The Grandeur converted to Genos

[SnowThief]

I sampled the full length of all 88 notes in the Native Instruments The Grandeur VST (default settings) at 16 different velocities to generate 1,408 stereo samples. I trimmed silence and near-silence from the end of the samples until they could fit on the Genos. I then installed the pack (1.7 GB) on my Genos. With so many velocities I didn't need to use any blending, so each note is only one sound playing.

Here are recordings of Gymnopedie No. 1:

CFX ConcertGrand (default settings): https://instaud.io/3awr
Converted The Grandeur: https://instaud.io/3awt

There are still a couple of things I need to fix, but I just wanted to share my progress.

[willem7397]

Thanks for sharing your progress. Nice work; The Grandeur has a somewhat fuller and darker sound. The CFX is brighter and somewhat thin but seems to have a bit more resonance. I'm curious about your sampling process, how do you create the 16 different velocity samples per note?

[SnowThief]

I'm a software developer and made a tool that sends a key to a VST at a specified velocity and losslessly records the returned sound. Before this you can set up the VST with your preferred settings (such as open/closed lid on a grand piano). I did it this way because I wanted it to work with any VST in case I want to sample more pianos.

[rodrigo.b]

I'm a software developer and made a tool that sends a key to a VST at a specified velocity and losslessly records the returned sound. Before this you can set up the VST with your preferred settings (such as open/closed lid on a grand piano). I did it this way because I wanted it to work with any VST in case I want to sample more pianos.

I hope you sell your software soon 

[Bachus]

I'm a software developer and made a tool that sends a key to a VST at a specified velocity and losslessly records the returned sound. Before this you can set up the VST with your preferred settings (such as open/closed lid on a grand piano). I did it this way because I wanted it to work with any VST in case I want to sample more pianos.

There is a pro version of this available..
Its called sample robot..
There even is a special version for Yamaha montage..

[SnowThief]

There is a pro version of this available..
Its called sample robot..
There even is a special version for Yamaha montage..

Awesome! Could you maybe tell me a week ago?

[willem7397]

I'm a software developer and made a tool that sends a key to a VST at a specified velocity and losslessly records the returned sound. Before this you can set up the VST with your preferred settings (such as open/closed lid on a grand piano). I did it this way because I wanted it to work with any VST in case I want to sample more pianos.

Thanks, that makes sense. I guess you could do the same with a midi file in a daw specifying the different velocities and breaking up the recorded wave file. Not sure if its worth the trouble
Do you have to manually map the samples in Yem so that the right samples are at the right key. Sorry for my ignorance but I have only used YEM for transferring packs.

[SnowThief]

Thanks, that makes sense. I guess you could do the same with a midi file in a daw specifying the different velocities and breaking up the recorded wave file. Not sure if its worth the trouble

That's what I did at first, but it took too long. Some samples are 45 seconds long, so you have to record all notes for 45 seconds to be sure they don't get cut off. That's 45 seconds * 88 notes * 16 velocities = 17.6 hours. With recording until each note ends the entire process is much faster, since the average sample length is much lower than 45 seconds.

Do you have to manually map the samples in Yem so that the right samples are at the right key. Sorry for my ignorance but I have only used YEM for transferring packs.

You don't have to do ANYTHING manually in YEM.

[valimaties]

You don't have to do ANYTHING manually in YEM.

So, how did you transferred sampled voice in Genos?
You have to import sampled voice into YEM before transferring to Genos, that means you created a sample library first (like sf2 or something YEM can read), didn't you?

Regards,
Vali

[SnowThief]

There is nothing you need to do manually in YEM, everything can be automated. I used AutoIt, because I didn't have the patience for manually importing and adjusting 1,408 samples.

that means you created a sample library first (like sf2 or something YEM can read), didn't you?

No. I think that might work, but I read that YEM sometimes has problems when importing SF2s, so I decided not to do it that way.

[BenoitM]

Indeed, some weeks ago I did an 'Import Test' of a SF2 piano (Salamander Grand Yamaha C5 , free :  https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/  ) , but YEM seems to have hard time understanding the SF2 format, since the end result was not really impressive... YEM briefly displays a 'Normalizing Samples' message while importing the SF2 file, and I suspect that this 'normalization' degraded the original samples  (the original samples were good when played alone...)...

So I did not insisted with the SF2 import in YEM ...

The 'AutoIt' way seems to be the best way, thanks to SnowThief for pointing this out ! 

Benoit
   

[Bachus]

There is nothing you need to do manually in YEM, everything can be automated. I used AutoIt, because I didn't have the patience for manually importing and adjusting 1,408 samples.

No. I think that might work, but I read that YEM sometimes has problems when importing SF2s, so I decided not to do it that way.

Autoit, thats indeed a great idee..
Haven't used that in ages..

[rodrigo.b]

Indeed, some weeks ago I did an 'Import Test' of a SF2 piano (Salamander Grand Yamaha C5 , free :  https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/  ) , but YEM seems to have hard time understanding the SF2 format, since the end result was not really impressive... YEM briefly displays a 'Normalizing Samples' message while importing the SF2 file, and I suspect that this 'normalization' degraded the original samples  (the original samples were good when played alone...)...

So I did not insisted with the SF2 import in YEM ...

The 'AutoIt' way seems to be the best way, thanks to SnowThief for pointing this out ! 

Benoit

What is AutoIt? How to use AutoIt with YEM? Help me please

[Bachus]

What is AutoIt? How to use AutoIt with YEM? Help me please

Autoit is a windows program that allows you to automate things..

So if you have to import 4192 samples manually into yem..
You make a small script with autoit that does all these things for you..
instead of a day of work, it takes a few minutes, and all the labour is automated for you

[rodrigo.b]

Autoit is a windows program that allows you to automate things..

So if you have to import 4192 samples manually into yem..
You make a small script with autoit that does all these things for you..
instead of a day of work, it takes a few minutes, and all the labour is automated for you

Thank you! How do I do the script?

[Bachus]

Thank you! How do I do the script?

The program has a graphical interface that creates the script in the background, you will not see the script

[CMS Sounddesign]

Hi !

Just recording and importing samples in .SF2 format are far from exhaustive sounds. In order to get an authentic grand piano sound, different zones have to be considered, which have to be processed in the YEM with different envelopes.
Each Grandpiano has different string zones (from single strings in the bass, up to three / four strings in the high registers), and each string zone responds differently to the release time. In the upper layers, most Grandpianos are undamped and the high layers generally sound. All this must be taken into account when programming in the YEM. The .SF2 format does not transport this data, therefore, despite external mappings with various tools, a lot of manual work in YEM necessary.

Greeting / Peter

[Bachus]

Hi !

Just recording and importing samples in .SF2 format are far from exhaustive sounds. In order to get an authentic grand piano sound, different zones have to be considered, which have to be processed in the YEM with different envelopes.
Each Grandpiano has different string zones (from single strings in the bass, up to three / four strings in the high registers), and each string zone responds differently to the release time. In the upper layers, most Grandpianos are undamped and the high layers generally sound. All this must be taken into account when programming in the YEM. The .SF2 format does not transport this data, therefore, despite external mappings with various tools, a lot of manual work in YEM necessary.

Greeting / Peter

I found this to be true..
The only thing Genos imports are the samples..

[CMS Sounddesign]

Yes, unfortunately.

Yamaha has been sleeping at this point for almost 20 years. At the time of the PSR 8000 I already had the requirements regarding mapping on the computer. Only since the introduction of the Tyros 5 with the YEM platform, Yamaha has taken the long necessary step. Unfortunately, the YEM is far from a decent sampler in many ways.

- No Key Release Samples (Note Off Trigger)
- No fade functions between subvoices
- No macros that allow you to change filter and amp envelopes at the same time.

and much more.

Here Yamaha has more than catching up to do. A "workstation" in the sense of "work" is not the case with regard to the sampler. Even the edition of the internal Voices is simply worse than with the PSR 8000.

No keyswitches, no keyzone, no dynamiczones. That does not correspond anything to a device from the year 2019! We had that already in the 90s in the middle class samplers.

[Sokratis1974]

Yes, unfortunately.

Yamaha has been sleeping at this point for almost 20 years. At the time of the PSR 8000 I already had the requirements regarding mapping on the computer. Only since the introduction of the Tyros 5 with the YEM platform, Yamaha has taken the long necessary step. Unfortunately, the YEM is far from a decent sampler in many ways.

- No Key Release Samples (Note Off Trigger)
- No fade functions between subvoices
- No macros that allow you to change filter and amp envelopes at the same time.

and much more.

Here Yamaha has more than catching up to do. A "workstation" in the sense of "work" is not the case with regard to the sampler. Even the edition of the internal Voices is simply worse than with the PSR 8000.

No keyswitches, no keyzone, no dynamiczones. That does not correspond anything to a device from the year 2019! We had that already in the 90s in the middle class samplers.

I absolutely agree....

[Bachus]

Yes, unfortunately.

Yamaha has been sleeping at this point for almost 20 years. At the time of the PSR 8000 I already had the requirements regarding mapping on the computer. Only since the introduction of the Tyros 5 with the YEM platform, Yamaha has taken the long necessary step. Unfortunately, the YEM is far from a decent sampler in many ways.

- No Key Release Samples (Note Off Trigger)
- No fade functions between subvoices
- No macros that allow you to change filter and amp envelopes at the same time.

and much more.

Here Yamaha has more than catching up to do. A "workstation" in the sense of "work" is not the case with regard to the sampler. Even the edition of the internal Voices is simply worse than with the PSR 8000.

No keyswitches, no keyzone, no dynamiczones. That does not correspond anything to a device from the year 2019! We had that already in the 90s in the middle class samplers.

All yamaha needs to do is combine the modx with the Genos...
For me modx offers pretty much everything missing on the Genos...
And its at 1/4th the price orriginally payed for the Genos..

Onboard sound editing debth on modx is far beyound what yem can do..
And then we don't even talk about the other features like:
Audio over usb, programable arps, 2 dsp/sound up to 8 voices assigned to keys..
And much much more..

The only things missing on modx are va synthesis, wavetable synthesis and a VL synth,..  but thats not something many Genos owners would use much..