Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Yamaha P515 owners CLUB

I was lucky and my piano was in stock, so I waited only a few days. The p515 is a dream to play, and I really cant find a fault with it.

New here. Just put in an order for the P515. It should be arriving in January. I can't wait to get it. I'm hoping it will be a big upgrade over the PX160. Some.of the comments I've seen here have made me a little apprehensive that the sound quality won't be where I'm expecting it. I don't plan on purchasing any VSTs to try new sounds so I'm hoping it will he pleasing to me out of the box. The speaker quality is my biggest priority as I won't be using powered speakers. I picked the P515 over the ES920 due to the springiness of the key bed and the lack of rhythms and synth sounds. Also the 90X was out of my budget. It'll be a long wait for it to arrive but I'm looking forward it

I love my P515 - in my home, the speakers are fine alone. I did buy a set of monitors which I sometimes use when I want fuller base sound but overall I really don't need them. I also did not like the key-click of the ES920. I'm happy with my purchase. I tried ordering it from Kraft but they were not super forthcoming about when it would be delivered, they kept telling me they get a few in every few weeks. I waited, and waited - and twice while I was waiting Amazon got 4 or 5 and then immediately sold them out. The third time it happened two months after I ordered, I canceled my Kraft order and bought from Amazon. It actually came from Sam Ash who sold through Amazon. In any event, I am very happy with it. I don't think any of the retailers can control what's happening with the supply chains so I don't blame Kraft - they were otherwise very nice.

Just joined the club. As mentioned in the 'prices paid' thread, i picked up a bargain

I'm a beginner trading up from a korg b1 and have only had the p515 for a few days, but I'm very happy. thanks to all the happy owners on this thread - you convinced me that this was the right model and after a few months of waiting and watching i was able to pick up a great dp at a great price

Hi everyone! I'm posting to introduce myself as another new member of the P-515 club because mine just arrived today! (Still in the box.) I also wanted to share what my wait time was in case anyone is interested:

I placed the order with Kraft Music (bought the P-515, the L-515 stand, and LP-1 pedals) on October 1st, so it took 2 months and 9 days in total to get to my house. Not too bad, I think. I live in Miami, Florida.

I bought it to replace my P-125 (which I'll try to sell) as my silent practice piano (about 50% of my practice has to be silent) and I'm looking forward to setting it up over the weekend and to experiencing the better action and better quality samples.

Cheers!

I just found out something worth sharing about the P-515. And possibly many other yamaha digitals.

I was recording directly to USB audio the other day. I was switching from headphones to speakers for a couple of recordings. Then it hit me that recording while the headphones were plugged in was producing aweful results compared to recording while the headphones were not plugged in. Just to make it clear, in both instances, I wasn't actually recording the sound from the speakers. It was always direct to USB audio.

I began to fiddle with the setting and I found out that when you disable binaural sampling, the audio that is recorded to the USB is far better with headphones plugged in than what you get with binaural sampling on. It is not even close. There must be something wrong with the mix to audio when that feature is on. My understanding is that binaural sampling are only activated while the headphones are plugged in. This would explain why the recordings were better when I played without headphones.

mareg, уou might be interested in reading this thread:
Here's why new Yamaha DP-s sound bad on demos

Oh my god thanks for that thread reference 9190, you've just answered one question I've had since I got this instrument !

One big mystery still remains to me, why does the audio recorded direct to USB as a wav file sound so flat and lifeless no matter what?

Yamaha's DSP algorithms are only applied to tone generator output, but not to WAVE file recording or playback, which is always "vanilla" for post-production.

This explain everything. For the longest time I was wondering why everything was sounding soo flat recording direct to USB Wave file. Now I need to find a way to record from line out !

IIRC it's written in manual that Binaural should be switched off when using line outs because it affects that output when headphones are plugged in. I have switched it off forever.

Yeah well anyways I don't have the gear to actually do a proper recording of line outs. I wouldn't trust line outs directly to laptop combined audio jack.
I'll have to live with poor audio in my youtube recordings for the time being. I don't have the skills to properly process a "vanilla" wave recording to sound like what I hear from the instrument.

Maybe a proper Mic would be a better choice.

I have a USB Blue Yeti Microphone. But I believe it is more designed as a voice recorder. I tried to record the piano, but it did a [censored] poor job. I don't know, I might actually try stereo line outs to 3.5mm combined laptop jack. It sounds like a bad idea but who knows !?

I did a quick test with a cable I didn't know I had.

Turns out it works relatively well to use lines out to laptop combined audio jack. However... it introduces lots of white noises. Possibly due to the quality of my cable.
I fiddled with the settings for the mic input and disabled any boosters but still white noise. Oh well. One day I'll just get proper gears.

Yep first review I read on the cables ! :
Expect to hear hisses and pops through your speakers because these cables are not shielded. Bummer.

Check your computer specs, but I think that in most cases motherboards only have mic input. If you connect line outs you run the risk of damaging the input, if the line outs exceed the max voltage for a mic input.
If I was in your shoes, wrong signal for wrong signal, I would connect the headphone output instead of the line out.

Good point, it seems to work. But you are right, I'm feeding DP line output directly to a laptop mic input. It works, produce decent sounds (with white noise). Certainly better than the sound directly recorded to a usb thumb drive with Yamaha's save as audio file (Wave). But it might damage the mic input of my laptop audio jack.

Why didn't Yamaha allow for recording of the sound actually produced by the instrument ? That seems like a very important feature. Oh well back to flat cold recordings.

Or you may try to aooly some post processing to the wav file. I use reverb plugins on Reaper for my amateurish experiments, but even Audacity has a reverb function... Ooen the wav on Audacity, normalize the file and then play around with the reverb... It may work well, not at all, or even better than what the p515 outputs. Nothing like trying: it is free...

Actually, that is exactly what I'm currently doing. Save to USB wave form. Audacity -> Reverb -> Normalize.
But even then it pales in comparison to the real deal. Servicable, but I cringe everytime I listen to my own recordings.

And it is not because I'm overeacting. The people who have heard the instrument in my room did comment that it was nothing like the recordings. Not even close. To get the saved Wav file to sound like what you hear from the headphones or speaker, I think it would take serious editing.

Well... If that is not an option (frankly, I was not expecting too much from the reverb in Audacity, and you confirmed it) saving from line out is the best option. You can try an external audio interface to connect the audio out, or go the VST way and enter a world of endless search for THE one...

I only recorded one song on YT using the 515's native voice (Bosie) and it quite ok; I can't record anymore now, because I sold ir . .

Someone suggested to me to record directly from the USB to Host (connection from behind to a PC). It never occured to me that the USB cable on the P515 had two ways audio.
Meaning the P-515 can both be used as a speaker for the laptop while also transfering the audio back to the laptop from the same USB cable. Quite fascinating actually.

But I think it suffers from the same limitation when recording the audio. It sounds lifeless compared to the actual sound comming out of the piano. I'll do more tests but I think there is no difference between recording directly to USB thumb/flash drive and using an USB cable connected to a PC and recording from that output. You loose all the processing of the piano patch when recording this way and it sounds flat and lifeless.

If the above is really true, then for me this is a huge reason to look towards something else, since this is an important function, and it is not clear why Yamaha has so under-implemented it. I am convinced that the USB flash drive should record exactly what the user hears when playing the instrument. Otherwise it's a scam and nonsense.