Anybody try the Tascam CVPiano yet

[ddarwin7]

Hello

Anybody had a chance to try the Tascam CVPiano (Continuous Velocity Piano) yet. I am out of town and so have not had a chance to try it out for myself. Can't wait to get back to try this myself. Anybody try this yet??

Dd

[belbin]

Yes!!

It is pretty sweet. CPU intensive, but easy on the RAM. AFAIK, it's a free downlaod, too (or you already have it if you have GVI).

-Belbin

[ddarwin7]

Hi Belbin:

Thanks for the feedback. I am still out of town and have not had a chance to try it yet. Do you know if you have to have GVI for it to work. I thought I heard it can be used as a stand along as well. Not 100% sure though. I do not have GVI, I only have GS3. Hope I can get this to work as a standalone.

Dd

[scope4live]

I noticed that one right away when I installed GVI. It sounds really nice for a mere MB sized piano. That is the prime example of DEF in action.

I have added a little custom device to enhance it's sound even more. It's made in the Scope platform, and it is called PolyEK. It's a mid/side style EQ that works off of velocity polyphonically as well. And CVP sounds even better.

I think we will see alot of DEF based instruments in the near future. As the old GB sized libraries are nice, but wreak havoc on the memory subsystem, DEF based libraries have eliminated large uneeded layers, at the cost of CPU cycles, but still, with quad cores getting better, and developers optimising their apps for 64bit, and SSE4 / quad cores, I encourage this. As live performance is an apps real test, DEF excells there on my DAW's. It allows more instruments, all at the cost of CPU cycles. Since HDD's have topped out as far as maturity is concerned, this is a move in the right direction, at least until Seagate and Western Digital release their 8GB cache HDD models. Just kiddin' there, it was wishful thinking. Who knows what we will see w/ HDD's, but until then certain developers will not rest on their laurels and wait,...................right Mark?

[Jake Johnson]

Can someone post a brief demo of a slowish song? Maybe Amazing Grace, or something else in the public domain?

[sgarsson]

Loaded it up yesterday. My machine is not powerful by today's standards P4 2.8mhz. As background, I use Gigastudio 3 Orchestra.

An observation in general; I am fairly surprised the NS boards are not plastered with more posts or samples about this tool - 2 days after release. Free, very novel approach and an important instrument (piano). The general and Gigastudio forums are just not lighting up - everyone on vacation? Industry that crowded with newness? A few years ago, I am sure the thread count would have been well into the 3 digits.

That aside, sorry I was not able to create a sample for anyone, but thoughts are:

Nice things so far discovered:

1. Install was a snap.
2. Its seemingly free (no day counters, annoying pop-ups or anything).
3. I was able to get up to 64 voices (32 notes) on my machine before CPU started not liking me. I set polyphony to 96, did a left hander and drove the machine nuts. . .leading to nice things number 4. . .
4. Nice little reset button on the interface stopped all the notes and allowed me to lower max polyphony without leaving the session
5. The piano plays nicely, smooth transition on velocity and key range
6. Haven't played many Kawai's so not a sound I am overly familiar, but I found myself just noodling for a while. . .so for sure, a piano I will work with.
7. The sustain pedal resonance up and down is a very cool effect. Adds a lot to interacting with the instrument
8. Tascam included their effects for chaining in the tool.

Things I am curious about:

1. The PDF in the download talks about using the '.gig' file in Gigastudio but all I see in CVPiano is the ".gvi" file. So I assume that for this freebie, it comes as "rompler". What are plans for GS?
2. The sustain pedal effect is very dramatic. . .wish there was a way to go in between on the resonance added. . maybe there is and I have not discovered yet. . also a limition of binary nature of midi sustain pedal.

Overall, you would be crazy not to take the time to download and give a try even if a Kawai is not your goto piano preference. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up. I hope that many 3rd party folks jump in and run with the concept of 'lite' mega libraries.

Scott

[scope4live]

http://www.wavelore.com/DEF_Tutorial.shtml

http://www.planetz.com/forums/files/das_mccy_spacef_769.jpg


Here's a pic of what Scope does to an already responsive instrument.

The CVP is inside of the ASIO 2 module shown. It gets sent to a tube emulation device with inserts. In the insert is the fabulous DAS DynaPara EQ which is a 6 band mid/side dynamic parametric equalizer. It then gets sent to another custom device where each layer of the CVP gets it's own EQ attached through velocity. So if you liked CVP, you'll love it in a DSP based platform.

Another example of a great piano is Muse's DEF version called Classical Grand, and Jazz Grand. To make matters even more complicated, I still use Vintaudio's Upright Clinton, and it is my favorite jammin' 88'r. It seems as though you are sitting on a bench in a great honky tonk saloon, only the pedal up/down and the Lexicon PCM91 create the perfect ambience. DEF can make some instruments better and worse. It's a hit and miss in IMO. But when a developer creates using DEF from the get go, it's amazing how many more variations you can cram into a gsi.file, and for live players, this means you can fill up several instances of GVI with enumerous variations as well. It is more CPU intensive, but since GVI is multi core optimised, as well as Bidule, those cheap quad core Intels are perfect and beg for more. I still love my ancient Northwood, but it shall recieve proper burial in my studio where multiple takes are tolerated. Live, it'a quad cores and GVI, as GS3 just can't keep up.

I still haven't found the perfect piano for Debussey, and Chopin, but I am certain that GS4 should do that. Afterall, they always release free content that causes other developers to take notice. The trend of the new " GigaPiano " should be another leap. That's what causes sales for newly released products.



Strength And Honor,

[Jake Johnson]

Nice piano. I'm finding that I get a better sound from the low velocities if I use the Nonlinear velocity curve rather than the default Special velocity. They tend to have a little more volume with that setting, so the higher velocities don't jump out as much.

Some things I don't understand, however. (No real manual was included in the download.)

I really like the ability to choose from the many microphones. I don't quite understand, however, the Replacement microphone feature. You choose one mic in the Original Mic section, right? But why would you then choose an another mic in the Replacement mic area instead of just changing the original mic? I understand that the feature gives us more sound shaping ability, but what is the logic behind it?

And what does the V button do on the GigaPulse pages (it's to the right of the picture of the mic over the strings). Does it just turn on the impulse? Seems like an odd place to put such an important command. (And what does "V" stand for?

And does anyone have a reference that would tell us what the qualities of all of these mics are? Which tend to cut or accent which frequencies?

[Jake Johnson]

Hate to respond to my own post, but I found the answers to my questions after downloading the GigaPulse manaul from Tascam's site. You can find the page from which to download the Gigapulse manual here: http://www.tascam.com/details;8,7,48,19.html

1. The V is actually a down arrow that changes the picture to its left. Lets developers include a page with information about the sound space as well as a picture. There is no additional page for this default sound stage, so clicking on the button does nothing.

2. The Original mic drop down list lets you remove whatever effect (filtering, etc) the orginal mic had on the recording. (So we have to find out what mic was used to record this piano.) The Replacement mic drop down list lets you choose a new mic. You can leave both flat, but if you want to create the sound of a given mic, you should first eliminate the sound of the other mic by choosing it from the Original mic drop down list.

(By the way, the MD421 Emulated sounds great with this piano with just a "000 none--flat" setting for the Original mic.)

[radim]

Hi,
I´m new at the forum .
I have one question about instalation - when I unziped it i can find only .giv files and .gx99 which can´t be open neither by CVPiano nor my GS3 Solo which I use. Is that anything else necessary to do ?
Thanks for your help.
Radim

[Jake Johnson]

To set up this piano:

In the uppermost folder of files in the zip file, double-click on the file CVPiano-GVI-Modeled_Setup.exe. It will perform the entire setup.
However, be aware that it may not automatically find your VSTI folder. You'll be given a choice of where to put the VSTI and you'll have to browse for it. You are also given, on the same dialog box during the install procedure, a choice of where to put the data. If you have a second internal hard drive, use it.

On my system, the setup procedure took a little longer than I anticipated: the install program seemed to be doing nothing for a time, and at the end, a message box came up that said the files were 100% installed, but the message box didn't close. If this happens, just let t sit there for a few minutes (about 3 minutes for me). Don't click on Cancel. Eventually it will go away and a new box saying that the program is installed will come up.

If you are using other programs that require some kind if dongle, be aware that this installation program installs a dongle driver (yet I have no physical dongle, and the piano comes up without any problem). On KVR -VST.com, there have been reports of this driver conflicting with older drivers that Sonar and other programs use to control dongles. You may have to be go into the other programs and update the driver for them.

[scope4live]

Jake You're A Good Man,
Your help is needed here trust me. GVI is damn stable in STND, but I use it as a shell for live performances as Cubase 4 is unstable, as well as overkill.

GigaPulse and mic modelling are really great to play with, most impulses as you noticed have many options. It's hard to get the pedal up/down impulse to sound any better natively speaking. It was GS3's finest moment IMHO. I can only make it more suitable for my taste by deleting the up impulse, and replacing it with ambience from a PCM91, which is to die for. CVP is not my favorite DEF paino though. Muse's Jazz Grand, and Classical sound great, even though their names do not reflect the style well. For classical I use Vintaudio's C7 w/ GPulse as I described above. I rarely do gigs that require classical, but occasionally I do some Isao Tomita takes on Debussey, and also add the piano. With the C7 and all of my SISS strings and Scope synths going, it does me proud.

I think GVI comes with the mini version of Westgates Acoustic Guitar. Have fun playing that one with the pedal down impulse. I use several different acoustic and DSP modelled guitars and love experimenting with DEF there as well. Using the pedal down on a custom Martin library I have, I got the exact sound of the intro of " And You And I " by Yes. that Steve Howe performed. I did have to use the sustain pedal frequently, but I have to cover acoustic guitar parts frequently, as I enjoy giving players a kick in the ~~~ by doing their parts and emulating the instruments that they should already have.

If you guys could only hear what GVI, and GS3 sound like inside of the Scope DSP enviroment. I route the finest hardware FX into the mixers where the sampled content is treated, and that's why Gigapulse works so well for me. I tend to use it's mic placement and modelling, as well as an ER simulator. That way the PCM91 can devote both of it's DSP chips to re create acoustic and hybrid virtual spaces.

Let's face it, high quality samples with high quality effects can sometimes sound more pleasing than the real thing.

[Jake Johnson]

I probably need more help than I can give. I'm still not sure I understand many things on the GigaPulse page of the interface. For example:

1. My impression is that moving the mic Perspective slider to the left moves the mic towards the piano, increasing the bass response (proximity effect) and some other frequencies, depending on the mic. But I don't always hear much difference. Certainly there's little of no difference in amplitude, as I expected there would be. Does the volume automatically adjust as the slider is moved to the left or right?

2. Does clicking on the Bypass button (upper left corner of the Gigapulse pages) bypass everything--are the mics on the page just for the impulse responses, or are they the mics for the entire recording? Bypassing both the pedal up and pedal down Gigapulses, I still get a piano sound. Is this sound independent from all of the mic settings? (If so, isn't that strange--why is there no control for the basic mic set up that doesn't try to capture the inside of instrument?) If, on the other hand, the mics partly control the basic sound, as opposed to the sound of notes convolving inside the instrument, then why are those mics on the GigaPulse page? Or do the mics really do both, capture the sound reflected off the sound board and capture the sounds bouncing around inside? In which case the mic controls are still active, even if Bypass is selected?

3. Can you share some mp3's of yer work with Scope?

[belbin]

1. My impression is that moving the mic Perspective slider to the left moves the mic towards the piano...?

Perspective is designed for room sounds, and, in theory, moves a mic closer to the source. However, I find that generally it has an inverse effect on volume: increasing perspective tends to make things a little louder in most cases. With resonance models, as opposed to ambience, it's actually helpful to think of perspective as a wet/dry control that doesn't actually attenuate the impulse sound. Attenuating the impulse (by using the proper w/d control) will cause you to hear less of the coloration imparted by the impulse, which is not always desirable. If you want the full timbral effect of the impulse, but with more or less audible (for example) pedal-down resonance, boost perspective.


2. Does clicking on the Bypass button (upper left corner of the Gigapulse pages) bypass everything--are the mics on the page just for the impulse responses, or are they the mics for the entire recording?

The mics on the page are just for the gigapulse. Bypassing them bypasses the mic modelling and the room/resonance. Whatever mic the impulses were recorded with will not be heard if you bypass. Instead, you'll hear only the raw samples, including the color of whatever mic was used for the samples. In the case of this piano, that mic was an AMS soundfield Mk V. I believe the same mic was used for impulsing. That said, if your gigapulse instance is set to 100% wet, whatever replacement mic you use will be what you hear on the sound overall. There is a mic in the gigapulse list called "S-FIELD", and my guess is that this is the original you should choose if you want to use a replacement.[/QUOTE]

Hope this helps,
Belbin

[Jake Johnson]

Many many thanks. So the mic Perspective lets you move just the mics for the acoustic space. So moving them back increases that sound instead of the overall sound, assuming that the wet\dry mix allows it to heard. It will take me some time to learn to work with this arrangement. And the delay controls the room size, so raising the mic level, decreasing the perspective, and making the delay small gives a sound closer to that of what the performer hears, while the opposite settings have an opposite effect. I think.

Thanks again. I'm finding that there's still a lot to learn.

[radim]

To set up this piano:

In the uppermost folder of files in the zip file, double-click on the file CVPiano-GVI-Modeled_Setup.exe. It will perform the entire setup.
However, be aware that it may not automatically find your VSTI folder. You'll be given a choice of where to put the VSTI and you'll have to browse for it. You are also given, on the same dialog box during the install procedure, a choice of where to put the data. If you have a second internal hard drive, use it.

On my system, the setup procedure took a little longer than I anticipated: the install program seemed to be doing nothing for a time, and at the end, a message box came up that said the files were 100% installed, but the message box didn't close. If this happens, just let t sit there for a few minutes (about 3 minutes for me). Don't click on Cancel. Eventually it will go away and a new box saying that the program is installed will come up.

If you are using other programs that require some kind if dongle, be aware that this installation program installs a dongle driver (yet I have no physical dongle, and the piano comes up without any problem). On KVR -VST.com, there have been reports of this driver conflicting with older drivers that Sonar and other programs use to control dongles. You may have to be go into the other programs and update the driver for them.

Thanks - I´ve done it.
Radim

[robh]

Rats! It requires XP SP2.

I've got a system running smoothly on SP1, and now that's not good enough? Grrr!

Rob

[Alexcremers]

Wow, it's certainly worth the download, folks. Nice resonance! But sadly too much CPU drainage. :(

However, is there a way to control the volume of the mechanical pedal and hammer sounds? They sound way too loud when playing pianissimo.





Alex

[beatpete]

However, is there a way to control the volume of the mechanical pedal and hammer sounds? They sound way too loud when playing pianissimo.





Alex

Exactly! There must be a way to adjust (or turn down) the mechanical pedal sounds...

[chesterdesmond]

I d\l it yesterday but haven't tried it yet. There is a rather long thread on KVR about it, which people with Synchrosoft dongles should read before installing. I believe they also talk about CPU usage and adjusting different things on it.

At this point I'm mostly posting to caution about the dongle thing (jeez I sound like a young girl's mother before her first date).

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2689768

[Olivier]

Hi,

just tried it, sound bad.

[Jake Johnson]

In the post titled Midrange in the CVPiano, I've listed edits that I find to make a huge difference in the sound. There were some strange default settings, such as the low velocity samples being reduced in volume, so that their level was a little low, and thus made very low by low velocity strikes. Just setting them to the same level as the other samples solves most of the problem with sudden leaps in amplitude.

I hope other people will try the edits I list. This piano offers many more edits than may seem evident at first glance, before you notice that there are three distinct samples, at varying velocities, for each keyboard range, and each sample can be given different settings on the General and Edit page.

[ddarwin7]

In order to run this I had to install SP2 in my gigastudio computer, which as been running great with SP1 for years. Now I am having Giga problems with loading using SP2. But I did get a chance to try the CVPiano. Not sure I like it yet. The velocities don't seem smooth. It sound too harsh to me. Does not seem to have a smooth transition between velocities. I am getting unpredictable velocity strike results. I have messed aound with the scale knobs too, still cant fix the harshness. I like my personalized GS3 setting with other pianos more in GS3 environment. May be I just need to experiment more. Don't like it too much right now. But again its free, so not complaining much right now. Its just my gigastudio is screwed up now, with SP2.

Like other have mentioned, who does the document refer to a gig file. Not sure, I would like a GS3 version of this.

Dd

[Jake Johnson]

ddarwin7:
The Scale knobs will help, but you have to go in and select the low velocity samples and change their actual volume using the Volume knob. This solves the sudden volume leap problem. (I made some notes on how to do this in the post titled Midrange in the Tascam CVPiano.) Hope this helps.

[Alexcremers]

Its just my gigastudio is screwed up now, with SP2.


It screwed up my GS3 too. It won't start up now. Thanks Tascam!

[ddarwin7]

Hello:

Ok here's an update. I got fed up with this piano. I know its Free, but it just did too much damage to my PC. So I just removed it, and never going to use it again. No I just have to figure out how to roll back to windows SP1. Thanks to all for your help and detailed information, especially to JJ. It just did not work out for me.

Dd