Crumar Mojo 61 Review - (LONG)

[Delaware Dave]

I won't speak for the other DD, but this DD understands that you notice the acoustic piano lag because you've made that fact quite clear. The question is: have you ever written to info@crumar.it and reported it? and if so, what was their response? and if you haven't, why not?

[AndreaAgnoletto]

Sure he did.

Actually is the only customer reporting "acoustic piano lag". We do not have any evidence about this.

As we always do, we replied thanking for the feedback.

When we receive feedbacks about bugs or something, we usually try to replicate it, if we are able to replicate, we will fix, if we are not able, there's nothing to fix.

 

 

 

[Jazz+]

Copy and paste:

_________________________________________________

to Crumar

 

I notice when I play fast on Mojo 61 that the organ and Rhodes can keep up with my speed, the notes trigger fast enough. But the Acoustic Piano is lagging behind my fast playing, so I don't like using it. . I think the trigger response for the Acoustic Piano patch needs improvement. Can it be?

 

Jazz+

 

 

Crumar

 

Apr 1, 2017

 

to me

 

Apart from this, acustic piano on mojo61 does have another bug that will be solved on next software upgrade

 

cheers

 

Crumar Customer Support

 

Apr 3, 2017

 

to Crumar

Hi, Are you saying you will not improve the trigger response time for the Acoustic Piano? It lags.

Thanks

Jazz+

 

Crumar

 

Apr 4, 2017

 

to me

No, I'm telling you that acoustic piano on Mojo61 is something introduced 4 months ago (so relatively new) and we know all bugs... we use to fix them on next software release, as we always do with all our instruments

 

__________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

For comparison, when using Logic or Mainstage we've long tried to push buffer settings down to get better latency performance between MIDI in from controller and audio out to our ears. All digital instruments suffer from latency, so I'm surprised, Jazz+ that you haven't been more critical of other digital instruments. Are you saying the Mojo61 is significantly slower in response to a Casio PX-350? Have you experimented with any piano sample libraries like Garriton CFX or Synthogy Ivory before? I know I'm sensitive to latency, negligible at around 5ms or less but quickly becomes noticeable at 10, 15, 16, 17ms etc. (or at least that's what the software is reporting to me when I start to feel it).

 

But point being... here is a guy playing the Yamaha Avant Grand N3 as controller only. He's running MIDI to a Mac hosting Garritan CFX. I'm not sure how low he has been able to get the buffer, but clearly it's not wrecking his technique or ability to play fast.

[video:youtube]

 

So, is there something else at work here with the Mojo61 that you are noticing? Laggy doesn't define it enough perhaps. Late? not able to keep up in some way? As in, dropped notes or missing attacks? In which case, could it be the action and the messages it is sending to the sound engine? Maybe on your unit specifically? Or could it be the trigger point? A polyphony issue?

 

>>>> was posting while you shared the response from Crumar. OK, so Crumar is saying there are known bugs with their 4 month old acoustic piano software and are working on it. Possible the "lag" is a symptom of some other things going on under the hood.

 

[Jazz+]

Elmer Fudd, do you own a Mojo 61?

 

"Are you saying the Mojo61 is significantly slower in response to a Casio PX-360?"

 

Yes with regards to the sampled acoustic piano only, not the other modeled sounds.

 

"Have you experimented with any piano sample libraries like Garriton CFX or Synthogy Ivory before? "

 

Yes

_________________________________

 

This reminds me of 10 years ago when I mentioned that the Yamaha P120 Stereo Piano samples sounded weird and phasey in mono. I was not believed and was mocked by members for months.

[ElmerJFudd]

"Are you saying the Mojo61 is significantly slower in response to a Casio PX-360?"

 

"Have you experimented with any piano sample libraries like Garritan CFX or Synthogy Ivory before?"

Yes

 

Elmer Fudd, do you own a Mojo 61?

 

You know how it goes around here when being critical of Crumar/GSi/Mojo/Gemini/DMC-122. You sharing the response from Crumar clears this up a bit and takes some heat off you. I mean, some folks that haven't noticed it might near suggest it's in your head rather than a bug.

 

No, I don't own it. It's not what I am looking for. But I am interested in them pursuing future instruments that fill my needs more effectively and not exhibiting what you're describing.

[Jazz+]

Take it from an expert who owns a Mojo 61, plays it all day long, and has no commercial interest in the company or any other company. I have no incentive to be making this up, I am not crazy nor naive or detached from reality.

I do love playing the Mojo 61 organ and Rhodes, but it's piano is not fun simply because it lags, the note trigger response is simply too slow for fast tempos. It the same thing that can happen with a controller, a Giga piano, and an interface: unpleasant lag time.

If I had to guess I would venture around 14-18 milliseconds of lag. The Mojo 61 Rhodes I would guess it has is around 5-6 milliseconds of lag which is perfectly acceptable, imo.

[Jazz+]

I am not trying to hassle anybody. I was just hoping they could improve the AP trigger response time for the last update, so I can actually enjoy playing the AP. I have said from day 1 that I really like the Mojo 61 organ, Rhodes and Wurly. Those sounds have decent short enough lag times. I have owned over 30 different digital piano the past 30 years. (Yamaha: P250 (several), P120 (at one point I owned a whole classroom of these), P90, Roland: RD-200, MKS-20, P330, FP4, FP3, FP2, FP50, MKS-60; Kurzweil: PC2x, PC88, Micro Piano with Fatar controller, K1000 module; Korg SV-1 and some Technics models)

[Doerfler]

I do love playing the Mojo 61 organ and Rhodes, but it's piano is not fun simply because it lags,

 

I guess this falls into the "different tools for different jobs" discussion. Mojo 61 is a clonewheel organ that also has AP sounds, not vice versa. I remember when the Nord Electro came out Clavia got lots of grief about the acoustic piano also, but it was never supposed to be a digital piano.

[mate stubb]

I'm with Jazz+ on this one. There is something weird about playing the AP that doesn't occur on the other instruments.

 

I can't say if it is latency or not. I'm not playing a lot of fast material so what I am hearing is not necessarily the machine not being able to keep up.

 

It just feels mushy and makes me want to bang. The last update with the velocity helped though.

[Ashville.Guru]

Actually is the only customer reporting "acoustic piano lag". We do not have any evidence about this... if we are able to replicate, we will fix, if we are not able, there's nothing to fix.

If I had to guess I would venture around 14-18 milliseconds of lag.

You don't need to rely on guesswork, and it's easy to provide the evidence that Andrea is asking for.

 

Mojo MIDI out->Any other *hardware* keyboard. Record one channel each from the Mojo and the other keyboard. Strike a key, record. Fire up a DAW, or Audacity (free) if you don't have one. The difference in attack onset between the Mojo and the other keyboard can be precisely measured by zooming in on the start of the sound.

 

Repeat with AP and non-AP sounds, and you have your objective evidence that can be replicated.

 

- Guru

[Markyboard]

You don't need to rely on guesswork, and it's easy to provide the evidence that Andrea is asking for.

 

Mojo MIDI out->Any other *hardware* keyboard. Record one channel each from the Mojo and the other keyboard. Strike a key, record. Fire up a DAW, or Audacity (free) if you don't have one. The difference in attack onset between the Mojo and the other keyboard can be precisely measured by zooming in on the start of the sound.

 

Repeat with AP and non-AP sounds, and you have your objective evidence that can be replicated.

 

- Guru

 

That's very good thinking. One caveat however is if the midi timing is also affected by which sample is selected, bit still this could prove to be very revealing. No doubt Andrea is well ahead of all this.

[Delaware Dave]

Wouldn't this be how Crumar would troubleshoot it? Also, I don't know about you but without equipment to measure how can anyone distinguish 14-18 milliseconds? I mean really...... I couldn't tell you if a particular latency is 4 milliseconds or 64 milliseconds. Only Sven is able to do that.......

[Markyboard]

Wouldn't this be how Crumar would troubleshoot it? Also, I don't know about you but without equipment to measure how can anyone distinguish 14-18 milliseconds? I mean really...... I couldn't tell you if a particular latency is 4 milliseconds or 64 milliseconds. Only Sven is able to do that.......

 

AG is right - just about any waveform drawing software

(including most DAWs) will allow you to see timing of the waveform in milliseconds, # samples etc. What's being proposed here is a way to see the delta between the waveform start time of 2 different samples relative to the midi data- assuming the midi timing is a constant.

 

This does not give you the absolute latency since you don't know how many milliseconds pass between the physical activation of the note and when the software registers/display the audio waveforms.

 

And yes, Crumar not only has this method at their disposal but also way better tools and "access" for analyzing the timing.

 

 

[Jazz+]

Here's an easy test. Set your metronome to 220 use the Rhodes patch and play a B major scale in eighth notes up-and-down two octaves for a minute. Now switch to the acoustic piano and play the same B major scale up and down the same way.

 

When I do this, the Rhodes is able to keep up, but the acoustic piano constantly lags behind me

[slowtraveler]

I don't know about you but without equipment to measure how can anyone distinguish 14-18 milliseconds? I mean really...... I couldn't tell you if a particular latency is 4 milliseconds or 64 milliseconds.

Based on previous discussions I've seen on KC and elsewhere, I think it would be pretty widely agreed that trigger delay or latency in the range Jazz+ is claiming is quite perceptible. Besides that, comparing different patches on the same instrument, with the same signal path, would give you a good chance to notice different amounts of trigger delay, even if your estimate of the absolute values was somewhat off.

[ElmerJFudd]

Wouldn't this be how Crumar would troubleshoot it? Also, I don't know about you but without equipment to measure how can anyone distinguish 14-18 milliseconds? I mean really...... I couldn't tell you if a particular latency is 4 milliseconds or 64 milliseconds. Only Sven is able to do that.......

 

Correct, a piano player would be hard pressed to tell the difference between 14 and 18ms. But you can between less than 5 and 18ms. The keyboard starts to feel mushier as you increase latency until you get to a point where you say, this doesn't feel tight

Then you break 20-25ms and you say the attack is just plain late and I am compensating by hitting everything earlier than its supposed to be. Remember as suggested above, that reported 18ms from the sound engine doesn't include signal from the action's controller or the additional pass through DA or the distance between you and your monitor. It adds up quick.

[Jazz+]

I am raising my estimate to 20 ms. And I don't describe it as feeling mushy, I describe it is dragging big time.

[Delaware Dave]

20ms is 1/50 of a second. 50ms is 1/20 of a second. Without some measuring device I couldn't count in a way that distinguishes between the two without guessing. And without that device where does 14 to 18 come from (which is now guestimated at 20ms, nearly a 50% difference from the 14ms). See what I'm getting at? I'm not disputing whether there is latency; it's when we start using precise numbers using imprecise measurements; it kind of makes me chuckle. I actually noticed (for the first time) last night what appeared to be some latency when I was retriggering VB3. When I was playing fast staccato it felt to me that the notes were lagging behind my playing. How many milliseconds? Not a clue.....

[AnotherScott]

20ms is 1/50 of a second. 50ms is 1/20 of a second. Without some measuring device I couldn't count in a way that distinguishes between the two without guessing.

Do you have any kind of digital delay you can play your keyboard through? Set it for "wet only" (no dry signal), and you can get a sense of what it feels like to play with a delay of 20 ms vs. 50 ms. You can't count it, but once you feel/hear the difference, you'll have a sense of, "oh, that delay is in the neighborhood of 20 ms" or "oh, that delay is in the neighborhood of 50 ms".

[Dave Bryce]

From Facebook:

 

Newsflash! Mojo61 new firmware version 1.21.

 

We got feedback from some users that the Clavi sounded out of tune. The tuning wasn't actually "out", the problem was that certain string models were a bit too inharmonic and had too many uneven overtones - especially on the low pitches - making it hard to perceive the fundamental of a sound. The best solution was to reduce the inharmonics a bit, finding the right balance between realism and better tuning perception. While we were at it, we fixed something related to how the virtual pickup parameters were reported in the editor.

 

Also, one user said that he could feel some sort of latency in the Acoustic Piano. We checked the samples and found nothing wrong with them; however, we wanted to try to improve the perceived latency by trimming the start of all samples by 1.5 milliseconds which should be more than enough to give the piano sounds a little more "snap".

 

As usual, feel free to download and install this new release and enjoy your instrument!

 

Clonk

 

dB

 

 

[RedKey]

Clonk

dB

[Jazz+]

I just performed the update and the difference is noticeable. The piano is quicker to respond and the Clav sounds better. I wonder if perhaps a higher key trigger point would make it feel more snappy. A real piano throws the hammer half way down the key travel. My sense is that I have to go down To the bottom of the keypad to get a full enough mezzo forte tone. It takes time when you have to go all the way to the bottom of the key bed for every note ; on a real piano when you're playing really fast you only have to depress the keys halfway to throw the hammers to achieve mezzo forte. Velocity is the key. I think the Fatar action must be a challenge for developers who try to get it to trigger dynamic piano samples . Whith this action, when the key travels half-way down you get a ppp dynamic. On a real piano when the key travels halfway you can still get a good mezzo forte. I think that is why I notice the notes cannot keep up with me when I play Giant Steps. I feel I have to spend extra time getting the key all the way to the bottom of the bed

 

Thank you Crumar for continuing to improve the Mojo 61 thru updates. Yours loyal customer, Jazz+

[AnotherScott]

They now have a Electro killer, imo. The Electro only had an edge with the acoustic piano. That is no longer the case

Not to take anything away from the Mojo, but... really? If it does what you need, great. But lots of people may still want the much larger sound library (including mellotrons and other vintage keyboards), splits/layers, custom sample loading, a 73-key option (61 is skimpy for piano), real-time fx/envelope controls...

[ElmerJFudd]

When they do both 88/76k TP-40L and 73k "compact" organ versions with the full Gemini sample and model sets, now we're talking. The VA synth engine will need some real time spent on presets and the acoustic piano still needs some work to be competitive.

[Doerfler]

it's only 2 guy's, fellas. They would have to become a larger company to accomplish this.

[AnotherScott]

They don't need to be an "Electro killer." Each can have its place.

[Doerfler]

agreed, Scott.

[Stokely]

Certainly becomes an electro alternative though for people like me that was contemplating one. My main problem with the electro is the key action, it's pretty stiff (I'm used to the easy action on the VR700)...I've never actually seen a Mojo 61, is it comparable?

[mate stubb]

Mojo 61 action is definitely lighter than an Electro.