Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ravenscroft by VI Labs… First Look and Sound

My advice is to put the licence in your pc. At any time you can move the licence from the pc to the iLok and back to the pc. Or from one pc to another (but not 2 at the same time) without iLok (just deactivate on one and activate on the other). I personnaly only use my iLok for Synthogy not for True Keys.

thanks alot.
pretty psyched to check out Ravenscroft.
how do you like TK American?

I'd say it's superior to most of my pianos, except maybe Ivory II, I am still comparing them (I only received American D today and have been playing with my friend's other Ivory 2, including the Italian for some time now). I cannot say what I prefer in Ivory II, they both sound great, but it seems somehow more playable. But I'll keep comparing them over the next days (also trying other mic position) and will report my impressions. As for Ravenscroft, I am tempted, but the SSDs of my 2 PCs are almost full (only 15-20 GB left) so I would have to buy a new pc first (I don't install such pianos on 5400 rpm HDDs, you need an SDD to get the best out of pianos like Ivory II or TK....)

cool. I would love to try them all. I am especially tempted to check out (get) the American D.
I have this model external hard drive:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-Fre...Hard_Disk_Drives&hash=item338a123cf1

it is not SDD. but it is 7200 rpm. do you think it will work ok with Ravenscroft?

It would be interesting to test its speed. You can do a disk speed test with this free software and let me know how fast is your disk http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
Just to give you an idea my HDD is around 70 MB/s while my SSD is almost 500... My external USB Sandisk Extreme 64GB is 260 MB/s and it works fine with pianos...

I'll probably reply tomorrow as I am going to bed, it's 2.35am here in Europe now...

Well, I hope you are wrong about that.

I am running with a 7200 rpm HD, Intel I7 3.40 GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM. I installed True Keys American Grand and it seems to be fine.

I have heard that the Ivory II product may need more resources.

With a 7200 rpm HD and these specs you should be fine, my True keys is running on a similar pc except with SSD. I will test in the 5400 rpm HD of my other pc (I7, 16GB of RAM) to see if it works fine. I may do the same with American D just to compare. However I have heard you lose polyphony etc. if you disk is not fast enough (not to mention that True Keys would take ages to load on a 5400 rpm HD I guess...)

roger all of that. thank you. have a good night's sleep. I'm about ready to faint from lack of sleep.
do you mean that I could run True Keys Ravenscroft on a 64GB Sandisk Extreme thumb drive, instead of my external HDD?
would that be better?

Sure, provided you have UBS 3.0 on your pc (and better if it's recent). My smaller pc has UBS 3.0 but it runs at 135 MB/s while in my most recent pc it runs at full potential, I don't know why....

hey Don, I am obviously way uneducated on all this.
but I did talk to Ivory a couple weeks ago. the friendly dude did mention about 7200 rpm HD and usb 3.0.
today I talked briefly with VI Labs. the guy said that if I used a 5200 rpm HD, I might have pedalling troubles. I said what if I only need the sustain. he said then probably be all right (this is the best I can recall the conversation).
something about when you turn things off, less processing power needed.
he also compared having 7200 rpm to 5200 rpm, as being like having a 12 lane highway, as compared to a 6 lane highway.

thank you.
my sony vaio laptop has a usb 3.0 jack. but only an i5, with 6GB of ram and 5200 rpm HD.
it gotta be 3 or 4 years old now too.

Have you tested the speed of your current external drive with the freeware I linked?

trying to figure out how to make CrystalDisk run a test......thoughts?

You must have clicked some ad banner or may be taken the sponsored version (open candy). Try this link, it's the portable version
http://sourceforge.jp/projects/crys...stalDiskMark3_0_3a.zip/?use_mirror=jaist

Nothing to istall, just extract the zip and run the exe file (x64 if you have a 64 bit Windows as you probably do).
If you want to make 100% sure it's clean try analyze with https://www.virustotal.com/ (you probably know it, 50 virus scanners together).

figured out install. thank you.
I ran the first option in the file choices (that is to say the next one down from default (random), because that does nothing.........so I ran all 0 x 00 (0 fill)
the boxes at the top of the screen I left at the default settings: 5 and then 1000 MB.

sequential read 32.83MB/s write 22.18 MB/s

random 512k read 22.38 write 21.87

4k read .601 write 1.181

4kQD32 read .659 write 1.180


did I do it right? should I run the other test choice:
(all 0 x FF (1 Fill) ?

what do you think of my external HDD? too slow??

Oh yes, it's much slower than a normal 5400 rpm internal HDD, try testing your internal HDD for comparison (always leave the default settings, just change the letter of your drive, choose the one corresponding to your internal drive, e.g. C or D, and click ALL)

ok. thanks a lot. checking it now.
am I doing the right selection by choosing the first one in the drop down menu: all 0 x 00 (0 fill)?

assuming yes.
and I just used the CrystalDisk Standard edition (not the Shizuku). is that alright?

here are the numbers for C drive:

read 89.61 write 88

read 33.17 write 39.4

Ok, well your HHD is not that bad, and anyway much better than you external drive (the number to look at for piano is the first 89.61). It might be ok, otherwise you could try a sandisk extreme, should be faster than your C drive, but how much depends on your PC, I cannot guarantee, can be 30-50% faster or even 3 times faster... I believe you get best results with Windowa 8, as it has native UBS 3.0.

thank you.
my sony vaio, (maybe 4 years old), has an i5, 6 GB of ram, windows 7, and a USB 3.0 jack.

my new HP notebook, has windows 8, 8 GB ram, 4th generation haswell i7, and noooooo USB 3.0 jack.

what to do, what to do?

maybe I'll check the new HP's speed with crystaldisk? does it matter whether I use crystaldisk standard or shizuku, (I used standard before)?

Are you positive that sequential read is the crutial parameter? Just asking.