I just took delivery of a Yamaha CLP-340.

My mother gave us her CLP-560 about 5 years back and has been a wonderful work horse for our family and has served us well and continues to serve us well for that matter. Unfortunately due to its age (It was purchased 1995'ish) my oldest child is at the point where he is out growing it.

Due to my home, family, and budget ... a digital piano continues to be a good fit. Considering the 560 has served us so well, we naturally researched Clavinovas again.

We liked the CLP-330 ... but the sound between the CLP-340 and CLP-330 was quite significant. The price difference was not that significant so we bite the bullet on the 340.

So ... you have the background.

I was wondering if you could educate me on the "Number of Dynamic Steps" ... in english

I know the 340 has 4, 330 has 3, and the 380 has 5.

From Yamaha's web site it states:

The voice of an acoustic grand piano changes according to how it is played. Yamaha's sounds are sampled according to keystroke strength for each key at 10 levels or more. The Advanced Wave Memory (AWM) Dynamic Stereo Sampling technology analyzes these samples. Then, it selects three to five levels* that best match your subtle touch on the keyboard. This enables you to directly transmit the delicate movements of your fingertips into expressive sound.

I get that each note is sampled at different strengths ...

What I am confused about is the "it selects three to five levels" part.

Lets say a note has 10 levels or strengths with 10 samples accordingly. I play the note at level 5. Does the piano then play samples (for example) 4, 5, 6, 7 (in the case of the 340)?

Please educate me ...

Thanks ...

theoak, welcome to the forum!

According to this website:

http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/ContentDetail/ModelSeriesDetail.html?CNTID=5020862

No. of Dynamic Steps: 4

Regarding your query, I'm confident the other chaps here will offer their words of wisdom in due course.

Cheers
James
x

- How hard you play a note is called velocity.
- Velocity is quantized, or converted to discreet steps.
- For MIDI, velocity has 128 steps. Your digital piano probably uses this many steps internally as well in the connection between the keyboard assembly and the sound generator.
- Yamaha sampled the original acoustic piano at 10 or more velocity steps, which means they made 10 or more recordings of each note, played from soft to loud.
- Yamaha then selected 4 of these recordings, or velocity layers, and programmed them permanently into your CLP-340.
- When you play a note the programmed velocity layer closest to the velocity you played on the keyboard is selected for playback. It is always scaled in volume to match the volume of the original piano, and is sometimes blended so you don't hear the various recordings for that note switching as you play it harder and softer.

Okay ... so I can restate ...

I have 4 recordings at 4 different levels or velocities in my 340. Depending on the velocity that I play a given note, the 340 picks one.

It then scales that note based on an additional 128 levels (from MIDI) and further refines the note played.

Is that accurate?

Yes, that's pretty much it.

A note with one of 128 possible velocity levels is played on the keyboard. This is used as an index into:
- sample memory to pick the layer or recording, and
- one or more algorithms that scale the volume and perhaps alter the timbre (high pass filter or similar) of the recording before playing it back.

I like that better!

Got it now.

Many thanks!