Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards The "Official" Top of Line Digital Piano Playoff Thread

I agree. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone were to come up with a new "piano", digital or otherwise, that has it's own unique and beautiful tone to define OUR era? It's interesting that both the Rhodes and Wurlitzer were designed to solve problems pertaining mainly to the educational market and space/price considerations, and were not in themselves attempts to accurately recreate the piano sound. Perhaps it requires someone to approach the problem from a different perspective.

That said, there is sense in providing DP facsimiles of existing "real" instruments that are too heavy/cumbersome/limited. The market size for DPs endorses that.

Actually I don't see the point. What you would like to have is already there: It's called Synthesizer... You have hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of new and exciting sounds to play with, there is lots of music out there that makes excessive use of those sounds, and you can even create your own sounds in a very creative way! It's just not what everyone wants.

And actually my DP is not just an imitation of an AP, it has several unique selling points, to talk in marketing language: I can play it in the night, it has different piano sounds, I can add effects and ambience, I can somehow adjust the sound, and I have some additional sounds like EPs, harpsichord, guitar, organs etc. that are fun to play with. And I can record my music as a midi file and edit it on a computer, or print out music sheets. And I don't need to tune it. And...and...and...

Whatever they can sell they will build. If there is any demand for such a thing, someone will "invent" it.

I think the point is that instruments like the Rhodes, Wurli, Clavinet, Pianet were remarkable inventions created to overcome the limitations imposed by conventional piano design. They were not pianos and they were certainly not synthesizers, but they became iconic becasue of the character of the sound. I think DPs are wonderful for all the reasons you mention and am very happy to have access to them. But why say it has to be either a DP or a synthesizer? Electro-mechanical instruments were a fascinating development of the mid twentieth century; sampling/synthesis has been the hallmark of the last three decades; why not something new, now?

I think that is what Roland was attempting with the Vanguard sounds from V-Piano.

There are many ways a syntheziser can operate and create their sounds, one of them is also physical modeling. So again, what's the point, it's all artificial/algorithmic creation of sound, you can immediately create your own very new sound with lots of variations and expressiveness. Many of the syntheziser sounds are now legendary because of their uniqueness. Everything is there, the boundary is just your imagination (and of course your ability to build algorithms / program sounds).

Yes, that's where things start to fall apart for me

But it's not just the sound - it's the totality of the instrument as an expressive whole.

Well, there have been a number of other innovations, such as the Ondes Martenot from 1928 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9UBjrUjwo , Roland's guitar shaped wearable keyboards http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4050620085533970495# and various instruments with knobs, tabs, levers, etc. One could argue that in the dance scene "composers" are writing and performing mostly by using just computer software and perhaps a couple of MIDI input devices.

Given that our joints move our limbs in arcs rather than straight lines, I have always wondered about the possibility of an ergonomic keyboard coming about such as the arched ones one can by for a PC.

Yes, I meant the Yamaha indeed! First time I compared Yamaha to Roland at a store with no Kawais. Second session I compared Kawai and Roland, this store did not have Yamaha CLP.

You can adjust the curves, but I am not sure if the maximum force needed for the highest velocity can be adjusted, I think most DP's only adjust the shape of the curve. But anyway, I tried both on the most heavy curve, and my impression still was that on the Roland you need more physical force to reach the highest velocity.

No, I think
1) Kawai
2) Roland
3) Yamaha
That is, for the new Kawai CA63/93. The CA51/71/91 are lighter then the Roland I think.


Indeed, I had really big doubts about this choice. I chose for the 307 because:
1. The PHAIII keybed is really a bit better than PHAII, I only found the difference smaller then expected, but it still is significant.
2. The speakers and amplifier of the 307 are much better. I think I will be playing maybe 75% with headphones, but the other 25% is also important!
3. The 307 has more settings that can be changed, which I like a lot, like the lid open/close (which is very realistically) and especially the equalizer.
4. I think the 307 will have a better value to sell second hand after some years since it is the top model with better keybed.

A few more remarks after playing a bit with my new HP-307: generally, I am very happy with it, especially with the sound generator and the keyboard action. Build quality looks also good. The only downside is that the speaker system is not superb. Of course I understand a really high end amplifier and speaker system would be too expensive. I noticed some resonance around 100Hz, but luckily I was able to correct it quite satisfactorily with the built-in equalizer. I also made the bass tones a bit software because I think they are a bit too loud on default.

In my opinion, each manufacturer has its strong and weak points:

Kawai: strong: keyboard action, weak: sound generation
Roland: strong: sound generation weak: speaker system
Yamaha: strong: speaker system, neutral: sound generation and keyboard action.

Interesting post jbx, congratulations on the purchase of your new DP!



Therefore, if we were to assume that money is not an option, perhaps the best combination would be to MIDI the CA93 (keyboard) to the HP-307 (sound generator), then connect the output from the Roland to the CLP-380's line-in (speaker system).

Cheers,
James
x

I wonder how the HP-307 would sound with some studio monitors added to the equation? 350 euros will be a pair of pretty decent monitors such as a pair of KRK Rokit R2s, bringing the total cost still 1500 euros less than the Yamaha CLP-380...

If one is going to add something to the equation, then it seems more straightforward to just add a couple of speakers rather than having to hook up a PC with software to the Kawai.

Why is it a given that the sound generation of KAWAI is weak in any way? That's depending on the personal preference: I think it's very good sounding.

Here is something similar: http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectures/askenflt/askenflt.html

I stumbled upon this when searching for "fastest repetion rate piano" ;-)

BTW, there is a very important paqram that can be measured easily: The Keystroke strengt for velocity 127.

At the abovementioned artikle they say that for a real akustik piano keyvelocity rarely exceeds 1m/s.

I have measured this for my Kawai CP136 piano and found 1.7m/s for velocity 126.

How to measure this? Use a soft and stable cardboard, put it onto a key and let a hammer fall onto it. Measure the falling distance and calculate the velocity. I found 150mm.

Ok, at a piano store they will probably prohibit you from doing this. So you must use your hands. Hand and arm in typical player position weight 750g, that is much more than the mass inertia of the key.
Let them fall down totally relaxed. This should give values that can be compared.

I find that falling distance is much more illustrative than velocity, so the falling distance should be used instead.

For ff it should be between 1m/s repective 50mm falling distance and 2m/s respective 300mm falling distance.

Peter

Just a mono conventional keyboard with filters and crazy speaker effects, but it can have a continuous controller.


Just a conventional keyboard in a strange case with some other stuff attached.


We can't have new controllers - there is an unholy combination of at least three things preventing it:

1) Backward compatibility to a large pre-existing user base - conventional keyboards are a known quantity, anyone that can play piano can do something on it. New controllers suffer from chicken/egg syndrome. So almost every controller looks, and can be played, like a piano or a guitar.

2) Corporate culture isn't interested in employing unmanageable "rock star" engineers or designers who truly think outside their tiny, constrained little box. So they hire mediocre employees who will do anything to get the scratch to put their kids thru college and fund vacations, and do it in a generally lackluster manner. I've heard numerous managers say they prefer a bog-average employee that gets along to a difficult genius. Managers don't like it when people make them look like the generally unimaginative people they tend to be.

3) MIDI bandwidth - to allow expressive input, one really needs some events happening at an audio sample rate of 40kHz or better. The MIDI BAUD rate is 1/32 of 1MHz, or 31.25kHz. The shortest message over this interface is two bytes, which translates into a <2kHz message rate. MIDI was a revolution when it came along, but IMO it's been holding controllers back for at least the last decade. And I'm not talking keyboard controllers here, it works fine for that generally. I'm talking guitar controllers and the like where playing must be somehow translated to MIDI, at which point lags are introduced, nuance is discarded, and all the life is wrung out of it.

That sounds interesting. Do you know why noone introduced a MIDI2 Specification, just like USB2, with backward compatibility?
Or is there still no real need for a bigger bandwidth? On the other side, those controllers could be easily equipped with just USB and then connected to a PC. Most of the current keyboards have a USB connection anyway.

MIDI was a boon to manufacturers and users, but these days I think manufacturers see it as an element that tends to commoditize their goods, which they are rightly averse to I suppose as commoditization exposes them to even more intense market forces, which drives down profits.

We could really use a bidirectional audio / control stream that will play nice between manufacturers, but they don't seem interested in anything other than their own proprietary (and therefore useless, yet at the same time expensive to include in an instrument) implementations, such as Yamaha's mLAN. Maybe they think it will all shake out like the HD DVD wars, where the single company left standing & holding the patents wins. Meanwhile absolutely nothing happens.

Everyone says markets will give us everything if we just let them - that if we want it bad enough someone will build it. I see markets, at least in this industry, as holding back innovation and lowering efficiency. PC solutions are absolutely murdering them, but they remain stuck in a deep rut, falling behind as they stand still. So people are left to their own devices, cobbling keyboards, PC hardware, piano software, and monitors together on their own.

I can agree with this totally. I"m not at all sure what it would look like but it would be interesting, for instance, if a company like Steinway (or whomever) joined forces with a company like Yamaha (or whomever). Maybe a Prius of the piano world is what everyone would be happy(er) with.

The problem is, once a market is dominated by a few large manufacturers all real innovation grinds to a halt. You get a few new features here and there, but never anything revolutionary.

Individuals or small groups drive all the real innovation happening these days.

I think your either you calculation or your description of it is wrong.

I think you are calulating the velocity of the object that strikes the piano key and not the velocity of the key. The two would be the same only if the key had zero mass and zero friction

To know the key velocity you will have to measure it. I think you can measure it with a video camera. Place a vertical ruller with a millimetre scale near the key and shoot video of the key and ruler.

I'm guessing they you calculation of a 1.7m/s hammer speed is about right for a 1.0m/s key velocity.

You might also be able to measure the velocity of the key roughly by recording it, and measuring the time delay between the instant your finger contacts the key, to the "clunk" of the key bottoming out. I've used this technique to produce very repeatable total key-contact to sound-from-speaker latency measurements.
For key velocity measurement, it would be best to turn the sound of the piano off. (which I realise is impossible on an acoustic!) This method won't work if some part of the action makes a sound before the key bottoms out, though. (unless you can recognise the sound and make allowances for it)

A mobile phone with a voice recording function works fine.

Using the video method, you might have to have a few goes at it in order to get two frames of the key moving, I think.
(60Hz video = 17ms inter-frame interval, and on my Kawai MP9000 I meausure about a 20ms time delay from key contact to key bottoming out, for a forte hit - ASSUMING that the clunk coincides with the key bottoming out) Actually, the video camera will probably need to be very sensitive (high ISO/fast shutter speed), otherwise I suspect the result will be too blurred to allow a measurement at all.

EDIT: I've just done a calculation: playing a forte note (just one "F", I think - not "FFF" - definitely not 127 with the MP9000 on "normal" response), it's 0.6m/s. Key travel is about 12mm. I'm pretty sure the clunk on this digital piano coincides closely with the key bottoming out.

Greg.