Yamaha P140 >(midi)> M-Audio Fast Track Pro >(USB)> HP Pavilion G - Pianoteq STD >(USB)> M-Audio Fast Track Pro >(audio)> 4 Behringer MS16.

It's OK for me...

burns

2) For portability with smallish groups/room, the Bose Compact L1 is really great.  You need two for stereo, but in a live listening environment it is usually not necessary.

3) For large areas, outdoors, and the best low end, the ideal (for me) is a pair of Bose L1's (not Compact) with two B1's for each L1.

Don't confuse the Bose L1 line with their consumer products line!  The L1 is designed for the professional musician on the road.  They are, to my ears, the best non-custom installation one can use in any environment.  Also, unlike the consumer product line of Bose, the professional musician line is a better value for the money.

I have a Compact L1 personally; our church has 3 of the full-size L1's.  Never a complaint about the sound.

just one more thing: we don't listen to Watts, but to deciBels. Usually hifi speakers are much, much less efficient than studio monitors, not to mention PA speakers. So a "100 Watts" monitor could very well deliver the same loudness than a "1000 Watts" hifi speaker. This being said, it is indeed important to have a lot of power if you want to come close to the dynamics of a piano. I sometimes play along some backing tracks on my own "grand" ("only" 6' !!!) and I really need my 2 x 450 Watts amp to drive my pair of old Tannoy's 10".

Very true, Luc

Please do remember that the same loudness for speakers requiring 100 or 1000 watts follows the logarithmic +3dB rule:  When one wishes to increase that reference loudness by only 3dB, the power amplification must be doubled -- 200 or 2000 watts.

An increase of +3dB is quite subtle ... if one has a monophonic source, and plays it through the left channel alone -- and then adds the sound from the right channel, ... the amplification has doubled, but one senses only a slight difference in loudness.

I agree that we listen to decibels, but clean decibels require tons of RMS power.

Cheers,

Joe

<Edited only for grammatical accuracy.>

Personally speaking, in order to reproduce the in-room dynamics of a grand piano, I make use of all 4,400 watts sent to my six speakers -- if there is to be audio without clipping!  One of the reasons I believe that people complain about Pianoteq sounding "metallic" is that their amplifiers are running out of headroom, and are clipping and/or their speakers are distorting!!!  After all, WHO can expect a pair of cone speakers (whose surface areas are measured in terms of square inches or centimeters) to reproduce the grandeur of a 9' piano's 20+ square feet's worth of soundboard area, connected via the bridge to some 230+ strings, carrying a tension of more than 20 or 25 tons?????

Cheers,

Joe

More seriously joe, I agree with you that a huge amount of power is needed as headroom for clean, fully realistic dynamic reproduction of a grand piano, although this is dependent also on room size (wall reflections are an important factor). I have a rather large listening room, but I think that if I would place a real Steinway D in there, it would just be too loud! In the past I owned a large Kawai upright that was just too loud for me (in a smaller room elsewhere though) so I was tempted to keep riding the soft pedal all the time...but maybe this is worse for uprights where the player is closer to the soundboard that is somewhat reinforced by the wall in the back.

I have an audio system with a 15" servo-controlled sub with its own 250W amp, plus a 60W/channel stereo amp driving full range B&Ws, plus another 60W/channel stereo amp driving smaller Paradigm bookshelfs in the back, for a total of 490W RMS giving me very satisfactory sound from CDs or SACDs, but I am sure the sound is not as loud as would be a real piano, it is just scaled down correctly so the illusion is still quite valid.

In the same way, high-quality headphones are the best (and cheapest) way of having that "illusion" of a real instrument or instruments. The only danger in that case is overdoing it, and damaging our ears...

I don't own studio monitors or speakers designed for public performance, but those I heard seem to produce that "metallic" coloration, which is maybe one of the possible source of that criticism. In other words, I think a realistic full dynamics piano sound is surely possible in a listening room with hi-fi speakers AND the high headroom of high quality amps, but I think that this is not scalable for a large concert hall or other public performance room. Even 4.4kW is not enough, as you say, the power must be much higher, but then you have to use very colored speakers, not hi-fi at all, to absorb all that energy without blowing up...

  I also run test CDs through my digital alarm clock, just to listen to how the sound holds up with devices that sport miniature speakers.

Do you also wake up your wife this way? Reminds me of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll...

Fo who have the flat response studio monitor, maybe they get a "too perfect" sound for the electric pianos ad ons, cause the original instruments are from many decades ago and used speakers far from que high quality of today.

What do you think about a option to emulate the sound response of the vintage speakers of such instruments?

and thank you Joe...

that is a good one: Benny Hill stated,  "May I be frank?  I'll be honest if you prefer."

In my own case, I do my mastering through a pair of AKG-702 headphones.  I am aware these 'phones are slightly shy in bass response, so I specifically do not attempt to "overly correct" the bass in the mix.  Otherwise, the AKG-702's are extremely revealing of audio details I might otherwise miss in lesser-quality 'phones.  Previous experience with other headphones and non-monitor type loudspeakers has caused me to produce CD recordings whose bass responses sounded muddy, and generally too heavy when played through high quality consumer audio systems.

Now, the real reason I do not master my recordings with good monitor speakers ... is that the high audio levels required to do mastering does not sit well with my wife (34th wedding anniversary on 28MAY2012).  This is especially true when I loop portions of the audio while searching for the best reverb, or EQ setting -- it becomes extremely annoying for someone in the same house if I master my recordings through speakers.

Next, I test my recordings in my car-audio, especially to listen whether the audio becomes masked by the effects of ambient wind noise while driving.  Other tests include playing back through a pair of Bose QC-2 headphones (very bass heavy -- and relatively light in the upper frequencies), and a cheap pair of older Sennheiser 'phones.  I also run test CDs through my digital alarm clock, just to listen to how the sound holds up with devices that sport miniature speakers.

My personal "acid test" involves running my Pianoteq recordings through my aging audiophile system, which consists of 6 channel audio played through Ohm-F speakers, Ohm Walsh-4 speakers, and some B&W small monitors, of which the latter pair is wall mounted towards my back and lifted to just below ceiling level.  All of these speakers are played through three dedicated stereo amps whose summed wattage is 4.4 kilowatts distributed among six speakers.  My holy grail of sound is to mentally visualize a Steinway Model D in my living room while listening to Pianoteq D4.  Sometimes it happens, in which case I forget I am listening to Pianoteq, and just listen to the music.
(With all of this racket in the house, does anyone question why my wife insists that I use headphones?????)

Although I am drifting off topic at this moment, it is because of the logarithmic property of non-clipped audio output signal that I require such high powered amplifiers.  You see, for every increase of 3dB in sound output, the amplifiers' outputs are doubled!  Adding another +3dB corresponds to yet another doubling of amplifier power.  It is hard to conceive that reproducing a +30dB increase involves 10 "redoublings" of amplifier power -- a factor of 1024 times!!!

Personally speaking, in order to reproduce the in-room dynamics of a grand piano, I make use of all 4,400 watts sent to my six speakers -- if there is to be audio without clipping!  One of the reasons I believe that people complain about Pianoteq sounding "metallic" is that their amplifiers are running out of headroom, and are clipping and/or their speakers are distorting!!!  After all, WHO can expect a pair of cone speakers (whose surface areas are measured in terms of square inches or centimeters) to reproduce the grandeur of a 9' piano's 20+ square feet's worth of soundboard area, connected via the bridge to some 230+ strings, carrying a tension of more than 20 or 25 tons?????

Cheers,

Joe