PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I don't hear it in my monitors or my earbuds both of which are fairly high quality but on my cheap stereo I hear it. Do you hear the clear and loud distortion?

I don't hear any distortion, but then again if it isn't obvious I am concentrating more on the music.
Nice piece, especially the first half.

Not on Super high fidelity dell mini9 speakers or headphones

Something about this stereo but only on the piano. So strange. Someone let me know if you hear it.

can you try with the same stereo and headphones. its probably the speakers resonating at a frequency that is not as strong in most other material.

Yes I tried it. It is the speakers but it's only on the piano and I have never heard this before in any music. Quite strange. Greg said he heard it in my video though.

What brand of speakers are they i will make sure never to buy any .

if they are cheap its probably because they have a simple capacitor crossover which makes the woofer try to reproduce higher frequencies than it is meant to.

Sony LOL.

no distortion in the mp3 that I can hear.
Pulled it into Samplitude to look at it, and it's clean at -3db.

Near the end, at the ending run, it almost sounds like the samples themselves are clipping, but I don't see it on the scope.

Listening through RME Multiface to M-Audio speakers (better than Sony )

On the video perhaps the encoding process added some artifacts or clipping on some of the stronger passages.

Greg

It does seem to be caused by my speakers but also related to compression which would be worse in video. The video has the same piano distortion but more of it.

how are you recording it? MIDI-piano? Using compression in the master channel?

Greg

No audio compression. It's a VSTi piano. I don't use audio compression anymore because no matter how I set it, it always sounds better when I hit the bypass button.

HA! I just went to the official Roland V-Piano demo site and after going through different pianos, I heard the distortion again on one of the presets.

so the actual sample is distorted?
nice.

Greg

It's converted into a sample before exporting but that is the same thing as just exporting the song anyway. I like the cheap capacitor in my speakers explanation. Now that I'm sensitive to that distortion sound, I heard a bit of it again today in some streaming media. Piano seems to emphasize that frequency or frequencies and so does data compression. It happens only on the upper keys when sustain is used. It's probably going to happen in other cheap shelf speakers too but never in ear buds. Recording through a microphone would probably mitigate it. I might try that. Good experiment.

What happens with the capacitor crossover is that all the signal is sent to the woofer, and low frequencies are prevented from hitting the tweeter because it would blow from the much higher energy in the low frequencies, woofers have a lot of "break up modes" above their rated band.

if you ever look at something like http://www.zaphaudio.com/ you will see that if you want good speakers with passive crossover, a good one has inductors to keep out of band content from hitting the wrong driver. a good crossover can cost as much as a driver. (and a good crossover tames other shortcomings of the drivers even in their rated band)

(i have built 2 of his designs for friends and they are excellent for the price)

A piano note will usually be mixed in with some other instruments, so it wont be as loud, so you wouldn't notice the distortion as much. its probably a great idea to bring a CD of solo piano music to the store if you are auditioning speakers

otherwise even really crap active monitors these days have the crossover before the amplifier, with a separate amplifier for each driver (they chip amplifiers are very good and very cheap these days) so they may sound woody, tinny, boxy or otherwise "saved money on the box and drivers instead" but they wont distort your piano

Probably through good professional mastering the distortion wouldn't be as bad. I was listening to some Charles Ives solo piano on Pandora last night and I didn't hear distortion in it.

do you notice the distortion more on some notes than on others? maybe the other Charles Ives you heard did not use the actual note that causes the problem, or the notes were short enough not to notice as much.

Just for a laugh, record playing up the keyboard slowly and then play it back on the Sony speakers, Ill wager there is a certain note, and probably the octave above it where the distortion is the most prominent. also the setting of the piano sound might matter depending on its frequency content, so use the same setting you did for the original song.

If it is F# i will laugh because there used to be this rumor that japanese speakers were tuned to play loudly on that note

I can tell it's worse on the Bosendorfer, it's in the upper notes not the bass notes within a certain range, not too high and I think the sustain causes it because of the way the notes interact with each other. I'm sure I would not hear it if I played slowly with no sustain pedal. It will be a good test. I should try it tomorrow.

Not Hearing any distortion.I turned it up uncomfortable loud aswell.