Recording digital piano

F

freakout116

New member
I bought a digital piano (Casio AP-38) with Line Outs to record since an acoustic piano was pretty much out of the question. Problem is recording direct from the line out to my sound card gives me a muddy sound. In order to get the sound decently eq'd requires massive massive mid cuts and high boosts, leaving a high frequency buzz.

I can cut it down to an acceptable level, but I'm curious if there's a better way to do it. But I don't want to spend any money on a method that I don't like. Three questions...

1) I'd try MIDI out, but I really want a realistic sounding piano in my recordings... as much as possible anyway. How would the MIDI sound?

2) I've considered getting an equalizer to throw in the line before my sound card... if i have to do the same amount of adjusting would it make a difference?

3) Or should I just try miking the speakers on the piano?

Need some advice before I proceed with anything. Thanks for your time board!

Chris
 
if you are using the standard midi piano, it is going to sound like crap, but the beauty about midi is that it is vector. do some researching on soundfonts. if you route the midi through a soundfont, you have access to hundreds of different piano sounds. a free one that ought to be a good place to start is ns_piano (http://www.natural-studio.co.uk/). if you're using sonar, livesynth will take care of the soundfont business for you.

justin
 
Just for the record, MIDI doesn't sound like anything at all...in fact it doesn't "sound" at all, as all it is is controller information designed to trigger a certain sound, at a certain velocity, at a certain pitch, etc...so, if your using MIDI, like the previous poster suggested, you can use your Casio as a controller (sendidng MIDI), and have other synths (soft or otherwise), or Soundfonts (which probably is a good idea in this case), and the MIDI messages from the Casio will trigger sounds from a different synth or soundfont. Hope I didn't add more confusion to the "stew"..:)
If so, grab a book on MIDI, and you'll be flying straight in no time!
 
Sorry if this sounds obvious but are you using the "mic" or "line in" on your sound card. Never use the mic in on your soundcard (assuming you're using Soundblaster or something like it). That's only for those cheap headset mics you talk over the net with.

Also, check your "line volume" level on your Windows panel. Double click on the speaker icon at the bottom right of your screen to bring up the panel. If line volume is set too high it's really gonna sound bad (distorted).

DD
 
Try sending your line outs to a good quality amp or PA and miking those speakers. I have similar problems with my Yamaha P80 - sounds great through headphones and crap recorded, and I'm using an AW4416 to record it to, so it's not a crappy soundcard issue.

I haven't tried this myself yet as I'm not recording it at the moment, but will one day soon.

Cheers
 
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