Korg Forums

Rodney wrote:...

I've got a weird effect that I absolutely love the acoustic piano sounds through headphones (Sony MDR7506) -- they're expressive, have plenty of punch, and I can make inner voices sing out. But through any speakers I've tried (my studio Tannoy active near-field monitors, my Roland KC-300, or through several different stage monitors) it sounds very different. The ringing of the middle notes takes over much of the sound field, I notice some odd phasing that makes certain notes sound artificial, much of the highs on the attack seem to disappear, and I have a hard time bringing out melodic notes above the background notes. I wish I knew what to do, because I never had this problem with my Korg SP-200 or my previous Roland keyboards. I've never heard such a big difference between phones and speakers before.

...

But the most disappointing thing for me is the inability to get it to sound good through speakers.

So far with my SV-1 I've found you need a lot of amp power but keep a very soft touch to get much out of it on stage. I barely touch the keys on the normal setting and let the amp do all the work.

I played Rolands before this keyboard and they were much different.

I would not play the SV-1 through my KC-500. I run Mackie SRV 450v2's on stage and Alesis monitors in my studio - both work for me.

I don't have a SV1 but have a Triton Extreme and I must say I find exactly the same thing. The headphones are soooo sweet, but I've tried just about every kind of speaker system there is and I can't get anywhere near the sound that is coming through the headphones into a speaker system. Very much "ringing' on pianos and E. Pianos. I'm all "tweaked out" with the system. I'm not gigging live so it's not that major a problem for me but it would be nice to have the pianos and E.pianos sound at least close to the Headphones going through a speaker system If you come up with a solution, I'd love to hear it.

Old Guy

Old Guy wrote:I don't have a SV1 but have a Triton Extreme and I must say I find exactly the same thing. The headphones are soooo sweet, but I've tried just about every kind of speaker system there is and I can't get anywhere near the sound that is coming through the headphones into a speaker system. Very much "ringing' on pianos and E. Pianos. I'm all "tweaked out" with the system. I'm not gigging live so it's not that major a problem for me but it would be nice to have the pianos and E.pianos sound at least close to the Headphones going through a speaker system If you come up with a solution, I'd love to hear it.

Old Guy

Are you sure that is your synth/amp and not your room? Symptoms you mentioned resemble flutter echo. In essence, sound reflections are so fast and blend in your original sound and change it in negative way.

More info here: http://www.realtraps.com/rfz.htm

Cheers,
Ed

vanhaabe wrote:

Old Guy wrote:I don't have a SV1 but have a Triton Extreme and I must say I find exactly the same thing. The headphones are soooo sweet, but I've tried just about every kind of speaker system there is and I can't get anywhere near the sound that is coming through the headphones into a speaker system. Very much "ringing' on pianos and E. Pianos. I'm all "tweaked out" with the system. I'm not gigging live so it's not that major a problem for me but it would be nice to have the pianos and E.pianos sound at least close to the Headphones going through a speaker system If you come up with a solution, I'd love to hear it.

Old Guy

Are you sure that is your synth/amp and not your room? Symptoms you mentioned resemble flutter echo. In essence, sound reflections are so fast and blend in your original sound and change it in negative way.

More info here: http://www.realtraps.com/rfz.htm

Cheers,
Ed

I've actually done some treatment on my room (several bass traps, some absorptive materials here and there), because I do record my ensemble in there. While it's hardly a high-end recording studio, I doubt that what I'm hearing is flutter echoes. It's a lack of the attack portion of the notes. I don't have problems with listening to other keyboards using the same speakers, nor with listening to recordings of my real piano. The surprise to me is how big the effect is with this keyboard compared to other keyboards I've owned.

Hey, has anyone had any trouble connecting to the SV1 Editor? I have tried everything including adding a USB 2.0 PCI card.

USB Midi works fine, but the editor doesn't see the SV1 for some reason, its just a blank screen. Any ideas?

sc

Ok, I have found that the editor works fine on my MacBook, so it must be some USB configuration issue on my desktop PC. Guess I'll have to contact Korg.

Hello, I'm looking seriously at buying an SV-1. I'm really curious about future expansions to this board. Has Korg indicated that there will be additional sounds available in the future? I'd love to see some mallet instruments, mellotron sounds, etc.

Also, are they planning to fix the tape echo/tap tempo issue?

Thanks in advance.

fancyPantsZero wrote:Hello, I'm looking seriously at buying an SV-1. I'm really curious about future expansions to this board. Has Korg indicated that there will be additional sounds available in the future? I'd love to see some mallet instruments, mellotron sounds, etc.

Also, are they planning to fix the tape echo/tap tempo issue?

Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't count on new sounds -- from what I've seen, they're open to making modifications of the existing sounds (of what kind, I'm unsure), but I'm not sure if there's even a possibility of adding brand new sounds. Get it for the sounds it has if you like them. If you need a bunch of other sounds, an external module is probably a better bet.

I'm the one who complained about the weird phasing sound through speakers as opposed to the beautiful sound through headphones. I've done a bunch of investigating, and I thought I'd post my results since it may be helpful to others who have noticed the problem.

The problem seems to be a stereo/mono thing. The reason the stereo pianos sound bad through my Roland KC-300 amp is that the amp is mono. The reason they sounded bad through my studio monitors is that I didn't have the channels panned wide left and right -- so it was functionally two mono speakers. Once I'd fixed that, the sound came to life.

As I understand, since the piano 1 and 2 samples were recorded from a pair of microphones located in different positions over the strings, when the signal is combined, it causes phasing interference between the two recordings. In short, some waves are doubled and others are cancelled, depending on the ratio of the wavelengths to the distance from the string to each microphone.

The signals get combined when I run stereo cables to the keyboard amp and combine the signals there, or when I plug one cord into the Left/Mono jack on the SV1, which combines the signals inside the keyboard. If I plug in just the Right cord, I actually get a better-quality sound, but it's only one of the two recordings (perhaps a bit heavy on the treble).

Once I'd figured out that much, I was able to determine that another reason I didn't like the sound was that my Roland amp is not giving me very good reproduction -- whether it's the design or whether it's got some worn-out components I can't tell. But I need something usable for gigging.

I went by the Bose store and picked up their L1 Compact system to try out. This is a mono system designed to disperse sound around an area (as opposed to a traditional keyboard amp, which is highly directional). For playing in a chamber setting with non-amplified musicians, this is a much better setup since it sends sound to the other musicians as well as the audience, and in a pinch it will work for a complete PA.

The Bose L1 Compact has two channels -- one dedicated for a vocal microphone, the other has a variety of inputs including a single 1/4 inch plug, stereo RCA inputs, and a stereo 1/8 inch jack.

The mono piano sound (Piano sound 3) sounds much better in a mono situation than pianos 1 and 2. Keep in mind that in 99% of live concerts, the audience is hearing things in mono. Since stereo doesn't work for 80% of the crowd anyway, virtually all live sound engineers use mono. This means that all of us should avoid pianos 1 and 2 in that situation. It may sound fine to you if you have a stereo stage monitor, but the audience isn't hearing that.

Plugging the L/mono output into the Bose L1 gives a very nice piano sound when you play the mono sampled piano 3. Pianos 1 and 2 are thinner and a bit phasey, though not too bad. They improve by using the R channel instead of L/mono. The electric pianos are mostly mono samples and sound great.

On one message board I came across a recommendation to use a stereo 1/4 plug in the Bose L1, and that it would do a better job of combining the stereo signals. Since I've got such a cord, I thought I've give it a try. (The cord has two mono 1/4 plugs at the keyboard end, a single stereo 1/4 plug at the other).

Surprisingly, pianos 1 and 2, the stereo samples really do sound much better. Why? I couldn't tell you. It makes no sense to me, except perhaps that the Bose has their proprietary "ToneMatch" algorithms messing with the sounds once they enter the machine to improve how the signals are combined. The effect is real, and if you want to use those stereo piano samples, try it out.

But even more surprisingly, all of the mono sounds (piano 3, Rhodes, etc.) sound gawdawful using the stereo cable. Not just phasey, but horrible, staticy, jangly, weak. I can't explain that either.

Anyway, for a piano that is so obviously useful for live gigging, it would have been nice if Korg had included mono samples of ALL of the primary pianos -- the Japanese, the German, the Upright -- since mono samples are the only ones useful in 99% of live shows. Fortunately, the electric pianos are very useful, the Mono Grand is useful, and I'll continue to use it. The stereo grands are very nice for recording, listening through headphones, and playing through stereo speakers in very small gatherings where everyone gets the stereo effect -- just make sure the mixing board pans them hard left and right.

And if I've made any fundamental mistakes in the above, please correct me. I want to learn how this works, and not mislead others if I've gotten it wrong...

Does anyone know if you can use both the 1/4" and xlr outputs simultaneously? The manual seems to imply it's either/or. I had thoughts of running 1/4" outs to stage monitor and xlr to FOH. Doable?

Thanks,
Ed

vanhaabe wrote:Does anyone know if you can use both the 1/4" and xlr outputs simultaneously? The manual seems to imply it's either/or. I had thoughts of running 1/4" outs to stage monitor and xlr to FOH. Doable?

Thanks,
Ed

Yes, they're all active all the time. And if you add in the headphone jack, you can send the sound to three different destinations simultaneously!

The one difference is that the 1/4 inch outs have the feature that if you only plug something in the L/Mono plug, it combines the L and R signal into one signal. If you only plug in one XLR, you only get half of the stereo signal.

Thanks Rodney....

Korg released first SV1 update: http://www.korgpa.com/pa_root/en/produc ... _soft.html

Cheers,
Ed

Thanks for letting us know about the OS update! I had to do two tries on my Mac to get the Korg to show up on the desktop to get it to work, but it did work the second time.

Do make a backup of your sounds to the disk before doing this, since it re-installs the factory presets without warning!

The good news is they've implemented a solution for the "bumping the buttons while playing" problem that several players were complaining about. As they describe it,

"The response time of the front panel controls has been refined to avoid
unintentional bumping of the buttons during performance."

What I notice now is that if I press the button firmly, it goes on. If I quickly tap the button (as I might by accident), it has no effect. If it doesn't turn on and I quickly tap it again, it goes on.

This seems like a very nice solution, since adding a Panel Lock key is not going to happen to my keyboard, and should work for me. (As a sometime accordion player I'm used to having sensitive switches at the top end of the keys, so this hasn't been a big problem for me.)

Thanks for sharing your expereience. I can't wait to get my SV1/73 sometimes in February.

Cheers,
Ed

has anyone else tried the sound pack #1 released for the sv-1 a few days ago? this is really my first electric piano so i am a little bit lost on how this all works are the new sounds meant to replace the factory presets, or is it something that you can pick and choose sounds that you like from?