New Studiologic Numa X Piano

[RandyFF]

My request for other forums that are discussing the Numa Pianos: was re-reading these forum posts and someone shared a post from an Italian forum which has 56 pages of discussion!  Translated automatically to English makes it easy:

 

Italian forum discussing the Numa Pianos

[AnotherScott]

4 hours ago, RandyFF said:

Yes, C to E would be 77 notes.  I would think that distinguishing yourself as being the only low C on the market of 73 note boards would be worth the trouble, I know many feel the same as I do, those low notes are more sorely missed than the high ones.  Though I suppose that there are manufacturing considerations that I wouln't know about.

 

Korg and Numa have done 73-key C-to-C, which I like, but not on a hammer action board, as far as I can recall.

[RandyFF]

I find these SL pianos well-suited for these few extra low notes- overall they're pretty clean on the super low end. Sometimes I'll globally transpose an octave just to get those notes.

 

With my playing those lowest notes are missed, but rarely so for the highest octave.

[RandyFF]

CONTINUOUS A / CONTINUOUS B

Does anyone know what this is referring to?  It mentions it 3 times in the manual, but doesn't say what it means- perhaps just to distinguish between two otherwise identical pedals?  I don't have an expression/sweep/continuous pedal at the moment, so no way to tell exactly.

 

For people that like pedals, we've hit the jackpot with this board: 

Pedal input 1: switch or continuous: tons of sweepable parameters to choose from

Pedal input 2: same as 1

Pedal input 3: same as 1 and 2, plus the SLPD-3

 

Most boards give you max 2 pedal inputs, and one of them typically does only does switch pedalling

[kanefsky]

10 minutes ago, RandyFF said:

CONTINUOUS A / CONTINUOUS B

Does anyone know what this is referring to?  It mentions it 3 times in the manual, but doesn't say what it means- perhaps just to distinguish between two otherwise identical pedals?

 

There are different types of continuous pedals with different wiring requirements, so I'm guessing that's what it's referring to.  For example, some pedals use a passive variable resistor and some use an active optical sensor.  Rather than expecting the user to understand the differences and to know which type of pedal they have, they call them "A" and "B" and you just use whichever one works.

 

Some devices, like the MIDI Expression, are able to automatically sense a bunch of different pedal types.

 

 

[RandyFF]

31 minutes ago, kanefsky said:

There are different types of continuous pedals with different wiring requirements, so I'm guessing that's what it's referring to.  For example, some pedals use a passive variable resistor and some use an active optical sensor.  Rather than expecting the user to understand the differences and to know which type of pedal they have, they call them "A" and "B" and you just use whichever one works.

 

Some devices, like the MIDI Expression, are able to automatically sense a bunch of different pedal types.

 

Hmmmm.... the MIDI Expression boxes look promising ($60, auto sensing pedal type), but for this application I would think it'd be more a matter of buying one that works well with the Numa Piano, unless of course you have a good expression pedal already and want it to be useable for all your equipment.  Considering how many applications there are for expression pedals, from guitars and keyboards to all kinds of equipment, these could be some useful boxes.

 

I don't think the type, active optical or passive variable resistor, makes a difference for which pedals are compatible, but having the correct ohm range and polarity would.  

[RandyFF]

RECOMMENDATIONS: what sweep/continuous pedals work well with this board?  I've learned the hard way that you need the right pedal for any given board.  These boards like ohm inputs from 0-10K.  

 

Studiologic offers up 3 different sweep/continuous pedals:

FP 50: $80 Organ style expression pedal

VP-25: $70 Volume/expression pedal made expressly for Numa etc., has a 1/4" TRS plug for controlling stereo volume.

VP-27: $100 same

 

No idea on what the difference would be between them, once again SL isn't particularly helpful, they give the bare minimum descriptions.  They seem on the pricey side, I've seen some sweep pedals as low as $20

 

Recommendations?  Besides having 4 Yamaha FC7 pedals stop working on me, I see also that they're calibrated to 50k ohm, not 10k, so not the best pedal for the Numa.

[kanefsky]

8 minutes ago, RandyFF said:

Hmmmm.... the MIDI Expression boxes look promising, but for this application I would think it'd be more a matter of buying one that works well with the Numa Piano, unless of course you have a good expression pedal already and want it to be useable for all your equipment.  Considering how many applications there are for expression pedals, from guitars and keyboards to all kinds of equipment, these could be some useful boxes.

 

I don't think the type, active optical or passive variable resistor, makes a difference for which pedals are compatible, but having the correct ohm range and polarity would.  

 

I can't speak for the Numa.  Many modern keyboards are designed to be compatible with different types of pedals, polarity, etc.  Some are limited to a very specific pedal, especially when you're talking about triple-pedal units.  The MIDI Expression is perfect for a keyboard like the VPC1 which has a terrible triple pedal and where you're using VSTs anyway so there's no need for the pedals to run through the keyboard.  I use one with a Roland RPU-3 pedal unit.

 

The VPC1 and the MP11 come with a passive, variable-resistance type pedal that lots of people have problems with.  The MP11SE changed the pedal to a much better optical-sensor type but there's no way to make that pedal work (directly) with the VPC1 or MP11 (non-SE).  That's where devices like the MIDI Expression come in.

 

[CyberGene]

As I previously posted in this thread, I use a Roland DP-10 continuous pedal with the Numa X Piano 73 and it works, however there is a caveat. For the acoustic pianos it needs to be in Continuous A and for Electric pianos it needs to be in Continuous B (or the other way around, don't remember) because otherwise there's odd behavior, for instance on the acoustic piano the sound will decay quicker than usual even when fully pressed in one of the settings, whereas on Electric pianos the sound will still be sustained even when you fully release the pedal. Unfortunately, and oddly enough, these are swapped for acoustic/electric pianos and so you can't just set it and forget it in the menu which makes it rather unusable for me and I just use it as a switch pedal for now. I emailed Gianni and he admitted it's actually an issue with the electric pianos and that they are (probably) gonna update the pedal behavior of the electric pianos, but he implied that the mode that works with the acoustic piano patches is the one that is correct for Roland DP-10, hence third-party half-pedals are supported which is a great news. I'm looking forward to that eventual update because as a pianist I'm rellay used to half-pedaling, and besides, the pedal noises are much more realistic when used with continuous pedals. With a switch they are machine-gun like.

[confidence]

Just got mine today. First impressions: great, I like. Need to update firmware, fix that extraordinarily loud pedal clunk (!) and then have a proper go in detail.

 

Just one question: Are the outputs balanced or unbalanced? It doesn't say in the manual or anywhere I can find on their site.

[confidence]

On 8/22/2023 at 10:41 PM, RandyFF said:

My request for other forums that are discussing the Numa Pianos: was re-reading these forum posts and someone shared a post from an Italian forum which has 56 pages of discussion!  Translated automatically to English makes it easy:

 

Italian forum discussing the Numa Pianos

I followed your link and it's not coming up in English, nor can I see any way of translating it?

[RandyFF]

57 minutes ago, confidence said:

I followed your link and it's not coming up in English, nor can I see any way of translating it?

Hmmmm.... when I follow this link the browser automatically asks me if I want to tranlate into English with a small dialogue box that hovers just beneath the address bar.  I imagine this is something the individual browser handles- I'm using Chrome, but I imagine every browser out there is going to have a translate function.

[RandyFF]

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

As I previously posted in this thread, I use a Roland DP-10 continuous pedal with the Numa X Piano 73 and it works, however there is a caveat. For the acoustic pianos it needs to be in Continuous A and for Electric pianos it needs to be in Continuous B (or the other way around, don't remember) because otherwise there's odd behavior, for instance on the acoustic piano the sound will decay quicker than usual even when fully pressed in one of the settings, whereas on Electric pianos the sound will still be sustained even when you fully release the pedal. Unfortunately, and oddly enough, these are swapped for acoustic/electric pianos and so you can't just set it and forget it in the menu which makes it rather unusable for me and I just use it as a switch pedal for now. I emailed Gianni and he admitted it's actually an issue with the electric pianos and that they are (probably) gonna update the pedal behavior of the electric pianos, but he implied that the mode that works with the acoustic piano patches is the one that is correct for Roland DP-10, hence third-party half-pedals are supported which is a great news. I'm looking forward to that eventual update because as a pianist I'm rellay used to half-pedaling, and besides, the pedal noises are much more realistic when used with continuous pedals. With a switch they are machine-gun like.

So, it would appear that using the same continuous pedal (for half-pedaling), that you can have it behave in two different ways, A or B.

 

Any insight on which SWEEP continuous pedals work well with this board?  Your above example is for AP style half-pedaling, but as the manual suggests, with a sweep/expression style pedal, which can work with all 3 Pedal Inputs, there are all kinds of things it can control, like sweeping thru the full range of effects parameters.

[b3plyr]

1 hour ago, confidence said:

Just got mine today. First impressions: great, I like. Need to update firmware, fix that extraordinarily loud pedal clunk (!) and then have a proper go in detail.

 

Just one question: Are the outputs balanced or unbalanced? It doesn't say in the manual or anywhere I can find on their site.

Unbalanced.

[confidence]

43 minutes ago, RandyFF said:

Hmmmm.... when I follow this link the browser automatically asks me if I want to tranlate into English with a small dialogue box that hovers just beneath the address bar.  I imagine this is something the individual browser handles- I'm using Chrome, but I imagine every browser out there is going to have a translate function.

Thanks! I was on Firefox but I just opened it in Chrome and it was as you say. (There's probably something similar in firefox but it doesn't come up automatically).

[obxa]

For more on the Numa particularly the action,  I joked in another post the folks over at pianoworld love to obsess discuss 😀 such things at a granular level.  But seriously, and not to take any love from beloved Keyboard corner,  if you have a few hours, you'll find many Numa threads there.

[RandyFF]

2 hours ago, obxa said:

For more on the Numa particularly the action,  I joked in another post the folks over at pianoworld love to obsess discuss 😀 such things at a granular level.  But seriously, and not to take any love from beloved Keyboard corner,  if you have a few hours, you'll find many Numa threads there.

Thanks, the only one I've been aware of was dedicated to the action of the Numa GT, sounds like I missed some threads.

[RandyFF]

14 hours ago, obxa said:

For more on the Numa particularly the action,  I joked in another post the folks over at pianoworld love to obsess discuss 😀 such things at a granular level.  But seriously, and not to take any love from beloved Keyboard corner,  if you have a few hours, you'll find many Numa threads there.

Of everything I could find, this particular post made me want to buy the Numa GT!  I've edited it for relevance and brevities sake but The original post is here. 

 ------------------

Aorasy wrote:

"I wanted to share with you my feelings after an experience with this piano. Everything has already been said and I do not think that my contribution will advance the knowledge of this piano, because despite my quite long experience as a classical musician and composer, I am not able to express my thoughts as precisely with a technical vocabulary as some of you have already done. However, I have a good knowledge of all actions available on the market (Kawai, Yamaha, Roland...) having tested some of them for many years or having compared them in showrooms several times for several hours.

What an addictive pleasure! I don't know if a comparison really makes sense here but in terms of touch experience and playing pleasure, I would place it above the Kawai Grand Feel I (MP11SE for example) which was my reference of portable pianos until then.

 

I like heavy touch in general because it gives me more control over my playing, and I wouldn't consider this piano heavy touch, but I have revised my judgment on lighter keyboards while trying it. After a few hours of playing, I suddenly experienced a rare pleasure, namely that each key felt like an extension of my fingers: it's quite unique indeed to realize that without forcing, without even wanting to pay attention, I was controlling exactly each level of velocity to perfection and was able to express exactly the range of emotions I wanted to convey in the pieces I was playing. 

 

Where this mechanism really shines is at low velocities. It's amazing how subtle and progressive it is without overdoing it, with just the right amount of force feedback without causing any playing fatigue and an extremely fast and stable release of the keys (no bounce at all). I agree that it is a bit forgiving in the high velocities, namely that they are quite attainable without too much effort, but it is not that glaring. For this reason, I would perhaps advise against this piano for classical music students who might acquire bad habits and expect the control of high velocities to be so "effortless" on a grand piano. However, for the others I would say: "Go for it!"  You really have to look for non-portable piano action (ex: Kawai CA99 / Grand Feel III or Yamaha CLP785 / Grand Touch "black belt" version) to hope to reach an equivalent experience, knowing that they also have a heavier touch and I would say closer to the experience of a grand piano. This allows me to address a question I've been asking myself:

"What are we looking for? Is it better to try to simulate the mechanics of a grand piano, without succeeding exactly, and thus take the risk that these differences with the "real" experience will be somewhat unsatisfactory for the professional players? or to move away from the realistic model by proposing an experience of touch optimizing the mastery of expressivity even if it means that the experience will be "too indulgent"? For me, the choice is made  Even if I'm going off topic now, it reminds me of a new MPE Osmose keyboard model developed by Expressive E (https://www.expressivee.com/2-osmose) that offers something different (and has extremely positive feedback from professional jazz players used to the grand piano experience). I assure you, the Numa X GT is still a classical piano, but in my opinion it opens the way to a still unknown and unexploited territory "beyond" grand piano simulation, a simulation that we have been trying to perfect for decades.

I won't talk too much about the sounds. I find them rather average compared to the competition, although they are far from being ridiculous and I appreciated their variety, and the fact (it is important) that they are qualitative in their variety. We often see in digital piano models that the piano sounds are ultra realistic, but the rest of the sounds are just "meh" ... here it is not the case. Special mention to the color coded interface: very efficient, pleasant, and terribly simple, so much that one wonders why it couldn't have been invented elsewhere before. The encoders seemed to me to be quite robust. Some people criticized the left control joysticks for pitch bend and modulation effects and I can understand why. I find them pretty cool and easy enough to control for my personal use. You just have to find the trick 

This piano is unfairly underrated, that's why I support the initiative of the creator of this thread, which consists in promoting this piano, by bringing my modest contribution. Some may wonder, considering my almost rave review, but I want to say that I was not paid by Studiologic to write it."

 

[RandyFF]

The above description is very similar to my experience of the action on the Kawai ES110.  It is by far the most expressive/fluid keybed I've experienced, a true joy to play.  Sounds like the Numa GT, which I haven't played, is even better, but hell, I'd go with the ES 110/120/520 anytime!  And to think that the ES110 is an entry-level board! I just wish they'd license it out to other companies!

 

Anyway, side rant over, wanted to share what this classical pianist had to say over at PianoWorld about the Numa GT Piano.  Almost makes me want to pay the extra money and deal with the weight- almost double compared to the X 73 that I've got!   Yikes!

[obxa]

3 minutes ago, RandyFF said:

Anyway, side rant over, wanted to share what this classical pianist had to say over at PianoWorld about the Numa GT Piano.  Almost makes me want to pay the extra money and deal with the weight- almost double compared to the X 73 that I've got!   Yikes!

it was either this thread or another;  that someone wisely said  "dealing with digi keyboards always contains compromises".    Which ones are deal-breakers, all depend on your end-use - and what's most important to you in the end that you can live (or gig) with.  That pretty much sums up life too (for me at least).   Just like there is no perfect job/gig, car, DAW, plug-in,  house/apartment,  coffee,  significant other, etc. etc.  .  

[DeltaJockey]

When I bought my GT, I felt the same about its action compared to my MP11SE. I ended up selling the MP11SE, and haven't missed it a single day! But to be fair, selling it was mostly about it's effect on my wrist and hand health than the playing experience, because I found the GT to be much easier on my hands.

 

I still have the MP7SE, but that's for a contrasting experience.

[RandyFF]

4 minutes ago, DeltaJockey said:

When I bought my GT, I felt the same about its action compared to my MP11SE. I ended up selling the MP11SE, and haven't missed it a single day! But to be fair, selling it was mostly about it's effect on my wrist and hand health than the playing experience, because I found the GT to be much easier on my hands.

 

I still have the MP7SE, but that's for a contrasting experience.

Pray tell, you felt the same- meaning, like the PianoWorld post that I shared above, that playing the Numa GT became an effortless and joyful extension of your expression, which I take wasn't the case with the MP11SE-? How about the MP7SE?

[confidence]

OK I'm loving this keyboard. The action is lovely: solid but pliable, responsive, good for AP while not too heavy for EPs. Piano sounds, while not the very best out there, are good. Some excellent EPs, orch sounds, pads and some of the new ones released for download are smashing, which bodes well for the future. As others have described, so I won't repeat, the design and interface are pure genius. All this for £900 for the 73 key version seems like a steal.

 

One major query, if anyone can please help:

 

Most similar keyboards have some kind of distinction between "patch" and "program" modes, although they may go by different names. ie the mode where you're dealing with a single sound, and the mode where you're putting sounds together in combination, and applying key ranges, controller assignments etc. to them. On the Numa X, you're basically in program mode all the time, right? Any time you manipulate or edit a sound you're doing so within its particular zone of a particular program. (Tell me if I've got this wrong).

 

Now, differences of design (and preference) sometimes arise about where editing fits into this. To what extent do you edit the basic sounds themselves, and to what extent the programs. When you save an edit, does it affect every instance of that sound, or only the program you're in? Different boards have different approaches to this.

 

On the Numa, program 0001 has "German Grand" in zone 1 and nothing in the other zones. So to get rid of the ridiculous level of pedal clunk, I go into zoom mode on zone 1 and reduce the pedal resonance by half. I save the edit, and now whenever I come back to that program, the pedal resonance is as I set it. If I scroll through the programs and find others with the German Grand in them, the pedal resonance is still set to the default, so clearly the edits only affect the program, not the patch. OK.

 

But here's the thing: If I then go into program 0001 and replace the German Grand with a different piano model, the pedal resonance edit disappears and we're back to square 1 (ie the new piano in zone 1 has the default level again, not the one I set). So it doesn't seem to save the edit to the program either - it only saves it to the SPECIFIC PROGRAM-PATCH INSTANCE. This seems like editing is going to be a stupid amount of unnecessary work. In this example, every time I load a piano sound into any program, I have to first load the sound AND THEN GO INTO ZOOM EDIT AND SET THE PEDAL RESONANCE. I can't just make the sound carry it's correct resonance level wherever it goes, and NEITHER can I make the program retain the correct resonance level whatever sound I put into it!

 

I'm using this example as the one that's jumped out at me as needing editing, since all the piano sounds have this excessive pedal resonance, with the level set to a default 64 rather than to what sounds good (why?). But as other similar things come up that you want to edit and have them stay that way, it could become a serious PITA.

 

Am I missing something here?

[obxa]

3 hours ago, confidence said:

But here's the thing: If I then go into program 0001 and replace the German Grand with a different piano model, the pedal resonance edit disappears and we're back to square 1 (ie the new piano in zone 1 has the default level again, not the one I set). So it doesn't seem to save the edit to the program either - it only saves it to the SPECIFIC PROGRAM-PATCH INSTANCE. This seems like editing is going to be a stupid amount of unnecessary work. In this example, every time I load a piano sound into any program, I have to first load the sound AND THEN GO INTO ZOOM EDIT AND SET THE PEDAL RESONANCE. I can't just make the sound carry it's correct resonance level wherever it goes, and NEITHER can I make the program retain the correct resonance level whatever sound I put into it!

Yes!!!   I have the same frustration, and carpal from having to constantly reset those parameters.   I've wondered what I'm doing wrong.  

 

  I have a ton of user presets where all is retained, but if I'm feeling cheeky and want to try another piano model within my presets, the new model pulls up the same default (on-stun) settings and over-rides mine.    Its the string res-duplex-pedal noise  dance over and over. 

 

At least with user presets those parameters will stay unless you switch pianos. The workaround is create some patch templates with your most used-pianos as the start, with your desired settings. I rotate between  Vintage, Japan, and fav EPI/II templates and then add/edit  my other layers to those. 

 

  I keep hoping I missed something.  I've complained before there should be a "User Global setting" for AP/EP that can be overwritten within the preset. 

 

In fairness, much like taxes and daylight saving time -  I only think-bitch about it when setting up for shows.  I (we) really need to write support instead of here. I know CyberGene has had extended positive dialogue with them.  He got a good explanation why the pedal is maxxed out.    

[confidence]

Thanks Chris it's good to know it's not just my insanity. The UI is so strong on this board but this does seem to be one area they've got it wrong. Hopefully it's the kind of thing that could be sorted with a future firmware revision?

 

As you've obviously had longer with the board than I, have you suffered this problem with other sounds as well? I mean when you edit, copy and change programs based on the EPs, synth sounds etc, are there parameters there too that you have to reset over and over again? I can probably live with it for the basic AP parameters, it'll just become a habit. But I can see it being really annoying if the same "dance" applies to every edit I ever want to make.

[obxa]

4 hours ago, confidence said:

I mean when you edit, copy and change programs based on the EPs, synth sounds etc, are there parameters there too that you have to reset over and over again?

Unfortunately yes- for all.   E.G:  I rotate between different pads (movie and synth), with a couple  tweaks I regularly do for attack & release. Those always go back to default. 

 

It's a PITA and can keep you from exploring other sounds to avoid the hassle.  Again my only solution was create templates, knowing if any sounds are swapped within, they'll go to that sound's default settings.  However any splits, active ranges, or octave transpostions for the layer are still retained.  

 

With everything else they got so incredibly right, it's a weird oversight. 

 

Soon as I can get to my laptop, writing support in detail.

[CHarrell]

23 hours ago, RandyFF said:

Sounds like the Numa GT, which I haven't played, is even better, but hell, I'd go with the ES 110/120/520 anytime!  And to think that the ES110 is an entry-level board! I just wish they'd license it out to other companies

 

I have a 120 on the way! How do you feel about it vs the 110?

[stoken6]

1 hour ago, CHarrell said:

I have a 120 on the way! How do you feel about it vs the 110?

I lost interest after the 110 when Kawai dropped 5-pin MIDI in favour of USB MIDI on the 120.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[kanefsky]

4 minutes ago, stoken6 said:

I lost interest after the 110 when Kawai dropped 5-pin MIDI in favour of USB MIDI on the 120.

 

They also replaced the excellent F-10H sustain pedal that was included with the 110 with a junky one that's included with the 120.  Of course this can be fixed just by spending some more money, but it makes for an even more dramatic price increase between the 110 and 120 overall ($699 vs over $1000).

 

For 5-pin DIN, there seem to be a lot of interesting solutions now that let you connect multiple USB MIDI devices along with 5-pin DIN and even MIDI over ethernet. They also provide extensive routing/filtering/remapping capabilities if you need it.  For example https://www.iconnectivity.com/mioxm and https://www.bome.com/products/bomebox

[stoken6]

9 minutes ago, kanefsky said:

For 5-pin DIN, there seem to be a lot of interesting solutions now that let you connect multiple USB MIDI devices along with 5-pin DIN and even MIDI over ethernet. They also provide extensive routing/filtering/remapping capabilities if you need it.  For example https://www.iconnectivity.com/mioxm and https://www.bome.com/products/bomebox

There are, but if - like me - you simply want a lightweight hammer-action controller, it's a pain to carry an extra device, and connect it to both boards, and to power - never mind the additional expense. Compare that to a single MIDI cable. 

 

Cheers, Mike.