Hello everyone,
I had the occasion to try the V-piano and I'd like to point out several critique arguments hoping the next models or software updates will improve these aspects.
So first of all bear in mind I like the very idea of physical modeling and I think this is a good piano, though Roland has to address many points - IN MY VIEW - to improve it. This is not a "review" on the piano, and I'm not trying to throw crap on this great instrument.
Alright, the model was the first to come to the music shop I usually spend some time every week. The shop clerk, a dear friend, let me spend some time with that piano and evaluate it so he can see whether it's the case to order more samples or not from the Roland dealer.

Here's a list of what I spotted out so far:
- the V-piano is huge and heavy, not very likely to be used in gigs and tours, but in concert halls and studios. Other specifications make it more suited to studios too. The finishing is superb, but the polished surface gets dirty in a second and is hard to get it clean again...
- The price. +5000€ is a lot. Only a studio or a concert hall can buy it. (Pro musician would buy a Korg Oasys for 7000€ but that keyboard has everything you can imagine inside, included string instruments with physical modeling...) But then a concert hall would invest more probably, and a studio would get something which includes also other sounds as electric pianos or GM sounds...
- Yes: there are GM sounds but you can't play them! They are only available when playing a MIDI file by external sequencer! This is crazy, they spent some maybe hundreds MBs which cannot be accessed by the piano!
- not sure whether the interface is really neat. E.g. reaching the start/stop button for sequencer takes several menus to be opened
- The presets are really few, I could expect that from a sampled piano (like the Native Instrume Akoustik which requires lots of GBs for 4 pianos, but than you have precious quality samples)
- No fine tuning has been made: I mean, it is PERFECTLY tuned, but we don't like a real piano to be perfectly in tune, right? They didn't call an expert for this so far. That's bad. You can do the tuning yourself but probably most of us are not quite good in that. In fact we called another friend, a pianos tuner,
and after that the piano sounded times better. Normally a tuner would cost you some extra money.
- Sound editing parameters are really few for a physical modeling algorithm... The software editor is really good looking but has no additional features
- Some sounds are SAMPLED!!! Well, that's ok for the damper pedal noise or so, but... the duplex scale strings are sampled, and the hammer sound too! At least in some part of the keyboard. The version I could try has a very nasty bug: the hammer sound in a section of the higher keyboard was tracking, as it was sampled (surely it is). For tracking I mean this: let's hear the sound of it, e.g. for a C4 note, than playing a C#4 you will hear that the hammer sound is pitched up by a semitone! And this goes on for a few keys. That's bad.

Again, many of these bugs or problems, hopefully will be addressed by future firmware updates. Looks like Roland this time had a very short time to market and couldn't complete all the debugging. No shame however! Usually Japanese companies are very tight to schedule, everyone can slip for once, no problem. Anyways, I would here stress the fact that some sounds are sampled, ok minor things, the piano sounds are physical and really good, but as usual the advertisiment is a bit incorrect...
About the sound: Roland didn't claim it was physical modeling so, I might have used the term in a improper way. I'm not still sure why didn't they use the term.
Anyway: the physical reproduction of the piano is evident and gives its advantages, as in ribattutos and the likes. Very good. I've heard some people telling the sound is too boring or something like that, but since you can change it everyone will find a pleasant sound, and if Roland will bring up new presets this will get better.

I would point out an additional fact: a friend of mine, which played it even longer than me, says the keyboard it's a bit too hard. He has a Steinway and a Fazioli at home and he's piano teacher in an important music academy, so I trust his opinion...

I really think this will open a new season, and the next Vpianos to come will give better results, hopefully with lighter prices.

Other's opinions are welcome!

When I first heard and read about the V, I was sure I would buy one. A couple of months ago I realized that wasn't a good idea for practical $ reasons. When I finally got to try one a week ago, I was comfortable with the notion that I wouldn't be buying one.

I did not have the right situation for extended play that was afforded you, but I don't think I would have picked up all the subtle points that you did even if I played it for three days. I did have my own headphones along though, so I was able to evaluate it against the digitals I'm accustomed to play, and on that basis it came up short of what I was expecting. All the hype had led me to believe I would have a Bosendorfer, a Fazioli, a Steinway or anything else I wanted on demand. No doubt that came from wishful thinking more than anything else.

On the sampling/modeling issue, I don't much care. I don't think my FP7 is a product of pure sampling. I don't think the latest GX is either. I think Roland has been mixing sampling and modeling for a while now even though their sound has been categorized by others as sampled.

On the keyboard touch thing. all the high-end Roland actions are a little rough on hands that are unaccustomed to them. I'm about 60 / 40 digital to acoustic. I think it's just a matter of adaptation and not a real concern.

On the market to be served, I agree with you. Roland has to find a market. The combination of size, weight, price, and what's missing (speakers, ease of changing on the fly,...), indicate this piano has to find its own niche.

Like you, I admire the initiative in this one and in a lot of other Roland products as well. I look forward to the trickle-down effect.

Somehow all these physmod pianos always sound like the same instrument on a certain level, no matter how much you change the settings. This seems to be as true for the V-Piano as it is for Pianoteq. There's a certain quality of the sound that remains constant, despite superficial changes like detuning, hammer hardness, or soundboard impedance. It's still recognizable...

I tried one of those V-Pianos at guitar center today, and I really liked it. To me, it put all the other keyboards in the room to shame.
In my view, anyone with money who's looking for a piano / keyboard just for the sound of the piano should look no further.

Martin, I think what makes it "recognizable" is the quality of amp / speaker you use.
Ultimately, if a CD is well recorded, a good setup and -eyes closed- you would not know if you are home, or in a concert hall. Same for keyboards.

I had a good 20 minutes trying this thing out ...

Yes, if you would hear it on its own or in a mix, with a bit of EQ and reverb thrown in, etc., you probably couldn't tell it's the V-Piano.

But when I watched the unboxing/demo video at Keyboard magazine, they fiddled around with the controls, and superficially there were big changes, but a certain quality (or lack of quality) of the sound was always there. A slightly unpleasant kind of artificialness, perhaps. And that's also what I found with Pianoteq: No matter how much you tweak the settings, it always only sounds almost right.

I'll definitely give the V-Piano a try if the local Guitar Center has it. Demos and videos can be totally misleading of course, so maybe it's wonderful if it's right in front of you. And at any rate the V-Piano is unquestionably a big breakthrough in many ways and will sell very well I think.

Martin,

If you're not finding the sound you want in Pianoteq, please do go to the PianoTeq forum and talk about what you hear and what you want to hear. The developers want feedback and take impressions very seriously. It's not as though you drop a rock into a big corporation's well and never hear the echo. (I'm not part of the company.)

You can post recordings of notes or songs and talk about what's missing or too present. Or post a recording of a sound you like vrs a recording of the PianoTeq sound, and talk about the differences. The more people who contribute, the better.

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewforum.php?id=1

i've played this thing 2 days in a row at different shops- about 45 minutes each session. I know this is their first pass at this. but i think- if you are really into playing- you have experienced nothing like this in a digital keyboard. i went with the intent of really listening for resonance, overtones, blah,blah. but each time - the first mainly though headphones, the second through external speakers- i wound up just playing my brains out. it is an inspiration to play. i have never felt action and responsiveness like that in a digital keyboard. no latency whatsover, complete dynamic response to your touch, lightening fast action, great touch sensation with the fake ivory material. the pianos all sound good. they don't need a lot of tweaking. the silver one is outstanding for rock, pop, gospel. the vintage one and two for anything you want to play- the vintage two has that mellow, jazz feel to it- wonderful for diminished chords. as i mentioned on another blog, the $6K is pretty steep- but to me that is early adopter pricing -as you see in all hi-tech stuff- iPhone, etc. i know this is NOT a mass market toy so who knows how long it takes to get the price down to the more reasonable $3000-4000 range. but it plays outstanding. i'm thinking about dragging my DAW over to GC here and seeing if they will let me record. to me, that will tell me if it does what needs to be done- how will it sound when dithered down to a 16bit CD..... all i know is when i play the sample programs i spend half my time tweaking this and that, but on this thing- i just wanted to play. and it made my playing better.....

knotty, see my reply above (below, whereever..) i am with you brother, this thing blew everything esle out the window. i have a yamaha p-250 which i have always appreciated as a terrific board. but it doesn't play ANYTHING like the v....

I went to a large music store close by to try out a bunch of keyboards, including the Casio PX 320, the Yamaha YPG-635, the 140, 155, 160, Nocturne, the Roland FP-4 and FP-7, the HP 207, and one of the YDPs. Anyway, I decided that I would get the least expensive that felt right and had a few features, I'm going to post my reaction to the keyboards somewhere else. We went to lunch and came back and I played a few keyboards some more. Then I asked to try the Roland V-piano which had just come in.

Well...there was no comparison. The touch was wonderful, altho' they have some kind of papery finish, I suppose to emulate aged ivory keys, they were unlike anything I've played on an acoustic or digital, but I liked it...they just looked a bit artificial.

The sound was gorgeous, nothing else came close. And earlier this week I played a bunch of Yamahas at the Yamaha dealer.

The way the keyboard responded to my changes in touch was like a really good acoustic, actually better than any of the pianos I've played including the Steinway grand in our classroom, altho' I've never played a Steinway concert grand.

I would have played all day if I could. I loved it.

The gradual decay of sound was just like an acoustic. I really don't have a clue how any of this works, but I don't care. I want one. I didn't play around with the different voicings or strings or models...I just played the "Steinway" sound.

I think that the price point is very good for what you get. Admittedly, you're not going to get a stage piano to use for accompaniment. This is just the closest sound to a grand that you can get without having a grand.

I think that this piano won't appeal to those who want a lot of Synth/track/sequ/stage stuff. That's not what this piano's about. It's for the sound/touch purist who wants the experience of a superb quality grand at $5,000 and who wants to be able to voice the imaginary strings in who knows what ways. My dream would be to voice it to make it sound one way for baroque music, another for romantic, another for classical or contemporary. So that would be the classical pianist. On the other hand, it would be great for a jazz pianist as well, and I suppose there are many ways to voice it for other styles, but I THINK, (altho' I don't know for sure since I didn't care about the other stuff with this lovely beast) that it is really intended just to be a piano, and not drums/strings/choirs/etc....How great is that?

Hi Jake!



Well, I think it's hard to describe. Recently I experimented a bit with Python and sound synthesis: sum a few harmonics, use an envelope, etc., just to explore the basics of synthesis (http://home.arcor.de/mdoege/pysynth/).

Of course my project is just for fun and not meant to be compared to Pianoteq, but I still find similar aural characteristics both in the output of my synthesizer script and Pianoteq: Somewhat bell-like, not bright but muffled (in my case because Python is too slow to sum dozens of harmonics, in Pianoteq's case presumably it's related to how many segments per string are simulated), a little too metallic, piercing, clangy, cold, lacking wood in other words. Plus in Pianoteq's case the hammer noise in the top two octaves or so is very strange (sounds more as if someone is knocking against the wall).

But I don't know if Pianoteq and physical modeling in general can be "fixed" that easily. The developers probably need to do a better job simulating the sonic characteristics of wood -- and I don't just mean the soundboard, but the entire enclosure -- to give it a warmer sound, and the program perhaps needs to simulate more segments per string to make it brighter and more "immediate" in its sound, right now it's more as if the sound is coming from the next room. Moore's Law will probably eventually solve all those problems, or maybe the algorithms need to get better. I don't know if much can be learned from the V-Piano, as it seems to employ a hybrid technique (sampling and modeling).

That is not to say that TruePianos is perfect, but I find it (at least most of the time) to be comparatively pleasant in its synthy-ness, while Pianoteq and to a lesser extent the V-Piano sound somewhat unpleasantly synthy to me. My main criterion is not so much realism, but mainly if I consider the overall sound to be beautiful or not.

Isn't that material also supposed to absorb moisture from the fingers like ebony/ivory does? I read that about one of these high-end DP's featuring that, I just don't know if it was the V-Piano or the AvantGrand...

There is no sampling used in the V-Piano. It is modeling only.

Lawrence

Nikalette, i believe when i was tooling around with it they had a pianoforte voice setting that would be very useful for baroque, etc. go to youtube and watch the demo videos. scott tibbs did some demo work at NAMM and his playing is just awesome. the thing is versatile beyond belief. there ARE some real issues- if you wanted it for performance you would have to hire a crew to carry it around. i wonder if it has been fully de-bugged at this stage so you will probably be having to update software periodically. and you will experience the pain of seeing it offered cheaper in a year...maybe. but your reaction seemed to be like mine- i played "inspired" on it. i have a 5-11 Steinway at home, and i thought the roland was much more fun to actually play. no, it will never have the natural sound of it, but i played better on it than i do the steinway. it is not for the workstation crowd that want a board for production, but in my mind those boards have rotten sounding pianos. so you have to make a choice

It's like nothing else. I can't wrap my brain around it. But what another poster said about any DP missing something, no matter how good, I don't think so. Because 99% of the acoustics I've played are missing something. I don't have the opportunity to play a top notch American or European grand, maybe they're not missing something.

I love this instrument so much, I've thrown all my other plans out the window. I know if and when I get it, I'll play way more than I would play any other DP, or either of the acoustics I've had.

Oh and vis-a-vis Piano tech and all the computer generated stuff. The V piano is one unit and whatever happens is in response to my fingers touching the keys. That makes it as organic as it is possible for a DP to get. To me, running a software program on a computer then through a keyboard, well, that's a whole bunch of extra steps between my fingers touching the keys and the sound emerging...maybe it didn't matter when you were playing a sampled keyboard, which I guess is just playing a bunch of recordings when you push down a key, but with this V thing, you really are playing an instrument, even though the mechanics are generated in a way I don't understand. To my electronically uneducated brain it just feels like someone has put the real workings of a grand piano inside of the cabinet, every last component....it's just put together in a different way, but the sound comes out in the same way.

I think so, it just looked so different, kind of a transluscent white wash. Oh, I am SO in love! When I sat down and played the opening bars of a Chopin Waltz and a prelude, I melted. I told the salesman, "It's like buttah." Maybe I'm easy, but I just had a real emotional response to the sound, feel and response of that sexy little thing. I had spent about an hour playing those 2 pieces on a dozen keyboards, and finally I got a response. I know I'm waxing a bit erotic here, but it's kind of like what I imagine would be the difference between sharing a Coke with Ryan Seacrest or champagne with Johnny Depp.

It only weighs 84 lbs. That's not so bad. I tried to watch the Scott Tibbs thing from NAMM but some idiot was banging away on drums in the background and I go nuts with that sort of stuff. I noticed that on the owner's manual they refer to one of the USB ports as being for patches and upgrades, so no doubt they will come. I'm jealous - you have a Steinway!

Martin:

Have you tried the latest demo version of PianoTeq, version 3.2, I think it is. Version 3 is night and day different from the previous versions.

In any case, the comments that you made earlier in this thread would be taken seriously in the PianoTeq forum, and would be taken into consideration in the next update.

In the first post of this thread it says:



I think it would make sense to use samples for something like damper noise, which would be very hard to model I think.

I believe I downloaded it two weeks or so ago. It says it's 3.0.4-demo (on OS X). Is there a big difference between v3.0 and v3.2?

Perhaps Pianoteq needs a high-quality setting. Right now it mostly seems to take about 50% on two cores, so there's definitely room for more algorithmic complexity. But then the fan would kick in on the notebook. TruePianos never seems to use more than 30% (and it runs on both cores, I'm not sure if PT does too), so there's no distracting fan noise from the computer...

I simply think the physmod pianos are missing some warmth and character in their sound. Of course playability is much better than with samples, but somehow the sound doesn't seem to be inviting enough.

But some of that might be due to evaluating the sound from videos. If you can hear the instrument directly, you will probably get a nicer bass and it will sound much better. I think the problems I have with the sound are all related to what the higher frequencies are doing...

Now you just have to strap a V-Piano to a mule and send it over the Rockies so I play one too.

Ah, just as I suspected, you HAVEN'T played one.

(I didn't know there were other physmod pianos.)

I think your reaction will depend on how high quality of an acoustic piano you are used to playing.

I played the V piano right after playing all the other DPs. And altho' my 1927 Knabe had some real beauty and soul, it was hard to play. All I can say is that the V was the best piano I've played so far. I will go back down there and play it again to see if I feel the same way on the second date.

No, like I said, I had to base my opinion on the videos at Keyboard magazine.

But if playing it is sooo intoxicating it might be wiser to only listen to someone else playing it, to be able to evaluate the sound more soberly (and from different positions in the room). Otherwise there is a real risk one wakes up the next day with a headache, memory loss, an overdrawn bank account, and a strange device right next to the bed that looks vaguely like a Wurlitzer.

I believe Pianoteq is the only other one that has made it out of academia into a product you can actually play.

But I must say that software pianos work amazingly well. I was also skeptical, because I thought latency would be far too high. But it's actually very playable if you exit all other programs that can use the sound card (Mail.app under OS X seems to be a particular offender; even when you turn off sound effects it still seems to slow down Pianoteq or TruePianos somehow, creating very noticeable lag between pressing a key and getting a sound). And on Windows I believe you need to install something called ASIO drivers. But then the ridiculous, highly intoxicating responsiveness is totally there.

Martin and Nikalette- good posts. Nikalette- you mention my steinway. its great except you need to live in the sahara unless you want to have a tuner as a best friend. here in atlanta, the humidity is like a yo-yo, and it greatly affects both the tuning and the action. I am looking for an instrument to record at home, and the steinway won't work for that because i don't want to remodel my house into a humidity free cedar closet and then embark on the holy grail quest for the greatest set of microphones to use. the holy grail quest for the greatest digital piano is enough for one lifetime... and since i want to record, Martin makes a very good point, i should drag some other player over to the guitar center and make them play while i just listen, because - as you mention- PLAYING the v-piano becomes a very emotional thing. which makes critical listening tougher. i have to admit, i find the recordings and videos i've found on the Roland site and NAMM, etc. to be quite pleasing to my ears, and i haven't heard that on pianoteq's site. although i can't back this up scientifically, being a rube, i tend to agree with Nikalette that the v-piano has less latency because of the way the software and hardware is integrated. and i believe it has some microprocessor power that senses your touch and adapts to it.... I am not a classical player, i'm looking for something that sounds like Keith Jarrett's Steinway or Dave Grusin's piano. and this sounded great to my unsophisticated ears....so at some point, after the studios and pros have bought theirs, they will bring this thing down a couple grand to expand the market, and i will definitely have one, unless Yamaha has a better answer real quick...

And when people record their acoustic pianos at home, it often has a strange hollow sound to it, as if they are playing in a subway tunnel, or perhaps the Batcave (e.g., many of the recordings at http://www.pianosociety.com/). Maybe this is really the reverb from the floor and ceiling interacting, which was suggested to be a major problem in another thread (i.e., so major that a little rug under the piano doesn't fix it). Digitals definitely have an edge there for easy studio-quality recordings.

Martin, yep, when i go to cdbaby.com and listen to solo piano recordings- 90% of them sound like crap. it is really, really hard to get it right for anybody other than the best studios. too bright, too mellow, mikes too close, mikes too far....noooo thanks. if you want to hear a nice recording of solo piano in a studio, go to amazon and listen to Dave Grusin's Now Playing (movie themes) recording. he really nails it. so for me, its keep up with the digital world and hope for the best!

My test for latency is to pick something simple (for some reason I've become obsessed with the 8-note motif from m. 2 of Dvorak's Humoresque #7) and play it faster and faster, as fast as you can. If at maximum speed you still feel your fingers are directly causing the sound and that there is no disconnect or "waiting" for the note to sound, then I would say it's responsive enough, because you are playing faster than the fastest speed you can sustain in an actual piece.

And if the system is set up correctly, Pianoteq and TruePianos pass this test with flying colors. If it is not set up correctly, sooner or later there will be a sense of mental disconnect between what your fingers are doing and what you are hearing that will cause you to stumble, as your brain can no longer decide if it should trust your fingers or your ears.

I have TruePianos running at a theoretical minimum latency of about 2.6 ms (purely based on sample rate and buffer size), and I'm pretty sure the actual latency is not very far behind, which I find quite amazing considering how many steps are involved in sound production...



Yes, his CD sounds very nice! Unfortunately I can really only evaluate piano sounds with a classical piece I already know reasonably well, like Chopin, played not excessively fast. That's why I dislike most DP product demo videos -- it's always either some improvised pop/jazz/new age noodling, or some Japanese chick playing a fiery classical piece at ridiculous speed. And then the demo quickly moves to e-pianos and cowbells, as if the manufacturers realize their acoustic piano sounds don't quite hold up to close scrutiny.

A slow, delicate, emotional, soft piece to me is the ultimate benchmark for the sound of a piano, whether acoustic or digital.

Martin & Fat/Flat-these posts really made me think (and laugh).

Playing an accoustic grand piano IS a very emotional and sensual experience..the feeling of the keys on the fingertips is pleasing, the vibrations of the piano, the response to the pedal, the visual of the polished wood, it's just an organic experience where one melds with the piano (or perhaps I need to get out more).

And in classical music, there's the additional element of having a concurrent relationship with the composer, a auditory threesome. When I play Chopin, he is alive and present.

I still don't understand how something as artificial as the V piano can make me feel the same way. I really don't understand or know how to use any of the capabilities of synthesizers and I actually feel quite hostile towards electronic music, as only a controlling person completely out of her element can be.

Anyway, you're quite right that I need to be sober and rational in this matter, since money is involved, although there is more to the whole thing than just the sound. I can't just say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all! How horrible it would be to go out to dinner with Johnny Depp and wake up with Ryan Seacrest!

Roland is on record that the V-Piano is 100% modeling, which is what I'm basing my claim on. It remains for someone to prove them wrong, I guess. It won't be me. V-Piano is not worth it. It sounds like a Roland, not a Steinway, or Bosendorfer - as Roland also claims. And so the marketing-speak goes, round and round. (Don't get me wrong, it plays superbly, just doesn't sound like my ideal of a real piano.)

Lawrence

As J.D. lately looks like his own death mask, I think you need a better comparison there. The thought of waking up next to Johnny Depp -- the horror, the horror! "21, Jump Street" was a long time ago...

Well, the OP said he could hear frequency shifts in certain sounds that can only be explained by them being samples played back at different speeds. But I wouldn't hold that against Roland anyway if they used samples -- Pianoteq is pure modeling, TruePianos is modeling plus samples, and I prefer the latter. If it sounds good enough, I like it, and it doesn't matter how the sound is produced.

But yes, that's my point, that both Pianoteq and the V-Piano really always just sound like differently voiced pianos of the same make, and not like different models.

[/quote]

As J.D. lately looks like his own death mask, I think you need a better comparison there. The thought of waking up next to Johnny Depp -- the horror, the horror! "21, Jump Street" was a long time ago...
[/quote]

He was a bit young for my taste in 21 jump street. By about 20-30 years. He's all growed up now and still looks good to me. Besides, just as with the V, it's not all about looks. It's the mystery, talent and the good sense to live in France.

And he was too old for me then. I mean 13 years older, I couldn't fathom why the girls in the class went nuts over such a geezer. But on the whole I don't think he's the Cary Grant type who improves significantly with age. He deteriorated rapidly in the last five years (since "Finding Neverland") and looks emaciated in the face and unwell, no matter how much brown makeup they smeared in his face for his gangster epic. Another 10 years and he will look like Keith Richards -- or Keith Richards' dad.

"Blood brothers", that says it all. The family connection is established.

And he was too old for me then. I mean 13 years older, I couldn't fathom why the girls in the class went nuts over such a geezer. But on the whole I don't think he's the Cary Grant type who improves significantly with age. He deteriorated rapidly in the last five years (since "Finding Neverland") and looks emaciated in the face and unwell, no matter how much brown makeup they smeared in his face for his gangster epic. Another 10 years and he will look like Keith Richards -- or Keith Richards' dad.


Meow!

I wrote some notes while reading the posts:

@Medialworks: incorrect, Roland claims is not based on samples, never talked about physical modeling. That makes me think. Why aren't they talking about physical modeling? Patents problems and stuff? Anyway you can look here http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=978&ParentId=72

@Medialworks music & Martin C Doege: ok for the damper pedal, but the duplex scale? That should be modeled as well in a "modeling piano"! And I could only spot that because it was buggy. I imagine there's more samples working below you don't notice. I'm just playing the role of the picky-one, I'm not discussing the fact the main sound is phy modeling and it's nice.
On the other hand as someone said, if samples make it feel good, why not? I can imagine for roland it would have been so unpleasant to say "97.5% sound is modeled", so just floored it to 100%, can't it be an explanation?

Someone said pianTeq and Vpiano just sounds the same: phy modeling techniques are much different one from another, and are implemented in totally different ways, so I wouldn't give for granted that a Vpiano sounds like a Pianoteq etc.
Anyways it could be they both have a similar characteristic or feature in their sound, a common problem, then, they should try to address...

from Martin:

I quote! Absolutely!

Martin, you need to grab your Moonlight Sonata sheetmusic, drive on down to denver and test this thing out. let us know what you think. me and nikalette believe you will experience this profound digital epiphany. i'm heading over to guitar center this morning (those poor schmoes never get a day off..) and give it another whirl...

fat and flat:

Looking forward to your next review.

Who or what is Ryan Seacrest? Same query for 21 Jump Street.
Somehow I have a feeling I've not missed a lot.

Hi Jake,

well i went back over there to GC. they were willing to knock 15% off to @ $5100 so i would tell everybody- don't pay more than that. i had noticed musiciansfriend.com online had broken price about a week ago. like everything else in retail, there are too many retailers fighting for share and once a supplier lets one break price, well you should never pay more than that. its still too much, anyway. i would like to buy from GC, because they at least provided me with a board to try out- the online guys can NEVER offer a service like that, you know...(but they provide a valuable pricing arbitrage function!).. i talked with the keyboard manager and he told me he was nervous about how this was going to work out. most stores will be lucky to have a piano on display and another one in the back in the box. there ain't no way i'm paying $5K+ for a display board. so i can tell these guys are really hoping Roland is willing to make the investment of having an expensive board out there for people to play with. right now, the market is strictly studios and pros. roland is hoping studios will really gravitate towards this, one of the salesmen there who works in a studio was telling me pianos drive studio technicians nuts, one musician will demand it be tuned a certain way and then immediately after that another musician will stomp around and ask what moron had it tuned like that... they are "hoping" this technology will at some point "replace" acoustic pianos for all but the van cliburn types. I'm not a pro, it sounds terrific to me, but i can tell i'm being influenced by my fingers more than my ears. it really is first and foremost a playing experience. I asked the guy if i could drag my DAW into the showroom and record for about 15 minutes to take home and burn to a CD to see what it sounded like. he sorta said OK once he figured out i wasn't ready to bite. so i guess i will try to take it to that level... anyway, i had fun playing it once i got the sales guy to turn off the disco rap blasting out from the speaker room (why DO they do that there?...). The Vintage pianos DO sound different. i am too unwashed to know if vintage 1 is true steinway and vintage 2 is a bos, but they truly have different characteristics to them. i had originally gravitated towards vintage 2 but today the first one sounded more colorful for the type of jazz/pop/rock/gibberish that i "noodle" (per Martin)around with. 2 is definitely more classical. and Silver 1- it makes a great rock/gospel sound. doesn't sound artificial to me at all. Jerry Lee would dig it. The ambience control is better than i thought, very simple, no "rooms" to choose, you don't have to figure out how far out in the parking lot to move the mikes, just turn the knob a little and you get a little air in there. i detuned the silver one and hardened the hammers and it makes a great rocker sound. So I am sold on it, although i would like to record it first to make sure its not all an illusion. but i come from a different place than most of you, i am an older boomer- i want simplicity. i want to give my wife my music computer and just be able to run a board right into a DAW and skip all the star wars stuff. this would allow me to do that, more playing, arranging and less cursing at Windows..... ya'll have a nice 4th...

Jump Street is an old TV show that I never watched...Johnny Depp's first exposure. Then he started making great movies and trying not to exploit his good looks.

Ryan seacrest is a multimedia industry, hosts "American Idol", radio shows etc....He's just kind of phony and tiny, and probably gay, not that there's anything wrong with it, but for a girl, not a romantic fantasy. AllPERSONALITY with a capital P.

J Depp is mysterious, talented, a man of few words and gorgeous. I used to tell people he was my fiance till he moved in with that French actress and started making babies.

F&F, with the $5100 do you get a stand? It's encouraging that the price is coming down. The mark-up has got to be huge at this point, but with the recession.....This is one I would buy online out of state because with tax in California, even at $5100, that's another $500.

Anyway, the playing experience, w hich for me was the touch and responsiveness, while not quite as important as the sound, is huge, so I really don't care if I'm being influenced by that, since I'll be doing Just Piano, classical, jazz, rock/blues etc...and singing.

F/F what's DAW?

Nikalette, the price includes the stand (very sturdy- custom made for it- i wouldn't trust the generics stands with it)and the 3 pedal unit. i don't think the seat comes with it but i am not sure. there are some other options you can buy with it, a CD rom unit that goes underneath etc. DAW - Digital Audio Workstation- a standalone multi-track recorder "box". I have a Yamaha AW 16G, which has been replaced by the AW1600 (i think). there are oodles of them and they run from $300 to a couple thousand depending on number of inputs/tracks and sophistication of the imbedded software. a lot of people use computer programs instead, such as Logic for Apple and Cubase etc for Windows. i like the dedicated hardware box myself. as i said, i would love to get the computer out of the middle of everything! i understand your point about taxes- it is a real consideration with something this expensive (GA's sales tax is 8%!). but Ahnold really needs the money. and don't you have to fill out some california tax form for internet purchases? (ha, right!)

PS: the GC manager said the units had about $1000/profit in them at list price. i don't know if that is only GC's margin or both roland and GC's... right now, they aren't producing enough to have real critical mass so i wouldn't argue his figures. but you figure if they can double/triple production they can probably get down the cost curve pretty quickly. DSP's / RAM are pretty cheap, i guess the cost is in the action (as must be all the weight)

Of course there are rooms, and halls and stages to select from. Reading the manual would reveal how to access these.

Lawrence

Well, I think noodling actually works great as a test, but only if you do the noodling yourself according to what you want to hear, not if somebody else does it. If somebody else demos it then I think a recognizable piece that you've already heard a thousand times (like the love theme from Titanic, a Chopin nocturne, or something by Bach) is more useful to pick up fine nouances.

The Denver GC is apparently the GC for poor people. The money is in the mountains here, so I suppose GC Aspen (if there is one there) has V-Pianos wall-to-wall.

I'm going to Cologne next week where there's a huge music store, so I'd expect them to have it...

I agree that everything directly to do with the strings should be modeled, except the very-high frequency stuff like damper noise. But of course marketing speak always tends to make outrageous claims, such as 100% modeled. It sounds better, and unless you reverse engineer the software on the V-Piano, you can't really prove them wrong, although the anomalies you noticed in the sound are a pretty strong indication of samples. Maybe the product was rushed to completion (it's supposedly been in the works for 10 years), so 100% modeled was probably the intention 10 years ago when they started, but then it turned out it didn't sound as good, so they put some samples in. Just my speculation.

When you look in the academic papers, physmod seems to be always the same: divide the string into say 100 segments, simulate the interaction with a hammer (represented as a round, somewhat soft entity on a spring in the models) and the soundboard. Obviously Roland and Pianoteq must have made advancements since then, such as the effect of an open or closed lid on the sound, string resonance, etc. But fundamentally I think it's well understood how physical modeling of a piano sound works. The challenge is doing it in realtime and still having it sound good. The V-Piano seems to have more CPU horsepower, which would logically mean they could simulate a brighter, more "overtony" sound, as opposed to the more CPU-starved, darker-sounding Pianoteq.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time for that forum right now, but then again I think my objections are very similar to what other people who take issue with the PT sound say, so I think basically the devs know what the objections are.

And I'm not sure if complaining helps, when the algorithms of PT are probably a trade secret. I really only like to complain when I also can offer an idea of a possible solution...

per Martin:
"The V-Piano seems to have more CPU horsepower, which would logically mean they could simulate a brighter, more "overtony" sound, as opposed to the more CPU-starved, darker-sounding Pianoteq."

Bingo. that would be my observation...

Not to mention the fact that you can voice and regulate the whole keyboard, or sweet spots, and make it exactly how you want it to sound for certain songs and then save that setting. Can't you save up to 100 settings on the V piano? They have 20 presets.

Hey no one told me anything about a sales tax form. The sellers have to do that, don't they? Arnold has plenty of money, it's just being spent badly.

Anyway, does the V piano have a built in recorder? I guess I need to think about getting something if it doesn't. No doubt it has no input for a microphone, so if I wanted to play and sing, I would have to set all that up separately.
I really need to take a class in this. When I try to find info online, it's just so technical it's way over my head.

I'm actually pretty good with computers in general but I never learned anything about the musical thing, I don't even know how to put songs on facebook or my space. I bought Cakewalk but it just seems so awkward.

All I have is an Olympus recorder and a Flip camera.

Nikalette- the vpiano has a 1 track recorder/sequencer. so you could play and record and i imagine there is some way to save it into a song file that can be downloaded to your computer. one-track is pretty hard to work with. you have to play the whole song flawlessly or your screwed. the Yamaha CP300 and my older p-250 have 16 track sequencers, so you can record more easily/ seamlessly in segments. but, yes, it can record....

a pretty good website to look at to learn about the digital music production/recording world- particularly for amateur home/ham operators is:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/

i am not sure if he is keeping it current but it explains how all the terminology and the equipment used etc.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

On the V, doesn't it have a port that you could put a flash drive into? I'm okay with trying to record it perfectly. It's mainly performance practice anyway.

The algorithms Pianoteq uses are purposely scaled back so that it can run on older computers. Future versions will likely increase the complexity of the algorithms, at the expense of greater CPU usage.

Even when I reach the polyphony limit of 256 on Pianoteq, CPU usage doesn't reach 15% on an i7 processor.

Since they have sliders for almost everything else in PT, I don't understand why there isn't a checkbox or something for "please waste more CPU cycles on generating the sound." I'd gladly do with lower polyphony if I can get a better sound.

Of course they should continue to support older machines/notebooks, so flexibility is key...

I have to agree with Martin. it makes no sense for them to "hold back" on any technology available to their users because of concerns over CPU power. if they got it, they should show it. they'd be doing me a big favor, because to my ears they aren't competitive with rolands effort. but that is just the way i am wired for sound, i guess...

on the Roland US website there are endorsement videos from George Duke and Myron McKinley from Earth, Wind, and Fire. Both videos are outstanding in my opinion. but on another blog i heard somebody really criticizing how synthetic the piano sounded on Duke's video. i dunno, maybe so. i get confused if i am listening for wood or metal. but if you listen to him change to various pianos, you would have to be one really critical player not to find something there that sounded good and..usable. and i guess that is the problem, classical pianists are looking for a certain definitive sound, while jazz/pop players need something else, and everybody's ears are different. on pianoteq, i did NOT find the M3 piano to be a good pop piano. i hope they get it right, and its a shame that roland's product is so expensive that it really doesn't effectively create head-to-head competition.

Well despite my infatuation with the Roland, I've gone for something a lot more economical until all the kinks and the price work themselves out. I would have held out longer, but I found a really low sale price on the keyboard I've been looking at, and I just can't practice on the 61 key Casio I've been using. I have no piano at the moment and it's driving me crazy.

I suspect there will be very few customers indeed upgrading from a 61 key Casio directly to Roland's V-Piano!

And they will... soon! The Pro version is coming!

It would be a quantum leap forward, would it not? I'll just pretend I still have the 1927 Knabe grand from 1 month ago.

Sounds like you're describing the uncanny valley effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

i am starting to be a running joke at the guitar center near my office. i've been in their 5 times to play the v-piano. as an aside, business must suck in the music world right now because there's hardly anybody in the place.... ever. anyway, the more i play it, the more i love it. there is so much depth to the tones. i can no longer play my sample pianos on my computer. they sound and play like crap. the pianoteq demo isn't much better either. sorry, i know that is heresy. my analogy is that the samples and the pianoteq "lite" are two dimensional, whereas the v-piano is very 3 dimensional- you swim in its tones. and i've spent a lot of time moving between the 4 pianos, changing rooms, hammer hardness- the tweaks are noticeable, they change the character of the piano, but no matter what i do to it- i really like what i hear.....this pro version of pianoteq interests me, i hope they bring it out soon and get some demos to listen to. but for now, I have been ruined. it has brought me closer to my steinway, however. we are friends again. i appreciate the overtones and its resonance. but i like the rolands touch MUCH, MUCH better. so i will wait it out and hold off on my recording ambitions. but i will never download a sample piano again. i don't care if they sample some 9 foot bos at 40,000 velocity levels per note and it takes 2 days to download the 2 terrabyte program. i'm done with em.

fat and flat, when you play the V-piano at the Guitar Center, are you listening through headphones or speakers. If the latter, what is the setup? Do you happen to know if Roland recommends a speaker set that is ideally matched to the V-piano?

oldfingers, i've played it both ways. the GC had it set up on a pair of KRK studio monitors, elevated to player height:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/KRK-VXT-6-Powered-Studio-Monitor-104404769-i1175386.gc

they were good speakers, somewhat better than the yamaha monitors i already have. i brought my own AKG K240 headset in with me to use, and it sounded just great through those.

In the Roland videos, i believe they are using the high end Roland KC-880, which GC sells for a cool grand a pop. (hey whats another 2K if you can drop 6K on a board!)... it also shows up under accessories for it on their website:

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=978&ParentId=87

i imagine we could start a whole new thread over how important the right keyboard amp is to use!

Cromas, your comment on "uncanny valley" effect reminds me of "the fly" when geena davis spits out the reconstitued piece of beef after ex-hubby jeff goldblum runs it though the transporter. looks perfect but something is synthetic.

now on the v-piano, i didn't feel that way about it. i read on another site that somebody felt the bass was too bold. maybe, but for me- the "tell" is in the midrange. i haven't played one sample or modelled piano that sounded realistic to me in the middle registers. the upper usually sounds pretty good on most all of them, the lower tends to vary. but the middle seems to be the hardest area- very prone to buzziness and lack of definition. i did not get that sense at all with the v-piano. it could be- at least for me- that i have learned that i like brighter, more metallic sounding pianos that i thought i ever would. i have always drifted towards mellow, but i am sensing better depth and resonance with the v-pianos brighter sound. hey, don't listen to me, i have become brainwashed. go try one and be the judge!

Yes, exactly. Aka the "Polar Express" effect (the movie with the characters that looked eerily like animated corpses). That's why Pixar cleverly prefers to use more stylized humans in their movies. Something less realistic can seem more realistic than something else that is a strange blend of the realistic and the unrealistic...

Last week I've had the opportunity to check out the V-Piano in Cologne. That's right, eight time zones away. So no expenses were spared on my part to have a look at this thing.

First of all, how much power does the V-Piano draw exactly? Because I went to the store twice, and on both occasions the unit was turned off when I arrived! There was a netbook on top (also off), so no spiffy PC interface for me. Typical German store. Their setup used headphones -- well, the showroom is real cramped, so that's the only viable option. And just for judging the piano tone, I'd say headphones are better than any speakers (that I've encountered).

I did a double take, because the VP was pretty dusty and the display had fingerprints all over it -- obviously a lot of people thought the V-Piano featured a touch screen, not an unreasonable assumption given the price. It was probably just neglect by the store, or maybe the V-Piano is a bit of a dust magnet? Perhaps their device had been to a trade show? All the other DP's in the room looked relatively pristine. Not Roland's fault, but I had hoped to be dazzled by the new-and-shininess of the VP.

I had expected having to stand in line for trying out the V-Piano -- with the V-Piano, the AvantGrand, and Pianoteq 3 having been reviewed in this month's "Tastenwelt" magazine --, but curiously nobody in the store seemed to care about it, or even notice it. So I sat down and had it turned on by the salesman. The keys are nicely weighted, and the moisture-absorbing finish is definitely a good idea, although it looks a bit porous and dull, not exactly glamorous. What I had not expected is that the keys have a very shallow feel to them, they don't seem to travel that far and there's a hint of the Roland-typical hard bottom, which probably increased that perception.

I tried changing the presets which that iPod-like wheel, but I'm not sure if that worked. Do you just rotate it, or do you have to press another button to activate the preset? Because I couldn't tell any difference between e.g. silver wire and steel. And the user interface generally did not feel very helpful. It didn't look like the kind of interface that you can figure out just by playing with the dials and buttons.

The tone is brighter than Pianoteq for sure, but it definitely lacks a certain something. So in that way it very much sounded like the demos I'd already heard. A bit metallic, a bit cold, slightly soulless. Somehow the sound doesn't draw you in as irresistibly as a first-rate acoustic.

So all in all, this was not the orgasmic I-have-to-have-it experience others have described. Maybe the next version could be designed by Jonathan Ive and get a better user interface with a touch screen and a prettier arrangement of buttons, with a case that looks less Wurly-like and a little more futuristic, with a glossier key finish, and a bit more sparkle in the sound.

"Tastenwelt" magazine came with a CD, and they had audio samples of the V-Piano among others. First the detuned "Wild West barroom piano" that everyone finds so cute, then the typical pop/jazz noodling, finally the token fiery little classical piece (by Chopin). Let's just say a performance of Chopin has rarely done so little for me, and I certainly don't blame Chopin in this case...

While a certainly agree with your comment, if one is thinking about the digital/acoustic comparison, then the only "fair" test is to evaluate it over speakers. The thing I like about my acoustic is the way it fills my acoustic space. The question is, would I give up some of that with a digital? But this then raises the question of which speakers and then the discussion gets out of control. I can't seem to get my head around this problem. One thing I like about the Avant Grand is that it comes with the headphone and speaker option, and the speaker option is fixed so I would know what I would be getting when I put it into my music room. It seems that for me at least, the fewer options I have, the better I like it. Weird, huh?

Not to be a whiner but I can't help wondering why the DP makers are so darned stingy with the size of the LCD displays. You'd use it alot on the v-piano. This is a $5000 DP and the display is about the same size as my $49 cell phone. It looks to be a cool maching but considering bang for the buck I'd give Pianoteq a go first.

I wonder how V-Piano would sound with two monitors (not the four that Roland recommends), with the internal reverb disabled, and making use of a good external reverb, for example the VSS3 running on Powercore Express?

The problem, at least for me, is that I can never try such a thing out in the store. My DAW is not portable!

I have no interest in running with four monitors.

I did think that the V-Piano sounded better in the latest video from Roland (Myron McKinley ). I wonder what processing and post production they used?

Lawrence

Does anyone know more about the Pro version of the V-Piano? When is it coming out, and what are the new features?

Is it possible to get some of the V-piano sounds in the Roland Fantom G-8 workstation?

I need a DAW, for recording, but would also like to have a bunch of great, modifiable/tweetable piano sounds in the unit without having to spend almost 10K for two keyboards.

Melodialworks... i can't for the life of me figure out why anybody would need 4 $1000 keyboard amps for a piano. unless you were playing in a stadium with a fully amplified metal band. i think that is just roland marketing glitz. as i mentioned in an early post, the 2 studio monitors set up at GC worked perfectly well, particularly for solo work. for smaller combo, i think it would sound great running through one decent quality keyboard amp, because the stereo aspects wouldn't really be necessary. I too, thought the McKinley video sounded fine.....

DavidK... i would imagine since the v-piano is modeled and not sampled, it won't be available on any other boards for quite awhile. also, the Pro version you are alluding to is probably the Pianoteq Pro version, not Roland. I would suggest keeping an eye on the pianoteq website, www.pianoteq.com ; as a means of keeping up with its launch. their user forum is excellent.

I think to truly "fill space" with a digital piano, you need a wooden soundboard. No arrangement of speakers can replicate this on their own. Kawai has the right idea with their CA series. (I've tried a Kawai at the same store, but unfortunately the piano tone was so bad it was hilarious. Probably one of their less expensive models...)

You can turn a DP up to be real loud (just like a TV set I suppose), but as long as that big wood membrane is not there to filter the sound and radiate it into the room, it's still going to sound like speakers. Therefore headphones seem to be the preferred option, although good speakers can probably be set up in a way to deliver good stereo sound to at least a single location (the player).



Yes, they should have given it a 17" touch screen and used the GUI as in the PC interface. This barely intelligible monochrome joke of a display it put to shame by every iPod and iPhone out there!

Martin, i am considering downloading the Truepianos demo for a test run. you advertise using it. what do you think of its strengths and weaknesses relative to a lot of the other stuff on the market. i rememeber thinking about it a couple years ago and then moving on to samples instead. now, i am back to looking at it as i've given up on samples.... i like the demos i hear on their site, although they all sound somewhat thin and distant- now that may just be the way they were recorded. the idea of a sampled sound being modelled sort of makes intuitive sense to me. i imagine your experience has been....good?

FWIW I've tried the demo version of TruePianos and I think it sounds excellent. I also have Pianoteq, and it's nice to hear all the extra detail in the sound from TruePianos. The main thing lacking in the demo instrument (Diamond, from memory) is that soft notes don't have a soft enough timbre for my taste - Pianoteq is more expressive. Didn't notice any "distant" character in TruePianos, in fact it has a lovely wide stereo image which to me makes it sound very close, and that's something I seek.

Greg.

Well, the demos on the Truepianos site are pretty terrible. With these software pianos, you really have to play them yourself to see if you like them or not. Based on the demos alone, I would not have purchased Truepianos I think. It was only after trying the demo version that I started appreciating it.

I think their Diamond module captures the sound of a concert piano quite well. (I'm not saying "Steinway", because the Steinways I've listened to first hand had a very metallic, grating sound. Maybe that's helpful if you have to compete with an orchestra, but not so good for solo work.) The other modules are more for Jazz/Pop mixes, etc. But at least the four modules really have a distinct sound to them.

And whenever I think Truepianos sounds fake, I simply fire up the Pianoteq 3 demo and I'm instantly cured.

that is good to hear, Martin. i will load it and then go over to the thread that discusses proper recording techniques!....

So, Martin, the real question... are you truly satisfied with what you are using? or is it just basically the best of a bad lot.... i would have to say that ultimately i would like to bet on Pianoteq as the winner. i really like the vpiano from my sit-downs with it, but as i first said that may be my fingers talking cuz it was great fun to play. My wallet is screaming at me to stay away from that jezebel....and I am also scared to death that their support for an owner will be completely non-existent... but i am really intrigued with the "process" that seems to be pianoteq. the guy who runs it is amazing- people start a thread and complain about something and he's on there in a day with a fix. that is pretty damn unbelievable for software people. if you listen to a couple of the demos now available with the new "rock add-on", there are some really nice sounding recordings there. i call it a process because it seems to be that you subscribe to it, and then go along for the ride. nothing constant but evolution and change. I hope they ukltimately get it right, because the people running it really seem to have their act together...

I talked to Roland Support today, and their tech said Roland uses just one set of powered monitors in their V-Piano demo room.

However, he said you can add another set of monitors, and use the "Ambiance" control to increase the depth/width of the piano's sound stage.

He said in a fixed situation a high-quality set of near-field monitors, at ear height, 1-3 meters away, works best. While the Roland KC 880 stereo keyboard amplifier (or two) works great in a live setting, it is not the best in a home/studio setting since it is usually placed on the floor.

I've heard great things about the French Focal Twin6 Be (street price: around $1,600 each) powered near/mid field monitors and its smaller sibling, the Focal Solo6 Be (street price: $1,200 each) speakers. While this sounds like a lot of money for keyboard speakers, they can also be used in a home/project studio for tracking, mixdowns, etc. The compact speakers have a true 40HZ to 40kHz (!!!) frequency response, so they should be able to reproduce all of claimed the aural nuances of the V-Piano very nicely.

I think in general neither Pianoteq nor Truepianos nor the V-Piano are quite there yet in terms of the sound. But I don't want to use a PC with a multi-GB sampled piano, because then I'd have the fan noise from the PC. (Not to mention that the whole concept of having to boot your piano before playing is a bit silly in itself.) The playability of either PT or TP vs samples makes it worth it I think and makes it easier to overlook some defects in the sound, which exist of course.

The whole concept of an entirely modeled piano is intriguing (although it appears Roland cheated a bit there in the case of their V-Piano). PT/V-Piano look like they will be the future eventually. Physical modeling is almost there, so hopefully it's not "almost there" the way clean energy from nuclear fusion has supposedly been almost there for decades. I.e., some technologies seem to take a long time to bridge that final gap between "it almost works" to "it works." Perhaps physical piano modeling needs a few more years to mature.

Both PT and TP are supposed to get major updates later this year, so then it will be interesting to see who can claim the bigger improvements.

I must say that one of the things that turned me off of PT (apart from the sound itself) was their crippled demo. You play a piece, and then suddenly you hit one of the dead black keys! This open display of mistrust is not a good way to make your potential customers purchase your products. Maybe that is something the 'amazing Pianoteq forum guy' should consider fixing...

What does this mean?

Martin, I do like the fact that Pianoteq doesn't put an expiration on the demo. it gives you a chance to spend a month or more playing with it. sometimes when you walk away from these programs for a couple weeks it helps clear you head when you use them again. your point about booting up a PC to play the piano is on the money. i hate doing it. my dell starts to sound like a steel mill after a while, i can almost hear trolls inside singing work songs. i think that is why i am enamored with v-piano, i really liked turning it on with one button, giving it a second to load up (yes, you have to do that) and then playing unecumbered by countless umbilical cords. which is an exaggeration, because you still got to run speakers. but i still like the concept of integrated software and hardware, (although i am very appreciative of the problems that brings on when something breaks down). it may be all in my mind, but i think even the slightest bit of latency is noticeable in the brain, ear, and finger connectivity of a player. the samples all seem to be all plagued to some degree with it. i guess not with pianoteq, and i definitely didn't notice any with the vpiano.

It means you've never read the first post of this thread.

Sorry, couldn't resist the "Ghostbusters" reference.

AFAIK, the PT demo is limited to 30 days, the TP demo to 40 days. So "a month or more" wouldn't work for PT. But like I said, I'd rather have a 14-day demo version of PT if at least all keys were playable. Their current demo is a joke.

One thing I love in PT (vs TP) is the recording feature. I hope they integrate something similar in Truepianos! Because Audacity always crashes when you try to run it at the same time as TP, so I haven't been able to record anything from TP. That's a big oversight!

Latency with sample libraries might be an issue if they have to be streamed from the hard drive (e.g., the 21-layer Ivory). Truepianos uses samples, but I think they all fit in memory, so it should not be a cause of latency. If everything is set up correct with TP or PT, latency should be so low that the responsiveness is similar to a real grand -- even if it's hard to believe, given how many steps it takes to create the sound.

Excuse me? Actually I HAVE read the first comment, and the entire thread, in actual fact. Please don't attempt to speak for me, and suggest what I have or have not done.

I would like the comment explained, other than what was presented in the first post of this thread. I'm seeking some validation of the OPINION that was expressed, and am not quick to accept it, and quote it, as fact.

Lawrence

I think you refer to v2 which was limited to 45 days back then.

I think the way the PianoTeq demo works is very fair. If no black keys were disabled, noone would buy the retail version... afaik it has no time limit like 30 days apart from the forced restart every 20 mins.

i loaded up the truepianos demo, i can see where it could be really useful for live playing. but i think it would be very weak to record off. and man, the octave that starts one full octave above middle C- what is going on there? it sounds really distorted to me. all i have for demo is the diamond module. has anyone else noticed that?

actually, on the pianoteq demo, i actually wish they would give you access to all the notes and make it for a limited time. there are so many upper register black keys disabled it is kinda hard to figure out what it sounds like.

The OP heard what he heard, and that's far more credible to me than what Roland marketing says. Sounds like the dampers lifting off the strings are unlikely to be modeled, if Roland can barely model the much lower-frequency tone of a struck string realistically.

So this is why Roland's claim of an entirely modeled instrument would need supporting evidence from their side, otherwise it's not very believable and reeks of marketing hyperbole...

Yes, and therefore I've always reverted to the built-in piano patch of the P-85 for recording. With TP/PT, the sound is more obviously synthy, and people would notice.

But to me software pianos are more of a skill-building tool to improve your playing. And the feel is more important for that than the sound. That said, I didn't notice that any particularly octave sounds much better or worse than any other in TP...



Bah, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and "Frère Jacques" have to have enough notes for everybody! Demanding more than that is madness.

Huh? Pianoteq can model "sounds like the dampers lifting off the strings" and Roland can't (with a hardware instrument that has four computers, three of which are dedicated to producing / processing the sound. I'm missing something in the reasoning here.

Lawrence

Unless I can see the source code for PT, it's just a black box, and who knows what its 30 or 40 MB on the HD actually contain? It's a bit too much just for user interface graphics methinks. Now if PT were, say, only 3 MB, then I would agree that it has to model everything, but given the disk space it uses, it could very well be using a sample for the dampers. The tech description on the PT site (http://www.pianoteq.com/pianoteq3_tech) is ambiguous enough -- it just mentions that PT features certain damper noises, but not how they are created.

When I search for Pianoteq and "no samples", I only find reviews that claim this is the case. However, so far I have not found anything equally definitive on the PT site that supports this claim this absolutely.

So, having no access to the source code, one simply has to listen carefully to the audio for signs of sampling, which is what the OP did in the case of the V-Piano. And I see no particular reason to question his analysis. I tend to trust a neutral party more than a company that understandably wants to sell its products.

Makes sense. Thanks for your explanations.

At the end of the day, what matters is the sound (and playability of that sound) that matters. I don't feel that either Pianoteq or V-Piano have arrived (yet) where they should be in terms of sound. The V-Piano certainly has in terms of playability, though.

It will be interesting to see where things go as this technology matures.

Lawrence

I think Pianoteq is also very "playable". There's a concert pianist over in the Pianoteq forums that also seems to be extremely impressed. (I'm not one by any means)

In terms of sound, what I want is the experience of sitting down AT the piano and playing, and right now, I feel that sampling is still the leader. (haven't tried the V-Piano yet, but from the demos, I'll be extremely surprised if it has the very high fidelity "definition" that sampling has, and which I want)

Greg.

I think the V-Piano has definition, but the definition feels slightly "off" -- if that explanation makes any sense.

In the digital world, nobody seems to have found the holy grail of perfect playability AND perfect sound, it's always a tradeoff between the two. (And given how bad some of the pianos in older Deutsche Grammophon recordings sound, I sometimes wonder whether the same could be true for acoustics.) For high-quality digital recordings, huge sample libraries like Garritan Steinway are still hard to beat.

Thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...

V-Piano is hunk of junk. That may sound harsh and unreasonable, but $6000 for digital piano that screws up basic string and pedal mechanics!?!?!?!? No thank you.

What I mean by "screws up basic string mechanics" is that the melody notes in the middle section of Rach's Prelude in B minor get cut off prematurely. This means that the polyphony is not implemented properly and/or they improperly executed the effect of repeating notes softly after playing them loudly, by having the soft strikes merely replace the loud ones.

What I mean by "screws up basic pedal mechanics" is that it does not pass my "test": http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthrea...html#Post702976 (hehe, my virgin post here on pianoworld! )

I'm no Pianoteq fanboy--I believe Pianoteq has a long way to go before truly eclipsing sampled pianos. But at least Pianoteq got the basics right. Now to be fair, Pianoteq does not merely cost $250. You need a good 88-key midi controller, a fast computer, and a descent interface. So a complete setup probably costs at the very least $2000. But considering you'd need a computer and an interface to record the V-Piano, THAT pile of epic fail really costs upwards of $7000.

Yes, when I referred to "sampling", this is the kind of thing I was thinking of. I have a few large software pianos and they're very impressive. (I don't have any of the *very* large ones that consume tens of gigabytes yet)

Greg.

If there is a bug related to the note-stealing algorithm, maybe they could fix that in a software update. What they cannot fix is the ugly design, the terrible button layout, and lame user interface (without the PC plugged in).

If they had really wanted to create the 21st-century DP, they could have given this a large, high-resolution, letter-sized screen, and the ability to download sheet music from the equivalent of the iTunes Store. Then, as you play, the piano would analyze your playing, figure out where you are on the page, and turn to the next page at the right moment. Maybe it could mark on the page notes you've missed or played wrong, etc.

Since the sound of the V-Piano is not everyone's cup of tea, it would have needed a breakthrough feature or two to make it sexy. Unfortunately, Roland seems to have been unable to come up with one...

allright, sports fans, so what would you pay for a new action that plays really well, and has a built in sound that beats the built-in sounds of others..even if it doesn't pass the sniff test for the piano illuminati on this blog. (i betcha if i recorded it my mom wouldn't figure out the string mechanics were screwed up, and neither would most of the dopes who would be willing to listen to me)..... jscomposer i'm just funning with you, you are absolutely correct to point out any shortcuts roland took with this ultra expensive product. obviously very serious people would be the only ones to look at this iteration of the vpiano, and you would have thought they would be ultra careful not to disappoint. but you know, i can just see the pressure building in a corporation like Roland to stop screwing around with it (10 years?)and get it out the door. so, at what price are we willing to overlook its shortcomings? I plan to go back over to guitar center this weekend and play it again, and see if all the nuclear fallout from the posts i've been reading "affects" what i hear. i'd like to think i'm more of a grownup than that, but we all have our onboard insecurities...

Martin, there is a little known training feature in the new v-piano. you feed it a midi file of a tune via USB, and then you play it. when you hit wrong notes it emits a current through a cable attached to a body part chosen by your instructor. very effective and creates zen-type focus.

What's terrible about this discussion is that no one actually owns the VPiano, so we're left talking about our impressions of the sound from listening in music stores.

Someone needs to buy it and then be able to post recordings and videos. Or everyone here could chip in to let me purchase it, purely in the interest of our mutual desire to explore what it can do. I'd be willing to make the sacrifice of having to test it.

Well, if you can't afford a piano teacher to hit you on the hand with a ruler, it's at least the second-best option...

But really, given all the bitching about the problems with sheet music in the other foums, one would think this would give somebody a hint there's a business opportunity there. And I don't mean that strange thing where you turn the sheet music with yet another pedal. I know that device exists...



If it sounds terrible over headphones in the store, I don't imagine it will magically sound any better over speakers in your living room...

jake- i wonder if anybody actually has bought one. wouldn't that be a hoot if nobody, even the pros, has stepped up to the plate and ponied up for one.. unless they get paid to promote it.... the delorean of DP's..(although those were pretty cool for awhile)

maybe somebody reputable should start a new thread "Has anyone bought a V-Piano... Please Report!

Well, if you search on "goldenpiggy" you will get the impressions of someone who actually owns the V-Piano. He has posted here, I believe, as well as part of the large thread at Harmony Central Forum.

Thanks for pointing that out Melodialworks.... i went searching for it and wound up in the Rolandclan website. read an interesting thread from a fellow who just got one (not goldenpiggy). he seems to really love it, but he said something very critical- at least to me. he said it didn't sound like either a digital or an acoustic piano, but a unique instrument. now THAT really bugs me, because once the love of newness wears off, you had better be left with something that passes for an authentic piano, particularly if your goal is to record, as mine is. i know for a fact it is a blast to play, and that it would get me to sit down and practice/play, which is good. but it has to sound like a piano- good enough to fool people on recordings. if it doesn't do that, it clearly means the technology isn't there yet- at least not for that price. i started using my Garritan Steinway sample program again, tweaked it differently, and have found that i am enjoying it. i will probably buy the Pianoteq software, because i believe in what they are doing and i learn alot reading posts from their community. i think i will take a breather on the roland vpiano idea for awhile...unless i hear user demos being posted somewhere that sound convincing to me- that...to me... is the test. regarding pianoteq, yesterday i listened to the demos of the latest sample program- Steinberg's the Grand 3 - and i was underwhelmed- i only liked the Steinway sample, and it wasn't any great leap forward. when i finished listening to it, i immediately went over to pianoteq's site and listened to a demo by Joshua Seth- who posts on this site i believe. now he is a great player, but i also appreciated how alive the piano sounded relative to steinberg's sample. i am still not a complete buyer of the pianoteq piano sound, it may be my brain screaming at me "remember, this is a fake piano"... but i really appreciated the way he brought it to life...

I see Pianoteq now has a section for bells and carillons on their demo page. Finally a good application for the metallic Pianoteq timbre!

I listened to Goldenpiggy's demo, and I hated it. In parts it sounded very good, but in other parts it sounded dreadful, IMHO.
Honestly - I do not even feel like going and trying it, other than for the keyboard action.

Greg.

Greg- i can't find the demo. what did you notice negatively?

The demo is here: http://sites.google.com/site/goldenpiggy227site/Home/roland-v-piano

The referring forum posting:
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showpost.php?p=34260809&postcount=225

I notice a very synthetic, electronic sound in some places. To be fair, it appears that he had reverb completely disabled, and I *suppose* that this might result in an unnaturally dry sound.

Greg.

On a more positive note(!), has anyone actually tried the "cross resonance" adjustmnet yet? In the Roland demo clip, this sounds really good.

Greg.

i went back over to GC today, which was a mistake because the place is an asylum on the weekend. so i only played the vpiano for a few minutes. i think they have it "voiced" pretty aggressively regarding the hammer settings. i backed them down substantially, "softening" the hammers, particularly on the vintage 1 and 2, and it does give you a very different sound, and to my ears, nicer sound. takes a lot of the metal out...play the mckinley video demo, he does the same thing while plahying, it gives you a good indication of how much you can alter the "bite"...it also responds nicely to adding resonance, as Greg asked above. without a quieter environment i coudn't much tell anything about overtones. i do find it interesting as to how it supposedly "adjusts" to your playing. you can imagine the piano sitting in the showroom gets a wide variety of styles banging on it. i do notice a different feel to it the first few minutes, and then it seems more "responsive", which could be more me responding to it than vice versa... but i wonder if they have it programmed to adjust its velocity curve depending on the heavy or light touch of the individual player.

Yes, I'd like to know more about that self-adjusting feature. It worries me a bit. I'd rather learn the pianos's response, and adapt to it, thankyou very much. ;^)

The East West Quantum Leap library has a very interesting feature - it has the ability to detect legato playing, and then (I think) select the most appropriate samples for legato, or at least do something to make it more legato. This *does* make sense to me, because most of us will be using keyboards that do not send continuous data for the key position, or for that matter, even just plain release velocity. If the V-Piano is doing this kind of thing, then that's cool.

Greg.

I just did jscomposer's test for "screws up basic pedal mechanics" on a V-Piano in a store yesterday, and the V-Piano did the correct thing (note kept playing).

Also, could you please provide a midi + audio files of that supposedly other flaw ("screws up basic string mechanics"), so that we can all make up our minds about it independently?

Martin: Forgive me for being late to the party, but I saw your July post:I can't know what thinking Roland applied to the design, but I have to agree ... the box looks like, well ... a box. No style, just folded sheet metal (or is it plastic?).

And, yes, the user interface looks like a horror. I haven't tried one. I've only seen the online videos. But from the paucity of controls, it's clear that this is not a good design.

Maybe the development costs were high, and they had to trim the "extras" in order to keep the price down. (It's still pretty high anyway. But wouldn't it be even higher if the UI were richer?)

Still, this is just V Piano number 1. Can we expect a model 2 someday soon? I hope that the falling cost of technology (and the payoff of the V's initial development costs) might lead to a better next-generation V.

If so, maybe the V's technology will roll down to the mainstream DPs? I couldn't possibly afford the current V. But if modeling goes mainstream, maybe my next DP will be a Roland "V junior" for perhaps $2000? I can hope!

[quote=MacMacMac.. What they cannot fix is the ugly design, the terrible button layout, and lame user interface (without the PC plugged in).

If they had really wanted to create the 21st-century DP, they could have given this a large, high-resolution, letter-sized screen, and the ability to download sheet music from the equivalent of the iTunes Store. [/quote]

The overall "look" is a matter of opinion. I'm sure some people like it.

As for the lack of a large screen and many buttons. I think a designer has to walk a line of balance. It's not just the cost. Many pianists simply do NOT want a large screen and many blinking LEDs. It's distracting. But you can fix all those things. Simply bay a small notebook computer, maybe the black Macbook and leave it on the piano. Now you have the ability to move MIDI files over a network, print out printed sheet music of what you just played (mistakes left in or not) record to a multitrack records and have a much nicer parameter editor. Then when ever you like you can close the lid on the computer. So I'd prefer a minimalist amount of controls on the DP and let the rest be done on a computer. The computer aalso has the advantage that it can be upgraded. Whatever is built into the DP, you are stuck with fr many years.

I've been a somewhat close follower of the Roland modeling technology since buying a set of V-drums 8 or 9 years ago. If the development cycle is anything similar to the drums, in about two years you can expect some kind of expansion board upgrade for the V-piano along with a newer model with fewer features but some new sounds and editing points at a lower price point. In about 4-5 years your can expect a full redesign with a version 2 model and more leveraging of the technology into lower price point units. The main flagship model will remain somewhat spendy.

Kurt

Suppose they simply offer an ordinary flat-panel display as an option. They just provide a DSUB or digital video output, and you can plug in any monitor. A 20" job goes for not much over $100.

And these generally have a standard, VESA-compliant mounting plate on the back. Roland need only provide an (optional?) post of some sort, to which you attach any monitor of your choice. (Or, if you don't want that look, omit the monitor.)

You could also do all that with a laptop computer ... but not for $100. I think they should put the necessary computing power inside the piano. Just add monitor.

As for buttons ... If an itty-bitty cell phone can have a full keyboard, surely there's room for a proper set of buttons on the piano?

New versio in about 4-5 years? I really hope we have to wait much less than that.

I tried the V-piano today.

It seemed to me that there was a change in sound when going from B5 to C5. It almost sounded like the V-piano transformed into a different voice. I think it was one of the Grands.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Any news or rumors about a " V-Piano 2 " ?

I doubt if a new version of the V-Piano will arrive anytime soon - even after 2 years, noone else has managed to emulate its technology, and it remains unique and (dare I say it) for the cognoscenti only, i.e. those who want a piano substitute pure and simple, with no distractions from the joys of playing like lots of fancy buttons, dials and flashing lights that you get from almost every other DP. Reading through all those posts from 2009, I realize that the V-Piano is really in a niche market because it doesn't give what most people expect from a 'digital piano' (i.e. lots of alternative & weird non-piano sounds, and bells & whistles), yet for me, a first-time buyer wanting a piano that I can use with headphones (and for the reviewers in magazines I've read), it's ideal precisely because it plays like a real piano and distractions are kept to the bare minimum.

The article in the Fall Supplement 2010 to Larry Fine's Piano Buyer gave strong hints that as far as Roland is concerned, they 'filtered' the V-Piano's technology (in the form of 'Supernatural') down to their cheaper, 'normal' (i.e. sample-based) models, which appears to include the RD series, without actually using modelling technology per se on them, which suggests that there are no plans to produce another modelled DP.

I am surprised that nobody compared V-Piano to Yamaha Avantgrand N2. The N2 does not cost more that a V-Piano PLUS 4 amplified speakers PLUS the stand ... and it has a real AC Grand piano action keyboard.


And...The new YAmaha Avantgrand N1, to be anounced a NAMM, may give V-Piano some very tough competition. it is supposed to be priced like the V-Piano, but (1) with a real AC action, and (2) with built-in speakers, so in fact way cheaper than a V-Pianio since no need for extra costs on speakers and stand.

What do you think ?

Moved the posted to the newer thread opened by B Michaels.