Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Strong Overtones on CP4 S6 Sound.

Hi All. New member here. Last night, I brought home my new Yamaha CP4. Although I really like this piano, I have a question that I thought other owners may be able to answer.

When I was trying the piano at the store, I noticed a very strong overtone when playing just a C note in the bottom register of the CFIII grand. It produced a very strong overtone around F# about three octaves above. It was really no problem, so I went ahead with the purchase.

Last night, while trying the S6 sound at home, I found an even stronger overtone that is very hard to ignore. It plays a harmonic at about a minor sixth and three octaves above. So, when playing an Eb, I can hear a very strong note around the C three octaves above. I have made a video to demonstrate.



Could other owners confirm that their example does the same? I must admit, it is quite hard to ignore.

Possible to get capture this direct?.
Do you also hear it in headphones?
Ambient noise in the room and other vibrations... Maybe the speakers or what the speakers are mounted on? Are a little distracting.

Yes. I'm positive I could capture this direct. I will do so. You can hear it the same through the headphones. That clip was recorded being played through a Bose L1C amp.

Do you have any additional layers selected?

I agree that these are most distracting sounds. What does your dealer say about it?

Ian

Hi Ian. No additional layers selected. I performed a factory reset on it when I got it home last night. I haven't spoken to the dealer about it yet. I'm waiting on a call back from Yamaha tech support.

It is impossible to say anything qualified on the basis of this rather bad recording. Of course recording sounds in such a way - and equally when playing back samples via speakers in a small room - will produce a rather jagged frequency response from input to output/ear. Of course piano sounds are very rich in overtones - that's what they are supposed to be. Now, when some peak of of the frequency response of your room, the amp, the mike, or the recording channel as a whole hits one of the overtones, it will selectively amplify it and it may then result in what you have shown. (The very same can happen of course when you record an acoustic piano with a low quality setup.)

The only way to get a good impression of your S6 sample would be a direct digital recording, transmitted through the web in a high quality format.

Cheers - enjoy your new piano.

Yeah, can we get a better recording of this?

Although we have some CP4 users here, Yamaha support hang out on their synth forums, see here . Also the musicplayer keyboard forum has quite a few CP4 users

OK. I have made another video. Recorded directly into the wav recorder on the machine. Sound still there, of course.



I will post this on the other forum. Thanks for the info.

I'm hearing the same overtone in the CP5 S6 DPBSD MP3 though it isn't as pronounced (perhaps due to the velocity). It's in the first three note stretch group up from the bottom, MIDI notes C#2, D2, D#2. I'm hearing it a bit also in the two note stretch group below this, MIDI notes B1 and C2. Here is the relevant passage from A1 to F2, so you can hear the two note stretch groups both below and above the offenders for lead-in / lead-out comparison:

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/ieqhpvllqdedndj/yamaha_cp5_s6_a1-f2_norm.mp3

So that's:
1. A1, A#1 - stretch group with no overtones
2. B1, C2 - stretch group with faint overtones
3. C#2, D2, D#2 - stretch group with faint overtones
4. E2, F2 - stretch group with no overtones

This is better and it shows a typical case of stretching. The overtones themselves are not a problem, they are in the piano itself. The problem is the abrupt transition between stretch groups.

But, to relax things a little: Do you have experience with acoustic pianos? All but the most meticulously prepared pianos do have some unevenness in the overtone spectrum in the bass range. Sometimes this is also in the upper ranges. I have a recording of Glenn Gould playing some Bach where one single key in the right hand range sticks out with a strong overtone... Some of this unevenness adds to the realism in playing more complex music.

Yes. That's it. I can hear it on your sample. As you say, it's not as pronounced as on mine, but it's definitely there.

Of course, I understand that the harmonics are a good thing, but those are very strident!

I haven't had my call back from Yamaha yet. I guess I have to decide whether I can put up with it. I like the S6 sound. Trouble is, I like to choose whether I want to play an Eb7, or an Eb13. It's not giving me a lot of choice.

This is a well known issue with the S6 sample. All Yamaha keyboards with the S6 piano exhibit that behavior.

OK then, that explains it - it's in the library. When they sampled the real deal, this particular instrument was showing off some partials. So the recording is a little too real, and you hear it on a few keys because they are using the same sample for each and stretching it.

What do you think of the samples in the onboard CF and CFX libraries? Nothing similar anywhere across the 88 keys?

Did you compare the Fl samples instead of the normal stretched samples? The Fl samples do not use stretch tuning. I agree the S6 sample seems more pronounced in this effect than the CFX or the CFIII.

I'm not sure what you mean by the FI samples. This really pronounced one is only on the S6. I noticed quite a pronounced high F# when playing the low C on the CFIII grand, but it isn't as loud as this, and it takes a couple of seconds before it comes in. I put that down to the original sample, as I really did with this one, except that it seems very strident. More than I would expect.

I'm certainly not seeing it as a fault as such. It would surprise me if it wasn't exactly the same on all of them. Possibly a characteristic of my particular amp (the amp in the piano) is making it stand out more. Either way, it's not a show-stopper. The piano is very nice all round, and a big step up from my Privia that I was using.

I'd still like to come across somebody with the CP4 to compare notes - just to put my mind at rest. :-)

It's funny that it's a 1/2 step above the compound 5th(when you hit the C after the Eb I really hear B).

Microphones that are close to strings in a piano can hear things quite differently than the human ear does.

To me I would not like it.

The thing about the PX5s is that all the notes seem right. It doesn't have messed up metallic bleeps on some notes, doesn't have weak 2 octaves on top like other boards, and now it also doesn't have wierd mi 6th overtones on certain bass notes.

It would be interesting to post that in the piano tuners section. They probably would have some insight.

If you spin the dial around on the voices you'll see you have some voices with the suffix "Fl" - this means "flat" meaning they haven't been stretch tuned. There's an explanation of this here in this discussion on the Yamaha forum.

https://yamahasynth.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&view=post&id=1589&Itemid=851

Being a previous CP4 owner and user I can say that I rarely used the S6 sample set because I could never get it to sit in the live mix well. However I think that in this thread you pointed out the obvious stretching that Yamaha continues to do. It's really unfortunate when they do it on their high end stuff and you could buy a low end model Roland of Kawai that does not have stretching. Like we all say in playing you usually don't notice these things but here is a case where it bothers the OP enough to demonstrate it and share it within a short time of a new purchase. I suggest you go over to: www.yamahasynth.com and make a thread over there. I'm curious as to how other users and moderators will respond. I remember hearing that the 3 piano sample sets in the CP4 were "full sample sets". While that is vague terminology, I would assume that they use different samples thoughtout each piano's (that they sampled) key range. But we know they don't from forum-mates like Dewster and even the OP( and our ears). I just mention this because while I've owned the CP4 for awhile the stretching and lifeless looping will eventual distract you from doing what you originally bought the instrument for....make music. I'm just expressing my hardships with the CP4 and this thread is another reason why I traded up for an instrument that does not stretch samples to cover all 88 keys of a piano that they sampled. While the S6 may not appeal to you anymore, hopefully the CFX and CFIIIS don't bother you too much.

Ah. Gotcha. Wow. On the FL version it's even louder!