Play along with LINE INPUT

[John King]

Hi
Something that I have enjoyed for many years is playing along with a recorded band that is missing my instrument, i.e. the piano. I have purchased "Music Minus One" cds and have had a grand old time keeping up with the Dixieland and Jazz offerings. I used to do this a lot with my old Kurzwiel digital piano where the piano accepted the line input very well. But playing the CVP keyboard while a program is being fed into the line input from a CD player causes serious distortion. It seems that any note played on the keyboard will distort the music fed into the line input. There is no distortion if I don't touch any keys. Has anyone had any similar experience? Does anyone know of a solution?

JK - CVP 303

[Eric Brinkerink]

Hey John,

But playing the CVP keyboard while a program is being fed into the line input from a CD player causes serious distortion.

Program? Do you mean sound or something else?

During the last holidays I hooked up my laptop (and my stereo) to my CVP-303 using the line input and played a lot of mp3's just jamming along. There was no distortion at all. Did you use the line-in close to the headphone jacks? If so, was the (tiny) switch set to line-input and not to microphone?

[Scubacpa]

Yes. There is a solution and it has been discussed a few times.

Lay on your back under the CVP with a flashlight and look at the switch next to the line in Jack. It is probably in the "Mic" position. It needs to be in the other position (not Mic) for a CD player, MP3 player, Guitar etc. I do it all the time.

There is then a volume control in the same place so that you can get the piano and the line in source to the right mix.

If you play a CD which has spoken word on it (like an instructional CD or DVD) you need to do one more thing or the voice will be distorted. You need to to into Utilities and change the line in to "talk".

[Midi Magic]

Hi

If you look at pages 180 - 181 section 4 of your manual you will see the correct connections to use.

I would use the Aux IN sockets on the panel next to the Midi sockets.

[John King]

Hooray. Thanks MM. Using the AUX IN jack solved the problem. No more distortion. I wonder why Yamaha specifies turn on and off sequences which I'll never remember to follow.

Eric, the input program is analog music from a CD player.

I did know about the mic/liine switch next to the input volume control. It appears to be simply an additional gain attenuator similar to the volume potentiometer itself. Anyway, with it in either position I get the same distortion using the LINE IN jack.

Thanks for all the response, guys.

[JoeM]

This is very interesting. I also have music minus one CD. I have a Toshiba satellite laptop with a CD/DVD player/writer. Since I am new to this, how do you connect the laptop to the CVP-307? What kind of wire and plug do you use?

If I can do this it will make it a lot easier to play a piano concerto or at a later date, Jazz. Thanks.

[John King]

Hi JM
Radio Shack has about every kind of connector and connector adaptor there is. I get a shielded stereo phono connector wire of the right length usually with mono phono plugs on each end unless I get lucky and see one with the kind of connectors that I need on one or both ends. If I can only find the phono plugs then I search for adaptors to make these mate with the jacks in the player and the CVP. THe CVP uses two 1/4" mono plugs in the "Aux in" jacks and a single 1/4" stereo plug in the "Line In" jack. Radio Shack has adaptors for these. I don't know what your computer has as output jacks but mine has mini stereo jacks. Radio Shack has adaptors for these as well. Now, I hope you have a Radio Shack or equivalent.

[JoeM]

Thank you JK. I understand what you mean. I will look for a mini stereo jack on one end and 1/4'' jack on the other (may be with adapter).

[John King]

Joe, you might also consider picking up an inexpensive CD player that would live on top of your CVP. I got one for less than $35 at Circuit City. Might be more convenient than having to hook up the lap top each time.

[JoeM]

Thank you JK for the idea of picking up a CD player. But before I do that I will try to hook up the laptop first which, presently lives on a table right next the CVP.

[JoeM]

Hi John,

I got the cable and the jacks and played the music minus one CD from the laptop. It worked except the volume of the CD was considerably lower than that of the CVP. I used auxiliary input

I also tried to record my playing of the CVP onto the computer using Audacity. The sound was terrible. In this case I used auxiliary output of the CVP. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong?

[Scubacpa]

To get the best recording you need to use the optical digital out. Do a posting search on "optical digital" and you will see plenty of discussion.

[John King]

Hi Joe
My computer is in another room so I record stuff on a disk burner next to the CVP. I pipe the output of a CD player into the AUX IN jacks as per previous posts. I have to take the output from the headphone jacks rather than the AUX OUT jacks because the program (audio) that goes into the AUX IN jacks doesn't come out of the AUX OUT jacks but does come out of the headphone jacks.
I would really like to be able to run the CD player into the LINE IN jack since it has a volume control with which I could tailor the balance of CD music and CVP "music". But doing that introduces the distortion that I spoke of at the start of this thread. So, I have been taking drastic measures by playing along with the Music Minus One CD and recording my playing using the CVP sequencer. Then I play back the recording and the CD at the same time and record the mix on the disk burner. While it is burning the disk I adjust the balance levels in order to accentuate or attenuate my playing for solos or background parts.
It sounds like you maybe need a bit more amplification than you get out of your laptop. But try feeding it into the LINE IN jack to see if you get enough volume. Maybe you wont get the distortion that I get. The LINE IN jack requires a 1/4" stereo plug.
John

[JoeM]

Hi John,

As you suggested I tried playing the CD using the laptop and connected to the line in. It worked and I could adjust the volume (the knob below the CVP) as I needed without touching the balance. This part is solved. Thank you.

I tried recording what I was playing: inserting the 1/4" jack into the headphone out, and the mini jack inserted into the laptop. Using Audacity software to record what I played and then converting the file into mp3. The result was not good. The sound was awful. Could it be the laptop sound card, but then the CD came out well with the CVP. My objective is to record some music for eventually uploading into the internet. I have had a midi file, that was downloaded from the internet with good results when played by the CVP, recorded by Audacity then converted into mp3. When played back from the laptop to the CVP the sound was awful as well. Could it be the Audacity software?

[John King]

Hi Joe
I've been using Audacity for some time for recording all of my old 78, 45, and 33 rpm records, loading them into a file and finally into my mp3 player. I have had good results with it regarding sound quality, although the quality of the 78s and 45s does leave something to be desired.

I think I understand that you have downloaded a MIDI file which, of course is in MIDI format, and parked it on your hard drive. Then you recalled the file and played it through the CVP thereby creating analog sound. During this time you ran this analog output from the headphone jack or the AUX OUT jack to your laptop LINE IN jack while running Audacity which converted the sound to a WAVE or MP3 format. If this is correct, it should sound OK. If it doesn't I guess I would suspect your sound card although, as you said, the CD, which uses the sound card, played OK when piped into the CVP.

Are you maybe overdriving the input in Audacity? I get good results with the input selector set on LINE IN and the input gain control, the one with the microphone logo, set to get max gain indication of about -6. Try different settings and see if there is any improvement. I find that I tend to set it too high sometimes.

Have you tried running some other analog sound source through your laptop, such as a CD player or tape deck?

If you are trying to run a MIDI format through the laptop it will sound awful. There are MIDI-WAV converter programs available but I don't think any are as good as using the CVP.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

[JoeM]

What I did was to insert the 1/4" jack into the head phone output on the CVP and connected the other end (mini jack) into the laptop input with Audacity open. Then I played something which was recorded by Audacity. Then I converted the Audacity file into mp3 and played it on the windows player of the laptop. The sound was awful. Then I switched the cable and connected the mini jack into the output of the laptop and connected the other end (1/4" jack) into the line in of the CVP. The sound was just as bad and a lot of distortion.
It could be, as you said, that I am over driving the input into Audacity. I think I will try to reduce the input on the Audacity and see what happens. I will keep you informed. Thank you John.

[JoeM]

Some measured success.
I had to lower the input volume to 0.1 before the distortion became reasonable. There is a window next to the imput control that shows the following options:

Phone Line
Microphone
CD Player
Stereo Mix
Mono Mix

I have selected the Microphone. Is this the right selection? Somehow when I selected the Mono Mix Audacity did not record anything.

Playback to the CVP is also improved. I am not very familiar with Audacity. In fact it is the first time I am trying to record with Audacity.

[John King]

Hi Joe
I think that using the mic input in Audacity will have a tendancy to overdrive the input amplifier stage. This is for a lower level input than the output of the CVP. I've been using the LINE IN connection which supplies sufficient gain level for the dynamic phono pickup that I am using. But I think you might benefit from using one of the higher input level (lower amplification) connections such as the CD Player. Try experimenting with several of them.

[JoeM]

Thank you John. I tried all the other selections other than the microphone but Audacity is only recording the microphone. The laptop has a mic in and headphones out. It also has USB, telephone and Ethernet outlets. This time I recorded at 0.1 input for Audacity and lowered the volume on the CVP. The results are now acceptable after converting the file to mp3.
I then plugged the mini jack to headphones on the laptop and the 1/4" jack on the line in of the CVP. I played back the mp3 file and the result was also acceptable. Thanks to you the problem is solved.

[JoeM]

I found the solution to the problem. In the control panel (sounds) the microphone had a "boost". I removed the boost and now everything is fine. In Audacity instead of keeping the input at 0.1, now I can increase it to 0.6 with no distortion.