Velocity sensitivity of black vs white keys on FA-06

Forum for Roland FA-06/08
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cabot001
Posts: 7
Joined: 11:57, 10 April 2012

Velocity sensitivity of black vs white keys on FA-06

Post by cabot001 »

I tried out the FA-06 today in my local PMT store in Bristol, England, and was very impressed. However, I immediately noticed that the black keys were more sensitive to touch than the white keys, this being particularly noticeable on the main supernatural grand piano sound, causing black notes played hard to sound too loud and too bright. Has anyone else noticed this? I found that if I played something in C major, using only the white notes, the response of the piano sound was perfect. However, in any other key, the black notes stuck out in volume and brightness too much when hit hard compared to the white keys.

Hopefully this problem will be addressed in a future firmware update. Also on the FA-06, I noticed that repeatedly plugging in and out a pair of headphones (I was comparing two different ones) caused the patch I was playing to go very quiet in volume; when the patch was changed and then returned to, the volume went back to normal. This problem was not specific to the FA-06 - it also happened on the FA-08 which was located above the FA-06 in the PMT store.

I would be interested to hear other forum members' experiences of these issues.
bennyseven
Posts: 699
Joined: 18:01, 19 April 2014
Location: Germany

Re: Velocity sensitivity of black vs white keys on FA-06

Post by bennyseven »

Hello cabot001,

I had a similar observation when I played the first days on the FA06, and my opinion was, that it might had to do with the shorter keys and thus different lever action when playing sharp/flat chords. At this time, I used the sequencer to record something with black and white keys. Looking for the On Velocity values, there was nothing abnormal.
After a while, this feeling vanished all the way. I think, coming from hammer action keys and Fantom keys, I had hardly to accustom myself to the new FA06 keybed.

Sorry, I can't help you, it was just my experience.

cheers, bennyseven
cabot001
Posts: 7
Joined: 11:57, 10 April 2012

Re: Velocity sensitivity of black vs white keys on FA-06

Post by cabot001 »

Hi Bennyseven,

Thanks for your reply - I know what you mean about the short keys. The Yamaha MX61 is another keyboard which uses a similar keybed, and the problem seems to be opposite with this synth - the black keys play quieter than the white keys! The use of these keybeds by Yamaha and Roland is a worrying trend. It's probably to keep costs down and to allow the chassis to be less deep, but I miss the quality keybeds that were on synths like the DX7, D50, XP30, etc.

I suspect that some adjustment has been made to the velocity signal coming from the black keys in both the case of the FA-06 and the MX-61 (e.g. scaling it by a certain factor close to 1.0), but that this factor is not as accurate as it should be. I am trying to find a device at the moment that I can put in a loop from MIDI out to MIDI in (with local control switched off) that can apply such a scaled velocity curve to just the black keys on synths with these shorter-key keybeds.

Regards,

David Kear
cabot001
Posts: 7
Joined: 11:57, 10 April 2012

Re: Velocity sensitivity of black vs white keys on FA-06

Post by cabot001 »

I have been doing some further tests on the FA-06 and found out more about the key velocity issue. There does indeed seem to be a problem with the response of the Supernatural piano sounds, and I have sent my findings to Roland UK. Hopefully, if other users also send Roland some feedback, this can easily be fixed with a firmware update. It's remotely possible that there was a problem with the unit I have been testing, but I would think this extremely unlikely.

The black keys on the FA-06 seem to trigger the Supernatural piano sounds with a velocity of around 15 more than the white notes when played hard (i.e. near 127), making them stick out unacceptably. This is really obvious if you play an even chromatic scale up and down the keyboard. Strangely, there is no such problem on any of the other sounds, e.g. '76 Pure. A difference of 15 is totally unacceptable, even for a lower-end product (the Juno's also have this issue), and this is Roland's new flagship workstation!

I have found a solution by using MIDI Solutions Velocity Converters, which now allow you to program different curves for the black and white keys. This is done by turning off Local Control and inserting the Velocity Converter in a loop from MIDI out to MIDI in. By putting these curves only on MIDI channel 1, and then only using channel 1 for the Supernatural piano patches, all the sounds in the keyboard respond to velocity correctly. I have even chained together two Velocity Converters, one to tame down the too-wide dynamic response of the Supernatural piano sounds, and the other to correct the black/white key difference - the result was perfect, with the grand piano sound responding as a real grand piano does.

It's such a shame that these problems are occurring in current keyboards - they never used to. Even the Yamaha MX49/61 has black keys that play quieter than the white keys (opposite to the FA-06!), and Yamaha UK have acknowledged that there is a problem, so hopefully this will be fixed quickly with a firmware update. In the meantime, John Fast's brilliant Velocity Converter can provide a solution.

If any other users have come to the same conclusions as me, I would urge them to contact Roland to ask for a firmware update to be made available soon to fix the problem.

Regards,

David Kear
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