It really should not matter whether the poster says if he or she played the music.
Especially since in the case the poster asked us to focus on the quality of the sound (pianos) and not the player.


I guess the poster did this so as not to have the topic stray away from the topic of the quality of the sound.

He probably did not want to hear “this is good playing” or “this is bad playing” or "how did you play this". He probably wanted comments about the quality of the sound.

In this case knowing whether it was the poster or another person playing does and should not in any way affect your judgment of the quality of the sound.

Now don’t get me wrong, it is always good to say who is playing and where the file came from, but is not necessary in a small forum like this and is absolutely not necessary for us to make an evaluation of the sound (like what the poster wanted us to do in this case).

[This message has been edited by TwoNuts (edited 06-03-2006).]

We judge what we think best by what we hear – and when a fine piano player demonstrates a piano he has an effect on what we are trying to judge. Was the piano sound better??? Or did the piano player make it sound better???
My dad who played piano extremely well tuned pianos at Wurlitzer piano in a store in Manhattan 42nd street. Whenever a salesman felt he was losing a sale he asked my Dad to play that without doubt effected the buyers opinion of the piano.

So does it matter who plays the instrument? I think it does it we wish to judge properly. IMHO

John C.

PS, I never enjoyed the over use of a sustain pedal, it seems to blurr everything.

Dennis:

Very impressive and great chops!! What I found most impressive was the fact you played those selections on a 61 note keyboard. Excellent.

Scott Yee is on to something with his comment

IMO the Tyros samples sounded much richer and fuller. Great chops on both Dennis, I am jealous.

To my ears the Ice Castles piano lacked it across the entire range of the board. It sounded very tinklie to me, with very little bottom end dynamics and resonance.

Terry

------------------
jam on,
Terry
http://www.artisans-world.com/

Interesting topic, as I just got the chance to give a try to Steinberg Hypersonic 2 and (some!!) samples are indeed much better on there than on my VA7. The ones I'm reffering to where much deeper, richer and thus more realistic.

It makes me a little angry, cause when you buy a hardware board (I mean a keyboard), you don't get all of these good samples but we pay MUCH more.. Why...? I don't mean to say that the samples on the pro-keyboards are not good, but some can really get better.

Frustrating.

[This message has been edited by Sander (edited 06-03-2006).]

I'm not an expert on hardware by any means, but I've learned enough just from observing.. that the hardware manufacturers are at a disadvantage even from the start. Probably due in a large part because of the time it takes from initial design of a product until it actually gets released. Those of us who use computers regularly understand that the technology changes so rapidly, that something that was the standard a year or 18 months ago is now often obsolete or very close to being there.

The Motif series is a perfect example of this. By the time the original or "Classic" version was released, the Simms that it used to expand memory had already been replaced as the current standard for Ram in hardware computers.

Then there are the sample rom limitations. When you buy a hardware board, you get what you get. That's it.. no more, unless of course your board has sampling, and you can add sounds to it. The current ES boasts of 180 megs of internal sample rom, for several hundred instruments of course. The SGM180 software uses that amount for 127 GM sounds, and dedicated software, like "Real Guitar" uses more than that just for nine acoustic guitar sounds.. so it isn't too hard to guess who can get deeper into sample layering for the most realism.

Of course, when you have a Tyros or Motif ES, or any other hi end board, you're getting a ton of great sounds, but if like me, with my own PA80 for example, you don't like the piano or el piano... well we're pretty much stuck with it, unless you want to add you own samples.

We can debate sounds to death, ( it's a bit too subjective for me ), but until you're actually trying to use a particular sound for a particular mix, it's kinda hard to tell from listening to demos or even when we play the board ourselves at the store. For example, of my 3 hardware boards, I always thought my Motif ES had the best "classic" EP sounds, and that my MZ2000 was the worst. Recently I was laying KB tracks down for a local musician. He wanted something close to the El Piano sound from the Eagles " I Can't tell you why" for his own song. I figured this would be pretty easy, but to my surprise ..we couldn't quite get it with the ES, and the PA80 wasn't even close, so before I started going to soft synths, I figured, what the heck, I'll try the oft maligned Casio.. the MZ2000 of course. Bingo... we both agreed it was almost a prefect emulation. Funny thing is, I'd have never guessed the MZ would be it if we didn't try it in his own song.

BTW, a majority of us don't use the sampling options we have in our boards anyway, and more often then not the ones who do use sampling to add cutting edge or different sounds as opposed to trying to replace what's already there. This I know simply from perusing enough sites where sampling is one of the main topics. After trying the sampling functions on my PA80 and Motif ES, I understand why too... Sampling in a dedicated sampling app, especially in today's software samplers, is pretty intuitive if not sometimes a bit complicated. Trying to do it in either one of my capable hardware boards can often be an exercise in frustration and about as enjoyable as getting a root canal.

AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 06-03-2006).]

[This message has been edited by TwoNuts (edited 06-03-2006).]

Dennis,

Both of your recordings have noticable 'clipping' in them. When clipping occurs and someone listens to the recording, in this case, "Slammed" and "Still Sloppy" you can actually ruin your speakers if you're not careful. Slammed was the worst offender of the two but nevertheless both had excessive clipping in them.

In the future you might want to record at a lower level or after having recorded your song[s] to check them for clipping. A good program to check audio for clipping is Sound Forge version 7 or version 8. There are other software programs out there that can do the same thing.

I know you did it unknowingly but try to remember we're your friends and you don't want to ruin a friends set of speakers do you?

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks Mike for bringing this to my attention.


Dennis

[This message has been edited by TwoNuts (edited 06-03-2006).]