Have we finally reached "Good enough" in ROMplers?

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, jejefunkyman said:

Now with the SV2, I'm going back and forth between different ones, having one opinion on one day and another on the next day. And this drives me a bit nuts!!!!

 

The worst part of this could be when you go through the sounds at home by yourself, choosing your favorites in each category, and then in the heat of the gig, playing with all the other instruments, you get the feeling that maybe some choice you made solo wasn't the best choice for the full band context, and the best you can do is "take a guess" at something else anyway. :-)

[jejefunkyman]

Very true 😱 But I think the worst is when you record something with a tone you crafted at home, believing it would fit nicely, while listening to it later, you realize it’s not exactly what you thought 🤪 And you don’t have the possibility to change it 😂 Then you hope that the sound engineer will mess it up, so that nobody hears it. Ok I’m exaggerating a bit there 😂

[ProfD]

@jejefunkyman, your KB affinity is similar to mine when it comes to EP (Rhodes). 👍🏿

 

I had an SV-1 until I got my Rhodes Stage 88 Mark II.  So, I've only got one sound right now. 

 

I've got to sink or swim with my Rhodes.  No confusion.😁😎

[jejefunkyman]

Yes I also thought about this as the solution to all my problems. But buying a real Rhodes at this point in time is totally out of question for me 😂 

Beside, I’m afraid that if I have only one real Rhodes, I will want one with another tone 😱 Oh there I go again 🤪

And when I had the SV1, I didn’t have that problem. This started only with the SV2 😂

No the real problem is that Rhodes tones are so versatile 😱

Now I’m even thinking about buying a Nautilus 61, just to get the Purgatory Creek EPs 🤦‍♂️OMG!!

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

On 4/11/2022 at 11:28 AM, RABid said:

I also sold my Yamaha Montage 7 really quick. My intent was to sit the Montage 7 on top of a 88 controller and play the piano parts on the Montage with the controller while playing synth parts on the Montage. I was shocked to find that Yamaha had removed this ability, something that was easily done with the Motif.

What do you mean they removed this ability?  I'd be shocked to know that the unit can't access more than one midi channel at a time.  That is all a request like yours would require.  

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

On 4/11/2022 at 12:59 PM, Tusker said:

We are all different. For me, I have different answers, depending on the answer to a corollary question “good enough for what purpose?”

Live performance with a full band? Yes!!! 🙂

 

Piano jazz trio live? Maybe.

 

For tracking in a studio, with acoustic  instruments like violins and saxophones? No.

 

You don't think violins are good enough on keyboards/plugins to pass in a studio environment?  

 

I hate saxophone either way.... So yeah no need for that.  Haha

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

On 4/11/2022 at 1:26 PM, GovernorSilver said:

I'm not really that big on using romplers to try to fool people into thinking they are hearing real acoustic instruments, which seems to be a typical use case.

 

That's why when I program drum patterns on a sequencer, I go for more electronic sounding drums.  I have some friends who can play real drums - i don't mind scheduling time with them for recording, paying them, etc. if I want the sound of real drums, with genuinely human groove,  in my music.  

 

Similarly, I prefer Rhodes, Wurly, etc. to acoustic piano tones in romplers, because they're a step away from "acoustic realism".   

 

I also don't like using bowed string sounds for similar reasons.  I do like Mellotron strings - they are recognizable as being distinct from pro-level orchestral sample libraries, and thus to my mind do not fall under "trying too hard to be realistic".  I have friends who can play cello, viola, etc. at a professional level and would not mind paying them for their time.  If my own electric violin playing is suitable enough, I just use that too.

 

So the answer for me is "good enough" happened years ago already when it comes to romplers.

So anything mimicking reality, you don't even fool with.... Bjust call the real thing.  But more synthetic tones are what you use keyboards for... Hmmmm. That makes sense.  

[AnotherScott]

11 minutes ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

What do you mean they removed this ability?  I'd be shocked to know that the unit can't access more than one midi channel at a time.  That is all a request like your would require.  

Each part on a Montage has a fixed MIDI channel. You can access 16 Parts (MIDI channels) at once, that's not the issue. But you can't change the MIDI channels of the Parts so you can't do things like put two Parts on the same MIDI channel. So for example, if you want to play two Parts from an external controller, you want your external controller to have two-zone capability. There are some workarounds, but that's the gist of the issue.

[GovernorSilver]

4 hours ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

So anything mimicking reality, you don't even fool with.... Bjust call the real thing.  But more synthetic tones are what you use keyboards for... Hmmmm. That makes sense.  

 

I don't have a job that requires me to use sample libraries of acoustic instruments.  That's one of the reasons I don't rely on sampled acoustic instruments for music-making.  Or rather, I don't really need them to make the music I want to make.

 

I did briefly use the rompler tones on my Korg M3 because the band leader wanted some sampled bells and piano for certain songs.  She's a huge fan of Trent Reznor and he famously used heavily processed/warped piano samples (or maybe just tape recordings of piano - not sure exactly) one of his big hits.  So, we did put in the time to make sure the piano patches we used were similarly twisted up in some way.

[Mighty Motif Max]

I'm going to jump in with a slightly different take.

 

I don't think that we have reached "good enough" across the board with ROMplers for electromechanical and piano sounds. A few brands are doing better in that area, while some (like Roland) seem to be going backwards. I'm thinking in terms of band-context usage with a good sound tech; solo/trio-type exposed stuff is a different game. Oddly enough I feel like the more "digital" sound is coming back into piano tones across many brands for some reason (like Yamaha's current CFX sample with its metallic FF layer). Piano sounds that sound nice on recordings but lose realism once you bring them live or while playing them (Korg and Nord in particular IMO). And of course action can be a huge factor on how you feel playing the sounds as well, but we're generally getting better in that area at least. Clavinet quality really varies still, and there's still room for improvement in Hammond organ (and pipe organ too but that's less-used now) patches. Roland's current VTW engine and Kurzweil's KB3 are doing well, but there's still a ways to go (and I say that as someone who's not a huge Hammond user).

 

For non-organ sounds that are acoustic, that's where the biggest drawback is right now. I'm coming at this as someone who actually does use ROMplers to simulate acoustic instruments, and there's a level of realism needed there. Strings vary significantly still - Kurzweil has been doing it right for a decade, and Roland is pretty good on solo strings (the SuperNatural patches anyways). Yamaha has pretty good general-purpose string sections currently with the Seattle samples. Brass has always been tricky; Roland for some reason has chosen not to include some of the brass sections from the Fantom X in the current Fantom, while those (2004) sections were IMO head and shoulders above any current offerings (from any brand) for realism. Again with the step backwards. Orchestral stuff like chromatic percussion and woodwinds, it depends what you're going for; since I'm needing pretty convincing realism, Kurzweil (excluding saxes) and Yamaha own this area , but are again way, way behind software. That is something that is especially visible with orchestral libraries. Then again, do I really need 4x round robin with 27 articulations to choose from for a Cimbasso patch for live use? Probably not. Sometimes that old Yamaha Sweet Tenor sax sample is just the thing that's needed. Guitars? Ironically I find that Yamaha's sample-based guitars tend to be better than a lot of virtual libraries; guitars are hard to nail for everyone it seems, but I've been pretty disappointed in most offerings, hardware or software. The fact that a Yamaha Motif ES from 2004 can have better guitars than a Korg Kronos 2 or current Roland Fantom just makes me scratch my head. Basses? Yamaha and Roland are good enough here, the others have work to do. Choirs suck across the board honestly.

 

Drums are way behind across the board, spanning from usable (Yamaha) to useless (Kurzweil). That's probably not a priority area for most people though, and even in the electronic drums industry there's still a lot of room for improvement, so it's no surprise that we don't have state-of-the-art drums in keyboards!

 

On the other hand, I think we're in a pretty good place with synth sounds in ROMplers. Most keyboards these days have enough presets to cover the basic areas, and at least some limited customization. Not ideal perhaps for sound design, but for basic synth work in a band, I think they're plenty. Pads are hard - most brands are stuck in the past a bit with lots of fancy evolving pads OR basic analog patches, but ignoring the types of pad sounds used in the last decade. Yamaha is good about this though. More synth engines are becoming a thing which is nice of course.

 

----

If we're talking about a solo context, pianos aren't there yet across the board. I don't feel comfortable doing solo gigs with non-Yamaha or Kurzweil boards (also see the Kawai note at the end of this section). It goes back to things sounding great in a studio context but kind of dying live. I'm not the kind of person who needs all sorts of mechanical noise modeling or anything like that, just a full-bodied tone that sounds like an acoustic piano in the room. I kind of think we've moved too far in the direction of getting the fine details there while neglecting the basic tone more recently.

 

The exception to this rule is Kawai IMO. I'm a big fan of their current samples, but can't justify that specialized of a stage piano.

----

 

Overall, I just don't think we're in a place yet where you can just pick any flagship ROMpler and have "good enough" sounds to cover all categories. In my mind you need at least two brands to hit "good enough", and maybe more to get a bit better than that.

 

For me, the ROMpler combo to hit "good enough" would be a Yamaha Montage plus a Kurzweil PC4. With a more synth-heavy focus, it would be a Montage plus a Fantom or Kronos. Pricy, yes; I just find the cheaper boards are skimpy on controls and feel. For my theoretical subjective "best of" ROMpler setup, it would be a Kawai MP7SE, Yamaha Montage 7, PC4-7, and Kronos 61. Plus an SKpro 73 (not sure if that qualifies as a ROMpler or not), and maybe throw in an Integra 7 for all the classic Roland tones and their solo strings. So it's not all in one place now. And that's more gear than I want to deal with for gigs.

 

 

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

8 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Each part on a Montage has a fixed MIDI channel. You can access 16 Parts (MIDI channels) at once, that's not the issue. But you can't change the MIDI channels of the Parts so you can't do things like put two Parts on the same MIDI channel. So for example, if you want to play two Parts from an external controller, you want your external controller to have two-zone capability. There are some workarounds, but that's the gist of the issue.

Wow.... That is shockingly hard to believe.   

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

On 4/12/2022 at 1:35 PM, jejefunkyman said:

Yes I also thought about this as the solution to all my problems. But buying a real Rhodes at this point in time is totally out of question for me 😂 

Beside, I’m afraid that if I have only one real Rhodes, I will want one with another tone 😱 Oh there I go again 🤪

And when I had the SV1, I didn’t have that problem. This started only with the SV2 😂

No the real problem is that Rhodes tones are so versatile 😱

Now I’m even thinking about buying a Nautilus 61, just to get the Purgatory Creek EPs 🤦‍♂️OMG!!

You feel like the purgatory creek EP is better than the one in the Nautilus/Kronos already?  👀👀👀🤯🤯🤯

[Julius D Majestic Studios]

@Mighty Motif Max sounds nice on recordings but lose realism live... How exactly does that happen? 

[kaptainkeys]

Just now, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

@Mighty Motif Max sounds nice on recordings but lose realism live... How exactly does that happen? 

My guess is that when it is played in a live context where there are other instruments and the pianos are being run through the FOH signal chain and then to the PA speakers and then the sound bounces around in the room the character the sound had when recorded direct from the keyboard and piped into your headphones is changed.

[Lazerlike42]

6 minutes ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

Wow.... That is shockingly hard to believe.   

 

Something else I was surprised to learn is that you can't assign the faders. If you could, like on almost any other board, I'd probably have bought one already (or a modx). As it is, I'm going back and forth between various options, all of which seem to have a flaw that's a significant downside to me. The faders are that flaw foo the Yamahas.

[Mighty Motif Max]

59 minutes ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

@Mighty Motif Max sounds nice on recordings but lose realism live... How exactly does that happen? 

 

56 minutes ago, GotKeys said:

My guess is that when it is played in a live context where there are other instruments and the pianos are being run through the FOH signal chain and then to the PA speakers and then the sound bounces around in the room the character the sound had when recorded direct from the keyboard and piped into your headphones is changed.

Yeah, so it's hard to explain exactly why it happens, but just try taking the Kronos/Krome/Nautilus German Grand sample (which sounds great on headphones, and when played back), and playing it in a live setting. Even if you play in stereo, it's like the midrange collapses down. Playing in mono is another issue that's been debated endlessly and drastically changes the sound, but I'm sticking to stereo for this discussion. Room resonances might be part of that. It doesn't seem to matter how nice of a PA or if you have a very competent sound guy. Some pianos just don't sound like a piano in the room when you play out. The other part is that, especially with Nord pianos, your perception of the realism of a piano sound is connected to how it responds when you play it...the finger-to-ear connection. That's why I can't stand Nords...the actions destroy the perception because it feels "off" and doesn't respond like I would expect it to when actually playing. But in a recording when you take that out of the equation they sound great. Playing in a live setting might also change how you're physically interacting with the keys a bit (i.e. if you have a live band) and then you aren't as in-touch with the fine details necessarily. Better monitoring can help with this.

 

I just know that I never cease to be amazed at how terrible some sounds can sound live while they sound great in headphones or studio monitors (or even on solo gigs). In the same way, you can have sounds that don't sound great alone but just fit great into a dense band mix - like some of the previous-gen Roland pianos did in country and rock music.

 

Part of me wonders whether, with pianos in particular, if the sound that we like in headphones was recorded more from the player's position, which then sounds off when you're listening from out in the audience. Or vice versa, if it's a close-miced sound that sounds great in recordings but sucks when playing.

[Mighty Motif Max]

10 hours ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

You feel like the purgatory creek EP is better than the one in the Nautilus/Kronos already?  👀👀👀🤯🤯🤯

I have the Purgatory Creek EP's in my PC4, and they are phenomenal. To be honest, the free MKII sample is all I ever need for Rhodes. They definitely beat the EP's in my Krome, which are sampled versions of the Kronos ones (and are pretty great, better than my other boards other than the PC4).

[jejefunkyman]

6 hours ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

You feel like the purgatory creek EP is better than the one in the Nautilus/Kronos already?  👀👀👀🤯🤯🤯

 

I don't have a Kronos, nor a Nautilus, but from the demos I've heard, it seems to me that they are more realistic. But here also it's a very subjective thing. Anyway, I would have to spend time playing both to make a final conclusion. 😉

[drawback]

 

9 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

I'm going to jump in with a slightly different take.

 

I don't think that we have reached "good enough" across the board with ROMplers for electromechanical and piano sounds. A few brands are doing better in that area, while some (like Roland) seem to be going backwards. I'm thinking in terms of band-context usage with a good sound tech; solo/trio-type exposed stuff is a different game. Oddly enough I feel like the more "digital" sound is coming back into piano tones across many brands for some reason (like Yamaha's current CFX sample with its metallic FF layer). Piano sounds that sound nice on recordings but lose realism once you bring them live or while playing them (Korg and Nord in particular IMO). And of course action can be a huge factor on how you feel playing the sounds as well, but we're generally getting better in that area at least. Clavinet quality really varies still, and there's still room for improvement in Hammond organ (and pipe organ too but that's less-used now) patches. Roland's current VTW engine and Kurzweil's KB3 are doing well, but there's still a ways to go (and I say that as someone who's not a huge Hammond user).

 

For non-organ sounds that are acoustic, that's where the biggest drawback is right now. I'm coming at this as someone who actually does use ROMplers to simulate acoustic instruments, and there's a level of realism needed there. Strings vary significantly still - Kurzweil has been doing it right for a decade, and Roland is pretty good on solo strings (the SuperNatural patches anyways). Yamaha has pretty good general-purpose string sections currently with the Seattle samples. Brass has always been tricky; Roland for some reason has chosen not to include some of the brass sections from the Fantom X in the current Fantom, while those (2004) sections were IMO head and shoulders above any current offerings (from any brand) for realism. Again with the step backwards. Orchestral stuff like chromatic percussion and woodwinds, it depends what you're going for; since I'm needing pretty convincing realism, Kurzweil (excluding saxes) and Yamaha own this area , but are again way, way behind software. That is something that is especially visible with orchestral libraries. Then again, do I really need 4x round robin with 27 articulations to choose from for a Cimbasso patch for live use? Probably not. Sometimes that old Yamaha Sweet Tenor sax sample is just the thing that's needed. Guitars? Ironically I find that Yamaha's sample-based guitars tend to be better than a lot of virtual libraries; guitars are hard to nail for everyone it seems, but I've been pretty disappointed in most offerings, hardware or software. The fact that a Yamaha Motif ES from 2004 can have better guitars than a Korg Kronos 2 or current Roland Fantom just makes me scratch my head. Basses? Yamaha and Roland are good enough here, the others have work to do. Choirs suck across the board honestly.

 

Drums are way behind across the board, spanning from usable (Yamaha) to useless (Kurzweil). That's probably not a priority area for most people though, and even in the electronic drums industry there's still a lot of room for improvement, so it's no surprise that we don't have state-of-the-art drums in keyboards!

 

On the other hand, I think we're in a pretty good place with synth sounds in ROMplers. Most keyboards these days have enough presets to cover the basic areas, and at least some limited customization. Not ideal perhaps for sound design, but for basic synth work in a band, I think they're plenty. Pads are hard - most brands are stuck in the past a bit with lots of fancy evolving pads OR basic analog patches, but ignoring the types of pad sounds used in the last decade. Yamaha is good about this though. More synth engines are becoming a thing which is nice of course.

 

----

If we're talking about a solo context, pianos aren't there yet across the board. I don't feel comfortable doing solo gigs with non-Yamaha or Kurzweil boards (also see the Kawai note at the end of this section). It goes back to things sounding great in a studio context but kind of dying live. I'm not the kind of person who needs all sorts of mechanical noise modeling or anything like that, just a full-bodied tone that sounds like an acoustic piano in the room. I kind of think we've moved too far in the direction of getting the fine details there while neglecting the basic tone more recently.

 

The exception to this rule is Kawai IMO. I'm a big fan of their current samples, but can't justify that specialized of a stage piano.

----

 

Overall, I just don't think we're in a place yet where you can just pick any flagship ROMpler and have "good enough" sounds to cover all categories. In my mind you need at least two brands to hit "good enough", and maybe more to get a bit better than that.

 

For me, the ROMpler combo to hit "good enough" would be a Yamaha Montage plus a Kurzweil PC4. With a more synth-heavy focus, it would be a Montage plus a Fantom or Kronos. Pricy, yes; I just find the cheaper boards are skimpy on controls and feel. For my theoretical subjective "best of" ROMpler setup, it would be a Kawai MP7SE, Yamaha Montage 7, PC4-7, and Kronos 61. Plus an SKpro 73 (not sure if that qualifies as a ROMpler or not), and maybe throw in an Integra 7 for all the classic Roland tones and their solo strings. So it's not all in one place now. And that's more gear than I want to deal with for gigs.

 

 

 

You nailed it.

 

7 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

I have the Purgatory Creek EP's in my PC4, and they are phenomenal. To be honest, the free MKII sample is all I ever need for Rhodes.

Purgatory Creek’s EPs is the first library I bought when I got my used Kronos 61. I don’t think anything’s changed with the core sounds in the Nautilus. They're also deeply editable.

[AnotherScott]

 

18 hours ago, Julius D Majestic Studios said:

Wow.... That is shockingly hard to believe.   

I don't know this for a fact, but I did come up with a theory that the decision to not let the user change a Part's MIDI channel (in a Montage/MODX) is related to their introduction of multi-Part single instruments, where, for example, a single piano sound could be split among 4 Parts (so it could have a lot more elements to it, and more flexibility about how different components of the sound could be processed). If a user could arbitrarily assign different parts of a single Piano sound to different-than-expected (e.g. non-consecutive or overlapping) MIDI channels, maybe havoc could ensue. It's possible that some aspect of the usability of these instruments depends on the system knowing, from a MIDI perspective, exactly where each component of an instrument's sound is going to be relative to another. Then again, I could be totally wrong. ;-)

 

18 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

Roland for some reason has chosen not to include some of the brass sections from the Fantom X in the current Fantom, while those (2004) sections were IMO head and shoulders above any current offerings (from any brand) for realism. Again with the step backwards.

I do find it surprising (and a bit irritating) that they routinely include the (now 22 year old) XV-5080 sound set as their legacy sounds source (Integra, FA, and the new Fantoms/Jupiters) but they leave out the major stuff that came between then and now. By today's standards, the Fantom S/X/G wave sets were small, something that could easily be offered as an expansion if not stock. Maybe the different effects structure is what stands in the way of recreating many of the patches? But as it is, the only place to find Fantom sounds these days is in the Juno DS (which still doesn't have all of them).

 

Some of Roland's best brass was in the ARX SuperNATURAL expansion for the Fantom G. That has disappeared, it's not even in the Integra, which has Roland's largest set of SN Acoustic tones by far. That ARX expansion had a neat trick where, if you played a chord in a brass ensemble, instead of having all the instruments play every note, it would assign different instruments in the ensemble (sax, trumpet, trombone) to different notes of the chord, the way it happens IRL. Currently, the only board you can buy that can do that is the Genos.

 

18 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

Ironically I find that Yamaha's sample-based guitars tend to be better than a lot of virtual libraries; guitars are hard to nail for everyone it seems, but I've been pretty disappointed in most offerings, hardware or software. The fact that a Yamaha Motif ES from 2004 can have better guitars than a Korg Kronos 2 or current Roland Fantom just makes me scratch my head.

If you're talking about electric guitars, one of the cool things Yamaha does is their VCM modeling of guitar effects, so what you're hearing may not be strictly sample-based.

 

Roland employs modeling in their SuperNATURAL guitars, but those SN sounds are not in the Fantom. 

 

18 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

Pads are hard - most brands are stuck in the past a bit with lots of fancy evolving pads OR basic analog patches, but ignoring the types of pad sounds used in the last decade. Yamaha is good about this though.

I wonder if it's not really that Yamaha is better at capturing the recent pad sounds, but rather, people were using Yamahas to create those pads in the first place, so of course, they're already there. Chicken and egg,

 

18 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

The exception to this rule is Kawai IMO. I'm a big fan of their current samples, but can't justify that specialized of a stage piano.

 

Years ago, I did a pretty thorough eval of piano sounds. At the time, the MP10 was the current top-of-line "portable" Kawai... I thought it was easily the best sounding of the bunch, compared to anything else I could find at the time, i.e. Nord (Grand Imperial was their latest at the time), Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Kurzweil, Casio.

 

16 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

Yeah, so it's hard to explain exactly why it happens...I just know that I never cease to be amazed at how terrible some sounds can sound live while they sound great in headphones or studio monitors (or even on solo gigs).

 

Here's one more theory to add to the list. One of the things I find most irritating about the majority of piano sounds (and in my case, it bothers me even in solo playing), is that the attacks are too fierce relative to the subsequent drop-off. Maybe part of it is that they are miking the piano really close to the hammers (which is not a place your ears will ever be located, and not where a piano sounds like it does when you hear it in a room); and in some cases (particularly older/lesser models), maybe it was also related to trying to keep the attack portion of the wave short before going into a loop, to save memory.

 

The reason I think this may be particularly relevant here is, a piano with too much attack-then-dropoff, in a solo environment, at worst, sounds plunky (something some of us seem more bothered by than others). But in a live full electric band environment, I think this effect can get further exaggerated, because assuming you're not playing with deafeningly loud attacks, what will happen in the too-quick note decays is that the notes will quickly fall away to being too quiet under the rest of the band, something you won't notice so much when playing against only a quiet ensemble or solo, where nothing threatens to overwhelm the piano sound as it decays. I think it's possible that this kind of "disappearing" piano envelope can cause the piano to lose its presence in a loud electric setting, in a way that it would not in a quiet/solo setting.

 

Related, I think maybe playing in a loud band prompts you to more often hit the keys harder, and so play them more in a velocity range where they may not sound their best, and not the way you would play if you were playing solo or in a quiet ensemble.

 

I wonder if adding compression to the piano sound in these cases (also allowing you to turn up your board's volume without actually making the piano too loud) might help address both of these things, helping boost the decaying sound and also allowing you to "keep up" with the band without feeling like you have to hit the keys as hard.

 

Tangentially, I think this brings up the potential value of easily accessible front-panel master EQ and master compression controls for in-the-moment tweaking that may be peculiar to the room or playing situation. I'm also reminded of my curiosity about exactly what the "Dynamics" knobs on some recent Korgs do. Some combination of MIDI velocity curve tweaking and compression maybe?

 

One last factor I'll mention, about why a piano patch might sound better at solo/quiet levels than at full-band levels... in the cases where you're playing thought the same amp in both instances, as has also been mentioned recently in another thread, sometimes an amp which sounds great at moderate levels can start sounding crappy when you push it.

[Stokely]

You might be on to something there.  Normally I dislike compression on piano, but it's a matter of degree; occasionally when I've monitored myself completely from an aux send I have found that the sound engineer has applied too much for my taste.

However, my Forte has a master compressor you can engage on the front panel and I'm finding that a minor amount (up to 9 o clock on the dial) does tame the attacks allowing the body of the piano to come out more (since the idea of compression is that you can bring up the overall volume once you tame the peaks.)  Too much of this and you lose dynamics and bite, but I'm finding I can sit the piano (and everything else) better in the mix with this.

I definitely experience the "why does this sound so wimpy at a gig" thing.  Last gig in fact, for whatever reason my main piano just sounded thin and boxy and low in volume compared to other patches, and it was the baseline for setting volumes for all those other patches.   I had changed nothing from previous gigs so I wonder if interaction with other instruments in my monitor mix were changing how I heard it.

[AnotherScott]

and yet one more variable I thought of... You could have a board that has an unimpressive basic piano sound that is still really nice in solo/quiet environments because of subtleties like the various resonances which make it better. But in a loud band, those subtleties get lost, so then all you're left with is the unimpressive basic piano sound.

[ElmerJFudd]

8 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

and yet one more variable I thought of... You could have a board that has an unimpressive basic piano sound that is still really nice in solo/quiet environments because of subtleties like the various resonances which make it better. But in a loud band, those subtleties get lost, so then all you're left with is the unimpressive basic piano sound.

Yep. There’s no one right piano library for all situations.  There’s no right acoustic for all either, so it makes sense.  Style of music calls for darker or brighter, needs to cut or be more mellow for accompanying.   If you’ve ever heard the isolated piano channel in a pop/rock recording with band - it’s had its lows ripped out, it’s mids  boosted to shape, its highs rolled off and been compressed to near flat dynamic range.  Sounds like shite for solo piano playing, fits very nicely in the mix.  Dave Weiser does  as much to his gigging piano patches for the PX-5S and other boards.  It does the sound engineer’s job for him.  

[kaptainkeys]

3 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

If you’ve ever heard the isolated piano channel in a pop/rock recording with band - it’s had its lows ripped out, it’s mids  boosted to shape, its highs rolled off and been compressed to near flat dynamic range.  Sounds like shite for solo piano playing, fits very nicely in the mix.

Dave Ross of HSCC discussed this on the Keyboard Chronicles podcast when he was on.  He said that if you pull a piano sound straight out of the program the way it is, it's going to end up interfering with other instruments and vocals in the mix, and if that starts to happen, the sound engineer is just going to bring down the piano, rather than spend time futzing around with EQing your piano in the middle of the song.

[MathOfInsects]

The Nord Royal Grand, with some personal tweaks, has demonstrably gotten me recording work I would not have gotten otherwise. Black Upright too. 

[synthizen2]

12 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

 

Yeah, so it's hard to explain exactly why it happens, but just try taking the Kronos/Krome/Nautilus German Grand sample (which sounds great on headphones, and when played back), and playing it in a live setting. Even if you play in stereo, it's like the midrange collapses down. Playing in mono is another issue that's been debated endlessly and drastically changes the sound, but I'm sticking to stereo for this discussion. Room resonances might be part of that. It doesn't seem to matter how nice of a PA or if you have a very competent sound guy. Some pianos just don't sound like a piano in the room when you play out. The other part is that, especially with Nord pianos, your perception of the realism of a piano sound is connected to how it responds when you play it...the finger-to-ear connection. That's why I can't stand Nords...the actions destroy the perception because it feels "off" and doesn't respond like I would expect it to when actually playing. But in a recording when you take that out of the equation they sound great. Playing in a live setting might also change how you're physically interacting with the keys a bit (i.e. if you have a live band) and then you aren't as in-touch with the fine details necessarily. Better monitoring can help with this.

 

I just know that I never cease to be amazed at how terrible some sounds can sound live while they sound great in headphones or studio monitors (or even on solo gigs). In the same way, you can have sounds that don't sound great alone but just fit great into a dense band mix - like some of the previous-gen Roland pianos did in country and rock music.

 

Part of me wonders whether, with pianos in particular, if the sound that we like in headphones was recorded more from the player's position, which then sounds off when you're listening from out in the audience. Or vice versa, if it's a close-miced sound that sounds great in recordings but sucks when playing.

 

I feel pretty sure that all kinds of sound problems (like some of the ones mentioned above) plagued the 60s and 70s pianists when playing live. Yes, on acoustic grands. Sounds great in your parlor room... but onstage at Madison Square Garden? (with all the miking issues, bleeding from other instruments... I could go on).

[kaptainkeys]

1 hour ago, synthizen2 said:

Yes, on acoustic grands. Sounds great in your parlor room... but onstage at Madison Square Garden? (with all the miking issues, bleeding from other instruments... I could go on).

There's a reason Billy Joel uses a VPC1 controlling Ivory.

[o0Ampy0o]

On 4/12/2022 at 7:26 AM, ElmerJFudd said:

Omnispherobia

OmnisFEARobia

[David Emm]

I first read that as "Omnisphere aerobics," which seemed perfectly sensible. If I took that up, I'd have to drop all of my other gear and put a sign on the door that read "Call Me In A Year." It certainly has huge range as a synth, but its arguably still the heavyweight champ of ROMplers, at least in software. It would be hard to stack it up against a totally tricked-out Kronos or Fantom because the angle of approach is so different. Its God's favorite synth and HE fully understands FM.🤯

[synthizen2]

Conclusion of this thread? Geez folks, it looks like we need to ALL stop buying keyboard instruments NOW and stop gigging NOW... until the perfect ROMpler has been created. 😄