I just got a Pianophonic. I am experiencing sound problems with some of the presets.
On the factory SDCard set I am getting distortion and clicking on presets 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8. This is most noticeable in the range of the Attack control between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. There is sometimes a clicking that occurs during the transition between the hammer and wavetable sections.
I downloaded the Piano_XL set of presets and put them on a brand new high-quality Sandisk SDCard and they all play nicely except #12 and 13 Felt Piano which are clearly distorted.
I am driving the module from MIDI. And I have found no settings that eliminate the distortion or clicking.
Also sometimes presets fail to load when I select them with the numbered Part Selector. I just get rapid flashing of the Trigger button and no sound. Sometimes selecting another preset solves the problem. Sometimes a power cycle is required.
I updated the firmware to v0.7.19 via USB cable, but I don't know how to confirm what version is on the module.
Could there be a problem with my module?
Regarding distortion, the newer 'smooth' factory library is distortion free. The issue arises from the wavetable 'sampled' sounds having low frequency artifacts embedded in them. Depending on the settings, particularly high Morph Speed and Overdrive, crackling can be heard as Pianophonic jumps between waveforms that contain differing DC offsets. I hope that helps.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for getting in touch about your Pianophonic.
There is a new firmware version available shortly that should improve reliability on loading.
The distortion issue is more nuanced since the wavetables can be heavily processed by the unit, some controls particularly the Compress control will reveal artefacts in the wavetables that were resynthesised from acoustic instruments. The felt piano, on account of its soft tone, is the most difficult to conceal these artifacts.
One other control that may help with output distortion is Shift Compress which controls the output level of the unit, reducing this may help.
Let me know how you get on
Kind regards
Jason