Ivory settings for live use, or other Piano possibilities?

[burningbusch]

Also, I don't know how you can get around the stereo issue. These pianos were all recorded in stereo and that's the only way they sound decent. Even using a small stereo amp so that you can hear it properly makes a big difference.

[tripjack]

Thanks for the input, I'll look into the Akoustik pianos and see what they sound like. As far as the Mono vs. Stereo - most clubs I've ever played in always run their rooms in mono, only the nicer theatres have had any kind of stereo options, so it's going to get summeed to mono at some point anyway. Also, I have my Ivory and B4 panned to independant outputs (Ivory=L B4=R) so the FOH guy has more control over my volumes for each instrument.

[cbreeze34]

I guarantee the problem is with the club-size PA systems you are performing through. Most instruments and even vocals are passable through a typical house PA, but the piano is an exception. To sound good, an acoustic piano requires extremely accurate monitors... the frequency spectrum is just too complex. summing to mono isn't going to make any difference because the stereo information in piano samples only adds a little depth and realism. so really it probably doesn't matter what plug-in you use. even a decent keyboard amp will most likely sound about the same as a house PA system. basically the only solution is to buy a good keyboard amp and a solid parametric EQ (or perhaps use a good EQ plug-in), then find a sound engineer with a spectrum analyzer who can create an EQ curve that makes up somewhat for the amp's shortcomings. it won't be perfect, but it'll be better than relying on the house PA to reproduce the piano sounds. of course if you play bigger shows where the keyboard amp isn't loud enough on its own, you'll just have to hope the PA is good enough to reproduce it accurately. i myself use akoustic piano, and typically take along a small power amp (in the rack w/ the receptor) and a single yamaha club series speaker, which i have bi-amped and eq'd the heck out of to make it sound passable. and my studio monitors still sound a lot better.

[ADino]

Ive been following this thread to see if u have solved this Ivory problem. Have you? I use Ivory w/my G5/Logic/RME setup, minor glitches here n there, but its a great sounding piano. I have been pondering getting a Receptor for awhile now, 2 reasons: 1, playing live so I can have a Stway on my gigs, 2, using it w/Logic to take less of a hit on the machine. Now if I run a track of Ivory with several instances/tracks of, say, Miroslav, I have to freeze tracks. So Im thinking that the Rec would alleviate that problem. Anyone here doing that? But, back to the thread, I would be really interested in hearing from Ivory/Recp users who are using this setup live, and getting good results.

Thanks, A.

[ADino]

Im going to add an additional comment..I read a lot of posts that deal with the speakers, amp etc that people are using to get a good sounding Ivory live..could it be that the Receptor, at this stage of developement is simply not powerful enough to run large sized samples?
Could this have something to do with the quality of sound? If I look at it, its basically a pc in a rack mount box..yes I understand what it does...but lets look at the processor, wouldnt a more powerful pro help this a bit? Memory...max at 2 GB...I run 4.5 in my Mac setup and Im bumping that to 6 soon. So why wouldnt the Recp benifit from a stronger cpu and the ability to run 4 to 6 gb mem? So we've got a stronger pro in the higher end Recp, but its still at 2 GB mem. It would appear to me that working with more memory would help this scenario, but would it solve the sound quality issue that Ive read about on a few different sites?
Any answers to my questions are greatly apptd.

Thx, A.

[tripjack]

I was never able to find a setting that sounded anywhere near decent. I went back to my Kurzweil Micro Piano which despite being synthetic sits great in a live mix... I still used the Receptor for B4II, which worked out great with the Axiom 61 controller. I tried all kinds of Ivory settings, and also converted some Gigasample piano patches in Kontakt but they all had the same sonic problems when trying to use them live with a PA or with my Roland Keyboard amp for that matter. I imagine it indeed has something to do with the difference in design/function of studio PA gear vs. Studio Monitors because it still sounds great at home, I just wonder why the sound of B4 isn't affected as drastically as Ivory is in that situation. Maybe it's just that a piano sample is much more complex harmonically than an Organ which isn't much more than stacking sine waves.