CyberGene

Exactly how me and my wife got through Covid in February 2021 before vaccines were available. FWIW, never got vaccinated afterwards, nor have been protecting myself or avoiding people, public places, etc. ever since. Life as usual. No reinfection so far.

True that! Besides, I’ve made a blood oath to my wife that I stopped buying keyboards (with the newly arrived CP88 being the last one!)

^ Wow that’s so lush!!! I want it! Also makes it pretty obvious it wasn’t the instrument’s fault in that other infamous video 😉

I own a Behringer Model D. It's my only synth that is a WYSIWYG synth: no patches, no memory, no menus, no endless encoders or jump-to-the-stored-value-potentiometer, only real potentiometers whose position is what you hear and some selectors and switches. Now, you may laugh but it taught me how synths work after all 😀 Exactly because there's no menu-diving, no "virtual" this or that, no dragging of some knobs with the mouse on a computer screen. Every function has a knob/switch and you immediately hear the result. I don't know if it's close to a real Minimoog since I was born in 1979 in an ex-communist country where there was probably only one Minimoog in the entire country, at the state owned studio 🤣 So, for just €250 I purchased that replica, good or bad, and started twisting knobs and stuff and it all clicked in my head. I doubt I could have learned these basic principles on a VA or by menu-diving on a Kurzweil/Korg or whatever. I love Behringer 😀

I also appreciate musicians more than geeks. The problem is there are either those guys who “demo” synths with an oscilloscope or others that just don’t know what is good to play on synths. In that regard I think Dr. Mix is among the best but IMO he’s too pragmatic and doesn’t shy using even sampled synths and software, so he’s not that appealing to the regular hardcore synth purists.

I considered it and I used to own a MP6 many years ago which was a very good stage piano. A few things that made me look elsewhere: - Not available - Too heavy and bulky. - No audio interface to supplement the onboard sounds with an iPhone/iPad - The strings/pad sounds in the Kawai sound meh to me - I'm not a huge fan of the Kawai piano sound and there's not a lot of variations there (no different samples) with either the acoustic pianos and the Rhodes pianos. - The infamous Kawai (lack of) quality. I haven't had problems with my Kawai pianos in the past but there are just too many complaints on the Internet

No, there are no pedal noises and stuff like that but I don't like them anyway. My go to software piano for my solo classical piano recordings on my YouTube is Garritan CFX and I usually turn pedal and hammer noises almost all the way down, leaving only a faint amount audible and you have to listen very carefully to notice it. I don't think something like that is needed on a stage piano since a stage piano is for gigging and those pedal noises won't be heard and can even go in the way of the entire sound. And if I would be recording a critical solo piano, I would prefer software anyway and not the onboard sounds of a digital piano. There's a very long decay with the bass notes of the CFX, the Bosendorfer and the new Hamburg Steinway. The rest of the pianos have shorter decay. I definitely prefer the CP88 much more than the Numa X Piano 88 that I returned. To a certain degree the keyboards feel the same but I had difficulties playing soft on the Numa which could be because of not very optimal touch response but even tweaking didn't yield satisfying results. I also felt I couldn't play well towards the back of the keys on the Numa. BTW, the action in the CP88 is quite heavy, probably heavier feeling than the Numa X. I think some people may not like it. The BHS action in the YC73 felt easier to play and lighter. On the other hand, the connection between the keyboard action and the sound is so well made, once you start actually playing the CP88 it feels pretty good. This morning when I woke up, I reached for the switched off piano and my first impression was "the keys are way too heavy... why is that?" but then I turned it on and suddenly when connected to the sound that feeling disappeared. It was very odd. I think it's important to note that the CP88 is IMO not for people who will play predominantly solo piano, especially at home. The P515 and Clavinova line might be better with resonance modeling and possibly better sampling. I have an AvantGrand N1X at home and the CP88 is a no match but I guess that is expected 😀 The N1X makes me smile every day since I bought it and it's the best piano I've ever owned in my life (and will probably own, unless I win the lottery and can afford purchasing a big house with a nice acoustic grand piano). And the CP88 is for my pop/funk/rock duties (gigging would be a strong word since I'm a hobbyist and play in amateur bands mostly, rarely on stage, mostly in rehearsal studios for our own pleasure) for which it's perfect.

Haha, I feel so dumb for returning that YC73 thinking it was a defect... 🤦🏻‍♂️ OTOH, I think I like the CP88 more than the YC73. I'm not much of an organ guy and can always connect a VB3m to the CP88. But I like the more direct controls of the CP88 and especially the action. So, a blessing in disguise 🍻

I received my CP88 today and I'm very happy with it. No need to post a review here since everything has already been said about it but if anyone is interested, I posted a review on another forum: https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/468-yamaha-cp88-review I have a question to other people with the CP88 though. I've recently returned a B-Stock YC73 to Thomann because the depth encoder for effect 2 on the Keys section could be turned to easily, i.e. there's no resistance when turning it. Otherwise it worked as expected. (I was told by an independent Yamaha serviceman that this is a minor issue, probably caused by a leaked oil from the encoder and so the knob would still work with no worries, only the feel would be lighter but they can replace it for me. However it would require desoldering/soldering and the spare parts are now very hard to find and I may have to wait for a few months). So, I ordered a brand new CP88 instead. Well it has the same "problem" with the "Speed" knob for the effect in the Sub section, as well as the "Rate" knob for the upper effect in the E.Piano section. Some other encoders are also kind of easier to turn than others although they still have resistance. I don't want to return it again because I am exhausted in returning instruments and I love the CP88 so far and this "problem" is indeed minor (and I can ask for encoder replacement later). But I started wondering, is that normal? Can you check if you have such loose encoders on your CP-s? If we assume that is a defective encoder, I can't believe it's the second rather expensive stage piano with the same problem. Then I started wondering, the Speed knob in the sub section may also be used for the Rotary speed which has only two values: Slow and Fast. Maybe they created it intentionally loose, so that when you change the rotary speed through that knob, you can quickly flick through the two/values? I'd be glad if you can confirm this is a bug or a feature 🍻

A lot of these overly expensive reissues will be purchased mostly by snobs and geeks. I guess that's the business plan. Yes, it sounds creamy, it's the best Oberheim sound. But unless you're going to release solo-OB-X albums, who's gonna notice any difference between this and a VST in a mix? Of course, it's also cool looking on stage but how reliable is it and how many will be willing to put it under rough gigging conditions?

I think the guy from Andertons has a specific style of playing that suits mostly R&B and the likes but that is something the OB sound is not famous for. He plays palm smears and staccatos after all 🧐 That’s Hammond technique not exactly working for polysynths. He should have demonstrated long brass swells instead.

I’ve watched this many times. The guy is a famous Bulgarian jazz pianist who is based in New York and teaching there too. We’ve never been known for jazz but that fellow countryman makes me proud! Check his albums, he mixes jazz with the typical Bulgarian odd meters in his first records.

According to some YouTube comments from his schoolmates he was called Hollywood after that heroic incident 😀 BTW, the CNN made a short interview with him:

It's good that they are releasing new firmware. Maybe they have somehow fixed/improved the underwhelming pianissimo response with their acoustic pianos and the resonance artifacts. If that's the case, I would be somehow sorry that I returned mine already. But then, instruments should only be released when finalized and refined... That being said, waiting for my CP88 to arrive on Monday.

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I’ve recently realized my first gen iPad Pro was running very slow. It’s been updated sequentially for years. I reinstalled it clean without restoring from backup and it's very snappy again.

Lovely memories! I grew up with my mom's upright piano too and have very fond memories of it. My grandparents bought it when she was in her early teens in the 1960-s and it costed them the entire year's salary of my granddad who was a neurosurgeon (well, we're Bulgarian, so a neurosurgeon in the Eastern Bloc wasn't paid much more than a janitor in the same hospital...). And since we were a poor country, according to my mom they had to live on a very tight budget for a few years to afford that piano. When you take in mind she wasn't a musician (she would later become a civil engineer) and they didn't intend to make her a musician, it's fascinating how people of that generation were ready to spend their last pennies on something like a piano! People were made of different dough back then.

Automatically re-enabling the noise-gate after a minute is a bad decision, especially if the sensing logic takes half a second to turn it off on incoming audio, I can imagine the frustration. But it seems they can easily fix that through a firmware upgrade and I believe they will do so.

Actually outside of the small circle of people who are church/pipe organists and are aware of the differences between different registrations, for most other people (including musicians, even keyboardists) pipe organ means the "tutti" sound of an organ and they will associate it with the Toccata and Fugue in Dm 😉 For all these people it's just a "pipe organ".

As far as I understand, the noise gate is automatic. Probably it's active when you boot the piano. Once there is a signal above the noise gate, the noise gate gets disabled. But whether it stays like that until you shut it down or will get re-enabled after a certain period of audio inactivity is a mystery

True that. Well, as a matter of fact both will certainly work in a mix, let alone for live situations. And the Rhodes isn't as bas as I made it sound. It's just that I'm very obsessed with acoustic piano sound and solo piano recordings with good sampled pianos such as Garritan CFX and the Arturia is very dull in comparison. Besides, I'm not a big fan of modeled pianos either... But the V-collection, especially when discounted is absolute value, so when you consider how many really usable (and some even awesome!) instruments you get for €200, moaning about the piano sound is silly, I admit

I grabbed the entire V collection 8 for half the regular price during the last Black Friday and they then offered me Pigments for only €50. It’s a tremendous value! Except for the modeled piano and the modeled Rhodes that sound like crap, everything else is ridiculously good! Pigments alone is a universe in itself. Just today I watched in another thread a comparison between the new Juno-X and the System 8 and I opened the Arturia’s Juno emulation and had great fun! Every synth emulation is an absolute winner!

@HammondDave I ordered a CP88 already. I live in Bulgaria and here in Europe the Yammies are scarce at the moment 😢

That’s 14cm, not enough for the MacBook Air. But maybe good enough for my regular sized iPad.