thank you! this is helpful. I'll check out the "release" function.
yes thank you. I think I mean the "release." it's funny. when I googled this, there were other forums that had lengthy discussions on the same kind of terminology ambiguity. so thank you for helping clarify.
Yeah, basically, envelope is just what happens to the sound over time. We're talking about it in terms of how it applies to amplitude (volume), but other things can have envelopes because volume isn't the only aspect of sound that can change over time, e.g. filter cutoff frequency (brightness) and pitch can change over time as well, and so keyboards may provide envelopes for those things, too. The most common common envelope settings for synths are attack time, decay time, sustain level, and release time, as illustrated below, but some systems provide for more control than that.
Yes, it is a common problem that piano notes on keyboards don't sustain as long as the real pianos do. Real piano envelopes are complex to reproduce, and there are compromises made... especially on older keyboards that had less memory and so relied more on loops.
I'm not familiar with such pedals. I'm skeptical, but Gary likes it...
I believe his entire interest in being able to adjust envelope (e.g. decay, release) is to get the pianos to behave the way he wants... and I'd say it's very possible (likely, even) that the Nord will give him the better pianos compared to most other keyboards regardless of their envelope controls. Nord has among the best pianos, and you don't need controls to fix something if it's not broken. ;-)
That is not how I see it.
Some more context... Before his post here, he posted at https://www.keyboardforums.com/thre...-piano-can-i-control-decay.33918/#post-227936 - He owns a CP33 and is unhappy with its envelope (decay, release, or both) - that's what really started the whole conversation, so I would not assume that he has yet concluded that the Nord is unsatisfactory as is, as opposed to being sensitive to the topic based on his experience with the CP33. He even said right in the post here, "this has been a chief criticism of boards I've own in the past." My take on it is that, based on his personal experience, he'd like to have the kind of control that he lacks on his CP33... but that doesn't mean he'll necessarily need it, i.e. on a board that has a more satisfactory piano sound to begin with.
I said "often", not "all" -- it depends not just on the board, but also which aspect of the envelope you're trying to adjust. Maybe I was not clear enough in what I was trying to explain. Sure, the Kross has those controls, but for example, the initial fall-off from the attack is part of the sample as provided by Korg (a combination of the characteristics of the particular piano, how they recorded it and how they looped it), and if you find that fall-off too quick, for example, there is likely no Kross ADSR function that will really let you fix that. That's an example of what I meant when I said, "synth-type ADSR is limited in its ability to improve the envelope of a piano sample, since often so much of a piano patch's response is 'baked into' the sound as provided by the factory." There's even a further variable that you may feel the envelope need to be adjusted differently in different key ranges (like, maybe there's only a couple of octaves where the decay seems off to you), and boards generally don't let you get that granular. ADSR controls are very useful on multi-sound boards for many purposes, but I wouldn't rely on them too much for making piano patches play more realistically or to your taste.
Thanks Scott. So the term "sustain" as typically applied to an acoustic piano (finger on the key or damper pedal pressed) is actually "decay" in the ADSR envelope description, and an acoustic piano sound does not have an ADSR "sustain" component. True?
Does "looped" mean the sample is, say, 1 sec long, and they repeat it at lower and lower volumes to simulate the "decay"? Loopless, would that mean that the each sample has to last many seconds in order to actually capture the acoustic piano's full decay? So loopless would be more accurate, but much much more memory intensive?
Does this give them complete control over the decay? Do these instruments have a longer, more natural sounding decay?
Basically, yes. I mentioned earlier that envelopes can have both time and level parameters. There is no "sustain level" to a piano after the key is struck. You hear only "decay" until you left your finger off the key or release the pedal. (The decay rate is not entirely linear which is why simple envelopes can't capture it. There is a ton of rapid fall off at the beginning, and a more gradual fall-off thereafter.)
Close. They don't repeat the entire first second, because you never want to hear the initial attack again. They pick up the sound a bit later, after a substantial decay to a lower level, and loop a small portion from there, fading it over time.
Right.
Not really... the main source of the decay sound of an unlooped piano sample is determined by the piano itself, that's out of anyone's control... though it can be tweaked some through programming/processing.
More natural sounding is the goal. Whether it's always achieved is up to your ears. Whether it's longer? I don't know. You can artificially create a very long decay, I imagine some looped models could have very long decays, I don't know. But increasing decay length and maintaining realism is another challenge, because as I said, the behavior of the real thing is not linear (in either level changes or in frequency response changes, I believe).