Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Got a Kawai CN33 :-) but now I want to connect it...

I finally sold my beloved Juno Di keyboard. So yesterday I brought home my new Kawai CN 33, and it is great

However, as expected, I miss all the great synth sounds of my Juno Di. So now I want to connect my Macbook Pro, with Garageband, Pianoteq Play, and all sorts of free softsynths to the CN33. I have already connected them with the USB cable, and it works fine. But I want to get the sound out from the piano speakers, instead of from the Macbook.

I was think of buying a (used) EMU 0202 USB soundcard and connect the EMU's Lineout to the CN33's Linein, so that the sound from the Macbook could come out of the speakers of the CN33.

But now I am in doubt whether that would work, as I read this in the CN33 manual, p.64:

"LINE IN JACKS
These jacks are used to connect a pair of stereo outputs from other audio equipment or electronic instruments to the piano's speakers.
The audio signal coming through these jacks bypasses the piano's volume control. To adjust the volume level, use the output control of the external device."

Does the bypassing of the piano volume control imply, that the signal from the LineIn is not amplified ? Do I need and separate amplifier between the soundcard and the piano ?

Any advice would be great. Thanks.

/Jens

Good morning Jens,

First off, congrats on your new CN33!



No, the Line In sound will be amplified. What the text in the owner's manual means is that the volume level of the Line In audio source is not affected by the CN33's master volume control. Therefore, you need to use the Mac in order to adjust the volume level heard from the CN33.



No, I don't believe so - your Macbook's built-in sound should be fine. Just connect the Mac's audio out to the CN33's line in, fire-up Pianoteq, and you're all set.

Cheers,
James
x

Good evening James :-) (Here it is midnight)



Ah, great! I will just go and find a minijack <-> 2xJack converter tomorrow, and see how that works.

Thanks for the quick reply !

/Jens

Yes you can send the Macbook's audio out directly to the piano. All you need is a cable adaptor. But if you have an audio interface box then you get an physical volume control knob on the box and also a headphone jack on the box. This means you don't need the mouse to change the volume and you don't have to swap cables around to use headphones. Some audio interfaces have built-in MIDI so if the piano has "real MIDI" yu connect that to the box and then there is only one cable plugged into the computer it all goes through the one USB cable.

The Mac's built-in audio quality is pretty good. You can use it for most line level recording and play back. The interface box does simplify cabling and give you physical knobs and jacks

I did the same thing and it works very well, although the volume coming from the MacBook Pro is a little low. Pianoteq is loud enough, but for Galaxy Vintage D, the volume on the MacBook Pro needs to be put to the max.

If you get some digital noise in the CN33 loudspeakers, don't be desperate. I had some very loud noise as soon as I connected both, audio and USB. Kawai Europe suggested me a hum destroyer like the Behringer HD400. I bought one and it works perfectly. The noise is completely gone.

May I ask why you are thinking of buy the EMU specifically? How much are you looking at for a used one..


Regards. Rimmer

Basically Vintage D should be able to produce so much volume that clipping occurs, that means both pianos should be able to produce the same volume.

In Vintage D there are three possibilities to adjust the volume:
1) The volume slider of the piano itself. If multiple instruments are loaded, each can have individual volume.
2) Master volume. That is the knob in the upper section at the left side.
3) Individual adjustments for each audio channel. You get this, if you click at the Icon with the sliders. This will open the output and effects section of Kontakt player.
Each audio channel can have individual volume and effects, if a multichannel soundcard is used.

Maybe the default settings are too low for your system...
BTW, hope you installed the updates. The choosen instrument setting is now remembered when a instrument is saved and loaded again. I reported this as a bug during beta testing and it was fixed... ;-)

Best,

Peter

Thanks, ChrisA. Good advice there.



I also tried it today, with Garageband and Pianoteq. I found that the volume
from the Mac was fine, but I also got that annoying hum.

When I just connect the audio cable there is no noise, but when I connect the
USB the hum appears. Although the hum is not so loud it is quite annoying. Which
is why I am again considering to buy an external sound card, probably one with
Midi. I hope that gets rid of the noise.

The box you refer to looks good, but I think I would prefer to solve the problem
with a sound card, because of all the other benefits of that.



No particular reason, really. The EMU was just the cheapest soundcard on the
local online marketplace, the asking price was €40 ($56). After the advice from
ChrisA, I would probably now go for one with Midi.

Do you know any soundcard, you could recommend ?

The problem is called a "ground loop" and it is one more reason to "just say no to USB MIDI" and go with those old round MIDI plugs. You are going to get a ground loop any time you can trace with your finger a circle of ground connections. Your audio cables, have grounds and so does the USB and technically what's happened is the grounds in the two cables are not at equal potentials. A few things to try are (1) making sure the computer is not running on AC and you don't have a pwered hub pluged into AC power. This way there is only one AC mains plug used. (2) get an audio interface box that has MIDI (3) use little box on the audio cables that is designed to break the ground, perhaps it has a line level transformer inside

I can see, I forgot to thank for the advice.

The explanation on "ground loop" was especially helpful.

I ended up purchasing the Lexicon Alpha audio interface.

It helped very much, there is still a slight hum, but it is acceptable, and the sound is overall better.

No, USB won't introduce ground loop problems.
1. The data is purely digital, with high noise immunity.
2. The ground connection is independent of the data connection.
3. The data is sent in differential mode, with high immunity to induced, common-mode noise.

If hum is present, it's because something else is broken, not because USB has shortcomings.

I connected the line out of my CN-33 into a M-AUDIO fast track ultra and the sound level is very low. -20 decibels. Not even close to being in the normal level. Has anyone else had this problem? I don't know how to record it because the piano sound is too low.

after some fiddling around I discovered that the sound is very low, even with the keyboard volume up high. I have to use the gain of the sound card to bring it up to level. I suppose I could put the volume of the piano at maximum too but I don't see why the piano's volume would have an impact on line out. It's a pain to have the piano so loud just to record it.

I also found that the USB midi connection creates a lot of noise, not sure if it's coming out of the CN33 or if it's interference in my computer. But unplugging that is definitely required before recording audio.

Lastly I did a quick comparison of the kawai audio w/ a recording via midi rendered to audio with true pianos. I didn't notice a major difference. I need to repeat the experiment with the exact same midi file so I can make a fair comparison. My initial impression is that recording with midi and rendering with true pianos would be much easier than trying to record audio.

Hi cunparis,

I don't know if I can help, but I need some more info to picture your setup.

What is your setup ?

Is it like this:
CN33 Line out/R -> M-Audio Mic/Inst 1
CN33 Line out/L -> M-Audio Mic/Inst 2
M-Audio USB -> Computer USB

Did you use the front or rear inputs ? And make sure that the two front/rear buttons are set to accordingly ?
Did you turn up the two Ch1 Gain and Ch2 Gain controls ?
What computer do you use, and what software ?

You described my setup exactly. I'm using the front inputs because I need to use the gain which I have put at 75% for Channels 1 & 2. I'm using an HP notebook dual core with 2 gigs memory running windows 7 x32.

If I put the gain knobs at 100% then there is a lot of noise. At 75% there is a slight noise that's not audible when the piano is playing but if there is silence it's slightly audible.

I thought line out would work like my stereo equipment: Just do line out to line in and the signal is perfect regardless of the volume setting. It seems on the Kawai this isn't the case.

If I have the kawai plugged into my computer via USB there is definitely more noise/interference. This will be a problem because I want to record a midi file in cubase and then play it back on the kawai to record the audio.

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it. BTW how do you get notified when there is a new post? I can't figure it out.

Thanks

'BTW how do you get notified when there is a new post? I can't figure it out.'

Go to the top of this page, and click on 'Topic Options'

Rob - I have the thread watched but I don't get any email notifications so I never know when a thread is updated.

Ok,

Again, top of page, click on 'My Stuff'/Edit preferences,
check 'Yes' in the text that reads:
By default should anything added to your Watch Lists be emailed to you?
Yes No

Thanks Rob, I got it configured to email me now.

I hope to get this recording issue working so that I can do some comparisons between the kawai, true pianos, and some live recordings on concert grands. It's a lot of fun.

Hmm, I tried the same setup with my Lexicon Alpha audio interface.

In my setup I found the best sound level, by first turning all volume levels down to zero.

Then I turned each of the audio interface Line In levels (your ch1/2 gains) up to full, and then I slowly turned the master volume on the CN33 up until the recoding level in Garageband was ok. In that situation, I needed to turn the CN33 Master volume up to about 50% (middle setting).

It is a bit annoying, that it apparently is not possible to turn of the CN33 speakers in that situation.

Here is a checklist you might try:

Have you tried to use the Line In on the back of the M-Audio instead. I can see from the M-Audio description, that the front Line in's are also used for Mic. Maybe they are also high impedance inputs to be used for guitars ? Have you made sure, that the fantom power for the Mic inputs is turned off ?

Have you checked that the M-Audio is the only input to the computer, sometimes I have had a lot of noise, because the internal Mic on my Macbook was selected, when I thought that the input came from the audio interface.

Have you tried to remove any cables from the CN33 Line in ? In my case I have connected the Line out from the audio interface back to the Line In on the CN33, but in one case this gave some positive feedback loop, which caused at loud noise.