Rhodes V8 Pro in LPX

[Elazmo Hiftenfifter]

Hi everybody, after owning Rhodes V8 Pro for a few days, I generally find it to be an important emulation of the real thing. However, there is a niggling (fatal?) issue: the lower notes' samples are delayed relative to the middle and higher notes. It's quite frustrating to play. Do some Hanon exercises on V8, and you'll feel it immediately.
I have attached a screen shot of bounces of MIDI notes C1 and C3. Notice the delay in C1.
Is any of you seeing this issue? It breaks my heart that Rhodes Music is claiming that they don't see the issue. It's an unfortunate problem in an otherwise fine plugin.

[David Nahmani]

I would try to contact Rhodes support and ask them if they're aware of this issue? https://rhodesmusic.com/contact/

[Elazmo Hiftenfifter]

Yes, I have contacted Rhodes, whose customer liaison claims that the company has not seen this delay before. Given that response, I have no recourse but to appeal to the experienced and trustworthy pros at Logic Pro Help.

In my previous screen shot, we see that the C1 note's sample begins to oscillate about 27 milliseconds after the C3 sample starts, or about 7 cycles of middle C later. This happens with all of the lower samples (although I don't want to to document each sample), and the player can feel it, for example, by running some Hanon exercises. I've used the old "sample start test" from sampling 101.

Who wants to play an instrument with 27 ms of latency?

I sincerely hope that Rhodes fixes this.

[David Nahmani]

2 minutes ago, Elazmo Hiftenfifter said:

customer liaison claims that the company has not seen this delay before.

Are they going to inquire about it? Were you able to provide them with a Logic Pro project so that they can reproduce the issue? 

4 minutes ago, Elazmo Hiftenfifter said:

I have no recourse but to appeal to the experienced and trustworthy pros at Logic Pro Help.

Sounds like an issue with the instrument, so there's not much we can do other than to try to reproduce the issue (if anyone else owns the instrument), but it really is the company's responsibility to try to reproduce the issue and if they can reproduce it, then fix the bug. 

I see they have a demo, I'll install it and see if I can reproduce the issue. 

[Elazmo Hiftenfifter]

Thanks a million! I think that if enough customers present this issue to Rhodes, they will address it.

I am expecting a dodge from them though. It is true that lower notes on real Rhodes pianos are a few microseconds behind upper notes, due to the escapement (the distance between hammer tip and tine) that is necessary to setting up a Rhodes properly. But this introduces a tiny, unnoticeable delay, not 27ms or more. None of my three Rhodes pianos exhibits extreme lag in the low notes.

Thanks again.

[David Nahmani]

So I bounced a C1 with the default patch and I don't see a delay here? Here's the Audio File editor, which waveform is a little more accurate: 

[Elazmo Hiftenfifter]

Thanks for investigating. What I'm seeing (see attached screen shot) is "stuff" in front of the tone, that results in a delayed feel compared to upper notes. As can be seen from the comparison in the screen shot, the two samples' tones are clearly not lining up. When combined with system latency, this is a deal breaker for me. I'm running 2.5ms output latency at 96K.

I will not belabor the point, but am hopeful that whomever has this plug can play it, feel the problem, and chime in,

BTW, the Vintage Electric Piano in LPX is immediate. No delay in any tones whatsoever. FAST!

[David Nahmani]

A rhodes note has an attack, so it's expected that there's noise at the beginning before going into that sustaining pitch that looks like a nice periodic waveform. For you is it something you're actually hearing, or is that just a test that you were experimenting with and you got frustrated by the look of the waveform? 

On my end I see a little bit of noise however it doesn't look like on yours, so I'm guessing maybe we're not using the same settings. Have you tried it with the default setting? Is it possible you're using a setting that creates a little more low-level noise on the attack than the one I'm using? 

[Elazmo Hiftenfifter]

The default preset and the Mark 1, which I used for my screen shots, have the same "stuff" at the beginning. I think the stuff might be a bit louder on the Mark 1 preset. Rightly so.

The stuff before the periodic waveform is mechanical clunks from the damper mechanism and hammer flange. Of course, that's part of the Rhodes sound. The problem for me at least is that the stuff lasts way too long (27 ms on C1) before the periodic waveform kicks in. Higher notes kick in much earlier. So, when I play low notes and high notes together, there is a noticeable disconnect. Very frustrating to play. I am pretty sure that some players will find the issue as frustrating as I do. I own three real Rhodes pianos, and none of them has lagging low notes.

FYI, the notes in my bounces were each at a velocity of 80, Rhodes V8 Pro version.

Thanks again for your patience with this. Kudos to Logic Pro Help!