Eli26

What tone it sounded like: No idea. The recording is above. It sounds very pure It did NOT stop until the piano was turned off and then back on. So nothing popped into place. It was an electronic glitch....

OK. The odd tone problem hasn't recurred. At all. Maybe it was some kind of strange electrical interference, although I assume that there would be shielding, inulation or something to prevent that from affecting things. Or maybe it was a weird onetime glitch.

Nope, no other electrical devices. It started while I was playing the piano, and in a particularly loud passage, which is what made me think that was related to the playing.... and the fact that the tone sounded rather musical, like a misplaced resonant tone...... So I of course don't know much about electrical stuff --- does the fact that the volume knob directly controlled the volume of the tone imply that it's not electrical interference? It seems to me like that implies that the tone was generated by the sound engine glitching. AM I wrong?? (I'm happy to be wrong, I just wanted your expertise as to whether it's truly possible that RF interfernece could produce that pure tone, that th etone is controllable with the volume knob, that the piano can be played and other tones sound just fine, and that the tone stays on teh ENTIRE time tha tth epiano is on unil it gets a reset by turning it off....... ) Also, there were NO other appliances being used in the entire house at the time (I was the only one home, besides the housekeeper who was putting away laundry)..... Couple of little glitches here and there (this and the weird hissing I get with recording Audio files to USB stick and playing them back through the piano), but I still love this piano....

keep in mind that this recording was made far from the speakers..... this shouldn't happen..... The audio in this was not boosted at all, it was just converted from an mp4 to mp3 using a phone app. 20200128_124701_high_quality.mp3

So I was practicing today playing some fairly tame minuet in G When I hear this tone and that just won't stop. By just won't stop I mean that the tone literally will not stop. I took a video which captures the tone. Because it wasn't recorded through line out it may be tricky to hear at first, except when I started raising and lowering the volume you can a clearly pick out the tone which just continued and continued. It didn't stop or vary when I switched from 1 piano to another, but it stopped when I powered down. Is this just a glitch or do I need warranty support now? I have the video file but it seems that can't upload it since Since its 150mb as was recorded with my phone camera.... I converted it to an audio file and this hopefully will load.... Seems like a can't get this to load.. I will try again later but in the meantime I'll leave this post here

My damper pedal squeaks when depressed. I am referring to physical metal squeaking/creaking, not some digital effect. How do I fix it? Possibilities include: blindly spraying wd 40 on top of the pedal (after depressing the pedal), spraying wd40 blindly on the underside of the pedal, and some complex procedure where I have to take the thing apart. Help, please!

(EDIT: I was able to download the fie which you had posted) I want to update something and that is that when I record to midi it's has no hiss whatsoever. However, when I record to the audio stick and played back through the GP 400 there is a very audible hiss and weird static I noises and this is true whether it's through the headphones or through speakers. I tried it with the 16GB stick and it has the exact same problem. Lastly and to be precise the nature of the hissing noises and Very low volume electronic beeps that I hear, Is entirely consistent from play back to playback. In other words it's not random static that's getting in as I'm putting to back but it's something in the way that gp 400 is interacting with that stick once it has been recorded. I'll try to see if I can get a recording from the line out. In any case is this a warranty issue because it really shouldn't be happening? When I'm practicing using the USB stick is by far the best way to go because it can record multiple takes but then when I am playing it back it's just plain annoying and if it's not supposed to be that way I would want the piano serviced.

(1) Yes, but that level doesn't do anything unless I'm using layers (I think) (2) I just don't get it. Do other casio keyboards also produce recordings this low in volume? when I play loudly, as some of the note sin that recording are loud, it is virtually inaudible. It seems like a tremendous over-compensation to prevent clipping..... I chose casio over the competition because I liked the action better. That said, all of the highend keyboards have similarly wide dynamic range. The issue with inaudible recordings seems unique --- I cn't imagine it needed to be quieted this much to prevent clipping..... (3) With regards to the noisy hiss -- perhaps I will figure out how to record this. I feel like if this is not a known issue, there may a warranty issue here. But I'm not sure what's going on…... (4) I think it was a 64 GB drive. I'll switch to a smaller one and see if this keeps happening...

So there's a lot of words, posts, and back-and forth above, but I want to summarize the issues and questions so that hopefully they can be resolved (1) Is there a menu to boost balance even when I am not utilizing layered sounds? (2) why are the wav files created by the gp-400 so low that they require substantial boosting to be above a whisper? What can be done to fix this? If not fixable a defective gp-400, or just am in convenience (having to use 3rd party software to boost levels) (3) why does playback through the gp400 speakers and/or headphones have noisy hiss?? (4) why do some of the audio recording files made with the audio recording feature on the gp-400 have skips in them??

Also Brad, I'd like to add the following quote from Jokeyman123. He also could barely hear the recording. I am confused as to how you are hearing the recordings loud and clear... is there some setting that you have on your computer that we don;t on ours? EVERYBODY I sent it to said that they could barely hear it. And my Dad may not be an expert on digital files and recordings, but he is an audiophile expert with extensive experience (in the 1970s) in the music industry (as well as son of a concert pianist) and his first reaction was to ask why I was sending a file which was virtually inaudible.. To be clear, I am not writing this with a tone of sarcasm -- - I am appreciative of your expertise and helpfulness but genuinely puzzled by how what you are hearing is so different than what I am hearing....) here's the quote from Jokeyman (I am not quoting him to say that he's more of an authority on technical issues with Casio, but simply to point out that the unboosted files were, as he said "barely audible" to most of us). Lastly, yes, the hissing is only heard through the piano itself. : "I've got pretty good hearing-I can tell you the recording was barely audible until I normalized the wav with Audacity, and still had to boost the volume more than that with Audacity to hear this clearly. Now on this recording-I monitored with good AKG monitor cans-I heard nothing wrong-no hissing, no extraneous noises, the piano sounded as I've heard it on my Privias. Quiet spots-were dead silent on my playback equipment. No spurious leaked harmonics-Audacity shows the precise waveform and it looks pretty clean. so I guess Brad will have to weigh in. But the recording level is abysmally low out of your wav file, so something is not right there. I am not familiar with the Casio Grand keyboard-is there a setting for "balance" anywhere in the menu? I know with the PX560 I can control the audio output/recording level separately from what I hear live when I play and also the input levels if I am recording with the audio input (I think I recall that right).

I know we've crossed messages, so for clarity, please note that I asked whether the part about layered tones applied if I'm not using layers (as far as I know). As for the noise, I edited the original post (and I think that you responded to the original unedited post) to indicate that I believe that it it occurs via headphones and speakers. (BTW I am not sure how to connect the piano to audio input on my laptop... I don;t even know i f there is an audioinput on my laptop!) It's a Dell E7450 I believe.

But I'm not using layered tones. Does the section in question still apply?

(3) as far as I can recall, all the background hissing which is on the recordings is heard ONLY when I play through the GP-400. I don't hear it on the actual files in audacity. So there seems to be a problem within the GP400. It's definitely NOT imagined, but I don't know how to capture it (recording it via cellphone or something like that has too much ambient noise to discern what I'm describing. But wow, is it ever there.) Since it is present in headphone listening and speaker listening through the GP400 it must be something at a level which is common to both (so it's not for example, a faulty speaker component)....

(2) Note that on this file there is a sound cut off at 64 and 128 seconds. Could that be related to the fact that that';s about one thirds and two thirds through? I have no idea. In any case, what explains why many (not all) of the recordings I make have little interruptions and skips?) [A quick note: this file was named TAKE 88 by the automatic file system in the piano. I had uploaded it into audacity and boosted the volume and saved in a way that over-wrote the original TAKE88. Then when I realized that it would be useful to share this file, I realized that I had overwritten the original on the memory stick. However, i still had the original file open in Audacity, so I exported it and thus (presumably recreated the original file) . So technically this file was saved by Audacity but its audio is the exact same as the original file. But my point is that this file was created with SKIPS in it by the internal audio recorder on the piano.) TAKE88.WAV

Here is an unboosted file. Along with a screen shot from Audacity. The sound levels are very low. Sure, It sounds OK when my computer volume is max and the speakers (small computer speakers) are near max. But that's a huge boost over the normal computer volume (notification beeps are like alarms at that level!) TAKE89.WAV

Sorry for the long delay. Life took over. This is really odd. Perhaps I uploaded the wrong samples, which is of course my fault. Perhaps the issue is that I hear the noise through the casio piano only, ie through that headphone output on the casio. I ill try to define the problems better, with some new uploads. Because this is happening again, with new recordings as well. And an additional issue --- on some recordings, the recording seems to abruptly skip. I noticed that on a recent one, it skipped at 64 seconds and again at 128 seconds ( I think the fat that that is an exponential of two is coincidental, but the fact that the two times that the recording skipped are spaced evenly can't be coincidence. To keep things clean, I will upload with separate posts so that my descriptions can be more accurate. Because there are multiple audio issues. SO if I make a few posts here, please look at each one, as that is the easiest way for me to do things organized. Also, I am confused by the reference to the balance menu on my piano. I have a GP400. I am unaware of a balance menu, but of course if there is one please let me know where it is located in the menu system. I have never seen that before.

First, I have more samples now. As Jokeyman pointed out above, yes the recording is abysmally low. I can't imagine it was supposed to be that way. I posted about this on these forums in other thread, but I'll comment again on thi shear. My father was an importwer of the highest end audiophile equipment in Toronto in the 19709s. He was friends with the late great Oscar Peterson and provided him with his microphones.... and set up the stereo in Oscar's house. He knows audio --- the speakers in my Dad's living room are the identical IMF monitors that were used in Decca's engineering studios to monitor their classical recordings (except for the faux wood formica they put on a few pair for people like my dad who wanted them in his living room). When he listened to the file I sent him he immediately sent back that the recording level was clearly way off, waay too low, and there is no way that it needed to be that low to produce good dynamic range. IN any case, I am attaching several files. First, the noises are there in silent spots. File 47 should be completely clean, but it isn't. When boosted to sound the way it sounds on my headphones (AND ON MY SPEAKERS through the instrument --- in other words, yes, I just discovered that it does produce the same artifacts through the speakers, but they are a bit harder to pick up on), you can hear that their is hiss and noise and pops. I called that file take47realistic gain, nbecause the gain was manipulatred so that what I heard on my computer speakers (with the volume way up) was very similar to what I am hearing through the piano. The pops are inconsistent on various files, perhaps indicating an internal electrical issue. On the recorded bit, you can hear some noise at the beginning. I should point out that I am NOT confusing damper noise with hiss. To me the recording sounds like an old LP, with a generalized background hiss through much of it. It seems to me as a layman (I don't have my dad's expertise on this) that the files have two issues (1) they are ridiculously low volume (2) when boosted to appropriate volume, they have artifacts such as hissing, popping, etc. NOt all of these are heard on the two files I uploaded, but I've been hearing it all day. To clarify, until today, was ONLY listening to recordings via headphones. I can now confirm that when listened through the piano speakers, the same artifacts exist. They are consistent for any given sound file, but they seem to appear inconsistently. It seems that the GP400 takes that very low level file and boosts it tremendously before playback (by about 20 decibels!), which may (or may not?) indicate that the file is 'supposed' to be about 20 db too low. But then again, the fact that the file is in fact boosted internally also implies that there is no reason for it to be so unacceptably low to begin with... can't have it both ways --- if the system is designed to boost the file and presumably can do so without clipping the sound, then I can't imagine why the sound level was so low to begin with. I WOULD like to know whether this is an issue on just mine (or a batch of similar GPs), whether it was true on all the models, etc.... It seems that this hampers my ability to make a clean recording.... AGain,. loving the piano but want o figure this out..... TAKE47.WAV TAKE47realistic gain.wav TAKE46.WAV TAKE46withgain.wav

Brad, I will try some of this out tomorrow. A couple of points: (1) I will look for another flashdrive and try it. The one I was trying has otherwise been flawless and is in fact a store branded one "Microcenter" so it certainly isn't a counterfeit. (2) I've posted a wav file. Here's what I can tell you about this. I listened to it with several different headphones, grado 125s and phillips SH9500. On the recording I purposely paused after the first few notes, and did that repeatedly. I heard hissing and noise (and there was no pedal being used for the first part). I also DEFINITELY heard what sounded like a weird cackly electronic echo. This isn't hyperanalyzing a resonance or something like that. This is a sound which is frankly just WRONG. It even sounds at a couple of points (and I repeated this with some other tracks too) like the kind of high pitched squealing (with little pauses) that I used to hear when my dial up on AOL was working. I have NOT yet checked this on the speakers, only used the headphone ports. The recording was NOT utilizing any scenes. (3) As for video --- I have to first check whether the issue is only through the headphone ports. Obviously if it is only through headphone ports it's harder for me to capture evidence of it..... and even if it is through the speakers, it may be indistinguishable from background noise in the house.... I do appreciate your attention to this.... I can't imagine that this is normal, I suspect that something in the circuitry is faulty. TAKE26.WAV

I haven't tried playing anything form the flash drive OTHER than recordings made on the piano. So again, what I'm seeing/hearing is: Extremely noisy playback (I haven' tried it yet with speakers, actually, but on headphones --- it's really unnerving). The noise is during silent portions or quiet portions (ie meaning no piano playing) , probably drowned out when playing loudly, except that it obviously is there, now that I am hearing it. And then, ironically, when I transfer the file to a computer, the noise is gone, but the file's volume needs a HUGE boost to be audible. (Which I know you addressed in a separate question, although I frankly still don't understand the answer fully).

I posted previously about the fact that the soundfiles when I record onto a USB drive with my Grand Hybrid gp400 are extremely low volume when played on a computer. SO much so that it required boosting by 20 decibels or more to make the files usable. This question may be related, but it is distinct: when I record the GP400 direct to the USB stick, and play back the recording on the digital piano, the background is EXTEMELY noisy, really unacceptably so. By noisy I mean whooshing and hissing sounds and something like white noise (and this is NOT the pedal or damper ---- even when no pedals are being pressed and no piano sound is being generated, the background is horribly noisy to the point that I can't listen to music played back, unless it is loud). What's really odd is that I do NOT get that same messy noise when I am playing the piano through headphones. I only hear it when playing back recordings. For the record, I am using good quality headphones -- -SONY 7506, philiips SH9500, and grado 125s. Also, when I bring the files into Audacity to boost he volume, (needs about a 20 dB boost), the hissing and whooshing is gone. SO it seems like the problem is with the internal processing of playback from the USB stick. Is this something that can be fixed under warranty? Or a known issue? I really love this piano, but the degree of noise in the headphone line when playing from a USB stick (to monitor my progress) is really unacceptable. Again, the actual files play fine on my computer once I boost hem, so the noise is NOT present in the files. So I didn't attach any files, because they are no very revealing.

I have a GP400. I have owned it for just 10 days --- it's absolutely amazing. Each time I play it I am appreciating more and more what a sensitive instrument it is.

OK. Thanks for explaining it. Definitely don;t want to sound like a complainer, but it is a pain having to adjust each file in order to review it on a laptop or chromebook (IN fact, do you know of a chromebook app that does what audacity does?). But I still think there is a LOT of room before that ceiling, and it seems like they have overcompensated in limiting thevolume so much. I wasn't playing especially softly, and the audio actually needed about a 22-25 decibel boost. I have hundreds of recordings of classical music, with a tremendous dynamic range, and the audio level for piano played at the volume which I was playing is much higher than that which is output into the USB. In fact, even soft passages are usually louder than the what was output It seems like it is overly dialed down waay lower than need be (again, if I'm wrong, please do correct me). Not a scientific statement, but the sound of air coming through vents in my office was so loud that the GP400 recording of a Chopin waltz couldn't be heard on my phone's speakers, even when they were on max. One last point. It seems to me that one way to demonstrate that the sound is TOO low is the simple fact that the output through the speakers is much higher than the sound on that card. If I play that USB file through the line in, I believe that I can't get even close to the volume level of concert magic or of the sound which the internal recorder generates on the speakers. This (to me) says that it is way lower than it needs to be. (What I mean is that if keeping the volume at a normal level would produce clipping, than the instrument should be producing clipping through headphones (or the speakers) all the time, given that it plays so much higher than that file. Please explain if I'm missing something. I know it's academic, bu I do want to understand this.

IN the youtube comments for that video, a Casio rep discussed the settings that were used. Here's what he wrote: Hi, and thanks for your insightful query! We recorded the audio for this using the L+R line-outputs of the GP500BP. There was also a very low level of audio recorded through the mic on one of the cameras (a good quality condenser mic),. The vast majority of the ambience and resonance you hear (we assume you've listened through headphones or reasonable quality speakers) is the on-board DSP setting "Hall 1". Hall 1 is the default DSP setting when the piano is powered On. We experimented with various levels but found the default DSP level most effective. Other resonance/ambience aspects of the "Berlin Grand" piano tone (a 9' concert acoustic grand piano by C.Bechstein, their flagship model D262) such as key-on / key-off noise level, pedal-on / pedal-off noise level, sympathetic string resonance, aliquot string resonance, etc., were all left at default levels (after experimentation). Casio and C.Bechstein's engineers used 24 different mics (and mic positions) in recording the samples for each of the 3 main 9' concert acoustic grand piano tones. This helped isolate all the various resonance and mechanical sounds associated with grand pianos, allowing owners to tailor each individually to taste on the Grand Hybrid. That we left all levels at default for this recording is testament to the expertise of our engineers! We hope this answers your query, just let us know if we can assist further. My assumption (Eli here, not the commentor on youtube) is that he "low level of audio recorded on one of the cameras" added more layers of resonance to the recording, as it captured some of the ambience of the hall. SO the only way to really replicate that would be to play the GP500 in a similar room....

When recording as a WAV file onto a USB thumbdrive, the recording is EXTEMELY low in volume. I had the volume parameter adjusted to the max (127), and teh keyboard setting was on normal (I'm not sure if that would matter whether it was on Normal, Heavy, or Light, but I actually tried it on Light and normal and had the same issue both ways). Now, when I playback the recording through the GP400 speakers or headphones, the volume is fine. But when I export the file it is EXTREMELY quiet. so much so that to hear it my laptop needs to have the volume on max (and eveen then it's a low volume). Emailed it to my dad and he cold barely hear it. This happened multiple times so it's not a onetime glitch. How low are the recordings? To make them listenable, I used audacity on my laptop to boost the volume. The files needs about 20 decibels boost!! (I am not a sound engineer and I didn't measure max peaks or stuff like that). That seems broken, so much so that if there is no setting to adjust it, it seems like there is something wrong with the internal system that creates the settings on the file. Can somebody perhaps help me learn how to make a file with normal volume?

Thanks for your reply. I had posted this on pianoworld forums and didn't get anywhere, so some of what follows is cut and pasted form there. Sorry if its disjointed. I just wantedto explain WHY I want to know what those defaults are (and also why I woulk like to know if the mellow/bright pianos are merely the regular pianos with some modifcations which can be done in the menus --- and if so, what are those modifications). Basically, I really want to spend some time playing around with the sounds to find the ones that I like. It would really help to know the exact parameters so I don't waste time or go in circles. It frankly seems kind of silly that casio would go to the trouble of setting up certain pianos to have certain defaults, and allow us to change those values, yet not tell us what those defaults are! One usually has an idea in which direction you'd want to adjust something. Or sometimes you might like one sound better but you're not sure you could precisely describe why and knowing that could give you insight to help you adjust other sounds. (Like "I get it, that extra resonance I'm hearing with that piano is the aliquot resonance dialed way up. Ok I'll see what happens with piano X when I play with the aliquot resonance. Or I want it dialed down just a bit... whatever.... Or if a certain piano happens to sound a little bit too resonant for my taste, it would be useful to know which of the many resonance settings are High (and how high) so I could better know which one to adjust. Clearly many people including myself can go through the process of finding good settings without this information but it just seems that this would be useful information...... All in all, it's not a HUGE deal. But It's kind of like if you feel that you wanted to make the volume of one input in a mix just a TINY bit louder than what it is, to see how that affects the overall sound, and you have to enter a number to do so (like on some kind of digital control that doesn't have a slider), but you have no way of knowing what the current volume is, and no one will tell you. Sure, if you know you want it at the max you just turn it up to 11 (unless you have a bad amp, in which case you turn it up to 10), but if you just want to see how it sounds with a small increment, you're kind of lost if you don't know where it started.... On taht same topic, if in fact the brilliant piano just means that the regular piano has the lid rmeoved and brightness up at 3 (or whatever it is) than that's useful information. But if it differs from the other pianos in a way which CAN'T be duplicated by the user manipulating the settings, than that is also useful. In that case I'd want to experiment with that piano as a separate entity, knowing that it can't be duplicated by starting with the standard piano. This of course can be extended to the other pianos --- the modern grand, the rock grand (which seems to have limited dynamic range, I think --- it seems like it can only be played loud -- is that right?) If they are simply vienna/berlin/hamburg midified in the same way that a user can, it would be good to know HOW -- -as a kind of tutorial in how to achieve certain sounds. Or if that whole family of pianos are modifications from one sample (different form the three main ones). that would be good to know. Are there three core sounds? Or are there more? And in summary -- long story short is that knowing the defaults as well a steh answer to the questions about brilliant/mellow/rock/dance/pop/rock gives me much much more information and makes playing with the controls much more systematic and akin to adjusting settings on a VST (without buying and setting up a VST). Maybe someone at Casio could simply let us know what the default numbers are. I'm sure it's not a super-secret thing,,,,, Thanks again for your help!!