and I have no hard evidence for that, just an observation after owning a few models). Now, I'm not sure whether the original CFX dynamic range is at the default value of 50% or someone decided to have it at 100% but decrease it to 50% for the default value.

Per Garritan, "The dynamic range refers to the difference in volume between the loudest possible note and the softest possible note. When the Dynamic Range knob is at 50%, you'll experience the natural dynamic range of the sampled Yamaha CFX concert grand piano. Turn the Dynamic Range knob above 50% to make the softest notes even softer, and turn the Dynamic Range knob below 50% to make the softest notes louder. The dynamic range setting can have a large influence on the expressive characteristics of the piano." Jeff may have confirmed that 50% figure here but I can't remember.

https://usermanuals.garritan.com/CFXConcertGrand/Content/dynamic_range.htm

I agree to a certain degree. I agree that Garritan CFX has somehow narrow dynamic range which makes it easier to play safely, i.e. without unexpected velocity jumps which may be a reason why it's so beautiful and "easy" to play and is liked so much. Just for instance, on my Kawai digital pianos, there were these infamous velocity jumps I've complained about.

However things are not as simple because dynamic range is also linked to the original piano and its hammers and strings. A huge piano will naturally use longer strings and heavier hammers which in turn will widen the dynamic range but to obtain the louder notes one also needs to use higher force than on a piano with lighter hammers. Let's talk about momentum transfer for a moment:
- a light hammer can be accelerated to hit the string with energy between 0 and 10 in a relative scale
- a heavy hammer can be accelerated to hit the string with energy between 0 and 20

It may seem like the heavy hammer, because of its higher mass, will have higher momentum with the same force applied but that's negated by the slower acceleration. Ultimately, and that's very important: the heavy hammer will allow for higher momentum to be transferred, provided you have high enough force. The opposite holds true for the lighter hammers: it may seem that they are easy to accelerate them to higher velocities, because they are light, but the low mass won't generate high enough momentum. And the other important thing here is that fingers can apply strong force only when they have strong opposing force. Because force comes from muscle contraction. Contraction isn't instantaneous. Which is why to produce high velocities on a light keyboard you need to bang from a distance, so that your arms already have high momentum when hitting the key.

With all that in mind, sampling a huge piano such as a CFX or a SK-EX and then putting these samples in a very light feeling keyboard such as the one in a Kawai ES7 will introduce discrepancies. And so so they compensate with some dynamics and velocity mess-up. Imagine for a moment the Kawai ES7 had hammers that could be put in a SK-EX and be able to strike the strings. Would they produce the same loud tones as from the sampling session? No. Because they are too light. But they mapped it so that you can trigger the loud samples.

It's a very complicated matter after all. Which is also why the N1X internal sound is IMO so good, because someone made it respond very realistically and I feel that I am playing a real piano with a real dynamic response (yeah, the N1X also exhibits slightly narrower dynamic response and wold require that you really sweat into the keys to have it scream.)

I don't doubt your analysis or the amount of time you've put into thinking through this issue, like most things I suspect you're spot-on here! However, I may not have the sensitivity to notice this behavior, at least in the mid- to higher tier digital pianos. I don't think I've ever really played a concert grand for long, but I have played on many larger 6-7' grands, and I feel there's tremendous variability in key weight and feel among acoustics. Some are feather-light, others downright heavy and "chunky." They're all different, yet IMO they're all capable of incredible dynamics from the softest ppp to the loudest fff (much more than I hear from CFX in its default setting, regardless of the feel of the keys). So in my layman's experience, I've just come to expect that different pianos behave differently, and it's not entirely odd to have a light keyboard output loud/strong notes or timbre, I just have to adjust to it.

That's how I've generally approached the dynamics setting of CFX. To me, it's more important to get the volume range between the ps and fs correct; and the feel/behavior of the keybed is something I just adapt to since it varies a lot on different acoustics, too.

I think the common feature of most grand pianos I've played is that they allow for huge dynamic range indeed but that's also backed by a huge keyboard "force" range and feels more linear. I mean, you can literally go up to destroying the keyboard. With typical digital pianos it seems like this huge dynamic range is often compressed into a narrow force region, requiring less effort to produce tones. Maybe it's again because of the lack of real escapement since on the digital piano every strike is a hammer-key-finger shock, whereas on the acoustic piano the hammer is detached, so you can't break anything and can thus transfer a huge momentum without feeling something is wrong. I need to think of this more. Might be wrong

You can voice the hammer in an acoustic to have a different timbre so sound is not only tied to force and mass. When you change the touch curve and the dynamic range together you are actually changing the mapping between volume and timbre.

I don't know but I feel the N1X dynamics are rather on point. When using the standard medium force sensitivity. With the soft one yes you have wider dynamics and sF so needed to play Beethoven for example, but when you try and play Chopin Nocturnes it gets to loud to easy. I never change anything from the standard configuration, if anything VRM if gets too fuzzy because of the acoustic of my room, or brightness if I feel like it.

I think Yamaha should have give us a one and only sensitivity level and give us a tone/timbre change options instead.

That's where the NV10 is leading a bit. But once again, to many configuration options only leads to confusion and hesitation.

I mean. All one need is a Piano keyboard and a piano sound from an electric instrument, why complicate the thing, and if it's complicated and options you needed, there you have the Clavinova line already in place for that.

I'm content with how they did it. But I do have a little quibble. Using the medium force setting,if I adjust the volume for what seems right for 'normal' playing/note loudness I can then play way more quietly than I should be able to (which is good) and not as loud as I would like (which is sad).

The fallboard on my N1x came off as I was opening it today; rather, one of the sides became loose and I tried to put it back in place for a while without success, so I just removed the entire thing. It's only a couple of months old. Has anyone had this problem? Any easy fix I can do myself? Or has anyone had any luck getting a technician to come out to fix their piano during this time?

Yes, this unfortunately seems to be a common problem, but is however user fixable. We’ve discussed it in this thread.

You have to extend the two pins on each side slightly more. To reach their screws you have to unscrew the long triangular beam from the fallboard. Search for it because I don’t remember, I believe there were pictures too.

It's a pretty easy fix. Here are some photos I posted earlier in this thread with some instruction on how to make the necessary adjustments to the fallboard.

Fallboard photos

God Bless,
David

It's a pretty easy fix. If yours is as loose as mine was, don't even try putting it back on without adjusting the pins of the soft-close mechanism. It'll probably fall off again and you might even get some nasty scratches.

Question for N1X owners -- how long does the N1X take to boot up from cold and be fully functional? I understand it doesn't restore most of the previous settings?

The Novus NV10 takes about 8 seconds for the default piano sound to be available, and another 12 seconds for the interface to load and the settings restored. So 20 seconds total.

I'm curious because I now have Pianoteq able to boot up cold and be fully functional (with full interface) in ~23 seconds. Even though it's on a Raspberry Pi and could be left on forever, I wanted to know what the baselines are.

Exactly 10 seconds, just measured it.

So pretty much the same as the Novus (with default sound only) -- 10 seconds seems to be the bar to meet (or at least aspire to!).

Thanks!

@Navindra, how long does Linux itself take to boot? One way to expedite it is supressing log messages sent to the serial port. Its been long since I tried this but it made a significant difference (too much data sent through a fairly slow channel).

Another think that might help (just guessing) is making sure you are using the fastest SD-Card (micro-SD?) that the Pi may support.

Eons agou there were tweaks that could make embedded Linux booting in a couple of seconds, but I have not followed its development for a long time now.

I remember the guy who reverse engineered the serial interface entirely and replaced the touchscreen with some 80s-era terminal keycaps. His system booted up in just a few seconds, such that the UI was ready faster than the sound engine.

And I do recall that the NV-10 UI module does have a micro sd card in it to run the Android UI. It's a good suggestion to try cloning the contents to a faster card and seeing if that makes any difference...

This fantastic UK video recommends hi-performance Micro-SD cards for Pi (general characteristics and specific models)

https://youtu.be/YUResed38uo

This is a quick blog intro to card specs

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/...e%20between%20speed%20class%20uhs%20sdhc