Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ivory II through Avantgrand (N1) Speakers

At least you know now. The 1616m has, I believe, a software toggle on it's mixer GUI that switches between
-10 and +4. It would be worth looking into to confirm.

The outboard mixer suggestions are most likely your next step.

Yeah - I flicked back and forth between the settings on the 1616m. Maybe some external 2.1 speakers instead - any you'd recommend for best reproducing a piano?

As far as speakers go, there are posters here that can give you very good suggestions. I have good trouble shooting skills and like to help out where I can.

At volume on "3 o'clock" (AG N1) I feel the instrument very convenient – loud enough to be heard as a real sounding piano.
The same settings remain when I connect the AG to my Macbook pro or Mac Pro from headphone jacks.
Today I did more precise test and must correct my last post. Not at 50-70% volume output form the Mac(s) but ca. 85%.

Thus I compared at almost the same loudness, playing Beethoven's Sonate F-dur Op.10, nr.2 (known as the 6-th Sonate) and Chopin Prelude Op 24 nr.4 e-moll.
Both have contrasts as a dynamic.
The "pp and ppp" range of Ivory II (American Concert D) in is even larger than AG.
As for as "fff" – they are quite equal.

Very interesting. As I said, the guy in the shop reckoned their two N1s were also outputing at 2/3rds of the volume of connecting the headphones direct - so either the Macs output is hotter or your N1 has a higher output for some reason.

I've spoken to Yamaha about it too and they are going to do some tests of their own.

I don't think that my N1 is different. Not at all.
Probably the Mac's output phone-jack has a bit more gain.
Both macs (Macbook pro 17" C2D 2.8GHz and Mac Pro 2.66GHz Nehalem) are models 2009.

How about with headphones? - listening to the Mac with headphones attached to the Avantgrand then listening to the Mac directly with the headphones without changing the volume.

If it's quieter through the piano the Mac has a hotter output. If its quieter through the Mac, your piano has a greater output than mine.

Albatrosse,

Perhaps you could adjust the touch controls on the piano to make it a bit softer when you want to play along. From what Wess.Chr.K. is reporting, flying in an external sound is a bit of a balancing act, but it can be accomplished successfully.
His statement about FFF being the same and dynamic levels below that being actually a little quieter fall in line with how an instrument with more dynamic range than the internal piano sound would behave.

Sorry, colleagues,
I did not mention something very, really very important about Ivory II Am.C.D being played on AG – the velocity curve:
because AG has been limited to 124 (upper register) and at most 116 -lowest one (but normally 96-106) you need to limit the velocity curve inside Am.C.D to 116 but not to leave it on 127 or instead, you might use a host (for instance Cubase 7) to enable the midi modifiers to expansion set to 17:20 (or it was an opposite??? – I can not check right now, however that were the values.)
This issue repeats exactly the same way with East West QL Pianos.
After this make-up it sounds perfectly for me, but it is a weakest spot on AG.

My conclusion is that AG is good for playing, but as a master keyboard must be treated with care and those tricks I mentioned above are absolutely necessary to get the profit of VST Pianos.

Cheers for this. On mine the fff is definitely quieter than on board so it's not a dynamics problem.

I also have ivory set up to send its highest velocities at around 100 and with the 'power' curve - so it's not that either.

Ps - also asked yamaha about the more limited midi range so ill report back if they say anything ( though I personally think its a limitation of using the acoustic action and/or of the sensors ability to register the speed).

Absolutely! That is the only logical explanation about velocity curve, but somewhere in this forum was report about the same issues with CLP?
Why then?
And also, one important fact – at "vel. 0" the MIDI sends "Aftertouch at 127" control which spoils pianos like East WestQL.
It took me a lot of effort to find it monitoring all my MIDI devices.
I had to disable "Aft.touch" on software MIDI filter to use AG as a MIDI controller when playing EWQL Pianos.

The piano (AG) is good, but not the best because it has a number of details that have not been decided to make the piano working also as an external MIDI keyboard controller.

For retail EU price ca. €6450 this instrument had to offer more versatile control over the signal input/output, adequate but not sounding cheep reverb, MIDI key. vel.-curves and so on, to support USB audio AIFF or WAV or MP3 (play/import/export) format and many other options, that are found on such instruments as Kawai and Rolland, even that they sound compressed and emitting unrealistically tang sound (pop or rock alike) at high velocity.

As many of us that picked up AG, I chose it mainly for the keyboard action and sound (for composing and teaching my 6 y.o. son).
In addition about its own (AG N1) sound system: when I compare the sound to the same signal going to studio monitors (in my case Genelec) – N1 sounds nice, piano like and of course "woody", in positive sense.
However, playing much louder than normal piano does, there are specific resonant zones between 350-800 Hz due to the body on AG N1, which over exaggerates "piano acoustic".

Talking from my short (only 2 months) experience, this AG N1 sounds better when internal speakers and external Genelec monitors are switched together in parallel (at "12 o'clock" or on 50% volume control knob AG N1 to more than 50%-60% Genelec).
It fils the studio very nice with added reverb form Altiverb ("Shubert hall").

For sake of that treat, as many other colleagues, I also would suggest you to take one external sound card and to control the output of your laptop.
Mac or PC – it does not really matter, because the sound is being reproduced by the external device.

Just as an budget example:

http://www.musicstore.de:80/de_DE/EUR/Focusrite-Saffire-PRO-24-Firewire-Audio-Interface/art-PCM0009017-000

In EU is about € 250 and one of the most important option on it is the build in MIDI interface.
Thus you will not need to struggle with pulse noise, high "Pegel", full of issues "MIDI to USB" interfaces such as "M-audio MIDI spot" or ~3 times more expensive (ca. €63) but working very well "Yamaha UX16 MIDI Interface".

Just a pare of (DIN) MIDI cables – they are much cheeper than both mentioned above.
IMHO, on the ground of more than 6000 (EUR/USD) man pay for AG N1 it is as a kind of "must have" accessory.

I wish you success finding the best solution for you.

So Yamaha have done some testing and found that the signal gets attenuated going through the N1 too. So definitely a widespread issue. They are going to look into it further,

In the meantime would a headphone amp do the trick to boost the line level before it goes into the piano? Just trying to think of something more unobtrusive than a mixer...

Headphone amp is a good idea.

behringer makes some nice Xenyx model mixers that are small

Check out the Peavey headphone amp. Not expensive and should do the trick:

http://www.amazon.com/Peavey-03001320-HB2/dp/B004PYTDK0

http://www.peavey.com/products/index.cfm/item/875/118215/HB2HeadPhoneAmplifier

Do you play "Ivory II" via host (Cuabase, Logic, Pro tools) or as a standalone app.?

As we know, the host applications have many advantages, but two of of the most important for playing "live" are the "output level control" and "reverb".
Personally I prefer – "Altiverb".
Before start playing on AG N1 (talking about "Ivory II") is necessary to adjust the velocity curve to your manner of playing.
More than 4 days after I picked up the AG N1 I experimented and find the most relevant set up for me.

With those changes (look at the screenshots) my colleagues and I feel the keyboard very comfortable and enjoy Ivory II American concert D.
Thus "ppp-fff" are absolutely possible.

In the "yellow" boxes are highlighted all values.
The lowest dynamic I get (after SONNOX "inflator") was -45.7 db (left pedal noise). When played A1-440 Hz with left pedal: ca. -39db.
After the insert on master output the highest value was -0.3db.

You can try it and I would be happy to discus this subject here.
I stay opened and would be thankful for any suggestions and positive ideas of yours.

Best regards,
Wess







Cubase 7 set up view:

Feed your laptop signal through a mixer and send mixer output to line in of AG. That way you can adjust gain to your heart's content. A cheap 2 to 4 channel mixer will do.

I had a Clavinova CLP and it had the same issue. I was so happy after I bought a small Behringer Xenyx mixer.