Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards What good is polyphony?

that's changed with all new and upcoming new low end models. all Casio new models have 128 polyphony and all Yamaha new low end models have 64 polyphony.

32 polyphony is becoming history as we speak, though such low polyphony DPs are still on the market.

"that's changed with all new and upcoming new low end models. all Casio new models have 128 polyphony and all Yamaha new low end models have 64 polyphony.

Ok what's Yamaha's problem? why won't they make the jump up to 128?

Isn't that signa's point? That's how I read the post. Yamaha doesn't see the need to go beyond that.

Did I read you wrong, signa?

well they lost me as a customer..until they do
I would've bought a Nocturne for 1399.00 on sale
but its only 64 poly..I think they need to be knock off there pedestal..and then they'll see the light..

I was wondering that myself. I mean, Yamaha is a big name. Doesn't it bother them that they are being passed up by Casio on this?

That's the point, Yamaha is a well known brand, back to the rolls royce analogy. Say you were looking at a basic Ford Coupe (not to bash ford i own one =) and saw that a brand new rolls was only an extra $400 dollars, what would you buy? Granted the ford might have better gas mileage, or a bigger trunk, or Sync, but you'd buy a rolls because of the name, that's why a lot of people buy a lower quality yamaha over a higher quality casio

Vincent L.
Many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions in such detail. I really appreciate it.

I see from your responses that the choice of conventional “controller” versus “piano” is often an economic one. It’s good to hear that there are no technical obstacles that I don’t know about. Of course it makes no sense for someone to purchase a $2500 piano when they know ahead of time that will be using it only to generate MIDI instructions. In my case, I already have the piano and I’m looking for a way to improve it. However, as btcomm pointed out, at this point I know zip about setting up a virtual instrument. So I guess I have a lot of pretty naïve sounding questions. Your responses have helped remove a lot of doubts. Thank you.

Incidentally, a salesman at my local Guitar Center store told me it couldn’t be done based on his experience that he had never heard of it being done. He claimed that most probably a DP does not generate all the required MIDI instructions that the software will be looking for. I suspect he really didn’t know much more than me about virtual pianos.

And, of course, I don’t think you’re evil. But yes, and I know it sounds naïve, but I was beginning to wonder if the type of music played might be an important factor. I’m glad to hear it makes no difference.

Good question. At this point I don’t know for sure because I have not yet setup a virtual instrument. However, I do use piano keyboard entry in my music editor (Finale) and the response seems very instantaneous. I realize that is not a measurable test, but it is encouraging.

I believe my next task down this road is to install some public domain virtual instrument software on my current controlling computer and see if I can get it working. I saw a thread recently that provided a link to a related site. I will try to find that again. A public domain virtual piano may not make my instrument sound any better, but it will give me the technical confidence to go forward with this idea.
The product called Akoustik Piano requires a minimum 1.5 GHz system, but they recommend 3 GHz. Yup, that’s getting pretty close to a game machine, without the high capability graphics of course. Yup, I was surprised also. Synthogy’s Ivory has similar requirements.

Apparently some virtual piano products operate in two modes, a full-blown mode with all the features and high quality tone, and a watered down mode that basically operates and sounds like an old upright at your local bar (yes, I’m exaggerating). I’m told the software is smart enough to decide on-its-own which mode to run based on available system resources. Well, it’s nice to hear that the software may work on my mediocre computer, but I can’t see spending $200 to $400 on software that my machine isn’t strong enough to take full advantage of.

By the way, my current controlling computer at the CLP-230 is an old 800 MHz machine. Obviously it needs to be replaced. In fact, I notice that Finale gobbles up 100% CPU when doing a playback of a score. And that’s just a music editor, not a virtual instrument. But obviously my intentions to run a virtual instrument will greatly affect what kind of computer I replace it with.

For your information, the reason all these ideas have been swimming in my head has to do with the new Yamaha 3xx series of Clavinova pianos to be introduced this year. Many people have already expressed interest in upgrading. But then I started thinking, why do that when for less money I can purchase a new computer bundled with virtual piano software that may sound just as good as the new Clavinova's?

I guess this is the start of a whole new adventure for me. I thank everyone in this thread for this tangential sideline conversation away from the initial subject of polyphony.

Orez -------- I just found this link that might help shed a little light on the subject.

http://www.pianoclues.com/2008/03/15/how-to-use-virtual-instruments-with-your-digital-piano/

sort of my point, and i feel the same way as all of you that Yamaha doesn't bother to upgrade the polyphony for all its models, but Casio is definitely making a run lately, and Yamaha was forced to upgrade to at least 64 polyphony. think about that DGX620/YDP625 has only existed for a couple of years? and now the new 64 polyphony replacement DGX630/YDP635 is on its way. that's how much Casio has been pushing Yamaha, i think, even though Yamaha has always been considered with better quality and technology in DP making over Casio. things are changing obviously...

>>
My first digital, bought in 1989, had
16 note polyphony. My neighbor now has
it, and I think it sounds better than
the latest digitals with 128 and 192
poly.
<<


OOOOOOOOOOKayyyyyyyyyyy...

If you compare a 1989 Clavinova to a 2007 Clavinova CVP-407 and STILL think the old one sounds better, then more LOL to you.

Many thanks. This confirmed the computer requirement, so today I bought a DELL, 3 GHz processor, 4 GB memory, with Windows XP Pro. Cost = $1900. It's a low end game machine. It has a separate graphics card (not shared memory archecture) which will relieve graphics display processing workload from the main CPU, making more CPU cycles available to run software. I know, it’s over twice what I paid for my YPG-625 and almost as much as I paid for my CLP-230. But for a number of reasons I had to upgrade the controlling computer of the CLP-230 anyway. Also, this is probably my last chance to buy an XP machine instead of Vista. I just purchased a Vista machine a few weeks ago and it is terrible. If it wasn’t for this conversation about virtual instruments, I most probably would have bought an under powered machine for less than $1000 to replace the one currently at the CLP-230, and then I would have regretted it when I came around to buying virtual piano software. Computer should arrive next week. I will probably purchase an E-MU 0202 USB Audio Interface to meet the latency requirement for a virtual instrument.

This may have been said, but . .

When you layer a sound, say, add strings, you've chopped your polyphony in half.

When you hold the sustain pedal, each note that is sounding subtracts from total polyphony.

If you have a lot going on, the first sound played will disappear as new sounds are played.

Tone generators (one each for each degree of polyphony) are one of the most expensive parts of the circuitry inside the instrument.

64 seems to be the going amount.


Click on the Roland link below to hear what 256-note polyphony sounds like.

Also, reverb or echo can use up polyphony on older units. I believe that most reverb now is an after-polyphony process.

You can still upgrade a computer that has Vista to Windows XP. Notice I said upgrade. Although, you could lose a few Vista specific functions such as mini LCD screens, etc. I only recommend this if you have a back-up Vista disc in case anything should happen. Happy Pianoing

That is so funny. My own definition of Windows is, “A million lines of undocumented source code that no one can figure out, never mind fix.” Thanks for the suggestion. The machine I’m using to write this message is still running Windows 2000 Pro, and I won’t upgrade.

Or you could find a windows 98 disc =)

Could you please clarify how reverb would use polyphony? I'm not aware of any synths/keyboards dating back to 1989/90 that used any polyphony for reverb (it would be possible to use repeated notes at lower and lower velocities for echoes that would use polyphony, but not aware of any synth that did). They use DSP chips for reverb downstream from the tone generator, so no additional polyphony is involved. If I'm wrong on any of that, please enlighten me.
Clyde

BTW, I believe Windows XP is unable to manage more than 3 GB of memory. So even if your system has more, it won't recognize this.

Don't know whether Vista has this limitation.

Vista 64 bit does not have that limitation. I'm currently running 6 Gb ram (2x2 Gb and 2x1 Gb) on my V/64 bit machine.

Yikes! I just bought a new computer with XP and 4GB of memory. My capacity to make mistakes and blunders continues to amaze me. The computer should arrive next week. I’ll report back then whether I can see only 3GB.