Disklavier

Hi Robert,

This is a GREAT contribution, and a tribute to Yamaha's designers. And 
you're right : figures must be /interpreted/ in order to make sense.
The experiment you made is a brilliant one, and not as simple to conduct 
as it seems. 
It also points to this little imperfection of the non-pro systems, and 
that is the pppp notes.  But who plays pppp ?  The real volume depends 
on the hall you play in !  For example, the piano competition files that 
most of us are waitong for will be played in a rather big hall, compared 
to our living rooms. And I guess that the minimum midi velocity will be 
around 25, if the pianist wants the /pianissimi/ to be heard by the 
audience. So this is rather clear : the "old" system still is a very 
good approximation of the performance of a real professional pianist.
However, I guess that the Pro system must have its advantage as far as 
home playing and recording is concerned : If you had the opportunity to 
have Alfred Brendel or Keith Jarrett at home -or if you ARE Alfred or 
Keith, go for a pro model ! ;-)
I am not a great pianist, but I still miss those very low volume notes, 
those that will in a way give the upcoming silence its real weight, 
allowing a further resonance to the music. But when I listen to those 
piano rolls that Rubinstein recorded in the 1920's, I am amazed with the 
expressiveness, although the system they used then must be miles behind 
my DU1A capacities.

So I guess my DU1A does not fear its pro counterparts, if only because 
of the price. And if I could afford  a pro, I'd go for it, if only to 
record those pppp notes I like so much, in my living room ;-))

Jean Debefve     


Robert Welcyng a \ufffdcrit :

> I'd like to speak to the "disappointment" in the DKV's apparent limited
> effective MIDI note velocity range.  I fully concur with PianoBench's
> suggestion of concentrating on listening to evaluate the DKV's technical
> performance and not getting hung up on numbers.  However, some of you
> might be interested in a different angle on the matter.
>
> Some time ago, I made sound output measurements on my DC3 Mark II.  I
> wrote MIDI files to play a succession of the same single note throughout
> the velocity range of 1 to 127.  I recorded that succession of sounds to
> DAT and measured the initial power of each note using Sound Forge.  In
> plotting the relative sound power of the notes (in decibels) versus note
> velocity, I found a fairly straight line between velocity 25 (-20 dB
> relative sound power) and velocity 90 (0 dB relative sound power).  The
> slope of that line is then 20 dB per 65 velocity units, or, in other
> words, 0.3 dB per one unit of velocity.
>
> Now, what do you suppose is the minimum step-change in sound power that
> an average person listening to a continuous sine wave can detect?  Well,
> that depends upon the frequency of the sine wave and the original
> loudness.  A typical figure (for 1000 Hz and medium loudness) is 0.5 dB.
>   (See John R. Pierce, THE SCIENCE OF MUSICAL SOUND, PAGE 131).
>
> So, generally speaking, even though the DKV's effective MIDI range (with
> the DKV Volume control set at "0") may be only 25 thru 90 (or 30 thru
> 100), its output sound intensity range is divided into steps
> sufficiently fine that most humans could not detect the change from one
> velocity step to the next.
>
> Was this design simply fortuitous, or was it brilliance on the part of
> the engineers at Hamamatsu?  I believe the later.
>
> My question is: Beyond the personal satisfaction of owning a Pro, does
> recording and reproducing note-on velocity to a precision of 1000 steps
> really buy you anything?  I'd love to make some measurements on a Pro
> and find out.
>
>
>
>
>