know of keyboard with excellent piano sound and digital outs??

[artsong]

i'm thinking of selling my rd-700 with analog outs to get a keyboard with digital outs to reduce keyboard hiss(and hopefully boost volume) in my recordings. i mainly just use piano sound and got the rd-700 for it's realistic piano quality. but the volume is too low going to the mixer and there's too much hiss with all the gains having to be all the way up.

 

it seems that it would be better to have something with digital outs. but i was told most keys with digital outs that are being sold so far, are synths, and not so much ones with a good piano feel or sound. anyone know of any thing or have any suggestions? i did see an expensive kurtzweil that had em. i didn't want to spend $2000 at this point.

 

thanks in advance for any help.

[Rauzi]

You shouldn't be using gain at all...

 

analog outs on digital piano's are line level. Which means they are already amplified and don't need any gain.

[The Pro]

I was on the same quest so I bought the mLan (Firewire) expansion board for my Motif ES8... I was greatly disappointed to find that it didn't help in reducing hiss from the keyboard. I also tried a Kurzweil PC2x which had an SP/DIF output... same story.

 

The most dramatic difference came when I started using softsynths. I began using the Steinway D piano sample in Colossus and was amazed at the quiet, no-hiss levels I was able to get from it. I have found this to be true of other softsynths as well such as B4, Reason and even M-Audio Key Rig. I was able to measure this using Sound Forge and there's no question that my "noise floor" is much lower when I record with softsynths than when I use hardware keyboards.

 

Now I can record very quiet piano passages with no hiss at all and the Steinway D piano sample in Colossus is my fav piano sound.

[jazzed]

Pro, wouldn't that depend a bit on the audio interface you use? What audio interface are you using?

[The Pro]

 

Originally posted by jazzed Pro, wouldn't that depend a bit on the audio interface you use? What audio interface are you using?

 

 

M-Audio 1010LT currently.

 

I don't think the audio interface is the key... I used the 1010LT with my hardware synths too and didn't get the ultra-quiet no-hiss sound I am getting with the softsynth pianos. I can't be the only one noticing this - I hope others will comment if they've noticed a big difference in noise between hardware keyboards and softsynths.