Roland Clan Forums

After browsing through some of the other piano threads, I would like to suggest buying Synthogy's Ivory. This thing blew me away, really an awesome job by Joe Ierardi, IIRC. I have a Fantom XR, bought an SRX11, also have a Triton Extreme, and before that a Triton Rack with the nice Grand Expansion. I'd have to say they're not even in the same league.

So if you have a fairly recent Mac (with REALLY fast drives) and are looking for a piano, this is it. Rarely am I this happy about a product I've purchased. But so that I don't sound like a damn ad for that company, I do have to say in a live situation, it isn't quite as magical. Probably due to the crappy monitors I usually end up with. Plus my laptop doesn't quite meet the needed spec of the software. I think they really need to optimize it somehow (if even possible) so it won't need a RAID array for the sustain not to cut off unexpectedly.

Anyway, just thought I'd bring it up since I bought a Fantom to use it as my main piano live, then was disappointed then bought an SRX11, then disappointed again...well, maybe it'll help someone.

Raul

If you ever want a hardware solution to your piano problem have a listen at:

williamcoakley.com

Although I haven't heard an SRX 11 piano, I've been hearing a lot about it for some time now and your disappointment is shared by many who heard the demo; listened to the hype and believed it was the ultimate piano to have.

With Ivory, you may be experiencing what other users have noted. The overrated performance specs don't reveal that a G4 isn't powerful enough to run the pianos and nothing was said in the beginning about the need for RAID arrays. But these problems are typical of version 1 software releases. Notice that MOTU's MACH V was incapable of streaming for nearly two years after it was released. These programs often take years to develop properly.

On the sample level, the main Ivory complaints center around noise in the samples (when you hold notes down especially the Bose); abrupt velocity switches, and most of all too much ambience in the samples which prevents the pianos from mixing well with other instruments. There are some articles on my site which explain the inherent problems with MMPs (Monster Memory Pianos).

If you are interested in a world class instrument for the Fantom let me know as I have been asked to consider a cross platform deal.

William

William, how long does it take to load your piano in a Fantom??


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exactly 4.5 minutes including 23 seconds for the system. Total piano load is just under 128 megs.

William

williamcoakley.com

Hi William, I actually bought a Coakley piano a long time ago, a 32mb (Fazioli) for my Akai S2000 (sold a while ago). CD got scratched so i can't even load it up anymore, but at the time I was pretty satisfied with it. I also have a Protesus 2000 with Sounds of ZR (w/ your piano), so I'm a supporter!

Had I known about your new one I would have bought that instead of the SRX11. But I bought these in April so not sure if yours was out already.

I'm assuming at 128 megs and with improvements in technology that Volume V is a big step up from your previous pianos? The bar has been set pretty high with Ivory I think. And really, I don't think you can lump that with the other multi-gig pianos,. It's much more inspiring than anything else I've heard.

But yeah, I certainly would like a hardware solution, I'd feel more at ease that way. The tough part is explaining to my commander-in-chief why, after buying the ultimate software piano and a piano expansion for my hardware (in addition to the pianos I already have in the Triton and Gigastudio), that I would need to buy ANOTHER one. I think it's a bit on the expensive side though. But I don't really know much about the economics of producing sample libraries.

Raul

In all fairness to ourselves... some of our addictive behavior comes from the availability of improved technology and some from common marketing practices ...giving you an "Ultimate" piano that isn't... and then luring you into buying the real thing (which they should've given you in the first place)... and the 'real thing' is only slightly better. It's a bait and switch game designed to flatten your wallet and meanwhile you end up broke and still don't have a good piano... not to mention your commander in chief suggests you may want to get some counceling. But what can we do if nothing else is available? We end up at the mercy of the manufacturer who, again, is controlled by the marketing department which isn't concerned with quality. BTW, I had not released Volulme V in April but was close.

Twenty two years of sampling has taught me one significant lesson... ambience in samples is death to a mix. Ambience is the leading cause of piano failure accounting for over 90% of all complaints. I have a beautiful ambient version of the Fazioli 9'2 that I never released because it was what I called a "specialty piano." It works in a few situations well... and doesn't work at all anywhere else.

After twelve years of research, I've come up with a solution to piano sampling problems. It ends up like this... I can get the smoothness of sound that more distant mics yield without ambience or noise in the samples. It's proprietary and called Z-AXis processing. If you listen to my demos you will hear the smooth response, seamless velocity switches and a sound that Ivory only dreamed of having.

By the way, I have two customers who own Ivory and have purchased my Fantom Volume V. Their primary complaints are listed above. So far, the MMPs (Monster Memory Pianos) are getting torpedoed by this 128 meg Hamburg D as the proof is in the playing that a 10 gig piano is about 9.9 gigs overstuffed. Besides, Ivory is married to the computer and owners are subjected to the slow painful progress of the software writers who haven't been too forthcoming with a module that performs to spec. They're now telling dissatisfied customers that they must add a RAID array in order to achieve the advertised performance spec. And what on earth are they doing adding two more layers... eeek!

Customer dissatisfaction in the Apple world may explain why they've withheld the release in the PC domain. But from the demos anyway... Ivory seems to be a significant improvement over other MMPs which has to be taken in context.

But unlike the Fantom which can be loaded with anything and is built for the road as well as the studio... Ivory is a one time shot in a computer... subject to a virus of variables. If you don't like it... you can't just load some Garritan strings in it and justify its existence.

I think MMPs will always be around because they're so easy to make and can sell as long as the unwary musician thinks quality equates with size. But their popularity will dwindle significantly as more smaller memory pianos are developed that sound better, take up far less resources and perform better. By the way, what serial number was the disk you bought?

William

williamcoakley.com

Hi William.

If I may ask, what do you use to set loop points in your stereo samples (in the context of use with the Fantom)? I'm sure anyone who's even dabbled with samples on the Fantom can attest to the difficulty of manually locating non-clicking sample loop points, particularly with stereo samples. So I'm just curious how a pro does it.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

Nathan:

Just a small note from me. You may see that the factory waves are in mono, e.g. stereo tones are given as L and R waves. This is done not only to give you an option to use a given wave in mono, but also it is much easier to find loop points of the channels separately.

I generally use WaveLab although I did use the Fantom editor (version 2.0) for some touch ups and in a few cases I actually managed to find a new loop with it. I've suggested to Roland that they implement a few basic features in the editor's loop section like the ability to crossfade loop points to eliminate clicking. I can't remember whether or not it has a 0 crossing search but if it does, that helps somewhat to locate non-clicking points. Actually, the best software I ever used for looping was a Mac program by Antares that took advantage of the DSPs in the ProTools system.

I haven't downloaded the latest version of the editor yet but it would be worth it if they improved the looping tools.

I loop mono or stereo the same way. For pianos and most pitched samples, the loop points have to occur at the same place in the sample so the amount of work is the same whether mono or stereo.

William

Artemio: Thanks for the information. Actually, I did know that but was curious as to how William did it with stereo samples specifically since they are harder than mono samples to find loop points manually.

William: Thanks for the information from you too. I was messing around with the Fantom-X Editor last night a bit and it is a bit easier to set loop points in that program as opposed to the Fantom-X interface (because of the ability to use the mouse mostly). I got distracted, though, investigating the SysEx messages Roland uses to transmit sound waveform data from the Fantom-X to the Editor program. That program uses all kinds of unpublished SysEx messages.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

By the way, a customer just reported in on a clever way of having all your sounds on a card and having the Fantom only load the one you want..... oops, its the girlfriend unit's birthday and I don't want to end up in the little red (dog)house just outside the fence.. so I'll return later on.

William

How is this done William? - I'm enjoying myself immensley with vol 5 by the way - Its fantastic!!

Actually this happened as I was assisting a customer in making sure he got the pianos loaded successfully for the first time. (It also gives me a chance to calibrate the piano) I thought I might be dealing with a somewhat computer novice when he asked about storing more than one set of Roland folders (Backup; TMP; Roland by name) on a flash card. Before I could get my mouth open to say,... 'Roland didn't offer a solution for that," he said "let me try something;" and here's what he did:

With the editor installed and the first piano already loaded on the card with three folders for it named "BACKUP" "Tmp" and "Roland" ...he added a prefix to the name of the folders (as I nervously hung on) so they looked like this

Hamburg_BACKUP Hamburg_Tmp Hamburg_Roland

Then he loaded in another piano which of course has the folder names without the prefix. He then added the prefix to those newly loaded folders using the prefix "D40"

This takes adavantage of the fact that when the Fantom boots... it only looks at what's in the folders "BACKUP" Tmp" and "Roland." After having all the pianos on the card, loading one simply requires adding the prefix to the folders of the piano you're UNLOADING and and deleting the prefix on the folders of the piano you ARE LOADING so the names of the three folders associated with the piano you want to listen to return to "BACKUP" "Roland" and "Tmp"

REMEMBER ====> You have to turn the unit off... wait a few seconds and then turn it on... for the Fantom to reload from the folders named: "Roland" "Tmp" and "BACKUP"

The alternative to this method of storage is preferred by some customers who've already purchased more than one flash card. They simply swap cards depending on which piano they want to hear. Again, after putting the new card into the slot, (thus far) the only way to load is to turn the unit off... wait a few seconds then turn it on so the Fantom will reload from the folders named "BACKUP", "Roland" and "Tmp".

I'm sure we'll have some variations on a theme from some of you so let me know what you think.

William

williamcoakley.com

Actually, William, there's already a tutorial on this subject by our very own member, Quinnx.

It can be viewed here:

http://knightspawn.fws1.com/woodhazel_f ... ilesys.htm

)

Dave

http://www.drstudio.demon.co.uk/
"Musicians fall into three categories: those with a physical block, those with a mental block and those with a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Excellent... I hope he isn't as clumsy at explaining it than I.

William