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I am experimenting with P'teq 4 (trial), layering sounds from P4 and the ES7. OK for playing, but the P4 recording only has the P4 sounds and when recording to usb on the ES7, faster passages - turns trills etc - just get missed, like a CD or vinyl disc jumping.

Anyone with experience of this? I am considering Pianoteq, but the layered sounds are better than the ES7 or Pianoteq on their own. No use if I can't record them! [Note: I am using the various Bluethner samples, modified to my taste]

Watch the Pianoteq's display of CPU usage (in the "Performance" display, "File | Audio/Midi Setup | Perf".

And (if using Windows), right-click on the Task Bar, left-click on "Start Task Manager", and click on "Performance".

If either of those displays shows CPU usage near 100% (especially on complex passages with pedalling) --

. . . You need a faster computer.

A human musician, faced with "too many notes in too little time", either slows down, or skips notes.

Pianoteq (or recording software) just skips (or drops) notes.

. Charles

It sounds like you believe you are able to get your ES7 to capture the mixed tones coming from the Pianoteq software and from ES7 engine by utilizing the ES7 ... record to usb feature. Is that right ?

What you experience is normal. You need a mixer table to mix the sounds generated by the DP and the computer, and then capture the mixed output.

Something like this would do the trick:



There are far better mixer tables (way, way, way better), but something like this is cheap and appropiate for a home use.

Regards,
Kurt.-

There will be some 10 ms latency difference - is it not disturbing then?

Many thanks for your replies. It is not a pc performance issue - less than 20% usage. It makes sense that a mixer is needed - I have one which I could never really master when trying to mic my acoustic piano. Oh, well, another learning curve ..........

Don, yes I am trying to use the usb to capture both sounds and this seems to be mission impossible. (Without using a mixer)

Re latency: I have played around with various settings and find that the ES7 sounds first, but the greater sustaining power of the Bluethner takes over without any audible problems playing live. The problem is capturing it to a recording.

On an associated aspect, I am playing around with software harpsichords and organs via Hauptwerk - a brilliant program - but find odd things happen. The Hauptwerk settings for an instrument - midi and audio settings etc - sometimes come up fine when loading, sometimes need re-configuring. What is more puzzling is distortion sometimes which no amount of adjusting the polyphony/latency cures - the only thing which appears to get rid of it is taking out the DAC and plugging it back in again, which of course throws Hauptwerk, but zaps the distortion - which is also audible through headphones.

Methinks using software instruments is an arcane art, akin to alchemy.

sandalholme, what kind of audio hardware are you using on the PC? If you're using the onboard audio, it may be worth trying a the lower latency ASIO4ALL driver.

As for recording both audio sources simultaneously, this can probably be achieved by connecting the audio output of the ES7 to your PC's audio input, then selecting to record both the input audio and the onboard audio simultaneously.

Cheers,
James
x

10ms is not noticeable. It is the same delay you get when speaking to a person 10 feet away from you. That said almost any decent audio interface will offer zero latency monitoring. It's a really common feature

No. don't bother with a mixer. That is what DAW software is for. And you are right about this specific one, a lot of self-noise and hiss. It is not the best.

But the more modern and more common way to go is to mix in software. One BIG advantage is that you get a second (or third) chance. Software allows you to do all kinds of non-destructive edits and remixes.

The DAW will run your software instrument as a plug-in and record. You can play while litening to a previous recording. Or you can hook up the keyboard to as many software instruments as you like and record each to it's own track then later mix it. Using a hardware mixer just does not make sense

But there is a difference: it is not about the latency, but about the latency differences of the 2 sound sources to be mixed.
But I would agree, the situation is like playing chamber music...
it will hardly be noticable being the two sounds entirely different.

(The question remains if one would mix the very same sound with a latency of about 10 secs.)


Zero latency monitoring is for totally different purposes and setups (to enable to listen to a miced music in real time). It is no use in this case.

In such an arrangement You could open a new track in Your DAW for the audio stream, you can apply a solo mode delay effect on this track specifying the sum latency of the instrument in the other track - (I am using Reaper and ReaDelay) that would be the perfectionist's solution to the latency issue.

This works probably by buffering the audio input stream...I have just tried this, but have no real life experience with this though.

Using a DAW such as Reaper, simply open two tracks, one audio, and one MIDI.
Use P4 as a VSTi on the midi track, and the output of your DP on the audio track, and record both simultaneously.
As long as you have a decent sound card, or use ASIO4ALL, there should be no discernable latency, or am I missing something?

I am very grateful for all these thoughts and suggestions. It now makes sense to use a DAW - I haven't explored this yet, being immersed in playing around with P4 and Hauptwerk. I have and used to use ASIO4ALL, but the audio output from the pc is very hit and miss, plus a not very nice sound card so I now use a usb driven DAC - FiiO E17 - which improves the audio immensely. So much so that I can hook it up to the BBC website and listen to DAB broadcasts via the hi-fi - great until the web connection falls over - and can really tell the difference between MP3 and WAV formats even on the powered pc speakers, let alone on the hi-fi. [As an aside, I have tried the Mietke harpsichord via Hauptwerk and experienced distortion on all output formats on MP3 which disappears when reprocessed as a WAV file.] Downside is that the latency goes up: 23ms would you believe, (due to DAC processing?) but to a former organist that's no big deal. And as I said above, the P4 sound kicks in, presumably, 23ms after the ES7 sound I start to hear through the ES7 speakers, thus extending it and adding more solidity. Below 23ms the notes continuously ring/oscillate. As I am using the P4 trial version, it's amusing to notice when P4 stops after 20 minutes: still a lovely sound, but with that extra sustain and solidity missing. It's probably an 80:20 ES7/P4 mix.

Further to the above, I found that recording the ES7 to usb also created jumps and crackles. I created more space on the (16GB) stick, cleaned and defragmented it. No change. Finally I did a factory reset: OK recording the ES7. Tried ES7 and P$ again: back to jumps and missing notes, which continued when recording the ES7 on its own.

Finally isolated the remarkable fact that trying to record the ES7 with P4 fouls up the usb recording process so much that only removing the stick, doing a factory reset, restoring my settings, then putting the stick back into the usb slot resolves the issue.

So,I can now record the ES7's native sounds again, Pianoteq's native sounds, via Pianoteq. Mixing them renders the usb recording facility useless.

Strange, but no doubt there's a logical technological explanation.