Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Volume settings on DPs to emulate acoustic piano?

You should always know where to set the volume of your DP to equal an AP. It is simple. Get the dB Volume app for your smartphone. Set it to -

Response: Fast
Weighting: C
Hold: On
Leq: Off

Put your smartphone at ear level near your head with mic facing piano to measure. Try different volume settings on your DP while playing as loud as you can with one hand. When you measure 90-95 dB, you got the volume setting similar to sitting in front of an acoustic piano. Duct tape the volume knob and never touch it again.

Actually, that last comment was in jest. One of many points of having a DP is to have the ease of muting the max volume of an instrument slightly without using pillows and blankets, which I have done and still able to get 92 dB from our 48" upright. On my DP, I would need to set it to 90% to get 90 dB from dB Volume app. On most days, I practice at about max 85 dB to save my ears. Any lower than that, it would form bad habits.

By the way, the size of your room makes a difference though not too much if you are measuring as close to your ear as possible. If you have a very small space, the echoes and reflections makes the piano much louder either acoustic or digital. If you have a digital in a very small room with volume at 100% you would get similar unbearable volume from an acoustic perhaps even more so, but why would you want that? Why not take advantage of the DP's strength? OTOH, 50-60% on the volume knob is unrealistic regardless of how small your room is.

Incidentally, on the AG N3 I like to the sensitivity at default when volume is at 100%. It response like a huge piano, I'd imagine a 9' concert grand, if not at least a Yamaha C7. Most of the time, I prefer practicing at 75% (knob at 3-4 o'clock) but that requires setting sensitivity to high (1), in order for the piano to response correctly like a Yamaha C3. Since I practice on my Yamaha C3X about half the time, I get annoyed if the DP does not respond like an acoustic.

Here is short (1 minute) clip of my acoustic piano with a sense of space. All this space comes from the piano. The mics are placed with 10cm of the tail and 10cm of the stick. No processing of any kind was done. You are hearing a raw take. This is what it sounds like from the piano bench.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/7orco7cze9huz06/Resonance.wav?dl=0

Again, the point is one wants enough volume to create a sense of space.

You missed out musicians ahead of earplugs. You haven't tried them have you? I feel a oxygen free cable discussion coming. although I'm with you on that one. Unless you have tried them, in which case lets just agree to disagree.

When my kids practiced on the 48" upright in my den, I had to wear earplugs everyday (even with pillows and blankets behind the soundboard) for the hours while they practiced as I work. I finally moved the upright to the family room which is about 3 times the size of the den, and put the DP in the den instead. Now, I don't have to wear earplugs in either room when they practice.

I remember years ago when my son was 6-years-old, while practicing on the DP I asked him, "don't play so loud," he move the volume knob down to 50% intuitively. I immediately move the knob back up to 80% and said, "no, I mean don't PLAY so loud." He understood and had never touch the volume knob since.

Perhaps I should clarify my philosophy on this important topic (- I've just re-read the wonderful Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, and my head is full of philosophy at present.... ).

1) If you never play acoustics, you can practice your digital at whatever volume, however, whenever you like.

2) If you want to practice on your digital in order to play on both digitals and acoustics equally well, you owe it to yourself to treat your digital like an acoustic. That is, set the volume on your digital at an appropriate level as you hear it when playing, sitting on the bench. At close to the volume level of an acoustic in a good acoustic (not in a tiny studio) as you hear it sitting on the bench. A good-sized showroom should be fine. What you want is to be able to play at all dynamic levels (or as much as your digital will allow - sampled ones in particular are limited at both ends of the dynamic spectrum) using the same force on both your digital and on acoustics.

3) Bear in mind that I play classical music almost exclusively, and tonal nuances and 'voicing' (in the classical sense of weighting/stressing particular notes within chords or dense textures) are much more important than in jazz etc, where you have other priorities (and where, in my experience, the range of dynamics used are much more limited: many jazz pieces are played by their exponents at unrelenting forte......). So, if you're not into classical, you may take my musings with a big grain of salt, and pound away on your digital to your heart's content .

4) If you want to develop a comprehensive piano (as opposed to 'keyboard') technique, the earlier you start treating your digital like a real piano, the better. Unlearning bad habits is always more difficult than learning the right ones from the beginning. Using your volume control to control your volume (sic) is a sure way to never develop a sense of touch. You want to keep reinforcing your muscle memory by consistently knowing how notes sound - by themselves and in relation to each other - with a particular finger force/'pressure'/velocity. If you've already developed an advanced acoustic piano technique over a number of years, you can get away with messing around with various volume settings on various digitals, and still retain your sense of touch when you play acoustics. But if you're still trying to develop your piano skills, what you need is a realistic and appropriate consistency in relation to how you play with what you hear.

5) End of my philosophy lesson - for now.

This thing is just displaying the relative response of your smartphone mic. To get meaningful results, you need a calibrated SPL meter.

PMFJI --

That's true, but there's a workaround:

. . . Get the app as proposed;

. . . Go to a piano shop, or church, or somewhere there's an
. . . acoustic piano you can use for a few minutes.

. . . Play the piano, with some "ff" midrange passages, and see
. . . what the SPL meter shows.

. . . Go home, try the same passages on the DP, and adjust the
. . . volume so that the SPL readings are similar.

If you're using the piano's midrange, whatever mic response the cellphone has, will be folded-in to _both_ the DP and the acoustic's SPL.

Mobile phone SPL meters aren't the most accurate things to use, but for _relative_ measurements, they're way better than than nothing, or most people's ears.

Yes there are good chances they didn't like my playing if I myself don't like it But I don't expect them to lie when they say that I'm playing very good for my current level - when volume is set at my usual point . And when they set volume to their point I indeed cannot make good sound, while they both can. My teacher says that I am not training to depress keys deep enough...

This morning I tested the SPL at my 7' grand piano bench when I was playing fff. The SPL, measured at my right ear, was variable between 98 and 102 dbSPL, C and A weighting, slow and fast. This was measured using two independent measurement devices.

I infer from this that a level of anout 100dbSPL, as measured at your ear, would be adequate. This level should not be maintained, obviously, for any length of time. The maximum daily exposure at that level is about 15 minutes, dropping to about 7 minutes at 103dbSPL.

I sometimes have that problem, according to my own teacher. She suggests "digging in" to the keyboard on her upright.

The trick is doing that, and not pounding, and not developing muscle strain.

There's a lot of psycho-perception happening. "How deep you depress the key" is limited by the felt under the key. I'd love to see some serious, quantitative studies of "piano touch".

There have been hundreds of studies (perhaps thousands) on 'piano touch', many of which are available on-line through a search, including here on PW on the other forums.

The 'volume' of the sound produced by a piano, both DP and AP, is SOLELY based on the terminal velocity of the key (most DPs), or the terminal velocity of the hammer (all APs).

Depressing a key all the way to the keybed is a good practice, but has nothing to do with volume.

I'd be much more concerned about damaging your hearing than developing bad habits. Safe volume control is one of the big selling points of digital pianos.

So, you want to play ff all the time? (Or, you're unable to play more softly?) But rely on your volume control to avoid damaging your ears? What about damaging your fingers and hands and wrists?

Normal piano playing is 60 - 70 dB (much softer than city traffic inside car: 85 dB), fortissimo is 92 - 95 dB. Regular sustained exposure to ≥90 dB may cause permanent damage.

Most of the world's classical concert pianists play on into old age. They never had a digital to stop them "damaging" their hearing. Artur Rubinstein was 89 when he retired, almost blind but certainly not deaf. Mieczyslaw Horszowski was 99 when he gave his last concert.

Go figure.

Pianos vary in loudness. One of the reasons I quit piano as a child was that the piano I was using was always too loud and it gave me ringing in the ears. I hated it. The room acoustics didn't help.

Again my question is - did you never learn to play softly?

If your piano's tone is shrill, that's a different matter from loudness.

This is entirely dependent on your own environment. Someone who places a large upright or grand in a small practice room, for example, can easily damage their ears. It can be difficult to generalize the volume of a piano because the different acoustics of each individual room, unlike a hall or stage where things are more uniform, reflects/absorbs the sound differently. Go play a grand piano in a closed racquetball court and I guarantee it'll be louder than it would be in an acoustically treated studio with sound absorbing foam in the walls, and quite possibly too harsh to play in for any period of time.

The point here is the actual SPL at the eardrum. That is where the damage occurs. It is completely irrelevent in which environment you play.

I can play softly, but why play on eggshells when you can just adjust the volume according to personal preference and room response?

I was never a key pounder.

With proper volume limiting, you can also occasionally practice your fortissimo parts without fear of hearing damage. With ever-improving digital piano sound, you get the fortissimo timbre change without the shotgun blast to the eardrum.

I've played all sorts of pianos - from tiny spinets to Bösendorfer Imperials - in everything from tiny studios to drawing rooms (in stately homes) to churches to small & large concert halls, and even airports, shopping malls and train stations.

If a piano is loud for the acoustic (really only happens in a tiny closed studio), I play more softly and keep the lid closed. I've never had any problem with controlling the loudness of any acoustic piano.

I think it's a case of some workmen blaming their tools......

Yes, when more sound reflects off the walls and back towards you, it ultimately lands on your eardrums.