Piano Sound

[Kalessin]

Hi guys. Has anyone else had the experience of the ends of each note being cut off? It's making the melodies sound choppy and its driving me nuts. I'm wondering if there's a setting in the program or on my PC that I can adjust to make the piano actually sound like a person is playing the notes (relatively connected) rather than a one-fingered machine. Thanks.

[Bojan]

Hi Kalessin, I've never experienced such a thing while practicing with EM. I'm afraid this is an error in your computer, not EM itself. And unfortunately, there is little you can do. There's no special option in EM to make piano sound longer or shorter, but you can try switching to another sound like guitar or violin (and if that doesn't work either, try switching back to piano). You can also try turning MIDI sounds off and reseting MIDI controllers (in Tools menu), although this is for your MIDI keyboard, if you use one. Does this happen in all exercises involving piano sound (meaning all but the rhythm exercises), or just few specific?

[Kalessin]

I'm afraid it does this for all piano sounds in all exercises. Here's another confusing fact, this problem has occurred on two computers in my experience. Is it likely the problem is in both computers? And a more accurate description of the sounds i'm getting would be to say that while the notes are sufficiently long, they just drop out suddenly at the end, instead of fade nicely like a piano would. With the first computer in which I installed the program, the problem would come and go. Sometimes I would open EM and get a normal sounding piano. Other times, I'd get a choppy one. So I know that the choppy one is not the sound the programmers intended. With my current computer, I have not yet been able to get a normal sounding piano. I'll try messing with MIDI and see what happens. Thanks for your reply. Let me know if you have any other ideas.

[Bojan]

Kalessin, do you use the newest update of EM (at this moment that's build 606), use your "Check for Updates" function in Tools menu. Do you use a more recent Windows (XP, Vista). If not, consider upgrading to these. Also try to get the newest MIDI drivers (XD MIDI, General MIDI, search the net for this). Did you try switching piano sound to guitar or banjo...? Does it give any results?