Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Avant Grand a lot better than older CLP 990 model?

I meant - "per keyboard", of course.



That is what Yamaha did.

What a surprise to find so much going on this thread -- most of it over my head. Looks like I'll hang onto my 990 for a while. From what I was hearing, it sounds like the Avant Grand is excellent and thought maybe I should upgrade because I'd like a better sound when I'm not using headphones.

Dewster you ask: Could I persuade you to digitally record the DPBSD MIDI file and submit it for analysis?

I'll have to ask my husband how to do that. Funny, as an aside, I just saw Kurosawa's film "High and Low" about a Japenese shoe company CEO who wants to make quality shoes but is being forced out of the business by the other executives who want to making cheaper shoes that don't last . . .

Dewster -- how do I find the DPBSD MIDI file?

I played the Avant Grand two days ago. While it's better than any other digital I've ever played...it's still a digital. The sound in the headphones is still way better than through the speakers, as it is with ALL digitals, but the sound is a real good piano sound, IMO. The action is good, but not nearly as great as some say it is. To me, it's spongy and very, very hard to control. It's way too sensitive. I put it on the lowest setting and to play mf to ff was hard for me cause it seemed it went from pp to ff with no middle ground on some higher octaves. IT sounds real bad with the lid down cause of the reverb, but it's okay with the lid open. I think if you're singing with it or in a band, it's a great piano..sort of, but it is a digital for sure.

I played acoustic grands right after and went back and told the sales person, no way I'd ever be happy with the Avant when I compare it to a real piano.

JMHO.

It's located here.

There's a readme file there too, please take a look at the "Test Setup" section.

From the manual it looks like you can just copy the DPBSD MIDI file to a floppy and play it from that.

For recording the audio, in a nutshell you want to record the factory default voice with the reverb off, while trying to get the recording level as high as you can without clipping. The free trial of Adobe Audition is here if you want to use that to record with on your PC, and there are special instructions in the readme file for using it.

If you have any questions let me know. Your DP is an interesting specimen.

Interesting view. Most people seem to find that, unlike almost every other DP, the AG is inferior through headphones because the tactile response system is disabled and it is this feature that makes the AG such a piano-like experience. Was this switched on when you played it? I should stress that I haven't played one but one of the regular contributors here had one for a while (he also owns a Steinway model B) and found it a very agreeable alternative.

Cheers,

Steve

Yes Steve, the Avant Grand is just basically a regular (but great sounding) digital piano through headphones.

What really makes it, is the tactile feedback when playing it without headphones...I really dislike using cans, as the sound of any digital piano is too "in your ear" and the panning sounds very unnatural.

As far as the action goes, the Avant Grand is better than nearly every real grand I've played, including my Steinway...of course, action is very subjective and personal, and what is ham for some, is just pig to others.

But, it beats the spots off every other digital piano for realism...simply because it is a real grand piano action...no other digital piano comes close, in my opinion, and very few real grands(unless they are perfectly maintained) can touch it...and upright acoustic pianos aren't even in the running.

Again, the subject of action (and sound as well) is a personal thing...I'm anxiously awaiting the next generation Avant Grand...I want more than just piano sounds in an instrument that costs as much as the AG, especially good strings and pad patches.

But for pure piano playing...the Avant Grand is a total experience, and a wonderful instrument to play.

Did you get your HP-307 yet?

Snazzy

It goes without saying that no sound system no matter how good can beat what comes out of a good set of headphone speakers that are 1/2" away from your ears.


The action on the AG is really the same action found in Yamaha acoustic grands such as the C3. Even actions amongst acoustic grands differ, and some people prefer certain acoustic brand's action over others. I guess in your case, you probably wouldn't like any Yamaha acoustic grand's action either, if you don't like the AG's action.

The other thing is that it looks like you picked the wrong setting to begin with. If you find the "medium level 2" default setting too sensitive for you, changing it to the "soft/lowest level 1" setting like what you did would only make it worse because the soft/level 1 setting allows maximum loudness to be produced with relatively light key pressure. You should have gone the other way, to "hard level 3", which requires that the keys be played quite hard to produce maximum loudness. At this setting, the volume changes very widely from pianissimo to fortissimo to facilitate dynamic and dramatic expression.

Note that even if you change the sensitivity setting, it does not change the weight of the keyboard, it just changes the sensitivity to the volume loudness. So if you think it feels spongy for you in the first place, that sponginess is not going to go away even when you change to different sensitivity levels.

I myself own an N3 for 7 months now, and play with it every day. I personally don't find the AG's action spongy at all. I find it very crisp and precise. I keep the sensitivity level to default level 2 and don't find the need to adjust this to any other levels. I've compared it to many other Yamaha acoustic keyboards and hardly find any different between their feel and the AG's. But I know that keyboard action can be a very personal taste to different people.


Nobody in their right mind would close the lid on the AG because you would muffled and ruin the sound produced by the speakers. The lid on the AG is only for decorative purposes and is not meant to be used for sound control like that of an acoustic grand. If you want to use sound control on the AG, leave the lid open and use the volume knob instead. And there's a reverb switch on the control panel to let you turn off the reverb if you don't want it.

Hi Snazzy,

Third week in March is all the shop are saying. Can't wait. I really have to say though that for the living room piano, an AG N2 would have been a dream come true. I would have kept my GranTouch for the sake of that lovely Yamaha piano action had it not been so lacking in versatility...just one piano voice (not a bad one even considering its age). And obviously no tactile resonators etc. I had it a few years and what I would've given for a decent Rhodes and a transpose facility! The AG does have couple of very decent sounding EPs and a harpsichord I believe so actually it would be fine for me.

I can dream!

Cheers,

Steve

Steve, you can still listen to the headphone AND have the Tactile Response System turned on (at 3 different levels). So you still get the full piano-like experience in terms of the vibration on headphones as well. It's just that the default when headphones are plugged in is for the TRS to be turned off (the assumption being that the player wants complete silent). But you can choose to turn it back on with a touch of a button, to 3 different levels.

If you choose to turn on the TRS for headphone use, however, it won't be a completely silent setup anymore. This is because the input used to drive the transducers for the TRS is the very sound that you play. The transducers take this input and turns it into vibration to send to the keyboard and pedals. The vibration caused by the transducers creates a very soft, but natural audible buzzing sound of the music you play. It is inevitable because it is the transducers that create this soft buzzing sound from the vibration, not the speakers from the sound system. An analogy is the very soft music you'll hear from a vinyl record caused by the vibrating diamond head as it tracks through the sound track, even if you don't connect this record player into a sound system.

And I wouldn't characterize the AG sound as being inferior through the headphones, either. What you hear through the headphones is basically the very close up and clean original sound source without any adulteration by the room environment, and without having to be subjected to any limitation that a sound system (amplifiers and speakers) may impose. The difference is that the AG also has a great external 4 channel sound system implemented through the 16 amps/speakers/transducers to give you the best projection of the sound source into the air/the room.

So the usual argument I hear discussed on the forum is that if your need is mostly silent practice through headphones, it may not make sense to spend the extra money on the AG because you wouldn't be making full use of the expensive sound system that's put in there. So you might as well just buy a cheaper DP which can still sound pretty good through headphones because you wouldn't make use of this cheaper DP's inferior sound system very much anyway. This argument may get misinterpreted into something like the AG's headphone sound is not as good as the AG's external sound. But in reality, it's just 2 different ways of listening and either way will produce great results on the AG.

I agree wholeheartedly about the piano sound through headphones...it is an astonishing piano, and a whole level above what you hear on any other digital...it's just that I can't stand wearing headphones, especially when the Avant Grand sounds so glorious when allowed to breathe.

It's very easy to forget you are playing a digital piano...the way the tactile feedback adds to the experience, can't be over-emphasized...it gives it, as I like to call it, "soul".

I miss playing it, but the opportunity to sell without a loss was too good to pass up...now I await the next generation with hopes they add the strings and pads.

And, yes, the electric piano sounds were excellent as well.


Snazzy

Dewster -- we are working on the DPBSD file and figuring it out -- so where do we send the file?

Thanks!

MediaFire is pretty easy to use and free:

http://www.mediafire.com

I think you make a directory and upload the file to it. Sharing is on by default, so all we need is a link to it, which you can get by clicking on the "share" button, copying it, and pasting it here in the forum. For example, here is the link to my DPBSD MediaFire directory:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7ef2fd9c0f59e62824a64199ac7f73e562543888620acf74e91dc00c2f906379

I think you'd have to sign up in order to be able to create your own directory. If you don't want to bother signing up, you can just simply click on Upload, which will upload your file to the default MediaFire "MyFiles" directory. Then you just follow Dewster's instruction above about getting the link to your file from the "Share" button and give it to him.

Here is the result of playing the DPBSD on the CLP 990:

Whew! That was a lot of work! Here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ywmz5mzmmod/CLP990_dp_bsd_v1.5.mp3

Recorded through the headphone jack because we couldn't get stereo from the aux out.

Hope this works! Interested in the comparisons . . .

Thank you nan for going to all that trouble - I do appreciate it!

I reviewed it this morning and just posted the results over in the DPBSD thread here.

Your DP is rather old, but being a more high-end model it isn't aging too badly. If you want to replace it with another console type DP you might consider the Roland HP-307, HP-305, or HP-302 as they all have the SuperNATURAL sound generator. Personally I'd avoid all Yamaha consoles until they update & improve the sounds to remove audible sample compression artifacting.

My husband tells me the results are interesting, not that I understand any of it. I still want to try an Avant Grand out which I'll do sometime. You can go ahead and pick my 990 apart -- I feel pretty happy with it! Also surprised at how good it still measures up to what is available. Thanks for the info.

I'd be interested in your impressions of it.


DP sound generation technology has been in something of a stasis. That's why I think it is wise to wait absolutely as long as one can before upgrading, and only then if the replacement is a genuine step up.

He just thought the testing interesting and how you evaluate the sounds. It was a big surprise to me to find out that my 990 is holding up very well. Still I'm curious about the acoustic touch keyboard in the Avant Grand which from what I understand should be much better than mine. Also in how it sounds compared to my 990. But now I like my 990 even more!

Correction:

The last video above is also using "The Grand 2" VST by Steinberg, if you read the sixth comment (down below the video) by the original poster, who is "TeQuiLLaXY."

Therefore, none of the videos above are using the default CLP990 grand piano sound.

Here is the default "Grand Piano 1" from the Yamaha CLP990:

Yamaha flagship Clavinova CLP990's Grand Piano voice