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Hey,

I was at a pianoshop and was telling a dealer about my plan of plugging my digital piano in my computer. He told me that I should be aware of the fact that I need a special soundcard for it, and not some average soundcard. I was wondering if this is the case with all piano software? How do you feel about what about the dealer said? How is this the case with pianoteq/truepianos/ivory? Is there a difference between the requirements of the pc between the software packages?

My soundcard is a creative soundblaster audigy 4, costed me 50 euros 3 years ago. This card probaly wont do, what card would you suggest me to get? (I havent even gotten my first lesson yet so I'm a complete beginner, so would prefer a cheap card :D)

All you need is a usb device such as these:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigation?q=usb+sound

M-audio's fasttrack and yamaha's audiogram3 ($100) work well.

Yours will work but without the usb device you'll have high latency.

I run Pianoteq (can' comment on the others) on my laptop, using it's on board sound card (Realtek). I also loaded ASIO4ALL drivers (so that there are no latency issues and it's free). I have a very cheap Edirol MIDI to USB interface to get the MIDI signal in from my truly ancient Clavinova. This works just fine for personal use listening on headphones. In fact I can't remember the last time I played through the Clavinova with its native onboard sound system.

But I also have a standalone firewire audio interface (Alesis IO/26). I have never found the need to use this for Pianoteq and haven't so far (although often wondered how much better the sound quality would be).

I also have and ancient desktop with a Creative Labs Audigy4. The Audigy4 was never a problem, and Creative also supply ASIO compliant drivers (so there were no latency problems). But the PC was/is well past its sell by date. If your soundcard is more than 3 years old, how old is you PC? This, may be of far greater concern.

Now, if you are going to start lugging the kit around and need to plug into external PA, amps and mixers or need other multiple inputs then consider an upgrade to the soundcard. For the moment check your PC specs and consider sound card upgrades only if the need arises.

Sounds to me like the dealers advice is correct although it does depend upon the sound card you currently have. You may or may not find it suitable.

Getting the signal from DP to PC over midi doesn't usually take much time, but getting the sound from PianoTeq through the various windows audio layers and out the sound card to your speakers can. In some cases this can be quite high, I had a soundcard that took over 150ms which is unacceptable when playing in realtime.

There are a few different solutions. The first/cheapest is to look for ASIO drivers for your soundcard, either official ones or some of the unofficial drivers. People have had success with both depending on the card.

The other option is a soundcard specifically made for the task such as M-Audio's range of internal cards. Not only do these have _very_ low latency when using the ASIO drivers (<5ms) they're also better protected against interference.

Yet another option is to get an external audio interface which connects to the PC via either USB or FireWire. Your DP and speakers will connect to this interface rather than to the PC.

I tried the cheapest option but had limited success, it reduced latency to 50ms and was still very noticable whilst playing, so I bought an M-Audio 2496. If I were buying today rather than 2-3 years ago, I'd look at the external audio interfaces rather than the pci card I bought, mainly because I'd be able to use it with my laptop and not just desktop. However, I've never tried any of the external interfaces, hopefully someone else on here has and can provide some recommendations if you decide on that route.

Answering the above post, on my Yamaha Audiogram3 I have about 6 ms on one computer and 9 ms on the other, both give sound to my ears at exactly the same time the native dp sound occurs, so imperceptible latency. Once it gets much over 10 ms, the latency becomes noticeable, and I consider it intolerable > 15-20 ms.

Technically this is not true. The software will make sound using any sound card you fit into the computer.

But,.... If you care so much about the sound quality that you are spending this much time an effort and research you will not be happy with a low end audio interface that is marketed at video game players. You will want one of the better interfaces that are sold to musicians and studio engineers. These don't have to cost a lot. You can get one for under $100. The Lexicon "Alpha" is all you'd need. There are others and which to buy depends on if you ever want to record (maybe a vocalist or woodwind instrument) using a microphone.

So now you have a decent sound card. That is the easy and inexpensive part. You will need speakers. Good speakers are not cheap and not so easy to buy, you have to listen to them. You should spend some time listening in the stor using a CD or solo piano music that you are very familiar with. Be sure and use the same music to demo each speaker. If the store will not let you do this, seriously, find another store. Speakers DEFINE the sound of the instrument and matter a LOT. Any DP is only as good as the speakers. You could use an amp and passive speakers or powered speakers. The prices are all over the map. From a couple hundred to a couple thousand. What to buy depends on your ears, budget and the size of the venue in which you'd be playing. (Of course if you only plan to use headphones yo can save a bundle.)

I also use ASIO4ALL, a free driver, with my laptop's low end integrated sound card. My latency is very low, quality high, and no problems ever.

Hey,

Thanks alot for the responses, gonna look how it will go with this card first, after that look for ASIO4ALL and after that probaly go usb interface.

Yeah it will be pointless to try it without asio4all, so just start with that. I wouldn't immediately buy a new card unless you have spare money left and really want to squeeze out all the quality of pianoteq. The differences will as always first come from your speakers, then amp, and finally which DAC (audio interface you use). (For the audio geeks, I know its not that simple, but if you look at quality increase vs cost, that is the most common way to go).

Audigy4 has full native Asio2 support (so it shouldn't need ASIO4All). You should confirm details of your model at Creative.com

Here's specs of the model I have (see the last line)....


Technical Specifications

Audigy 4 Processor

•Advanced hardware accelerated digital effects processing
•Patented 8-point interpolation that reduces distortion to inaudible levels
•64-voice hardware wavetable synthesizer
•Professional quality digital mixing and equalization
High Definition Audio Quality for Playback and Recording
•64 audio channel playback with independent sample rates
•24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion during playback with sampling rates of 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz in 7.1 mode and up to 192kHz in stereo mode
•24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion during recording in 8, 16 or 24-bit at sampling rates of 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz
•Supports Sony/Philips Digital Interface (SPDIF) format of up to 24-bit/96kHz quality
•Low latency multitrack recording with ASIO2 support1.

Ah right, good point, native asio is always better.

There’s some good info here from Alpha Terminus, EJR and others - thanks guys.
I tried Pianoteq over the weekend with my PF1000, and the trial demo was almost unusable due to high latency problems (soundcard is a Soundblaster Xtreme Fidelity X-Fi with HP desktop P4 3.0 GHz, WinXP).
And sure enough as suggested this latency problem disappeared after downloading ASIO4ALL drivers.
I wasn’t over impressed however with Pianoteq, so the next step will be a Yamaha Audiogram3 USB interface and other speakers.

You don't gain much with that Yamaha interface. The specs are "ok" but nothing great. As long as you are spending that much you may as well get something a little more high end. Look for somthing that claims "24-bits" per sample and at least 96K samples per second. And of course a well known brand. You should be able to get this for under $150.

I'm using lower spec'd hardware and have no latency issues and very good sound quality. I'm running on an older 2.16Ghz 24" iMac Apple's grand piano sound is sampled from a Yamaha grand and is not bad. You need some good speakers to hear the difference between the "stock" piano that ships with the Mac and Pianotq. So, unlless you have sood speakers this will be your next sound quality bottle neck. Test the speakers using a CD recording of a solo piano performance. Does the CD sound like a real piano? if not pianoteq will not. Take the CD with you to the store when you pick out your speakers

Pianoteq, Truepianos and Ivory have different requirements; Ivory is a sample set and requires a fair bit of HDD storage for the samples. Pianoteq and Truepianos are physical modeling software programs and take up far less space on your HDD.

If you are going to be using Pianoteq, it will be worth the time spent to go to the forum site and ask about the requirements and recommendations for soundcards, etc. The people there are using Pianoteq on a regular basis, and are familiar with what works.

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewforum.php?id=1

You will have to register (free), but there is a wealth of information that is specific to PT.

Glenn

Just a nit, but the TruePianos web site does not state that it uses physical modelling. Certainly, it does not allow one to modify the physical properties of the piano in the same manner as Pianoteq.

Greg.

Thanks all for the information.

TruePianos uses both samples and modeling. The following is from their website:

What technology does TruePianos use to produce it's piano sound ?
We combine different technologies at different places, following the 'common sense' rule. Things, that generally work better with sampling - we use samples for, and for the features, where samples make the product less versatile - we use other techniques. We are going to proceed with the same philosophy in the future as well. What-is-what may change inbetween the versions to maintain the best quality and experience of the product.

Rich

I didn't say that it didn't use modelling - I said that they did not state that they used PHYSICAL modelling. "Modelling" can mean different things. If they are using physical modelling, one would *reasonably* expect the parameters of the model to be available to the user - like they are in Pianoteq.

Btw, that extract doesn't even mention the word "modelling" either. ;^)

Greg.

I sure agree with you on this - if they used physical modeling (physmod), it would seem they would use the term because physmod is the latest technology in sound generation.

From a marketing point, wouldn't a product developer want to use and advertise the "latest" technique?

While their statement HINTS at various technologies, they seem to b fudging a bit.

Glenn

Milk, E-mu's 1212M, which I've been using for a little more than two years, gives outstanding audio bang for the buck. There's an active forum here.

It's a very good idea to read the installation instructions. Posts re problems usually are made by people who didn't do that;-)