Piano sound, off?

[ceggertmac.com]

Hi Yall!

 

I just received my new YamahaS80 last night. YIPPEE! But, the grand piano sound seems to be a little off. Or is it me?

 

The first of two stereo grand piano voices sounds dampened a bit. It's hard to describe but then again I've never owned a piano. My ears tells me it's not quite right.

 

Can someone tell me if this is possible, or if they have heard of this problem before? I know there are knobs to adjust the sound but I'm not sure how to use them other than fiddling around. Anyone have some advice? (The other sounds seem to be ok.)

 

Thanks in advance,

Calven

[Rod S]

A piano sound is difficult to reproduce, and is more affected by a 'inferior' headphone or monitoring system than other sounds, IMHO. What are you using to listen to them?

 

For example, I have a pair of Seinheiser HD series headphones (around $150...ouch!), but I've found that anything < $60 colors the sound in a negative way. I have a pair of headphones which works fine for most sounds, but adds a 'shrill' to the piano sound which gets really annoying.

 

You shouldn't have to tweak the piano sounds too much; I think they are pretty good as they are. Knobs A,B,C are setup as EQs, try adjusting them to see if it sounds better. If that doesn't work, try maybe raising the cuttoff frequency to make it a bit brighter (go into the QED parameters, select cutoff).

[jimbyjoe]

check out this lesson on this very server!

http://www.musicplayer.com/CDA/Player/Main/1,2228,Lessons--5141438,00.html

 

it's more about tweaking the sounds. and also play with your eq because yamaha's do have a good sound. sometimes reverb of various types can give the sound a nice finishing touch. have a listen to some classical recordings to get a good engineered piano sound (normally steinways, not yamaha's unfortunately).

let us know how you go why don't you. oh, btw, how editable are the organ sounds on the s80? does it have any type of virtual drawbars??

cheers.

[Jazzman]

I agree with you jimbyjoe. There are a lot of piano sounds out there, I think you might not be used to hearing other piano sound types. I have a QS6 with an external sound card with 100 piano sounds on it. Some are dark, airy, stereo, mono, upright, grand, etc.etc. Play around as you stated. I'm sure the sounds are fine. Use EQ, reverb etc. to give more color if you think it needs it.

 

Get excited and have fun..........you have new gear! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

 

Jazzman http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/cool.gif

 

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offdutystudios@aol.com

[ceggertmac.com]

Message from an outsider...Great advice. Anyone else want to comment on these suggestions?

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I have a Yamaha S80 for some months now and, just like you,

I'm not very happy with the preste acoustic pianos. It seems

there is something wrong with them.

 

For what I have discovered so far, there are two things that

I like to change on the preset pianos:

 

1. The time it takes for the sound to go off when you release

a key seems to short. As you know this is called "release time".

 

I have noticed that on a acoustic piano the sound takes something

like 3 or 4 seconds to fade away whene you release the key.

 

On the S80 the release time is something like 1 second.

 

2. This is a matter of personal taste, but I like more soft, classical

sounding pianos instead of the bright sound of most of the S80.

 

The S80 rom has three stereo samples for each of the main pianos:

one for low, mid and high velocity. The preset pianos do not

velocity switch between these samples, they mostly use the mid

velocity sample.

 

To my ears the soft samples are better because I can better detect

the hammer sound striking the string. So modifing the presets to

use the soft sample, instead of the mid also seems to improve the

"realness".

 

I can give you an idea how to change both these, but I hope you

can follow my too simple indications. Unfortunatly I don't have the

S80 with me now, so I cannot provide step by setp instruction.

 

Here we go...

 

Select the first preset PRE1 A01 piano and go in edit mode. On

the display you should see the first of "Common" menu pages.

Press the key number 9: you should see the first of the Oscillators

(OSC) pages. As you know every sound in the S80 can be made

of up to 4 oscillators. You use buttons numberred 1 to 4 to select

the oscillator tou want to change.

 

If I'm correct A01 only usees 3 osc. We have to do the same changes

to each one of the 3. Let's start with the first: it should already be

selected, but to be sure press the button number 1.

 

Ok, from now on remember that I could be wrong on the exact order

of the pages and the names because my memory is not very good,

so when I say "is" please read "should be". You may have to scroll

witth the PAGE knob to find the exact menu.

 

The fist OSC menu is (last time: should be) the one where you select the

waveform it has to play. The A01 piano uses something like "StGrand2".

If you use the VALUE knob you can scroll all the waveforms.

The wave number of "StGrand2" shoud be 400-something (476 or 491,

maybe). This is the medium velocity sample.

 

If you turn the VALUE knob to the right you see higher numbered waves.

As you can see for the StGrand2 sample there are a number of variations:

mono version, left channel only, right channel only. Next you can see

similar named waves with a "+" suffix. These are the high velocity samples

of StGrand".

 

Again there are mono and single channel version. Going further you can

find the same samples with a "-" suffix such as "StGrnd2-". This is what

we were looking for: you have just selected the lower velocity sample of

the stereo grand for the first oscillator.

 

Take note of the number for the StGrnd2- sample. Now press the button

number 2 to select the second oscillator and button number 9 to be sure

to have the first OSC page. Now select the StGrnd2- for this oscillator.

 

To the same for third oscillator by selecting button number 3 and we have

done:all theree oscialltors are using the same softer version of the piano.

 

Now we can lenghten the release time of the envelope for each oscillator.

 

Select oscillator number 1 (numeric button 1).

 

Scroll the menu pages until they show AEG il the upper left corner. You

are now editing settings relative to the Amplitude Envelope Generator.

 

Now is a bit tricky because I can't remember the exact name or number

of the menu page: try to find the one of the last menu of the AEG group

that have only a couple of values, one of which is Release Time.

 

If you switch the various oscillators while you are in this page you should

see that one has a value about 80, while others have lower values like 60.

The higher this value, the longer the sound will take to reach zero volume

when you release the key.

 

Try a setting about 81 or 82 for all three oscillators, by moving the relative

knob.

 

Here you are. Trying playing some solo piano parts with these settings

and see if you like them more. You can modify in a similar fashion the

preset PRE1 A04 (Dark Grand) for a more classical sound.