Hello!
I'm new to the forums but I've had a problem with Ivory II that I've not seen on here.... or anywhere on the internet for that matter. Usually most people complain of latency issues when it comes to Ivory, but I've been having a different problem...

Latency is not an issue but the sound dynamics are (not velocity curve related). When I play slow, all of the notes sound out how they are struck in accordance to the velocity in which I strike them. However, when more notes are added at a faster rate the volume drops immensely of ALL notes.... I'm also not talking about playing crazy fast songs like Flight of the Bumblebee either Another thing is that pedaled/held note velocities drop quickly when more notes are added even though the added notes do not exceed the polyphony of either my midi controller or Ivory's polyphony settings. I actually have ivory set for more polyphony than my midi controller can wield (which has 64) and have set Ivory to 164.

I wanted to test this further, so I set Ivory's "Dynamic Range" to zero. Meaning... all notes should be played at the loudest possible velocity no matter how hard or soft I strike my piano keys. Surprisingly the same thing happened once the playing got (faster/more notes added) with an additional problem of clicking sounds (which only has come out when it is set at zero). I'm also using ASIO 4ALL which is set at 256 samples.

I've never had a "slow disk" message from Ivory and my midi controller emits note velocities correctly on its own. It's just that my midi controllers internal voice sounds like crap, so I'm using Ivory. Anyway.... does anyone have ideas for what may be causing this sound drop-off? I really like Ivory, but as it is right now it is almost unusable for me because my performances cannot be delivered with any accurate dynamic control. Again, this is far beyond a velocity curve problem and not even related.

Thanks for reading!

My specs....
Operating System: Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processors: 4 (2.7GHz)
Ram: 8 GB
External HardDrive: Touro (7200 RPM)
Soundcard: Xonar DX
Midi input: USB 3.0
Computer: Hewlett-Packard h8-1010
Midi Controller: Yamaha DGX-640

Hi Aluminum,

One thing I should point out is that all of the latency that can be experienced from Ivory has to do with the audio buffer set by your audio interface. Ivory doesn't add any additional latency itself.

Your description of all notes dropping lower in volume is unusual. Are you running the latest update which is Ivory 2.1.1? The best way to see what is going on would be to create an MP3 recording of you playing Ivory and sending that to support@ilio.com or by emailing Synthogy, the makers of Ivory directly at support@synthogy.com.

Asio4all is not recommended as it attempts to make a sound card process audio at a lower latency that is not designed for this purpose. An official audio interface/sound card that is designed for ASIO will offer much better performance and very well could be the culprit in the behavior you are experiencing when using Ivory.

You could definitely be experiencing drop outs if your hard drive is using USB 2.0. If you are using USB, make sure the external hard drive as well as the usb port on your computer is USB 3, otherwise it will be using USB 2 which is not recommended. USB 3, Firewire, or eSata is recommended. Also, I would suggest lowering your polyphony as your drive most likely is not able to handle polyphony over 100. I suggest having it set to 50. Ivory set's it's polyphony to 24 by default and for most users, this setting is fine.