IK Multimedia Electromagnetik: Electric Grand C70P

[seagate2019]

I got this as part of the group buy.
Is anyone else using this? I find it terrible out of tune in the lower register, to the point where it's unusable, none of the other pianos in Snappletank are that bad...

Surely they would have tuned it before sampling it!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Are the low octaves consistently a little flat, middle octaves in tune, and higher octaves sharp? Could be a stretch tuning in that case. 41 cents is a pretty big stretch though.

Not sure if CP70s are traditionally stretch tuned like acoustic pianos or were equal temperament instruments like most electric pianos (Rhodes/Wurli's aren't traditionally stretched).

Note: I'm no expert in piano tuning by any means and it's just a guess pulled out of my ass.

[zzz00m]

That '"G0" tuning seems to be an anomaly. If I go down to "C0" and play all notes in that octave, as well as the octave above, the other notes are not as extremely out of tune as that single note.

The rest of the lower octaves are slightly flattish, most within 10-15 cents, but nothing like that one!

Someone should probably let IK support know!

[Tj Shredder]

Its not as bad on my side which might be because I tried with a different tuner. Tuners are bad in the low range in general. But beside this measured tuning, it sounds ok for me. The CP 70 is a very short piano, that means the low strings need to be much thicker than higher strings. The resulting overtones are not that harmonic. The stretched tuning on pianos is made to sound better if combined in a chord with the higher notes. Basically a piano tuner tunes to a higher harmonic of the low note which isn't necessarily a whole number multiple of the lowest frequency, the fundamental. The electronic tuner only listens to the fundamental, the human tuner to the complete sound...

[zzz00m]

Its not as bad on my side which might be because I tried with a different tuner. Tuners are bad in the low range in general. But beside this measured tuning, it sounds ok for me. The CP 70 is a very short piano, that means the low strings need to be much thicker than higher strings. The resulting overtones are not that harmonic. The stretched tuning on pianos is made to sound better if combined in a chord with the higher notes. Basically a piano tuner tunes to a higher harmonic of the low note which isn't necessarily a whole number multiple of the lowest frequency, the fundamental. The electronic tuner only listens to the fundamental, the human tuner to the complete sound...

I hear what you are saying, but that single note IS different from the rest of the samples on that CP70.

I used the tuner in Studio One Pro 5, and watched as the pitch slightly varied during the attack and sustain, while giving it a few moments of sustain to settle down. That "G0" sticks out from the rest.

[seagate2019]

That '"G0" tuning seems to be an anomaly. If I go down to "C0" and play all notes in that octave, as well as the octave above, the other notes are not as extremely out of tune as that single note.

The rest of the lower octaves are slightly flattish, most within 10-15 cents, but nothing like that one!

You're right, the other notes are not as bad, I should have mentioned that in my original post.

Basically a piano tuner tunes to a higher harmonic of the low note which isn't necessarily a whole number multiple of the lowest frequency, the fundamental. The electronic tuner only listens to the fundamental, the human tuner to the complete sound...

The pic of tuner is just there to illustrate the point, don't need a tuner to hear the note is out of whack.

[seagate2019]

I've logged a support request...

[zzz00m]

That '"G0" tuning seems to be an anomaly. If I go down to "C0" and play all notes in that octave, as well as the octave above, the other notes are not as extremely out of tune as that single note.

The rest of the lower octaves are slightly flattish, most within 10-15 cents, but nothing like that one!

You're right, the other notes are not as bad, I should have mentioned that in my original post.

Basically a piano tuner tunes to a higher harmonic of the low note which isn't necessarily a whole number multiple of the lowest frequency, the fundamental. The electronic tuner only listens to the fundamental, the human tuner to the complete sound...

The pic of tuner is just there to illustrate the point, don't need a tuner to hear the note is out of whack.

FYI, you misquoted me on that piano tuner quote. It was TJ who said that!

[seagate2019]

FYI, you misquoted me on that piano tuner quote. It was TJ who said that!

Fixed, sorry!

[zzz00m]

I've logged a support request...

Great! They will probably ask Erik Norlander to tune his piano before he samples it again, LOL!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Norlander

Erik's gear pics: https://eriknorlander.com/equipment

https://youtu.be/KDqhng7PCTs

[zzz00m]

From the IK website:

For Electromagnetik, we sampled an immaculate example of a ‘70s Yamaha CP70B electric grand with 8 real velocities across the keyboard. There are no loops, only full-length samples of a revered electric grand piano in prime playing condition.

And based on this, my conclusion is that note is actually out of tune on the "immaculate" example of a CP70B. I tested that note in ST4 at several velocities, and always got the same result on the tuner.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

From the IK website:

For Electromagnetik, we sampled an immaculate example of a ‘70s Yamaha CP70B electric grand with 8 real velocities across the keyboard. There are no loops, only full-length samples of a revered electric grand piano in prime playing condition.

And based on this, my conclusion is that note is actually out of tune on the "immaculate" example of a CP70B. I tested that note in ST4 at several velocities, and always got the same result on the tuner.

Can you use the Sampletank editor to bring up the pitch on that one note? Or are these locked down from editing? I've never tried it, but I've "re-tuned" some Kontakt libraries.

[seagate2019]

From the IK website:

For Electromagnetik, we sampled an immaculate example of a ‘70s Yamaha CP70B electric grand with 8 real velocities across the keyboard. There are no loops, only full-length samples of a revered electric grand piano in prime playing condition.

And based on this, my conclusion is that note is actually out of tune on the "immaculate" example of a CP70B. I tested that note in ST4 at several velocities, and always got the same result on the tuner.

Erik seems like a sensible lad, surely he wouldn't sample an out of tune instrument...

Can you use the Sampletank editor to bring up the pitch on that one note? Or are these locked down from editing? I've never tried it, but I've "re-tuned" some Kontakt libraries.

I've only started using Sampletank so haven't looked at the editor as yet...

[zzz00m]

From the IK website:

For Electromagnetik, we sampled an immaculate example of a ‘70s Yamaha CP70B electric grand with 8 real velocities across the keyboard. There are no loops, only full-length samples of a revered electric grand piano in prime playing condition.

And based on this, my conclusion is that note is actually out of tune on the "immaculate" example of a CP70B. I tested that note in ST4 at several velocities, and always got the same result on the tuner.

Can you use the Sampletank editor to bring up the pitch on that one note? Or are these locked down from editing? I've never tried it, but I've "re-tuned" some Kontakt libraries.

That idea makes sense, but I've not delved into the SampleTank editor yet. I suspect that the IK commercial libraries may be locked down.

[planetearth]

I've bought a couple of SampleTank libraries in the past that had quite a few instruments out of tune. This was roughly a decade ago, and these were from third-party libraries. These were samples of guitars or string sections that were flat by several cents, and IKMM took care of the issue quickly.

I've also had to report a few patches from a couple of instruments in UVI's "Digital Synsations" collection that were out of tune. The odd thing with those was that these were samples of digital synths. To their credit as well, UVI fixed the samples in an update to the library -- a library which had already been out for about 6 years by the time I reported the issues.

You can edit quite a bit with the SampleTank editor, but that really should be more for tweaking sounds to make them more to your liking -- not to fix tuning flaws. Besides, those tweaks would get wiped out if/when IKMM updates the sample library (unless you save them somewhere else).

I'm considering this library as part of the group buy, so I'd like to see what happens here. Thanks for letting us know about it, @seagate2019.

Steve