smaug

Thanks for the replies. I often only have about 5 sec to change sounds so a song is not doable. Looks like a slider will have to do or programming the volumes on the MIDI device to be as close as possible to give the desired balance.

A basic question which has me stumped. I have a stage setting sending to a single external MIDI zone. I have the volume set in the stage setting mixer, but I can't get the PX5 to transmit this volume as ctrl 07. The only way I can send the volume is to assign ctrl07 to a slider and manually activate the slider after selecting the stage setting - not very usable. Any ideas?

This is a great comparison and confirms my impression that the PX5 Rhodes is "boxy" compared to the real thing. This is especially evident in the phrases played from 2:00. The PX5 is slightly louder in the mix, which doesn't help the comparison and makes it sound subjectively better. I find reducing the mids from the factor default settings helps. In terms of playability, I don't think there's any comparison, with the PX5 only having 4 distinct velocity layered samples. Overall I find the Rhodes good enough for a lightweight solution, but much prefer an external sound source (e.g. laptop)

I found this problem after trying to use the inputs with a Nord Electro 2 rack (for the EPs and organ). The gate makes the inputs useless for me and means I have to use a mixer. What a shame!

Here's an updated version, louder and with slight High EQ boost (in System EQ) to boost the top end. SMOOTH_P.ZPF.zip

I did the first gig on Saturday with the PX-5S, replacing a 15 year old 24kg Korg SGproX. The setting was a big band. The 11kg was a joy to transport and setup. Most of the songs required acoustic piano. I had pre-configured a variation on the default concert piano with a lower cutoff frequency, however the sound engineer still complained of a very metallic sound that was difficult to tame. The more mellow tones (mellow and classical presets) were not a significant improvement and lost the presence of the attack. I spent a large part of Sunday examining the piano tone in more detail with help from a frequency spectrum in Logic. What I have found is that the attack of the samples sounds fine, but when the sample soon reaches the looped section, typically within about 1 sec of the start, there is a pronounced change in tone with much more "zing". Looking at this in Logic, with middle C (261Hz) there is a pronounced increase in the 2.1kHz (7th harmonic) relative to the other harmonics during the looping. This causes an increase in the zing of sustained notes, building up in chords and pedalling. It is due to the use of very short loops in the samples (of the order of wavelengths) which adds it's own harmonic colour, compared with a longer loop (> 0.1 sec). My solution has been to build a piano tone from scratch using the four velocity-layered waves and implementing a LPF which kicks in after about a second to try and squash these harmonics. This has produced a much improved tone on sustained notes, but still retaining the bright attack. The resulting tone is not perfect by any means, so if anyone has any other suggestions for improving this further, please edit it and upload. I'd really like to get a more usable tone from the instrument before resorting to an external sound source. SMOOTH_P.ZPF.zip