Newbie questions

Hello Clive, and welcome to this forum!

I am so glad you took the time to explain your situation about returning to the piano after having tasted the Pianoteq experience. As a lifetime pianist -- 55 years and counting since age 3 -- I always enjoy hearing about people who return to the piano, and re-discover the magic it has on one's soul!!!   Now before you ask, I am not a salesman for Pianoteq, and I am not a salesman at all -- rather, I am an enthusiastic virtual piano user, piano performer, teacher and tuner who has offloaded all of my sampled piano libraries (four EWQL grands, Ivory plus its Fazioli addons, the Bluethner Digital Model One, and many lesser ones whose names I don't need to mention) after having become smitten with the feel and playability of Pianoteq.  [EDIT:  It is appropriate to mention here that I have had constant access to a Steinway Model M in the church I have been senior organist since 1994.  I constantly compare Pianoteq (with great results) to the sound, touch and tonal response of a real Steinway grand piano.]

With that bit of formality out of the way, let me attempt to address your questions:

Regarding a stand to hold your keyboard: 
I would stay away from the "scissors-type" of stand -- those whose frames remind one of the letter X, as designed to be vertically adjustable and portable -- essentially functioning as "one-night stands" <ok, sorry>.  The problem with these types of stands is that they are unstable; the keyboard rocks toward you and away from you.  This is because the main structure of an X-type / scissors-type stand lies along the centerline of the frame, and relies on two simple tubular pieces of ~1 foot/ 30cm pipe extensions that contact the floor.  This design of keyboard stand is especially unstable on carpeted surfaces.

A much more stable stand has four vertically standing legs, and perhaps even reinforcing crossbeams, that distribute the structural integrity out to the four corners of your keyboard.  [ASIDE:  Sorry if this is getting rather technical sounding, but I also was a metallurgical engineer in the American steel industry before retiring after 30 years' employment.] 

EDIT:  One of the most stable 4-legged stands is made by Quik-Lok, whose URL is mentioned later in this thread by Gilles.

Regarding the "sound" you wish to hear, as compared to your Clavinova:
I have played a number of Clavinovae over the years, including the CLP series you mentioned, plus the CLPs shaped to look grand piano-like, and the CVP series, both with speakers configured under the keyboard, and configured to look piano-like.  Lastly, I have played on Yamaha's Avant-Grand at its introduction at the 2009 NAMM show in Anaheim California, USA.

Let's consider, firstly, the under-keyboard speaker arrangement.  Although I am not a Yamaha keyboard designer, it makes sense to me that Yamaha placed the speakers under the keyboard -- because there was nowhere else to place them!!!  (Had they been positioned behind the keyboard, odds are the instrument would have been placed against a wall in one's home, and the sound would have been lost.  Yamaha could have placed the speakers on the top sides, firing upwardly as is done with many "toy" keyboards, but that placement would have precluded making the cabinet look more "finished" and less toy-like.

The remaining choice they had (assuming a self-contained unit without external speakers) was to place them firing from below the keyboard and aimed towards the performer.  You may recall that several brands of home organs (Yamaha, Wurlitzer, Lowery, and even self-contained Hammonds other than the famous B3) featured forward-firing speakers from below their keyboards.  The effect was that you heard "sound" emanating from the direction of your fingers!

Regarding the "listening experience" when seated at a real grand piano: 
The sound originates not from the direction of the keys, but upward within the piano's case, a few feet ahead of the player.  Clearly, this sound dispersion pattern is not what you experienced from your CLP-123.  In fact, the Yamaha Avant-Grand most closely approximates the "upward firing" nature of the sound from within the piano's case -- at a very expensive selling price (a few dozen kilodollars).  In addition, you hear sound reflecting from the underside of the raised piano lid, in the case of a grand piano.

All of this leads to your ultimate question, namely, how to position your speakers. If you wish to approximate the experience of sitting at the keyboard of a grand piano, then the speakers need to be positioned about three feet / 1 meter in front of you, away from your keyboard, and placed just below ear level as you are seated at the keyboard.  Perhaps the best width for spacing those speakers is such that your nose and the two speakers create the vertices (corners) of an equilateral triangle in the space in front of you -- many audiophiles recommend this geometry of speaker placement for most effective imaging.  You must experiment for yourself whether the speakers are forward firing, or each angled inward up to some 30-degrees (thus combining to create the 60-degree angle of an equilateral triangle), towards your ears.

One of the marvelous qualities of Pianoteq Standard is that you are able to move virtual microphones to a place that approximates how you are seated at the piano!  That is to say, if you wish, you are able to get the low notes to sound primarily from the left side of the piano, and the high notes primarily from the right side.  HOWEVER, real grand pianos' soundboards are designed to distribute the sound throughout the vibrating surface area of the soundboard!  In other words, when you play a high C on a real grand piano, surely you will hear the plunck and the sound from the right side, but you will also hear the high C emanate from the middle and left side of the piano as well!  Not to fear -- Pianoteq Standard allows you to assign up to five virtual microphones to capture the space of this marvelous sound and give you a wide choice of dispersion patterns.

Enough of my rambling, Clive.  I noticed that you hadn't been answered in a few days of initiating your post, so I thought it might be time to chime in!

All the best to you and your Pianoteq journey ahead of you,

Joe

Concerning 4-legged stands this is the one I use:
http://www.quiklok.com/catalog/?p=produ...ame=WS-550

Very solid and stable, the legs can be brought under the keyboard so they are unobtrusive. Height is adjustable.

Hello again, Clive and Gilles,

The Quik-Lok stand shown in the above URL is exactly the design I find to be the most stable in terms of solidly holding a keyboard in place.  If possible (assuming this is at least a semi- permanent installation), I would attempt to physically attach the keyboard to the 4-legged stand with some type of fastener device.

Cheers,

Joe

My keyboard is heavy--a Yamaha CP-300, so it doesn't budge. If your keyboard should slide, you might try using a sheet of rubber beneath it. Home supply  stores sell web-like sheets of rubber, intended for placement beneath throw rugs to keep them from sliding on hardwood floors. They can be cut to any shape and work well. Some people use them beneath their pedals.

Getting a table that's a good height may take some searching. I found that the correct height for mine was roughly where my fingertips fall when I am standing and holding my arms straight down. (Edit: I originally said knuckles, but that puts the keyboard up too hight.) But I had set the keyboard up on an x-frame stand first, and had my bench in place, letting me determine the best height.

I moved my piano into a larger room over the weekend, and fixed up a grand old pair of Celef monitor speakers to replace the speaker system internal to the Clavinova (still with the subwoofer). Unfortunately, compromises with other furniture in the room made it impossible to try out the arrangement Joe suggested. The piano has to be pretty much flush to the wall, and I set up the speakers on either side of it. There were good points and less good points to this arrangement. The good point was that the Celef speakers removed all of the remaining unnatural resonances in the sound. But the playing experience was very odd! It was very hard to really *hear* what I was playing, whereas a recording of myself playing put through the speakers and listened to from the back of the room sounded wonderful.

So I moved the keyboard out an inch and toed the speakers in towards my playing position slightly (exactly what somebody on the pianoworld forum that Jake mentions is chastised there for doing). I also turned the subwoofer towards me. I know bass frequencies have little directional component but not everything out of a subwoofer is deep enough for that to be true, so I thought it could be helpful to turn it towards me. The result was much better. Especially if I lean back while paying instead of leaning forward. I think this would be a good solution if I could just bring the piano out from the wall a little bit more. I'm not sure that could be done without a lot of spousal strife...

Thanks Jake for pointing out that thread on pianoworld. However, I think the poster who claims that all sound heard by a pianist is reflected sound must surely be incorrect. If that were true, a pianist playing a concert in a hall would be hearing his playing several hundred milliseconds after hitting a note - and I doubt it would be possible to play under those conditions. Most of the energy hitting the ears of a pianist has to be coming straight out from the instrument - even if much more energy is being shot down the room towards the audience. In any case, theory is of limited importance here: as you say experimentation is attractive. I just wish I had more degrees of freedom!

Thanks also for the advice re "keyboard slippage." Since we are looking here for a table shorter than is typical, a friend suggested simply sawing legs down to the desired height.

Thanks again for so many constructive suggestions,

Clive.