I'm about to buy a Steinway B for a studio, and I want to use it to both capture performances into an external sequencer and play back edited sequences. The existing systems seem largely geared towards working as "player pianos", which I don't need. Is there a cost-effective means of achieving my needs?

Accuracy of performance capture and reproduction is the most important thing to me.

Thanks!

You might want to also post this one on the Digital forum.

hv does a lot of recording, especially of his wife, Sue Keller. You might want to locate him in the Directory and PM him.

(You may have to experiment with mics, based on the acoustics of the recording environment.)

Hi, PDaniel. I see I've been paged. Welcome to PianoWorld.

I have a PianoDisc system in my piano. Which can record performances played on it and replay them on the same piano. I assume when you say you're not interested in a "player piano" system that you're not interested in a playback-only system. If I understand your meaning, I'm also of the belief that no matter how much precision a playback system might have, its impossible to exactly replicate a performance originally played on a different instrument.

My PianoDisc system has its faults. The tft-plastic sensors under the keys add about 3-grams of touch weight to the feel. So if you think your piano feels perfect, you might not like the heavier touch. My wife, who prefers a heavier touch thought it was an improvement.

The biggest limitation in my opinion is the pedal treatment. It only records pedal-up and pedal-down. And no soft-pedal at all. More advanced systems record all the pedal gradations between up and down and attempt to replicate the movement on playback. With my system, I try to carefully adjust the pedal-up height to the absolute minimum which tends to yield pretty decent results. But if your technique involves half-pedaling, you might not be satisfied.

I hope GrandPianoMan chimes in here. He has a very advanced system with a much more sophisticated pedal implementation. Only drawback in my mind is that last I heard it didn't have an integrally designed key-sensor mechanism available. You could retrofit an optical keyboard sensing mechanism, but the rub would be calibrating something not designed specifically for a tight integration. Another possibility is recording with an electronic keyboard with wooden hammer-action keys... like a Kawai MP8 which I also have and it's quite good. Yamaha makes a similar quality one. You should try one.

On the audio recording side, I'm also of the belief that it's probably impossible to get back a recording that's truly identical to what's heard when a grand piano is played. But I try. I have my JBL's set up on either side of the piano with the sub underneath so I can easily A-B the recording and the real deal. I get the most accurate sounding results using a mid-side recording array. My only suggestion is that as in skiing, don't A-B alone. Invite a few people over and by all means include your piano tuner. I'm always amazed at how much more I hear standing next him.

Howard

Hi Daniel,

I hope I can help.

The LX system on my Grand Piano does not have any recording feature, it's strictly a high-resolution playback-only system. That said, one could install an optical strip as Howard mentioned, but it will not have as good a playback as a built in system of say an electronic keyboard or electronic piano. QRS has a retro-fit optical sensor strip.

The best would be if you can find an older Yamaha Disklavier Model DGT2IIXG, this has a real wooden Grand Piano action, with an excellent recording feature, that will give you close to 100% playback accuracy, plus you would have a Disklavier as well.