Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ivory II, my first impressions

Excellent idea! I have a pretty cool preset in Ivory, which I personally like for the concert D.
Once I receive Ivory II I will post some midis and screenshots.

For what purpose are you going to use Ivory? It sounds more like you are going to use it for real recording. I just use it to play with my headphones on.

After more using the Yamaha I found out its not just the C4, also the notes surrounding it. And I'm quite sure something inside the piano has been resonating, and that has been recorded. The effect is strongest on the C4.

No, I only meant that lots of other music uses C, like for example anything written in C. What I was getting at was that the defect was not hidden in some obscure place.

There are many Ivory users and any of them with a tool like Logic or Protools can come up with the "hack" in a few hours.

I'd not hold my breath for Synthology to fix this because the real fix involves re-recording the samples and for that they'd need a Yamaha piano that sounds identical to the one they used first but does not have the problem. Getting that correct could take some time.

still, wouldn't they have done some basic QA of the samples in the recording session? I would think especially something like C4 which is not at the extremes of the keyboard would've stood out...

And regarding users 'hacking' the samples it could be quite unlikely, if Synthogy is using an encrypted sampleset that would for sure not be possible.

@ChrisA ok then I get what you were saying

@MarcoM That was my thought immediately as I head it. Like I said I do have some of the best studio equipment here, but I am quite sure others can hear it too, and the recording studio should have definitely heard it! Its really not hard to hear, and it is very very annoying.

Ivory 1.7 also had fatal flaws in the Yamaha samples right around the middle of the keyboard. It sounded like someone stuffed a dead rat with lead and used it as a hammer on the D note (D4 I think.) I don't know what they could be thinking when they release flawed samples like this.

They must use a bad Yamaha to sample from. It's a shame... they could come sample from my C6 and it would sound better than theirs.

I haven't upgraded yet, but I do pay them compliments on their German D (Steinway) which is the only good piano in Ivory Grand. I hear the Italian grand is good too, though.

They probably left the champagne bottle inside the Yamaha grand piano, after celebrating the final sample recording of the Steinway Concert D, hence the resonance

I guess you bought the John Cage edition!

I got a reaction back from Synthogy about the Yamaha

Our goal is always to deliver as accurate a recording as possible. However, there are frequently some surprising things that occur in the real instruments. There are sometimes natural components to the sound we may not expect, and we may not be aware of until we begin to focus in on them. So, there's not much I can suggest to you to "correct" the sound of that note. There are many strange and unexpected sounds that can occur in a real acoustic instrument. It's very complex, and in many ways imperfect, but that is also what makes them sound the way they do.

I'm sorry but I just disagree with it. If you are going to sample an instrument, you gotta make sure the instrument is 100% in order before you do. There really is something resonating inside that piano, that a piano tech should have fixed. Now that same rattle is going to be heard/played by thousands of people!!

The package is worth it especially for the Steinway, but also for the Bosendorfer (as like I said, when you tweak it, you can make it sound really good, definetly add some bass). It is truly a shame however about the Yamaha!!!

I will go out on a limb here, because I have not heard the samples nor have you posted a sample of the corrupted keys, so this is based on your experience alone:

That is a very unsatisfying, "not our fault" reply.
A proper piano tech should've heard the corrupted sample and rectified it
asap. Blaming "suprises", implying that's just the way it is, is highly suspect, especially considering how expensive their software is, as well as how sophisticated their clientel is.
I did not expect them to handle this issue this bad.

This is similar to a problem with the Garritan Steinway. From Day One, I reported a very audible "knock" in one of the samples when played at, or near, maximum velocity. It wasn't until this past month that they acknowledged that one of the seatbacks in the concert hall in which they were recording had produced this sound (due to temperature/humidity changes).

Now, given the HUGE size of that library it's understandable that this anomaly could poke its way into the release. They even stated that they have fixed the individual sample and offered to post it but I've yet to see this post.

Curt

I've been playing with Ivory II for the past day now myself. I have to say that so far I feel a bit let down. It's certainly not blowing me away like I had hoped. Possibly I need a bit more time to fiddle with the various knobs.

I am very happy with the playability, which is where Alicia's Keys suffered severely. It's responsive and feels reasonably genuine. However my biggest playability criticism is in the pp/ppp range. Low velocities still sound too hard. It's not my controller -- even notes at velocity 1 seem much too harsh for what is supposed to be the softest end of the dynamic range. Here I pine for Pianoteq. AK has this problem too, where it's much worse still.

I bought this software mainly for the Steinway, but it sounds like there is a considerable amount of ambient hiss in the samples. As you play with the sustain pedal pressed, the ambient noise cumulates steadily, and once the pedal is released, it abruptly and jarringly returns to silence. The Yamaha C7 doesn't really have this problem, or at least not to the extent that it bothers me. (Didn't bother to check the Bosendorfer.)

I recorded an (admittedly obnoxious) example rendered with various pianos to illustrate:

Ivory II German Concert D Grand II: http://urandom.ca/~tack/x/ambient-noise-ivory-d.mp3
Ivory II Studio C7 Grand 18: http://urandom.ca/~tack/x/ambient-noise-ivory-c7.mp3
Alicia's Keys: http://urandom.ca/~tack/x/ambient-noise-ak.mp3

The pedal releases around 17 seconds and in the Steinway example you can hear the hiss drop off. This is quite noticeable during normal playing under headphones.

Victor, you were very happy with the Steinway -- do you not notice this, or does it not bother you?

Cheers!

Crud. This was one of my major complaints with Ivory I and I was hoping they would have fixed this.

Curt

In addition to the hiss problem, there seems to be other very awkward sounding artifacts in the Steinway. Many notes have a faint sound overlaid that sounds a lot like what happens to high frequencies when they're put through lossy compression (like MP3) at lowish bitrates.

I'm sure that's not what it is, but it has that sort of sound. It's very dirty and digital sounding. It's generally masked on loud and busy pieces, but I don't find the Ivory Steinway suitable at all for soft passages.

I experienced the same you described in Ivory I as well.
The sustain accumulates, and once the sustain pedal has been relased, the background static abruptly stops. Needless to say it is very annoying and I thought half-pedalling solved it. :-(

Got my Ivory II today, but I have a problem with Bosendorfer 290's library file, 2 files on the third DVD can't be copied on to my hard disk and the setup program is terminated.
Any Windows user has the same issue?
Now I am skipping this piano and continuous my installation, I may have to contact Synthogy tomorrow for more information.

I had the same issue with my DVDs. The copying process failed at one point and knowing how long installing takes, I just skipped that piano :-(

OK. I will give them a call tomorrow, may be in the afternoon, if you are able to reach them before me please post their answers here.

Thx.

James

WHAT!? You're makin' it WORSE!! As a solo pianist, this is not good to hear!!!

Curt