help! i've got piano distortion!

hello

I've got problems with electric piano distortion through my MLs. I am using an Onkyo TX-SR500 receiver to power a pair of Claritys, Scripts and one cinema center speaker. The signal sounds perfect through the onkyo's headphone output!!! But when it reaches the speakers I get a distortion in the mid to high mids of the piano sound.

Is this a problem with the speakers or the receiver???

Please help!!!

Thank you,

D

fathermackenzie said:

hello

I've got problems with electric piano distortion through my MLs. I am using an Onkyo TX-SR500 receiver to power a pair of Claritys, Scripts and one cinema center speaker. The signal sounds perfect through the onkyo's headphone output!!! But when it reaches the speakers I get a distortion in the mid to high mids of the piano sound.

Is this a problem with the speakers or the receiver???

Please help!!!

Thank you,

D

Click to expand...

Hola...It depends...if you bring down the volumen, do you still have distortion?
If you do, could be two things, one, you are saturating the input of your amplifier, two, your amp does not handle live piano performance. It is very difficult to break an electrostatic speaker, but not impossible. I think your problem is your receiver. When you say that with headphones works perfect, you are using not the output stage of your amplifier to drive the headphones, you are using just the first stage of amplificaction. The next question is, do you have the problem with all program material, or just when you play the piano?...my guess is your receiver the culprit, not the Clarities or any other ML speaker. Your Onkyo, with all respect, is one of the smallest Onkyo receivers, and ML needs a lot of juice...juice that your receiver lacks...I am not saying that you can not use it, what I am saying is that with your receiver´s rated power, ML can not play too loud...happy listening,
Roberto.

fathermackenzie said:

...

Is this a problem with the speakers or the receiver???

Please help!!!

Thank you,

D

Click to expand...

Jumping to a quick conclusion here, A- Your speakers are OK, so B- it must be the underpowered receiver.

Buy / borrow a good amp (many threads on what a good amp is here) and test. You'll be surprised at how much better the ML's can sound.

If your Onkyo has pre-amp outs, this test should be pretty simple. Just wire the pre-outs to the amp-ins and you speakers to the amp, then re-test.

Make sure it's an amp with sufficient current capacity, not just high wattage (although they usually go hand in hand, but you'll find some 100wpc amps that blow away a 200wpc in terms of current delivery into low impedances).

Here are the specs for your receiver:

Click HERE

Definitely that receiver is underpowered for all of your speakers. Like Roberto said, it is probably ok at a low volume level.

Or you know, it could be that the recording is crap...

I love Diana Krall, Rickie Lee Jones, and Norah Jones. Every Krall CD I have, and almost all the Rickie Lee CDs I have sound really good in the voice and piano. And on the Norah Jones CDs, the bass, drums, and voice sound heavenly, but on EVERY SINGLE Norah ones CD I have (and I have them all, I think) the piano sounds like absolute crap. It's flat, harsh, and sibilant as all get out. I think her recording engineer is just using the wrong mic or something...

I thought it was my system, so I took the Norah Library to Soundworks in Kensington MD, and played the CDs on their Summits (Ayre Amps, Ayre pre, Audio Research CD, Nordost cables all around) and the voice, drums, and bass were simply heavenly--like an angel choir. Then the piano came in...Nails on a blackboard...

As you can imagine, I was actually relieved to find that these recordings sounded equally as crappy on a $30,000+ system as they did on mine...

There seems to be a rash of recordings right now that otherwise sound fantastic, but have absolutely hair-raising piano tracks. The Regina Spektor CDs I have are the same on most tracks--lush voices, delightfully tight drums and bass, and then, that horrendous piano comes in... I think perhaps they stopped requiring recording engineers to listen to REAL instruments or something...

Try a different piano CD. It may just be the recoring.

But the reciever IS probably a little underpowered...

--Richard C.

Thank you!

I am extremely happy to hear that you all agree it is the amplifier. It was impossible for me to troubleshoot this and just needed your experiences.
I live in an apartment building, so I can't turn the volume up too high anyway. Which is why this low powered Onkyo amp worked for me. So, replacing that and not my absolutely treasured MLs is wonderful news. Looks like it is time to do some research on the correct amp. If anyone has even more advice I would love to hear from you.

P.S.

It wasn't a CD with piano music. I am actually plugging a keyboard into the receiver. But I am sorry to hear that Norah Jones' piano sound is so disappointing.

Thank you for taking the time to help!

D

Like the commercial says... wimpy wimpy wimpy, hefty hefty hefty. :rocker:

Regarding the Norah Jones comment, does anyone else find this to be true? I have posted here a few times and will be owning Vantages soon but have suspicions that some of the memebers here are crazy. Some of the claims made on this forum are hard to understand and this seems especially crazy. Norah Jones recordings are in my opinon some of the best recordings out today and are often used in high end audio stores to display their gear. Do people really think that the piano in all of her albums sounds like "nails on a chalkboard" ? I often check this site to gather information before I make my purchase but such rediculous claims make me lose faith in the integrity of this forum.

macallan said:

I often check this site to gather information before I make my purchase but such rediculous claims make me lose faith in the integrity of this forum.

Click to expand...

While there is some very good knowledge here on the site, it is just an Internet Forum and should be treated as such. How is that? Use it as a starting point for discussion, thoughts, opinions. But in the very end each person has to make up their own mind on purchases and preferences.

Those who use forums as the "Gospel" or "Final" truth are foolish.

Dan

macallan said:

Some of the claims made on this forum are hard to understand and this seems especially crazy.

Click to expand...

Be assured, all of us on this forum are especially crazy. And I mean that in the best way possible.

On this forum, you will get many different viewpoints, because you have many different people with different equipment, viewpoints, backgrounds, and experiences. The one thing you will not get is absolute agreement on very many issues. You should always take everything you read on here with a grain of salt, because you know very little about the person posting it. Over time, you learn more about the posters, and you develop an understanding of whose opinions you trust and whose you don't. This is no different than anywhere else in life.

As for me, I have never noticed any harshness to Norah Jones' piano tracks. I have heard her live and her CD recordings to me sound very close to how she sounded live. Smooth, effortless, and beautiful.

I don't discount that it may very well sound "flat, harsh, and sibilant" to Richard C., and that may be his equipment, his ears, or his particular sensitivity, but it is only his opinion and I am glad he shared it with us. Others may feel the same way. But I would not dismiss the usefulness of the information in his posts or in other posts on this forum simply because my reality varied so much from his on this one issue. Now if I began to feel that way about every post he made, then I would just start ignoring his posts.

Ultimately, the communications on this forum are probably composed of about 80% opinion and 20% fact. Take what you like, and leave the rest.

Good point, I realize that these are mearly opinions but the opinions are often so strong that they are counter-productive. I have learned a lot about audio from this forum and others but some of the comments seem to be gross exaggerations. Anyway, i agree that it is merely an opinion.

I think piano and horns are two things that logans do amazingly well. With that, I agree that the piano recording on her first album does not sound very good...which is a shame, because I love her voice. The piano sounds "clangy" to me...and kind of makes me wince at louder volumes.

Yes, hyperbole can often take away credibility from a point you're trying to make...but the point here is a valid one (at least in my own opinion)

I've heard her live and the piano (electric or acoustic) sounded just as it does on the recordings.

Is that to say that you that you enjoyed the sound of the piano live? (and enjoy it on the speakers) or do you agree that it sounds harsh (in both performance and playback)? Because it doesn't sound like normal live piano to me....or like many of the piano recordings I like

fathermackenzie said:

It wasn't a CD with piano music. I am actually plugging a keyboard into the receiver. But I am sorry to hear that Norah Jones' piano sound is so disappointing.

Click to expand...

I suspect you have the output of your electric piano set WAY to high...or some other strangeness going on with that. Why are you NOT using a synth (or acoustic guitar) amp? That is the PROPER thing to use with your electric piano, a receiver is really not designed to handle that kind of input...

Pcar928fan said:

I suspect you have the output of your electric piano set WAY to high...or some other strangeness going on with that. Why are you NOT using a synth (or acoustic guitar) amp? That is the PROPER thing to use with your electric piano, a receiver is really not designed to handle that kind of input...

Click to expand...

+1

The nominal ouput level of music instruments is +14dB higher than normal 'line level' your receiver input is expecting. You are likely overdriving the input stages of the receiver.

Get something along the lines of this: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SConvert

or this: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/LLS2/


To take pro-sound levels down to consumer line-level.

Oh, and I still think your receiver is under powered

macallan said:

Regarding the Norah Jones comment, does anyone else find this to be true? I have posted here a few times and will be owning Vantages soon but have suspicions that some of the memebers here are crazy. Some of the claims made on this forum are hard to understand and this seems especially crazy. Norah Jones recordings are in my opinon some of the best recordings out today and are often used in high end audio stores to display their gear. Do people really think that the piano in all of her albums sounds like "nails on a chalkboard" ? I often check this site to gather information before I make my purchase but such rediculous claims make me lose faith in the integrity of this forum.

Click to expand...

Personally - I find the Norah Jones CD/SACD to sound fantastic - especially on Logans. Her first and 3rd album sound great. The second one is good - but I just don't listen to it as much. I really can't find fault in any place. For what its worth dept: I listened to the first cd on Maggie 20.1s and it sounded thin (and was warned by the store owner) - I believe that to be the CDP though....

macallan said:

Good point, I realize that these are mearly opinions but the opinions are often so strong that they are counter-productive. I have learned a lot about audio from this forum and others but some of the comments seem to be gross exaggerations. Anyway, i agree that it is merely an opinion.

Click to expand...

Dan's advise is good to be sure, but don't forget were talking about the Piano here, arguably the single toughest instrument to reproduce correctly in ones system. For reasons I mentioned in another thread the dynamics, freq range, tonal balance, decay, etc are like none other when it comes to the piano, so everything in ones set-up has to be in order for justice to be done !

Yea, not enough stinkin' power

HI,
I'm not a big Nora Jones fan so I can't comment. I can confirm the difficulty in reproducing piano. It's tough and will challenge the best of systems. I agree with all who think this is a simple case of an amp which has run out of power. I do not think the input is being overloaded. Otherwise, the headphone test would show it up. Headphones are almost always run off the output stage through current limiting dropping resistors. They are monitoring the entire circuit chain from input to output. It's just a case of not enough power.

This is actually a good thing. Now you can justify a healthy amplifier upgrade. Your ears will thank you.

Sparky

I have purchased an upgrade receiver for my set up. A Pioneer Elite VSX-80TXV. 110 Watts per channel will hopefully do the trick. And so the troubleshooting continues.

I will be setting this stuff up tomorrow and would like to post my results for you all. Hopefully, Sparky is correct. I have sent volumes from very soft to very loud to the input and the distortion does not change. I have plugged the piano directly to the inputs. I have also placed a mixer between them. I have also converted the analog signal to a digital (optical) connection via the TC Electronics Finalizer (a mastering hardware unit) and inputted the signal via that connection. All at different volume levels and the same distortion is heard. Does this support anyone's claims?

Well, I will have a pretty good idea tomorrow after I set everything up.

As for PCAR928fan.... You ask why would I want to hear my piano through a Martin Logan surround sound room and NOT a synth/keyboard amp??? I got 2 strong words for you.... Come On!!! There's no comparison my friend. I'm gonna take my chances and stretch what this stuff is "designed" to do. No matter how improper I am.

Wish me luck!!

D