This is a really old thread, but I just had a similar problem, and realized that my thin, tinny, low volume piano sound problems were being caused by mixing the "Full Grand" tones down to mono in an amp. They sounded awesome in headphones, but the mono amp sounded awful. It turns out it's because of the phasing and interference of the stereo samples being mixed down to mono. I switched over to the "Mono Grand" tone and was happy again with sounds from the mono amp.
You can hear the effect in headphones by reducing the stereo spread on in Tone Edit for "Full Grand" tones.
It took me WAY too long to figure this out.
Here my thread where I finally figured it out.
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=54803
FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Nodog,
Glad you are happy. I was wondering if you had tried coming out left (mono)? If you are mixing down to mono at the amp anyway, it would open up a lot more piano choices for you.
Kevin Anker, the guy who wrote the article you referenced is a contributor over on the Keyboard Corner. He's a mono evangelist! Good guy and great player, he convinced me to go mono for all live work. Simplified my life, but I understand the allure of stereo!
Good luck,
Joe
Glad you are happy. I was wondering if you had tried coming out left (mono)? If you are mixing down to mono at the amp anyway, it would open up a lot more piano choices for you.
Kevin Anker, the guy who wrote the article you referenced is a contributor over on the Keyboard Corner. He's a mono evangelist! Good guy and great player, he convinced me to go mono for all live work. Simplified my life, but I understand the allure of stereo!
Good luck,
Joe
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Thanks for the suggestion, Joe P.
I guess I was unclear about my use of mono. Let me be more clear.
#1 - I noticed first when using the left/mono output to my mono amp. In that case, the summation to mono from stereo is being done by the FA-08 at the output. (I stated that the summation was being done at the amp. (Note: I *did* test stereo output split to the 2 channels of the mono amp, but it sounded exactly the same.))
#2 - I ended up using the Tone Edit to reduce the stereo width to 0, which sums to mono well before the output stage of the FA-08. That produced the same tinny, comb-filtered sound in stereo headphones that I was hearing in the amp. If I spread the stereo back out, the weak middle strings went away.
My understanding of the acoustics involved is that the problem is the summing of the original L and R samples. A comb filter is effectively created on the middle strings/frequencies due to the similar strength signal and the distance b/w the mics relative to the wavelengths of the frequencies involved. I discussed this situation with a recording engineer friend of mine, and he says it's a problem with stereo recordings mixed to mono in general.
If I wanted to use more pianos, that article suggests that I could use only the R channel, which is R channel only, and not summed-to-mono. The issue is that the low end would probably be lower in volume relative to the high end, but some EQ-ing might fix that. I was unable to fix the comb filter effect by EQ, as you might imagine, since it's a repetitive notch-bandpass filter across the middle of the spectrum.
I guess I was unclear about my use of mono. Let me be more clear.
#1 - I noticed first when using the left/mono output to my mono amp. In that case, the summation to mono from stereo is being done by the FA-08 at the output. (I stated that the summation was being done at the amp. (Note: I *did* test stereo output split to the 2 channels of the mono amp, but it sounded exactly the same.))
#2 - I ended up using the Tone Edit to reduce the stereo width to 0, which sums to mono well before the output stage of the FA-08. That produced the same tinny, comb-filtered sound in stereo headphones that I was hearing in the amp. If I spread the stereo back out, the weak middle strings went away.
My understanding of the acoustics involved is that the problem is the summing of the original L and R samples. A comb filter is effectively created on the middle strings/frequencies due to the similar strength signal and the distance b/w the mics relative to the wavelengths of the frequencies involved. I discussed this situation with a recording engineer friend of mine, and he says it's a problem with stereo recordings mixed to mono in general.
If I wanted to use more pianos, that article suggests that I could use only the R channel, which is R channel only, and not summed-to-mono. The issue is that the low end would probably be lower in volume relative to the high end, but some EQ-ing might fix that. I was unable to fix the comb filter effect by EQ, as you might imagine, since it's a repetitive notch-bandpass filter across the middle of the spectrum.
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
I just took a few minutes to try the R output into the amp, and it doesn't suffer from the thin/tinny sound issue for stereo piano tones. As expected, it's got some relative-volume-across-the keyboard issues, but so do many pianos. :)
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Joe,
Now that I've been sitting here using the R (not summed) output for today's practice, I realized that maybe you'd intended to tell me to use the R output and not the L (summed) output, because of the reasons stated in the article and you mentioned.
Now that I've been sitting here using the R (not summed) output for today's practice, I realized that maybe you'd intended to tell me to use the R output and not the L (summed) output, because of the reasons stated in the article and you mentioned.
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Hi Nodog,
I did mean left (mono). It hasn't presented any problems for me. The tone is even and I don't notice any significantly negative consequences, that's why I'm curious. I've even gone straight from left (mono) into a PA speaker with no mixer and I've never noticed any problems (other than normal eq tweaking via Sound Modify knobs). Maybe my ears aren't as perceptive as yours and so my ignorance = bliss!
I'm playing in a rock band, or a loud cocktail party, or a duo acoustic jam, but also quiet solo practice. Of course it doesn't sound perfect like it does in the headphones, but it has never sounded "thin, tinny, low volume, useless". Not by a long shot. What am I missing?
Regards,
Joe
I did mean left (mono). It hasn't presented any problems for me. The tone is even and I don't notice any significantly negative consequences, that's why I'm curious. I've even gone straight from left (mono) into a PA speaker with no mixer and I've never noticed any problems (other than normal eq tweaking via Sound Modify knobs). Maybe my ears aren't as perceptive as yours and so my ignorance = bliss!
I'm playing in a rock band, or a loud cocktail party, or a duo acoustic jam, but also quiet solo practice. Of course it doesn't sound perfect like it does in the headphones, but it has never sounded "thin, tinny, low volume, useless". Not by a long shot. What am I missing?
Regards,
Joe
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Joe,
Not sure why we're having different results. Though keyboard amps are generally designed for flat spectrum rather than character, each has it's own, of course. Maybe there's something about mine that just emphasized it to me.
I'm super happy to have gotten to a solution for me, though. I'm much happier now that I know to use Mono Grand and Rock Grand for playing through a mono amp, and happy enough with the stereo pianos in unsummed R channel mono, too. (If I get motivated, I could also create custom mono tones from the L or R samples of the stereo pianos, but that's time I'm not practicing or playing.)
I wouldn't have said, "useless" myself, but it's been notable enough when playing in duets and trios that I was switching to using electric piano and organ sounds, which start in mono, so sound great in whichever mono format.
Cheers,
Anderson
Not sure why we're having different results. Though keyboard amps are generally designed for flat spectrum rather than character, each has it's own, of course. Maybe there's something about mine that just emphasized it to me.
I'm super happy to have gotten to a solution for me, though. I'm much happier now that I know to use Mono Grand and Rock Grand for playing through a mono amp, and happy enough with the stereo pianos in unsummed R channel mono, too. (If I get motivated, I could also create custom mono tones from the L or R samples of the stereo pianos, but that's time I'm not practicing or playing.)
I wouldn't have said, "useless" myself, but it's been notable enough when playing in duets and trios that I was switching to using electric piano and organ sounds, which start in mono, so sound great in whichever mono format.
Cheers,
Anderson
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
All's well that ends well, my friend - rock on! :-)
Regards,
Joe
Regards,
Joe
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
to add balls to your piano just go into tone edit, select wav tab, set to +12 for partials, go to mfx tab set to eq, eq it, save it. In studio set mode you can add additional balls with the eq settings tab in part view. Beware this will cause distortions as your amping up the puny piano sounds of this board, but I had to do this to get some beefy pianos out of my FA06
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
Ok FA-08 or series owners for me this is ground breaking. After 5yrs of owning an FA, experimenting with the acoustic piano samplings, supra-natural, etc.... finally got a much cleaner, un-tinny, un-muddy sound acoustic output through my QSC 12" 'speakers!!
Its all in the equ-ing. I simply ran my 5yr old FA -08 direct into a decades old Alesis M230 2 channel - 31Band EQ, adjusted the tinny mid-ranges out and adjusted some of the high freq.'s, ran it through my small Mackie Pro sub-mixer (stereo channels & while "turning off the Mackie EQ"), to thru the QSC 12" speaker and like MAGIC sounds like as near an acoustic grand as I've ever had from a digital keybrd. For a $50.00 EQ investment now have a thousands of $$ fix to get excellent piano sounds. To bad Roland didn't install this level of EQing originally.
Some of you might already have known this but I've never seen it mentioned here. Thought it would help.
Cheers
Its all in the equ-ing. I simply ran my 5yr old FA -08 direct into a decades old Alesis M230 2 channel - 31Band EQ, adjusted the tinny mid-ranges out and adjusted some of the high freq.'s, ran it through my small Mackie Pro sub-mixer (stereo channels & while "turning off the Mackie EQ"), to thru the QSC 12" speaker and like MAGIC sounds like as near an acoustic grand as I've ever had from a digital keybrd. For a $50.00 EQ investment now have a thousands of $$ fix to get excellent piano sounds. To bad Roland didn't install this level of EQing originally.
Some of you might already have known this but I've never seen it mentioned here. Thought it would help.
Cheers
Re: FA 06 Piano is thin, tinny, low volume, useless
FA-08 Get More Authentic Acoustic Grand Piano Sounds by doing the following;
This was ground breaking for me. After 5 yrs of owning an FA, experimenting with the acoustic grand piano samplings, supra-natural, etc.... finally got a much cleaner, un-tinny, un-muddy sound acoustic output through my QSC 12" 'speakers!!
Its in the equ-ing ! I simply ran my 5 yr old FA -08 direct into a decades old Alesis M230 2 channel - 31Band EQ, adjusted the tinny mid-ranges out and adjusted some of the high freq.'s, ran it through my small Mackie Pro sub-mixer (stereo channels & while "turning off the Mackie EQ"), to thru the QSC 12" speaker and sounds like as near an acoustic grand as I've ever had from a digital keybrd. For a $50.00 EQ investment now have a thousands of $$ fix to get excellent piano sounds. To bad Roland didn't install this level of EQing originally.
Some of you might already have known this but I've never seen it mentioned here. Thought it would help.
Cheers
This was ground breaking for me. After 5 yrs of owning an FA, experimenting with the acoustic grand piano samplings, supra-natural, etc.... finally got a much cleaner, un-tinny, un-muddy sound acoustic output through my QSC 12" 'speakers!!
Its in the equ-ing ! I simply ran my 5 yr old FA -08 direct into a decades old Alesis M230 2 channel - 31Band EQ, adjusted the tinny mid-ranges out and adjusted some of the high freq.'s, ran it through my small Mackie Pro sub-mixer (stereo channels & while "turning off the Mackie EQ"), to thru the QSC 12" speaker and sounds like as near an acoustic grand as I've ever had from a digital keybrd. For a $50.00 EQ investment now have a thousands of $$ fix to get excellent piano sounds. To bad Roland didn't install this level of EQing originally.
Some of you might already have known this but I've never seen it mentioned here. Thought it would help.
Cheers