Did you find a board you liked better jve?

I'm still looking. I might get a Yamaha CP1 if I can find a good deal. There's the CP5, but the user interface doesn't inspire me. These are not perfect pianos, but I think I can live with the flaws. To me piano tone and player-sound connection is most important, and the Yamahas fair well in that department.

cheers,
-joachim

Yes I think they confuse damper resonance and symphathetic string resonance without pedal. That happens quite often, also for the Casio's.

From Korgs advertising I believed, the PA588 has sympathetic, but when I tried it, I couldnt hear it.
Reading the advertising again, I came to the conclusion they mean damper resonances. Unfortunately there is no clear definitions about these terms.

All else being equal, like most people, probably the brighter one (as long as it isn't overly bright).


OK I just checked this again. Nope, no key sympathetic resonance in either SV-1 AP (via MIDI). Nothing but noise floor after the stimulus. I do hear a string damping effect that sounds pretty realistic, but that's an entirely different thing.

The stretch group transitions are really audible over the lows and mids (not the best timbre matching between groups) which is a shame. The mechanical key and pedal noises are a bit too prominent, though I assume these can be lowered en masse by adjusting the confusingly named "RX noise level" parameter. Too bad the various noises aren't individually adjustable as a little goes a long way and more isn't necessarily better - they need careful management to avoid sounding obnoxious.

I personally demand that all editable parameters be available via the front panel, even if this means a deep dive into cryptic menus. The USB driver will almost certainly cease functioning with some future version of Windows or MacOS, and then where will you be? IMO they oversimplified the UI in this regard.

I asked you about sustain length vs stretching - I don't understand why you need to introduce brightness.



I gather the SV-1 interface is intended to be as direct and immediate as possible. However it's still possible to adjust the sounds using a Windows/OS X application.



Well, I doubt Windows/OS X will be dropping USB support any time soon.



See my previous answer.

Cheers,
James
x

Very sorry, I completely misread your question. I believe you're asking if I prefer stretching with longer loop samples or no stretching and shorter loop samples. If so, my answer is: this is 2011 why are we even discussing this kind of Sophie's choice?


I'm looking in the editor manual, it seems you can only adjust the "RX noise level" which I believe is after all the noises are mixed together at whatever levels Korg has deemed proper and correct. Do you see where they can be individually adjusted?


No, the fear is that Korg won't keep their SV-1 editor and USB drivers up to date.

Just for clarification, the level of the "RX Noises" can be adjusted without the editor by engaging the function button and turning the bass knob in the equalizer. However, Dewster is correct in that these noises can't be adjusted as separate components.

Most of the major manufacturers have a pretty good track record of keeping updated drivers available and Korg is not the only one with this issue to bear in mind.

I suspect the Korg EPs are better, but Roland's seamless dynamic control over the acoustic piano makes the choice easy for me. Piano trumps Rhodes and all the other considerations in my situation.

Correct. These are some of the factors that DP sound designers must consider when creating each patch. I onced asked a Yamaha engineer why their DPs typically do not feature 88-key sampling. He answered that, in his opinion, musicians are more likely to appreciate longer sustain lengths than shorter individual samples for each key. We went on to talk about other challenges facing DP hardware - suffice it to say it was a very interesting discussion.



Okay, but this doesn't really answer my question, unfortunately. Let's try again: if you were placed in the shoes of that Yamaha (or even a Kawai, Roland, Korg...) engineer, and required to decide how limited sample memory should be used most efficiently (and musically), which method would you chose?



No I don't, and after watching this overview of the software, it doesn't appear possible for each 'RX noise' level to be adjusted individually. However, the editor software certainly does provide access to parameters that cannot be adjusted from the 'oversimplified' front panel (the point I wished to demonstrate), and I for one rather like this approach.



Well, there's always that possibility, and the same could be said for every other manufacturer. However judging from the SV-1's editor application, I'd suggest that the Korg software team is pretty strong.

Please note that I have no connection with Korg, and I'm certainly not a fanboy. The SV-1 looks and sounds like a strong product, with features that will clearly appeal to a certain type of player - arguably someone who is more interested in vintage electromechanical sounds than acoustic.

There may well be flaws with the SV-'1s piano patches - some of which may even be highlighted by your DPBSD test. However, there's clearly a lot about this model that does work very, very well on a musical level. Therefore it's important to judge the overall product as an instrument, rather than continually focussing on minor details that the majority of players are unlikely to worry too much about.

Kind regards,
James
x

This is something I don't understand. From your conversation with those engineers, are we really to believe that there is "limited" memory in a $1600 + piece of gear? I realize the literal answer to that is yes - everything has limited memory - but the memory and computing power required to run a relatively sophisticated modeler like Pianoteq, or a top-notch sample library, is easily achieved with a $500 laptop in this day and age. I assume that professional keyboards remain expensive compared to far more sophisticated pieces of technology because there is not as much scale to drive down manufacturing costs. There aren't that many consumers for these products.

But there might be another reason. For the sake of argument, suppose the DPBSD helped us arrive at a nearly-unanimous consensus about which technology is superior among the available options. Not that we determined the platonic ideal of acoustic piano tone, but that we determined that one of the given technologies was officially so good that for all intents and purposes a sophisticated audience could never tell it was digital on record or even in the room. That technology would have to become cheaper over time, because that's what technology does. There is hardware involved too, but again the cost of keybeds will only go down. And yet, somehow, I bet that the requirements of marketing, salaries, and the arbitrary product hierarchy that all of these companies maintain would keep prices about where they are now. In other words, maybe the only reason there isn't a board with no compromises that costs the same as an X-Box is that they need it to be that way.

The trouble is that widespread exposure to personal computers, at relatively low cost, has made us all something of an armchair expert. Yet such comparisons are apples to oranges.

For a start (as you do in fact go on to point out), there are the economies of scale. Personal computers are a consumer electronics staple - musical instruments, of which keyboards form only a small part, are a highly specialist market.

Computers use dirt cheap RAM to achieve most of their magic, using a bus design which broadly speaking, hasn't changed for years. Keyboards, on the other hand, use mostly custom ROM chips, immediately piling on R&D and manufacturing costs.

Then there are the physical components to consider. These are nearly all specialist and must be custom designed and manufactured. More cost.



With respect, there are good reasons to assume quite the opposite of your assumption here. Manufacturing costs, even in places like China, are rising sharply - people aspire to and deserve a decent living and the number of "sweatshop" economies will continue to shrink. Plus, keyboards contain a lot of plastic. Plastic is made with oil. Oil is becoming scarcer and more expensive.

What else? Then you have to manufacture and distribute, worldwide, a relatively bulky, electronically sophisticated and heavy item. Then you have to promote it. I don't know what Synthogy's advertising budget is for Ivory, but I'm willing to bet it's a fraction of the advertising and promotional budgets of the big Japanese manufacturers.



Unfortunately, the overall appeal of a musical instrument cannot be quantified in a series of tick boxes and feature points.

If you follow Dewster's argument, Roland's RD Supernatural pianos are technically substantially ahead of the pack - every note sampled, modelling used to disguise loops and layers etc.

Putting aside the concerns about note-stealing and key wear, I still find the SN pianos very aggressive and metallic, particularly in the upper mid registers. So I could care less how perfectly formed the sound is - it's not for me.

Then consider the recent love here for Yamaha's CP33. Here is a piano which offers only 64-note polyphony and is merrily looped and stretched across the board. Yet it still sounds pretty good.

We need to remember that musical performance is a different psychological space for both performer and audience. Neither are listening to the end of notes to detect looping etc. In such situations, factors such as overall tone and keyboard responsiveness become far more important to the final overall impression than the inherent sampling technology behind the sound.



Everything has compromises, from an X-Box to a Steinway D.

If one of the Big Three could put together this idealised keyboard we have in mind and deliver it at a price close to a laptop, they'd be doing it. They'd be utterly stupid not to. But they can't and they won't.

My speculation as to why DPs are so far behind the technology curve is twofold:

1. The hardware design teams are stuck in an ASIC mentality.
2. Most customers are not enthusiasts, and so are largely content with the current offerings.

Putting an ASIC in a big volume seller like the Casio PX-330 makes some sense, but these days developing an ASIC for a single niche product doesn't.

The development costs for an ASIC are astronomical, so companies try to put the same ASIC in as many different products as they can, and then milk said products for as long as they can, in order to amortize the development costs. This is rational behavior if you find yourself on the ASIC road, but the reasons for being on that road in the first place have changed both drastically and recently.

If the consumer base is largely content with the current offering, why spend more on hardware and R&D to improve what is likely a diminishing returns scenario? This leaves the enthusiast out in the cold in what amounts to an untapped niche market.

It isn't that they can't make a DP with an acceptably sized piano sample - the Korg Kronos is proof that this is possible, and Nord is slowly closing in. The other manufacturers may offer similar fare someday if we as consumers communicate our wants and needs to them. I try to do my part in this regard by being as technically informed as I can be, and by ranting on-line about the things that strike me as woefully in need of change. I know it gets old and I apologize for that, but they say reps read these boards, and short of developing and producing our own DP I'm not exactly sure what else we can do.

Mmmmm, sigh...hardware instruments and their limitations;

despite of their shortcomings - I like the way you can just switch them on and start playing without EVER to have to bother about all the stuff you're usually involved with when using computers. Believe me, I've got all the hard- and software stuff available for a decent software solution, but for me I figured out it keeps me mostly from what I want to do => making music. I take smaller sample memories and some outdated technology for granted in that respect.

E.g. the more the Kronos becomes like a loaded computer , the less interesting it may be for me and I rather opt for this simple RD stagepiano or another old-school hardware machine. Keeps me from getting lost in endless software tweaks and configuration sessions, that can keep you busy for hours...

Been there, done that. Now back to basics...I'm getting really old ;-)

...meet the Nord Piano-the best of both worlds! ;-)

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Even with the less than stellar (but not at terrible) RH3 action, an SV-2 with Kronos derived piano sounds would be a bad a$$ little board.

I keep coming across mentions of the "SV-2." I'm assuming this is merely a theoretical possibility, or does anyone have anything concrete about this?

You assume correctly.