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pv88,
I really like your playing of the Moonlight!

You playing really shows what a great musical instrument this is. ("musical instrument" - as you can tell it's not an AP, but - who cares?)
Although most of the dynamic range is centered around p - pp, bass, arpeggio and melody are on different levels (I like the singing quality of the upper melody) and there is still plenty of dynamic and timbrical room and variety for the phrasing of each one of them.
In my experience the V is the only non acoustic piano that allows this kind of subtlety of expression.

Very, very well done.

pv88, congratulations on getting your new instrument.

I have to say that I am very envious of your talent and the V-Piano sounds really good straight out of the box, even with such a low recording level. I fear I am beginning to suffer from another bout of piano envy.

I know how much better the V-Piano can sound once you have played around with tuning and some of the other changes suggested in this thread so I hope to hear more of your recordings as you get to grips with tweaking it to your liking.

I would also very much like to hear more from you based on some of the presets provided by bennevis and others here. Does the V-Piano have a digital output? It might be the easiest way to make recordings if your soundcard has a digital input.

I would like to hear a pure digital to digital recording from the V-Piano as I wonder if the so-called Roland sound has more to do with the same family of amplification and audio circuitry in their pianos than the actual modelling process.

Once again, congratulations and I hope you enjoy your piano for many years to come.

To everyone's replies:

I certainly do appreciate all of the kind comments regarding the recordings, as this is what I enjoy doing the most, and, that is...
to play.

Also, will be posting a few Christmas favorites, shortly.

Christmas tunes, at the V-Piano:

1) Silent Night / O Little Town of Bethlehem / O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

http://www.box.com/s/k7roebxvrxg3llimcok1

2) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas / The Christmas Song

http://www.box.com/s/qeeo31d5d6qk4nv6zu3k

3) O Come, All Ye Faithful + Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee ("Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9) medley

This is an advanced concert arrangement, which highlights the resonant bass range of the V-Piano, using the "Triple Large" preset.

http://www.box.com/s/0rc55lvaikkau5xirm26

4) Christmas Time is Here, from "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

Everyone should know (or, become acquainted with) Vince Guaraldi's piece as it is a true jazz classic.

http://www.box.com/s/lfj365qqpols4ni1n1au

Hope everyone has a nice holiday season!

Hi PV,

I have been really enjoying both your playing and the sound of the V-Piano. Thanks for sharing with us,

Jonathan

Extra note:

Thought that I would continue adding new recordings into the original posts above, so that they are all in the same place for listening, etc.

Hi pv88, finally managed to hear your recordings - they are at very low level (at least as heard through the computer I'm using) but the piano sounds are similar to what I hear on my V-Piano, i.e. very life-like, and your playing is great.

Maybe you can try using your own customizations with more of your recordings, so people can hear what can be achieved.

Thanks for the great demos pv88. The bass notes sound fantastic, as usual. If they ever get the middle registers to sound as good, watch out! Even now, though, I find that the middle registers have an endearing quality, even though it doesn't sound all that authentic. Lovely playing as usual too!

Can the amount of hammer thud sound be varied on the V-Piano? If so, I'd be curious to hear some recordings with more thud - particularly in the middle registers.

The recording level is a bit low, yes. The easiest way around that for listeners is to use a player that allows the volume to be increased above 100%. I.e - a player that is able to apply gain to the digital audio. The equalizer in iTunes allows this. Another player that can do this is the VLC player. I'd rather the level be low and clean, though, than high with clipping.

Greg.

Yes, the bass is excellent.........

There is customization available for 'hammer' which gives the thud sound you mentioned. In fact, there's hardly anything that can't be changed in the piano sounds. Even pedal noise, for those that like the sound of them.....

I've added a setting for the new Yamaha CFX, as promised/threatened last month.

The CFX is the most exciting concert grand to have emerged in recent years, and its brilliant and colorful tone (in contrast to the CF-IIIS) is very distinctive: it could be a serious challenge to the Steinway D on the concert platform in years to come. It gives the pianist just as much variety of tone color as the Steinway, but with more brilliance and a bell-like clarity in the upper registers.

My customization is based on playing a well-prepared CFX in Yamaha's showroom, followed by 'fine-tuning' while listening to the first studio recording of the CFX on CD, HJ Lim's EMI recording of Beethoven Piano Sonatas (you can hear her play the CFX on her website www.hjlim.com). Incidentally, there's an impetuosity and a tigerish quality, of living life dangerously, in her playing, which is a refreshing contrast to so much staid and 'safe' Beethoven playing these days (which is not to say that I agree with everything she does), and the brilliant sound of the CFX suits her well.

bennevis,
maybe I missed that and it's written somewhere, but which preset did you use?

Oops, sorry, it was the V1 Concert.

Thanks bennevis, I will give it a try today and let you know what I think

Thank you again Bennevis, your wonderful ear has enhanced the V-piano like no other with these excellent custom sounds. This thread should have a sticky so new V-piano owners can take advantage as well and also come up with their own tweaks to those who have played some of the grand piano sounds you haven't.

It is to be noted that whether or not you are using closed headphones vs open headphones, a slight modification to the settings needs to take place. Bennevis uses the AKG K 271 MK II which are a closed design while I use the Sennheiser HD 598 open headphones.

For example while using the Bossendorfer setting Bennevis created, you want to be leaving the tuning and hammer settings to default on V1 Concert but every other setting Bennevis uses for the Bossendorfer stays the same while using open headphones. It is a small change, however every V-piano owner has to decide what they prefer after hearing it themselves. Furthermore there are plenty of open slots for customizing so I am creating two sets of Bennevis's piano's, one saved for open headphones and the other for closed as sometimes I do need to use closed ones.

Bennevis, your Yamaha CFX sound you adjusted is really good. It is my second favorite one to use Thanks I recommend every V-piano owner to give it a try. I do change the string resonance down to +30 instead of +50 and leave tuning and hammer to default as I am using open headphones. However all the other settings make it sound very close to a Yamaha. The soundboard on the Yamaha's have an after sound on the lower notes I cannot figure into the settings. I will keep trying and see if I can emulate it with different settings.

Also Bennevis, what Ambience setting do you use for most of the sounds? I use Hall 2 most of the time, and have the Ambience knob very slightly to the right of middle. Changing the ambience settings makes a huge difference to the overall sound as well.

Also, sorry it took me two months to get back to this very important thread. I will soon be in Summer vacation as I am a teacher, so I will have enough time to make an album of music from a combination of the Roland V-piano, a Yamaha S90, VL-plugin and a couple of the choir and string sounds from the Yamaha CLP990 Clavinova. I may add some vocals as well into the mix. It will be New Age style music for the most part similar to Yanni and Enya. I will be recording into a Zoom MRS1044CD which is in perfect condition and vocals into a blue snowball with ringer mic. All should be good enough to make an amateur album.

Do look forward to hearing some of your recordings as I happen to like New Age stuff as well, and, recently have been working on a new piece by Jon Schmidt titled "All of Me" and you can listen to him perform it, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fAZIQ-vpdw

Also, the sheet music is available:

http://www.jonschmidt.com/catalog/p...;osCsid=51fd865cc616c7e57b0ee0a47d466cec

As for headphones I have been using the Sennheiser HD-518's (open back ear pieces) which cost $130. In comparison with my $35 pair of Radio Shack headphones (closed ear pieces) the cheaper ones do far better at the V-Piano since they do not pick up the artificial midrange characteristics. As this is especially noticeable in the "Vintage Piano 2" (i.e., "Bosendorfer") presets. I just do not hear real acoustic-like "Bosendorfer" sounds at all, so what did Roland achieve by attempting to model this? Also, the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers with subwoofer sounds much improved over either of these two pairs of headphones. The speakers still do not mask these odd midrange sounds, however, there is a sharper and more defined presence to the piano sounds, making them somewhat less artificial/processed/electronic.

So, the most apparent flaws in the V that I can make note of would be this artificial midrange, from slightly above middle "C" to about two octaves higher, and, the wear of the keys. Waiting on the new key bed (with new part number) to arrive in about 8 weeks.

I have told you before that you really need to buy better headphones in order to hear the piano properly. what happened is you got used To the Way the V-piano sounded with your 35 radi shack headphones and now your brain thinks you like it better that way than the way it should sound. the headphones bennevis uses and the ones I always used are proffesional headphones for a reason. The same thing goes with computer speakers, they lack the range needed to hear the sound properly. I would highly recommend for you to give any proffesional studio quality headphone a try since you haven't heard the V-piano yet at its best.

What you are experiencing is the same phenomena people who moved from LPs to CD quality experienced. some people really like the sound which was scratchy at times better than pure clean digital sound from cd's. now in that case those people weren't wrong as neither are you for liking one particular sound over another. it may very well be true that if you do listen to higher-quality headphones you get the same results and end up going back to the original $35 RadioShack headphones. however I honestly would give a $200 or more headphones with professional quality specs a try before giving up all together on being able to hear the high quality sound the V-piano is capable of producing. honestly I do not hear anything wrong with the mid range as you have pointed out.

In regards to this artificial midrange it really does exist as some inherent component of the original piano sounds in the V, as no amount of tweaking the various onboard parameters seem to change this underlying "tone." I have spoken at length on this matter (with our other PW member "Essbrace") and I have come to the conclusion that while this is obviously something "in" the sound itself, it is not enough of an issue for me give up the V-Piano, as the artificial tone can be minimized to a greater degree in many of the silver presets, although not completely so.

The underlying artificial (modeled) "tone" is the culprit here as it cannot be changed or altered. Would like to eventually see another digital released that improves upon these modeled sounds/tones.

Might be interesting to see how the Viscount Physis Piano turns out - their claim is full modelling too but whether it will have the playability of the V remains to be seen - and it may not sound better either, who knows.

Yes... a possible contender for the V-Piano, perhaps?

Here is one of their demos, as it is quite intriguing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBit3c9OTkE