Numa Concert

[Adam Burgess]

Had a gig this afternoon. Didn't take my Nord/Kronos because the venue asked me to try their new house keyboard out.

 

Maybe the most uninspiring, dull stage piano I've had the misery of playing.

 

Numa Concert. Just very 'watery' thin sounding. I understand the action would take some getting used to but I seriously could not get it to do anything apart from medium. Not one bit of dynamic range. Organs are abysmal. Pads, too. FX section is also a bit dire.

 

It's heavy and totally characterless. Am I being a bit too critical? No. It can't even hold a candle to a Yammy P series or a CP33, which I loved.

 

Sound guy said it was just like a Nord. Erm... Not really! Sorry for my rant! How can they charge this much for a below par keyboard when the Casio does sooo much more?

 

[Delaware Dave]

I might try their k/b out but I would never leave my keys at home unless I were familiar with the rig I was asked to play on. Sounds as though you weren't, so you should partly share in the blame.

[Adam Burgess]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about my gear choice. I'm a good enough player to still make the gig good. And, it was fine, audience wise. The band did notice a hell of a difference.

 

I did it as a tryout both for myself in my quest for a traveling board so my good stuff stays set up for my residency... and to let the venue hear my opinion of their new purchase.

[Sven Golly]

Sound guy said it was just like a Nord.

 

From his perspective, it probably is exactly like a Nord:

 

• They both start with N
  
• They both have 4 letters in the name
  
• They both have black'n'white keys.
  
• He compresses the sh!t out of the channel(s) it's connected to, and mixes it about 10dB quieter than the guitars.
  

 

...so yeah, it's exactly the same.

[zauberklang]

Isn't the Numa Concert using the Fatar TP40wood? It's supposed to be one of the best keybeds, though I've never played one myself.

[kanker.]

Sound guy said it was just like a Nord.

 

From his perspective, it probably is exactly like a Nord:

 

• They both start with N
  
• They both have 4 letters in the name
  
• They both have black'n'white keys.
  
• He compresses the sh!t out of the channel(s) it's connected to, and mixes it about 10dB quieter than the guitars.
  

 

...so yeah, it's exactly the same.

I've missed you Sven....

[Adam Burgess]

Ha! Nice one Sven! It's funny because it's true!

 

Yeah, it's the wooden TP40. It seemed to bottom out really quickly. I obviously don't want spongy but this was really, really hard. Especially whacking it to try and get a bit brightness.

[Markay]

Not a hardware guy, but I have learnt a lot about how important tailoring velocity can be to the playability of sampled or modelled AP's from any keybed since I got Pianoteq which has a keyboard velocity mapping utility.

 

So the 'whacking it to get brightness' may have more to do with the stock velocity mapping than the TP40 keybed itself.

[Brettymike]

Maybe it was set on the wrong velocity setting , which can make even a good keyboard a difficult dog to play for many types of music.

That Numa sounds great on youtube at least.

 

Brett

[Adam Burgess]

Interesting stuff, Markay. I've really never thought about it before. Guess i either never had to or I've grown to like an instrument for what it is...

 

Not gonna fall in love with this one ha!

 

As far as I could see, there's three settings. L, M and H. On L, it just seemed to be stuck at a velocity of 100. It probably wasn't but that's the best way I can explain it in words. M wasn't much better. H gave me a little dynamic range but had to beat the thing as i said.

 

[Brettymike]

Crook dynamics setting on ANY keyboard can/will make it damn horrible to play, and munter the sound.

I found it nearly impossible to play some classical on my boards if the velocity wasn't set right.

Also , I have found the main volume set out of the keyboard will choke dynamics (and sound) if it is too low.

 

Brett

[Adam Burgess]

Yeah, you're right Brett. Never mind! Enough bashing from me!

[emenelton]

I had some time with a Numa Concert in a store. I noticed that on the E, octave and a 1/2 below middle C and up to ~ the next E, no matter how hard I struck the key it would never generate that top velocity layer with a metallic bite. The rest of the board did.

The E to E is an approximation. It might have been the A to F, a 6th. It was a field of notes around there.

[Al Coda]

 

As far as I could see, there's three settings. L, M and H. On L, it just seemed to be stuck at a velocity of 100. It probably wasn't but that's the best way I can explain it in words. M wasn't much better. H gave me a little dynamic range but had to beat the thing as i said.

 

Testing intruments requires a bit more investigation.

From the NUMA Concert specs:

 

4x Velocity curves ...

 

1x User velocity curve with 10 memories of Fatar Touch auto-learning system.

 

I cannot comment on whether that works great or not,- but have you tried creating any personalized velocity curve ?

 

A.C.

[Al Coda]

I had some time with a Numa Concert in a store. I noticed that on the E, octave and a 1/2 below middle C and up to ~ the next E, no matter how hard I struck the key it would never generate that top velocity layer with a metallic bite. The rest of the board did.

The E to E is an approximation. It was a field of notes around there about an octave wide.

 

Someone might have played around w/ the velocity curves and velocity-autolearn-system in the store, then stored.

 

The Fatar TP40H, GH and WOOD are the best actions you can get, except what Yamaha partially designs for their own DPs and others like KORG and Roland.

Kawai is great too as are Casio PX 3/5S actions.

 

A.C.

[emenelton]

The top response was a bit all up and down across the board as to how the bite could be coaxed. It's not the action that I would call into play with this result.

[Al Coda]

The top response was a bit all up and down across the board as to how the bite could be coaxed. It's not the action that I would call into play with this result.

 

Read my 1st line in my post above ...

 

It points on a electronics/software related behaviour,- regardles if someone played w/ the features and stored or not.

Can be the software (scanner) doesn´t work perfect when switching velocity curves or creating your individual curve(s).

 

The top end actions all work IMO and MIDI wise the are all linear and deliver 128 MIDI velocity values.

The electronics between the key contacts, velocity sensors and the samples and modelling algorithms makes the difference.

Processor speed too.

 

I don´t want to fight for the NUMA Concert but when I go over to Thomann and read all the customer reports (in german), EVERY report is positive and that´s pretty well on par w/ the Kawai MP7 and MP11 customer reports.

So, to me it´s hard to believe the NUMA Concert ist such a bad DP.

 

A.C.

[Adam Burgess]

Hey AC. Thank you for that. I didn't really have time to investigate the user velocity settings. Maybe I could give it one more try next week on that gig...