Did anything change with the Piano Synthdef in 3.2?

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21

Applied the PR and it sounds much better. To my ear could possibly do with a tad more, but I think it is acceptable :as is: in the pr

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22

Thanks for taking a look, I just double checked and youā€™re right, it was still a bit quiet. Iā€™ve bumped it up a bit more and pushed it again, does this sound better to you now?

Iā€™ve noticed that removing the scaling from vel has also changed the timbre of the sound. I think it now sounds better - closer to a piano played ā€œnormallyā€. Before it was harsher, almost as if the string was being plucked.

I also found that not quite all synths have the same level - :dark_ambience is much quieter, and :hollow is also quite quiet. Would this be a good time to adjust them to match the other synths or is it better to avoid breaking changes? What do you think @samaaron? Iā€™d be happy to make the changes (possibly porting them to SuperCollider at the same time) if you think itā€™s worth adjusting them.

23

Sounds better now youā€™ve upped the gain a bit. As regards other synths, I agree that one or two are rather soft. However, many people will have already written stuff employing the synths as they are, so I think it probably best to leave them aloneā€¦ or may introduce new additional normailsed ones with a separarte nameā€¦maybe a -N suffix which the user could select as an alternative.
The Piano synth is a special case as it was louder before already.

2 Likes
24

hi everybody,

try today the 3.2.1 BETA 2 on windows 10 and the volume of the piano is weaker than on 3.2 on ubuntu.
Maybe itā€™s what you want but il i test the code of my last post ā€œmixedā€ on v3.2 tomorrow, the tb303 is louder than the piano.

25

I think tb303 has always been louder than many synths in my experience. I compared the piano volume with that of the pluck synth as they are more comparable percussive instruments, rather than a sustained one like tb303.

However Iā€™ve just tested 3.2.1beta against my own build and it looks as if the latest tweak may not be included,as my own build at the latest commit # 9c27ec is a bit louder.
I think the pr was modified, and perhaps Sam didnā€™t include the change.
maybe @samaaron will check this.

This is what I use to compare

live_loop :compare do
  8.times do
    synth :piano ,note: scale(:c4,:major).tick
    sleep 0.2
  end
  8.times do
    synth :pluck ,note: scale(:c4,:major).tick
    sleep 0.2
  end
end
26

this is what i get

https://github.com/nlebellier/autour-de-sonic-pi/blob/master/amp-test-spi3.2.1-beta02.wav
github doesnā€™t help to post wav file to be readā€¦

Question : would it be possible to upload sound into this forum ?

27

I used wget to download your file which worked. It is much quieter than the piano synth I get from the latest download from SP source, so I guess the windows build may have used an earlier version, or else something weird is happening.

EDIT
Iā€™ve just installed the windows 3.2.1beta and it sounds fine there. Are you sure youve got the right version? I found that because the url is so long that if I just clicked it it tended to download the previous version. I ended up downloading the msi it on my mac and transferring it across.

28

So yes the piano volume is good now with the beta 2.

But iā€™m not fan at all of its new soundingā€¦ I prefer the previous one more realistic imho
Would it be possible to make two versions : piano (the previous sound) and piano_**** (i suggest piano_reverb_too_much :slight_smile: )
Cheers

29

The problem with the previous one, was that the velocity was internally multiplied by 4, so the default of 0.2 was actually 80% of the maximum, and anything over 0.25 was sending out of range values to the synth.

You can recreate the sound of the old one by using a vel of 0.8, and reducing the amplitude accordingly.

30

ok perfect i will try :slight_smile: thanks for your explanations.