Yeah, I'm pretty much in keyboard heaven right now. I have two keyboards controlling Receptor live, a Kawai MP8 and a Novation X-station.
So that I can save time, all of my thoughts are, of course, imho.
The MP8 has the best piano action available. And controlling Ivory on Receptor is the closest thing to playing a real piano I've ever experienced. I can practice classical music for the first time on a controller and actually feel the music. I've never enjoyed playing classical music on any controller until this point. The last time I felt this good was back in High School when my parents owned a Steinway D. I'm not saying the Receptor plus Ivory is anywhere as good as a Steinway D, but it is miles beyond many typical acoustic pianos I have played.
This being said, at home, I run the Receptor through a Lavry DA10 DAC, through ATC monitors and Audience power conditioning (again all top class). The end result is phenomenal sound and recreation of instruments.
The MP8 has four midi control sliders/buttons and I have the first assigned to Ivory, the second to Scarbee Rhodes, and the third and fourth to real strings and synth strings (Kontakt) and (Atmosphere). I also have a second synth/pad sound from Zebra or Cameleon 5000 but it requires a couple keystrokes to switch to a higher midi channel.
Above the MP8 sits the xstation. The main use is NI B4 II. The x-station is one of the few usb/midi controllers that has nine sliders so I can control all 9 drawbars on the organ. I have set up the Receptor to pass through CC information so the NI template for B4 II works perfectly. I added a few items to it such as reverb, crosstalk control, leslie fast/slow/off, etc. The xstation also controls Zebra for synth lead sounds, Pro53, and any of the aforementioned pad type sounds if I desire.
Again, all of this runs off of one Receptor. Last night at a little show, someone unplugged my power. Power came back on, and my Receptor automatically reloaded itself to the last patch and I was good to go.
My laptop on the other hand lost power to its external drive and took twenty minutes for me to get the drive working again, reload Logic, reset my Fireface 800 driver, etc. Fortunately this was before the show as I would have lost access to my third controller, the Novation Remote SL that controls Logic and a few effect type patches I use. At least I still would have had my bread and butter sounds if this had happened during the show. Now I will have to add a small ups to my laptop setup and have one more thing to carry.
For my live setup, I will reduce the Ivory voices to 50. This is plenty for 95% of my piano playing as if I hold the pedal for too long in a live context, the sound will become mush with the rest of the band and really doesn't benefit me. At home, if I am just practicing solo piano I will load only Ivory and crank the voices up to 75-80 and I can play very long sustained passages with no problems.
I think this is the experience you are looking for. Being able to play a very low latency piano with so many voices that you can play as if you are on an acoustic. I think you will probably need something more powerful to do this with the Italian Grand such as the Jr. or Pro, but I have never tried and could be wrong. Maybe a C version can handle it.
I may sound like a cheerleader for Muse, I guess I'm just that happy with the product at this point! And as picky and fussy as I am about sound, that is rare.
I think my next steps are to program an x-station template or external controller to manipulate VKFX for Scarbee, and Zebra, and to pick up some sort of compact symphony sample set for Kontakt. I can only imagine how great that will be.
-Will
Ivory Italian Grand Receptorized yet?
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- KVRist
- 39 posts since 4 Jul, 2007
Last edited by musiklov3r on Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- 691 posts since 13 May, 2004 from Silicon Valley
Hi again A Dino,
Will has some great usage stories for Receptor/Ivory in practice and performance. I wanted to add a few words.
I am running Ivory/Italian Grand on both a Receptor Pro and Pro Jr. I spent significant effort torture testing various scenarios:
Receptor on buffer size 32 (eg. 1.6ms latency), - heavy sustain, lots of ostinatos.
On an Ivory beta, after significant effort, I could get a glitch (eg. disk busy, resulting in a crackle sound). With the 1.6 final release of Ivory, I could not reproduce any glitch. Most audio cards can't even handle buffers this low. I don't notice latency differences between 32/64 buffer size, so I wouldn't ever use Receptor with this configuration. Still, it makes a good torture test.
Ivory/IG stacked with Kontakt/Scarbee (full sample sets, not the light ones), and pro-53 Pads (also substituted MiniMoog V, and atmosphere). At buffer size 64 (eg. 3.2 ms latency). This also produced satisfying results. Did not really notice latency changing from 32 to 64 - and gave receptor more headroom to handle Ivory and Kontakt both file streaming. This is not a very realistic situation, as I wouldn't typically stack all of these in performance. I'd probably have each of these on different controllers or in different zones.
Ivory/IG, Kontakt/Scarbee, Predator, Stylus RMX, Atmosphere (Buffer 64).
RMX running loops and Predator are pretty processor intensive. Atmosphere/Stylus simply take up RAM. Ivory/Kontakt or more disk intensive. These were all on different Midi Channels, that didn't interfere much with each other. At the same time, I was only doing 1 hand playing on 2 channels at any given time - so this scenario wouldn't stress the system much.
All in All - never really noticed any glitches. I'd never been able to come near this with a laptop either. I'd have to agree with Will - it's hard to beat this platform for live usage given the current technology and alternatives.
Regards,
Kevin L
Will has some great usage stories for Receptor/Ivory in practice and performance. I wanted to add a few words.
I am running Ivory/Italian Grand on both a Receptor Pro and Pro Jr. I spent significant effort torture testing various scenarios:
Receptor on buffer size 32 (eg. 1.6ms latency), - heavy sustain, lots of ostinatos.
On an Ivory beta, after significant effort, I could get a glitch (eg. disk busy, resulting in a crackle sound). With the 1.6 final release of Ivory, I could not reproduce any glitch. Most audio cards can't even handle buffers this low. I don't notice latency differences between 32/64 buffer size, so I wouldn't ever use Receptor with this configuration. Still, it makes a good torture test.
Ivory/IG stacked with Kontakt/Scarbee (full sample sets, not the light ones), and pro-53 Pads (also substituted MiniMoog V, and atmosphere). At buffer size 64 (eg. 3.2 ms latency). This also produced satisfying results. Did not really notice latency changing from 32 to 64 - and gave receptor more headroom to handle Ivory and Kontakt both file streaming. This is not a very realistic situation, as I wouldn't typically stack all of these in performance. I'd probably have each of these on different controllers or in different zones.
Ivory/IG, Kontakt/Scarbee, Predator, Stylus RMX, Atmosphere (Buffer 64).
RMX running loops and Predator are pretty processor intensive. Atmosphere/Stylus simply take up RAM. Ivory/Kontakt or more disk intensive. These were all on different Midi Channels, that didn't interfere much with each other. At the same time, I was only doing 1 hand playing on 2 channels at any given time - so this scenario wouldn't stress the system much.
All in All - never really noticed any glitches. I'd never been able to come near this with a laptop either. I'd have to agree with Will - it's hard to beat this platform for live usage given the current technology and alternatives.
Regards,
Kevin L
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- KVRist
- 39 posts since 4 Jul, 2007
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your previous posts on setting up the receptor, scarbee, etc. you've helped me quite a bit!
In your examples is that with just one of your units and if so which one? Any idea how many voices you were running on Italian Grand? How are you liking the IG vs. the Steinway in regular Ivory?
Thanks,
Will
Thanks for your previous posts on setting up the receptor, scarbee, etc. you've helped me quite a bit!
In your examples is that with just one of your units and if so which one? Any idea how many voices you were running on Italian Grand? How are you liking the IG vs. the Steinway in regular Ivory?
Thanks,
Will
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
Amazing posts...running 2 boards w/1 Rec? Thats what I mean about understanding the unit...
Ivory 1.6 is a much better product, if u cannot get a glitch running 1.6 then thats a very good sign.
And zones....this sounds like an intricate piece w/numerous config possibilities.
Ive never tried an MP8, will have to check 1 out.
So what is the ideal buffer size for the unit running IV/IG?
There is a good discussion on these boards concerning latency. I do notice a bit more latency w/ a Roland board than I do my Ensoniqs, but it may be me..it simply feels that way.
Kevin, Will, thank you both so much for these posts. Excellent info.
A.
Ivory 1.6 is a much better product, if u cannot get a glitch running 1.6 then thats a very good sign.
And zones....this sounds like an intricate piece w/numerous config possibilities.
Ive never tried an MP8, will have to check 1 out.
So what is the ideal buffer size for the unit running IV/IG?
There is a good discussion on these boards concerning latency. I do notice a bit more latency w/ a Roland board than I do my Ensoniqs, but it may be me..it simply feels that way.
Kevin, Will, thank you both so much for these posts. Excellent info.
A.
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- KVRian
- 691 posts since 13 May, 2004 from Silicon Valley
Hi Will and A,
Glad my notes are helpful.
Will - regarding #voices on IG - I don't remember actually, but I was using the default settings that Ivory/IG was using from the muse install, and I was choosing the programs with the highest number of layers. I think I might have also turned convolution reverb off too.
Regarding which unit I used - I did the first test (32 buffer) on both machines. Absolutely no difference. Since the disk size is the only difference, I only did the remainder of the tests on the Pro Jr.
Regarding preferences (Steinway vs. Italian) Unfortunately I haven't been gigging so much in the last year, and can't give a strong preference for live use. In the project studio, and just using Receptor singly for playing piano - I find the Steinway nice and bright, and ballsy in the Bass. This works well for things like Rachmaninoff and 'bold'ish types of pieces. IG seems to cover a whole range of scenarios from 'bright and bold' to 'delicate and detailed'. I notice a sense of 'air' and realism to the delicate sections, and never notice a 'hiss', aliasing, or other sampling artifact. To me, the real difference is the transitions between different velocity layers (when trying to emote different passages differently). These transitions seem much smoother in IG than anything else (even though transitions are very good in the other pianos). This is all hard to describe concretely, but I hope you can understand my impressions.
A. - regarding ideal buffer size - 64 is best for presence and minimizing 'playing latency'. 128 is easier on your Receptor, and will allow you to do more with receptor channels than playing Ivory. Frankly, I just always run at 64 with the Pro units, as that buffer level handles reasonable configurations.
Regards,
Kevin L
Glad my notes are helpful.
Will - regarding #voices on IG - I don't remember actually, but I was using the default settings that Ivory/IG was using from the muse install, and I was choosing the programs with the highest number of layers. I think I might have also turned convolution reverb off too.
Regarding which unit I used - I did the first test (32 buffer) on both machines. Absolutely no difference. Since the disk size is the only difference, I only did the remainder of the tests on the Pro Jr.
Regarding preferences (Steinway vs. Italian) Unfortunately I haven't been gigging so much in the last year, and can't give a strong preference for live use. In the project studio, and just using Receptor singly for playing piano - I find the Steinway nice and bright, and ballsy in the Bass. This works well for things like Rachmaninoff and 'bold'ish types of pieces. IG seems to cover a whole range of scenarios from 'bright and bold' to 'delicate and detailed'. I notice a sense of 'air' and realism to the delicate sections, and never notice a 'hiss', aliasing, or other sampling artifact. To me, the real difference is the transitions between different velocity layers (when trying to emote different passages differently). These transitions seem much smoother in IG than anything else (even though transitions are very good in the other pianos). This is all hard to describe concretely, but I hope you can understand my impressions.
A. - regarding ideal buffer size - 64 is best for presence and minimizing 'playing latency'. 128 is easier on your Receptor, and will allow you to do more with receptor channels than playing Ivory. Frankly, I just always run at 64 with the Pro units, as that buffer level handles reasonable configurations.
Regards,
Kevin L
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- KVRist
- 39 posts since 4 Jul, 2007
Thanks again Kevin for the input. I think I might have to pick up IG for home playing. Unfortunately, I know exactly what you are describing, and now I want it! Live I find that unless I have perfect monitoring, I can't hear all of the layers in regular Ivory anyway.
I too use a buffer setting of 64. I don't notice much of a difference if any between 32 and 64 and I'm sure it gives more processing power. Personally, I don't like running at 128 as I lose the feel of the keyboard with the delay.
I too use a buffer setting of 64. I don't notice much of a difference if any between 32 and 64 and I'm sure it gives more processing power. Personally, I don't like running at 128 as I lose the feel of the keyboard with the delay.
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
Will, I recently picked up the IG...very good...there is a def difference in the Stway's and the IG, dont really mess much w/the other piano's. They both sit in a mix much different than one another, hard to describe as thats always a personal thing. Its def well worth the investment, esp if you already have Ivory. I know that I can sit and play standalone on either for hours, running thru my setup, Im always amazed at the job they have done. I can hear the wood, if that makes sense, the resin tone...something that a dp will never give you.
In a live situation, I would imagine that you would lose some layer sound, depending on the situation. Piano's in general seem to lose that and more as volumns increase, so I would think that Ivory would be the same.
I would certainly use it in my solo to say quintet jazz and funk/jazz jobs..
on the other hand, I would simply use 1 of my dp's for louder vol situations.
Once things get to certain level, well, you understand...
A.
In a live situation, I would imagine that you would lose some layer sound, depending on the situation. Piano's in general seem to lose that and more as volumns increase, so I would think that Ivory would be the same.
I would certainly use it in my solo to say quintet jazz and funk/jazz jobs..
on the other hand, I would simply use 1 of my dp's for louder vol situations.
Once things get to certain level, well, you understand...
A.
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
I would like to add to this..as I mentioned I recently picked up IG...
Laying trks today on a jazz piece, decided to use the jazz IG....
I must say..this is an impressive piano...Its killen me...it cuts, the lines are
positive, no eq required n Im not kidding, the chords, everything about it is
simply wonderful...I am so impressed its silly...
If this will sound on a receptor as it does on my G5 setup...well, where do I sign up? I'll take one....NOW!!!
A.
Laying trks today on a jazz piece, decided to use the jazz IG....
I must say..this is an impressive piano...Its killen me...it cuts, the lines are
positive, no eq required n Im not kidding, the chords, everything about it is
simply wonderful...I am so impressed its silly...
If this will sound on a receptor as it does on my G5 setup...well, where do I sign up? I'll take one....NOW!!!
A.
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- KVRian
- 691 posts since 13 May, 2004 from Silicon Valley
Hi A.
It may sound *Better* on a Receptor than on your G5 - Receptor's DACs are quite good, and sweeten many VSTis.
That's not the reason most people get Receptors though - the reason is for it's conveniences in live performance. Starts-up fast. Typically faster file access than PCs. Very low latency. Simple mixer metaphor in the host design. .... These are compelling reasons to get a Receptor.
Regards,
Kevin L
It may sound *Better* on a Receptor than on your G5 - Receptor's DACs are quite good, and sweeten many VSTis.
That's not the reason most people get Receptors though - the reason is for it's conveniences in live performance. Starts-up fast. Typically faster file access than PCs. Very low latency. Simple mixer metaphor in the host design. .... These are compelling reasons to get a Receptor.
Regards,
Kevin L
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- KVRist
- 39 posts since 4 Jul, 2007
Without a doubt, the Italian Grand will perform better on a Receptor than any G5. Strong statement, but true. And thanks for the tip, now I definitely have to pick up IG.
-Will
-Will
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
Hey guys, Merry Christmas...well I did it..just got a Pro Jr, was delvd today from SW...just cracked the box...1st thing I thought was....wow, ton o bread and no rack ears...whats up w/that...at any rate, I had a few samples preloaded from SW since I am not familiar w/the unit at all...2nd thought was, I want to take this to my 2 gigs tomorrow..really see how Ivory/IG hold up to a heavy swinging quartet..but, I dont even have the time to fire it up much less use it on gigs, so while Im using my dig piano, I will be thinking why didnt I bring the Muse..but in due time..I want to at least be a bit familiar w/the box, plus its late, .......n I need a set of rack ears.......ho ho..ho...
A.
A.
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- KVRian
- 1116 posts since 22 Apr, 2005 from Nashville, TN USA
My rack ears were hidden well. Best I remember they were in a mass of wrapping plastic attached the power cord (which I didn't initially even take out of the box since it was just the standard cord I already had plenty of). Check it out...I'll bet they are in there!ADino wrote:Hey guys, Merry Christmas...well I did it..just got a Pro Jr, was delvd today from SW...just cracked the box...1st thing I thought was....wow, ton o bread and no rack ears...whats up w/that...at any rate, I had a few samples preloaded from SW since I am not familiar w/the unit at all...2nd thought was, I want to take this to my 2 gigs tomorrow..really see how Ivory/IG hold up to a heavy swinging quartet..but, I dont even have the time to fire it up much less use it on gigs, so while Im using my dig piano, I will be thinking why didnt I bring the Muse..but in due time..I want to at least be a bit familiar w/the box, plus its late, .......n I need a set of rack ears.......ho ho..ho...
A.
My advice is spend some SERIOUS time setting it up and messing with it before you gig with it! (in my case, I spent almost a year
)Unless you are JUST gonna turn on Ivory and use it just for that
Congrats and good luck,
John
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Bryan@MuseResearch Bryan@MuseResearch https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=9067
- MUSEician
- 618 posts since 18 Sep, 2003 from Silicon Valley
[quote="ADino"] I need a set of rack ears.......ho ho..ho...
A.[/quote]
The rack ears are wrapped around the power cord in a little plastic bag. Alas, you are not alone, many people don't discover this, so I guess we had better find a more obvious place to put them!
Merry Christmas!
A.[/quote]
The rack ears are wrapped around the power cord in a little plastic bag. Alas, you are not alone, many people don't discover this, so I guess we had better find a more obvious place to put them!
Merry Christmas!
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
Well, I did check that, only thing I can think of is that Sweetwater must not have put them back in as they did some preinstalls for me, no paper or bag around the power chord.
I am going to use it as simply a piano module for now, I have Ivory/IG and Pianoteq installed, along w/Atmo and Trilogy, so once I get it at least a little bit together, its going out w/me. I am going to kik this things butt.
I may get on the horn w/SW, see if they have me ears.
Thanks guys...A.
I am going to use it as simply a piano module for now, I have Ivory/IG and Pianoteq installed, along w/Atmo and Trilogy, so once I get it at least a little bit together, its going out w/me. I am going to kik this things butt.
I may get on the horn w/SW, see if they have me ears.
Thanks guys...A.
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 18 Dec, 2006 from NE US
By the way, in no way am I digging at anyone, I'll get the ears..sno biggy...Ive been dealing w/SW for almost a year now and they do everything totally professional, the salesman I work w/goes out of his way where he really doesnt need to, and theyve busted butt to get me equipment because of my schedule. I dont know of any org that Ive dealt w/lately that would do what they have done. Muse also, as I called them, spoke to someone and voiced all of my concerns about the Receptor which were answered to the point of me ordering the ProJr the next day.
Im simply excited that I decided to do this, plus I AM really in need of a major equip overhaul, decided to go this route w/the ProJr as I really feel that this is the only way for me to go now...I may not take it out this week, but 1 way or another, Im taking it to all of my gigs after Christmas...really cant wait.
Thx for the support, may you all have a wonderful holiday n Merry Christmas...
A.
Im simply excited that I decided to do this, plus I AM really in need of a major equip overhaul, decided to go this route w/the ProJr as I really feel that this is the only way for me to go now...I may not take it out this week, but 1 way or another, Im taking it to all of my gigs after Christmas...really cant wait.
Thx for the support, may you all have a wonderful holiday n Merry Christmas...
A.