I've heard the clavinova's have a new group of voices called "natural", has anyone heard these and if so how do they compare to the other sweet, cool, live stuff?

Simon


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Simon G.K. Williams
simon@svpworld.com
Creative Music & Multimedia
http://www.svpworld.com
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The Yamaha PF1000 keyboard features the Natural voices you are asking about. I've copied a few sentences from the Yamaha website where they explain their Natural voices.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
"For even more realism, the PF1000 features Stereo Sustain samples to recreate the resonance of the strings and soundboard when the damper pedal is pressed, and Key-off samples to simulate the subtle sound that piano keys make when released.
Natural!" voices--pianos, electric pianos, harpsichords and other keyboard instruments--have their own stereo-sampled waveforms, including Dynamic Samples, Sustain Samples and Key-off Samples, for truly expressive performance capability. "Sweet!" voices accurately emulate the natural tone and vibrato of acoustic instruments such as brass and woodwinds. "Cool!" voices realistically reproduce the dynamic textures and subtle nuances of electric instruments. And "Live!" voices are stereo sampled with natural room ambience to ensure maximum realism and expression."

The "Natural Voice" Grand Piano sound on the CVP209 uses more sound ROM than the entire amount used for all the sounds on the Tyros combined (Tyros has 96MB). The CVP209 Natural Grand Piano has more than 100MB (reportedly 118MB) of sound ROM just for the piano sound and because of that it sounds quite stunning. The CVP209 also uses two processor boards, one for the "Natural" voices and one for the Sweet, Cool, Live, and GM voices. In fact the second sound board is identical to that of the 9000 Pro.

The CVP209 also has more polyphony than the Tyros and 9000 Pro because of the dedicated processors (254 note polyphony). Unfortunately that polyphony is divided amongst each sound board (126 notes each) so even though you have 254 note polyphony total, its sort of misleading.

Yamaha's dynamic allocation of polyphony has been a major short coming in their instruments for quite some time. The Motif Series, EX5, 9000 Pro, PSR-9000, and even the Tyros really aren't capable of producing the full polyphony without severe dropouts and note stealing. Other manufacturers instruments with the same or less polyphony don't have this problem so clearly its something Yamaha should remedy. For example.. a Technics KN7000 and Roland XV5080 have 128 voices of polyphony that are usable whereas a 9000 Pro or Tyros have about the same amount of polyphony and yet if you approach even two-thirds of their limit, they will have severe dropouts. Even a Technics KN6500 with only 64 note polyphony can handle its dynamic allocation better.

Come on Yamaha, make a keyboard with enough processing power to actually use all the polyphony you claim the instrument to have. How hard can that really be?

Now, if they could make the CVP209 Portable, then we'd really have something good!!

Al

Yes, polyphony has been an issue for me too; however, after having installed on my 9000 pro the PLG150-PF (piano) board, which adds 64 notes to the total polyphony (126+64=190), I haven't experienced note drop-offs anymore, not even when I play eight notes chords with three sounds layered in the right part.
:-)))

I played a CVP207 at a local music store. The natural piano sounds superb. It felt and sounded "almost" like a grand piano - real close.

Beakybird

I bought a CVP 207 Last year. I find the polyphony to be a huge problem as soon as you layer anything. It doesn't seem to be a problem when your using the accompaniment.
I love the CVP series. However, this is definatly a problem. I have bounced around between different manufacturers over the decades,and have found Yamaha to be very durable. So I will continue to by their product. Hopefully they will get it perfect someday.

Regards,
Dennis