Recording Yamaha P125

[Haisum]

Hello. I need to record my Yamaha P125B. Currently, I am using a USB cable that connects the piano to my laptop (acer aspire s13).
Then I use Audacity (44.1k HZ - mp3 format - 320kbps) to directly record the audio. However, I feel as though the sound quality is pretty low. I have been trying to record with better quality since months but could not figure out a way. Can any suggest me what can be done?
That would be really helpful. Please let me know as soon as possible as I have been trying to find a way since an extremely long time
but don't have much knowledge/experience regarding recording and stuff.

Another thing (this not related to my previous question) I wanted to ask is that does it make a difference in the sound
quality if I upload a Piano cover on a social media platform through my laptop than by first sending the video to my
phone and then uploading through it?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

This is a little complicated to answer, because there are various places where the audio quality could be getting degraded.

First, there's the method used to get the audio into the recording software.

As far as I can tell from Yamaha's website, the P-125 uses the Steinberg USB driver, which implies that it has a built-in USB audio interface and therefore has the ability to transmit and receive audio over a USB connection. Therefore you should be able to get the highest-quality audio recordings by connecting to a computer via USB and recording the audio that the computer is receiving over the USB connection.

If that isn't possible, the next best choice would be to connect the keyboard to an external USB audio interface, connect the audio interface to the computer via USB, and record the audio.

If that isn't possible, the next-to-last choice would be to connect the keyboard to the computer via audio cable.

If that isn't possible, the last choice-- which would most likely give the lowest quality of audio-- would be to use a microphone, or pair of microphones, to capture the audio coming from the keyboard's speakers and sending it as either a monophonic or stereophonic signal to the computer for recording.

This could actually give good results depending on the quality of the microphone(s) and whether or not an external USB audio interface is being used, as well as the actual room and overall sonic environment-- think of a singer being recorded in a studio, where they're usually singing in a soundproofed room and being recorded using high-quality professional equipment.

But if, for example, you're recording on your smartphone using your smartphone's built-in microphone, don't expect the results to be very good.

Once you record the audio in your software, the quality can potentially be either improved or degraded based on any processing you do to the sound, such as applying compression, or filtering out sounds which are above or below certain frequencies, or boosting the amplitude of certain frequency ranges, etc.

And once you've got your tracks and final mix sounding the way you want them to, you can lose audio quality by saving the final mix in a "lossy" audio format. MP3 is a lossy format, which compresses the data in order to reduce the file size using methods which result in the loss of some of that data. The software might allow you to set a desired percentage for the quality, resulting in less loss of quality but also less file compression, or more loss of quality and more file compression-- but there's always going to be some loss, because that's just how the MP3 format works.

There are several other audio formats you could use instead, and some of them are "loss-less" formats which retain all pertinent data. However, some-- if not most-- formats might be "proprietary," or the intellectual property of some company, which means free programs such as Audacity might not be able to include the necessary libraries or routines for converting to and from those proprietary formats. You might still be able to save files in those formats, but you might need to download and install the necessary add-ons yourself.

 

[Haisum]

will any audio interface work or it will have to be of considerable quality and which formats apart from mp3 are these? Also, thank you.

 

[Biggles]

Welcome.

The P125 has audio over USB hence the weakest link in your system is probably the quality of the laptop that you are using.

I have been using Audacity for years to record audio and always select WAV as the default format hence you may like to try using this format.

Also what are you using to listen to the recording?

i had a P121 which is the same as your P125 but with less keys. I used the audio over USB but never tried recording it

 

[Haisum]

Hey. So you mean that I should try to record it on another laptop that probably has a better sound card?
After I export the audio I convert it to mp4 and then send it to my phone using messenger (facebook). On phone the quality gets even bad. But even when I play it on my laptop (either the exported file
or on audacity) it doesnt sound that good.

 

[Subramanya]

Hello. I need to record my Yamaha P125B. Currently, I am using a USB cable that connects the piano to my laptop (acer aspire s13).
Then I use Audacity (44.1k HZ - mp3 format - 320kbps) to directly record the audio. However, I feel as though the sound quality is pretty low. I have been trying to record with better quality since months but could not figure out a way. Can any suggest me what can be done?
That would be really helpful. Please let me know as soon as possible as I have been trying to find a way since an extremely long time
but don't have much knowledge/experience regarding recording and stuff.

Another thing (this not related to my previous question) I wanted to ask is that does it make a difference in the sound
quality if I upload a Piano cover on a social media platform through my laptop than by first sending the video to my
phone and then uploading through it?

I use Audacity software to record from Yamaha keyboard. I connect the audio out of the keyboard to PC with a cable. I get reasonably good quality recording without noise. Noise gets added when the cable connections are not proper. I had this issue once. It is easy to check the additional noise in the line. Just start recording in Audacity with the keyboard turned on. Don't play anything on the keyboard. There should be a straight line in the Audacity screen. Any waveform is noise. Hope it helps.

 

[Haisum]

J

I use Audacity software to record from Yamaha keyboard. I connect the audio out of the keyboard to PC with a cable. I get reasonably good quality recording without noise. Noise gets added when the cable connections are not proper. I had this issue once. It is easy to check the additional noise in the line. Just start recording in Audacity with the keyboard turned on. Don't play anything on the keyboard. There should be a straight line in the Audacity screen. Any waveform is noise. Hope it helps.

Just checked. It shows a straight line so there is no noise. I don't know why nothing is working
Thanks though.

 

[SeaGtGruff]

You should be able to record by connecting the keyboard to the laptop with a USB 2 cable (not a USB 3 cable), and by installing the Yamaha-Steinberg USB driver.

However, I only found out a couple of months ago that the speed of the computer's CPU can be a factor, and it seems that a lot of laptops have CPUs which are too slow-- only 1 GHz, although they can run much faster in "turbo" mode-- so I'm not sure if that could be why a lot of people have trouble getting the driver to install on their laptops.

 

[Biggles]

I do not understand why you are using MP4.

If you record using a WAV preset in Audacity, save it as a WAV then export it as an MP3 at 320bps and send the MP3 file to your mobile phone you will have the best sound quality you can achieve.

 

[Haisum]

I do not understand why you are using MP4.

If you record using a WAV preset in Audacity, save it as a WAV then export it as an MP3 at 320bps and send the MP3 file to your mobile phone you will have the best sound quality you can achieve.

What do you mean by using WAV preset in Audacity and then exporting in MP3? Doesn't the file format option only come when you are exporting? I know how to export it in MP3 but how do I set the preset as WAV? (I am a total beginner)

 

[Haisum]

I have the driver installed and I am able to record but its the sound quality which is not good.

You should be able to record by connecting the keyboard to the laptop with a USB 2 cable (not a USB 3 cable), and by installing the Yamaha-Steinberg USB driver.

However, I only found out a couple of months ago that the speed of the computer's CPU can be a factor, and it seems that a lot of laptops have CPUs which are too slow-- only 1 GHz, although they can run much faster in "turbo" mode-- so I'm not sure if that could be why a lot of people have trouble getting the driver to install on their laptops.

 

[Reuben]

The best (well certainly the easiest) way to record a Yamaha P125 or P121 is by using the free Smart Pianist app made by Yamaha (I have the iOS app but I believe its available for Android as well). You can choose to export as mp4 or wav to a free Dropbox Account so its accessible on other devices.
I've tried it and it works perfectly.

 

[Haisum]

Hey guys. I recorded my Piano. I have attached a sound sample below with a blue thumbnail. Can you guys listen to it and tell me how it sounds? Is the audio quality good? Is the volume loud enough? Please listen to it on your phone because I feel that the audio does not sound well on mobile.

 

[Reuben]

It sounds nice and clear to me. A little to much reverb for my taste but thats just a personal preference.
Is that the P125 inbuilt piano or are you using a sampled piano?

 

[Haisum]

It sounds nice and clear to me. A little to much reverb for my taste but thats just a personal preference.
Is that the P125 inbuilt piano or are you using a sampled piano?

Its the inbuilt sound of p125. Does it sound nice and clear on your mobile as well?

 

[Reuben]

Yes its the same and being a digital recording it should be the same on just about any device. I guess the quality of DAC's vary a little bit but the quality of the speakers or headphones (including mis-match of impedance i.e. dont try to run 200 ohms headphones with an iPhone that is looking for maybe 30 ohms) will be the main thing that determines the sound quality.