After-note ringing/dissonance on GP-310

[JamesO]

Hi, I have a new GP-310, installed by Parsons in HK, there is a very noticeable "ringing" sound coming after playing notes and chords, particularly in the middle range. I get that there's supposed to be some "natural" resonance but this is quite an irritating high-pitched noise and it comes on about a second after the key pressed, it sounds very artificial and it is bugging me! On chords  (even major chords) it's quite a dissonant sound.

Sound file here from an F. Normal play and then I jacked up the 2-2.5kHz on the equaliser to highlight the resonant sound more, you can see in the sound file screenshot below it comes on quite strong.

B flat major chord is really bad, to the point I thought there was some other noise in the house or the windows being set off by the frequency (it's not, it's the same with headphones or recorded straight to SD as this sound file was).

I can reduce it a little through the amp (treble lowered but using the "bright" Berlin sound so it's not too muffly) but I wonder if there's a hardware/firmware fix for this? Perhaps the machine is trying too hard to be a real piano but I never heard a real piano make such a dissonant and awful buzz. Or is it faulty?

I have all the "resonance/damper" settings turned OFF and it hasn't made any difference. Any help appreciated. Incidentally I don't get this when using the 310 as Midi controller with another Grand, so it's entirely the Casio sound engine on board doing this. I think 😅

Thanks!

James

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[Brad Saucier]

I recommend not jacking up the 2.5khz EQ range.  It makes it sound unnatural.  Normal play sounds fine.  Metal strings on a piano (or on any instrument) vibrate with many different overtones in them when struck.  What you're hearing is a CD quality recording of an acoustic piano.  That sound is coming from the piano they sampled.  The overtones you hear most prominently depends on your ears, listening position, type of headphones you're using, type of speaker monitors, type of mic used to record (for acoustic pianos), and where the mics are positioned, how hard you play the notes, where the notes stand among other notes, how you EQ the sound, and much more.  In other words, it's considered normal.  That is the characteristic sound of a metal string vibrating.  

[Mike Martin]

James,

You're hearing a recording of the way that note of the piano sounded on that day and in that environment. Since you're turned off damper resonance and features "Casio's engine" is not adding anything to the sound. All pianos have additional resonant frequencies that come from the body of the instrument, open strings and other elements. One of the benefit of the GP-310 is that it has multiple pianos to choose from so you may wish to spend time with the other two pianos to see if this changes your experience.  As Brad said above, this is normal. 

[JamesO]

Thanks Brad and Mike!

I appreciate your messages. To add, though, I've been playing piano for 45 years, from our cheapish upright at home to the grand at Coventry Cathedral, I've also owned two Yamaha CLPs (lower end) and never noticed such an irritating noise/resonance. It's quite off-putting. And I have tried the other piano settings, it doesn't change it. It really sounds like a process rather than a natural arising. If it was just on the Berlin eg then I would accept that they just recorded that, but as it's on all three, and I've never heard that on any other real piano, I am skeptical. 

Mike, you say as I have the damper resonance off there's no other processing: is there ANY processing I could have missed which would explain this noise? With respect, I really don't think it's "normal", at least in my near-half-century of playing pianos. Of course one explanation is my hearing has changed since younger days and I am more sensitive to the higher frequencies... 🙀

Or, bottom line, are there any settings that would reduce this?

Cheers,

James

 

 

[Brad Saucier]

If you have damper and string resonance turned off, the only thing left on the GP-310 is sample playback of the original piano.  

 

I'll still say it's definitely a normal overtone.  I'm used to sticking my head inside of my old upright piano to tune or repair things.  I've also mic'ed and recorded that piano. I can appreciate how different a piano can sound based on where and how the mics are placed.  Most people would never notice that particular overtone, so you're probably just more sensitive to it.  It sounds fine to me.  

[Joe Muscara]

I hardly hear it on the unmodified part, and even then I have to listen for it. I think part of what's happening now is that phenomenon of, "once you hear it, you can't unhear it." In my personal experience, I can unhear or forget about things with the right kind of effort. You can't not hear it by saying to yourself, "don't think about that sound" just as much as if you said, "don't think about the Empire State Building" if you didn't want to think about it!  Maybe that's what you could do. Every time you start to think about that sound, tell yourself, "don't think about the Empire State Building." That kind of thing works for me!

[JamesO]

Well, I had it sent back to the shop for checking: as much as I tried Joe's good advice to Zen/Jedi the sound away it just wasn't the quality I expected... turns out the pedal unit was faulty, I guess perhaps the soft pedal was kicking in when it shouldn't have, which gave us a bit of a muffled sound, and correcting for that (with volume and brightness) may have given the dissonant noise. Or something else maybe? The shop wasn't too forthcoming, just said it was a faulty pedal unit. But anyway, got it back and with the pedal unit repaired, the sound is closer to the showroom sound 😁.

[Joe Muscara]

That's an interesting problem/solution, and points out why we have these forums. I never considered the fact that one of the pedals might be kicking in (pun intended) and thus making the instrument sound slightly off. Thanks for sharing what happened, now we have another potential solution to suggest if something like this comes up again. Granted, we can't ask people with certain models to unplug the pedal unit, but there are many others where that's possible. Or, we can suggest they try and see what happens when they press the various pedals. For instance, if one of your pedals was acting in reverse, it might have sounded fine with the pedal pressed. Then we can tell them that needs to be fixed.