I've added a setting for the new Yamaha CFX, as promised/threatened last month.

The CFX is the most exciting concert grand to have emerged in recent years, and its brilliant and colorful tone (in contrast to the CF-IIIS) is very distinctive: it could be a serious challenge to the Steinway D on the concert platform in years to come. It gives the pianist just as much variety of tone color as the Steinway, but with more brilliance and a bell-like clarity in the upper registers.

My customization is based on playing a well-prepared CFX in Yamaha's showroom, followed by 'fine-tuning' while listening to the first studio recording of the CFX on CD, HJ Lim's EMI recording of Beethoven Piano Sonatas (you can hear her play the CFX on her website www.hjlim.com). Incidentally, there's an impetuosity and a tigerish quality, of living life dangerously, in her playing, which is a refreshing contrast to so much staid and 'safe' Beethoven playing these days (which is not to say that I agree with everything she does), and the brilliant sound of the CFX suits her well.

bennevis,
maybe I missed that and it's written somewhere, but which preset did you use?

Oops, sorry, it was the V1 Concert.

Thanks bennevis, I will give it a try today and let you know what I think

Thank you again Bennevis, your wonderful ear has enhanced the V-piano like no other with these excellent custom sounds. This thread should have a sticky so new V-piano owners can take advantage as well and also come up with their own tweaks to those who have played some of the grand piano sounds you haven't.

It is to be noted that whether or not you are using closed headphones vs open headphones, a slight modification to the settings needs to take place. Bennevis uses the AKG K 271 MK II which are a closed design while I use the Sennheiser HD 598 open headphones.

For example while using the Bossendorfer setting Bennevis created, you want to be leaving the tuning and hammer settings to default on V1 Concert but every other setting Bennevis uses for the Bossendorfer stays the same while using open headphones. It is a small change, however every V-piano owner has to decide what they prefer after hearing it themselves. Furthermore there are plenty of open slots for customizing so I am creating two sets of Bennevis's piano's, one saved for open headphones and the other for closed as sometimes I do need to use closed ones.

Bennevis, your Yamaha CFX sound you adjusted is really good. It is my second favorite one to use Thanks I recommend every V-piano owner to give it a try. I do change the string resonance down to +30 instead of +50 and leave tuning and hammer to default as I am using open headphones. However all the other settings make it sound very close to a Yamaha. The soundboard on the Yamaha's have an after sound on the lower notes I cannot figure into the settings. I will keep trying and see if I can emulate it with different settings.

Also Bennevis, what Ambience setting do you use for most of the sounds? I use Hall 2 most of the time, and have the Ambience knob very slightly to the right of middle. Changing the ambience settings makes a huge difference to the overall sound as well.

Also, sorry it took me two months to get back to this very important thread. I will soon be in Summer vacation as I am a teacher, so I will have enough time to make an album of music from a combination of the Roland V-piano, a Yamaha S90, VL-plugin and a couple of the choir and string sounds from the Yamaha CLP990 Clavinova. I may add some vocals as well into the mix. It will be New Age style music for the most part similar to Yanni and Enya. I will be recording into a Zoom MRS1044CD which is in perfect condition and vocals into a blue snowball with ringer mic. All should be good enough to make an amateur album.

Do look forward to hearing some of your recordings as I happen to like New Age stuff as well, and, recently have been working on a new piece by Jon Schmidt titled "All of Me" and you can listen to him perform it, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fAZIQ-vpdw

Also, the sheet music is available:

http://www.jonschmidt.com/catalog/produc...b0ee0a47d466cec

As for headphones I have been using the Sennheiser HD-518's (open back ear pieces) which cost $130. In comparison with my $35 pair of Radio Shack headphones (closed ear pieces) the cheaper ones do far better at the V-Piano since they do not pick up the artificial midrange characteristics. As this is especially noticeable in the "Vintage Piano 2" (i.e., "Bosendorfer") presets. I just do not hear real acoustic-like "Bosendorfer" sounds at all, so what did Roland achieve by attempting to model this? Also, the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers with subwoofer sounds much improved over either of these two pairs of headphones. The speakers still do not mask these odd midrange sounds, however, there is a sharper and more defined presence to the piano sounds, making them somewhat less artificial/processed/electronic.

So, the most apparent flaws in the V that I can make note of would be this artificial midrange, from slightly above middle "C" to about two octaves higher, and, the wear of the keys. Waiting on the new key bed (with new part number) to arrive in about 8 weeks.

I have told you before that you really need to buy better headphones in order to hear the piano properly. what happened is you got used To the Way the V-piano sounded with your 35 radi shack headphones and now your brain thinks you like it better that way than the way it should sound. the headphones bennevis uses and the ones I always used are proffesional headphones for a reason. The same thing goes with computer speakers, they lack the range needed to hear the sound properly. I would highly recommend for you to give any proffesional studio quality headphone a try since you haven't heard the V-piano yet at its best.

What you are experiencing is the same phenomena people who moved from LPs to CD quality experienced. some people really like the sound which was scratchy at times better than pure clean digital sound from cd's. now in that case those people weren't wrong as neither are you for liking one particular sound over another. it may very well be true that if you do listen to higher-quality headphones you get the same results and end up going back to the original $35 RadioShack headphones. however I honestly would give a $200 or more headphones with professional quality specs a try before giving up all together on being able to hear the high quality sound the V-piano is capable of producing. honestly I do not hear anything wrong with the mid range as you have pointed out.

In regards to this artificial midrange it really does exist as some inherent component of the original piano sounds in the V, as no amount of tweaking the various onboard parameters seem to change this underlying "tone." I have spoken at length on this matter (with our other PW member "Essbrace") and I have come to the conclusion that while this is obviously something "in" the sound itself, it is not enough of an issue for me give up the V-Piano, as the artificial tone can be minimized to a greater degree in many of the silver presets, although not completely so.

Not that I am siding up with anyone (i.e., "Essbrace") on this midrange issue, although I have found that it is there, nonetheless. The underlying artificial (modeled) "tone" is the culprit here, nothing else. Would like to eventually see another digital released that improves these modeled sounds/tones.

Might be interesting to see how the Viscount Physis Piano turns out - their claim is full modelling too but whether it will have the playability of the V remains to be seen - and it may not sound better either, who knows.

Yes... a possible contender for the V-Piano, perhaps?

Here is one of their demos, as it is quite intriguing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBit3c9OTkE

Competition is always a good thing.. Now let us use this thread and stay on topic which is for creating new sounds on the V-piano

Extra note:

Almost forgot to add (to the other post above) that the Physis Piano will contain a new version of the Italian "Fatar" action. There are others here that do not like the Fatar actions, as I had previously owned a Kurzweil Mark Pro 3i that had a Fatar action and it was not a keeper.

The Kurzweil also had some other issues, and, that has already been documented in my other posts, however, the action appeared to be rather sluggish in regards to key repetitions. It felt quite odd in regards to the bottoming out, almost as if it had spring-like resistance. Not a very responsive action, especially when doing scale work.

Perhaps the Physis Piano (which is not a Kurzweil) will have a better and improved action?