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I do a lot of recording from a home studio, and I don't own a Grand. I use a soft-synth from Propellerheads Software called Reason and use the Pianos Refill. There's a complete explanation here: http://www.propellerheads.se/products/refills/rpi/

This gives you the option of controlling the software (running on your controller) with a midi controller (a keyboard with midi out)

The refill which with the software costs around $500, has hyper samples of 3 pianos. The Steinway K upright, The Steinway D, and the Yamaha C7. Many of the samples even capture the pads as they come down when you lift the key or sustain pedal. Also, unlike what someone noted above, the samples are true length samples, meaning that when you hit a key and sustain, the sample is an actual sample at that velocity that will ring until the string stops... not a loop.

That said, these samples are very large and require a fairly recent computer if you don't want to choke the computer for power.

This refill is hyper sampled, meaning that there are multiple samples from separate microphones in different locations, that can be custom mixed, depending on where you want the listener to be located in the room, relative to the piano.

I know, sounds complicated, but the results are amazing, and you can literally use a setup that compliments the piece you are trying to play. There's a set of close-up top mics for a intimate, bright sound. A set of close up bottom mics for a darker intimate sound. There's a set of Stereo Room mics that give the piano more space, and there's a monophonic Ribbon mic that has a classic sound, all its own.

The software allows you to select from the different mics and even has the ability to use multiple sets of mic mixed the way you want them.

Of course, to simplify things, there are different presets that you can choose between.

I like this program, especially because it gives you a wide variety to choose from and opens your options in the future, should technologies improve, allowing you to use your existing midi keyboard controller for another program or sound module.

It should be noted that the Reason program also is a recording package that allows you to record your performance and even play a duet with yourself by playing back your performance and adding a second part. You can also record vocals and other instruments, as well as select from many synthesized sounds in the software (strings, brass, and every conceivable wild sound you can think of.. : )

Hope this helps.

Les - cool concept for the video comparison. But it's not an apples/apples comparison especially because the acoustic piano is so out of tune. Doesn't sound like the temperament is way off, but the unison strings are really beating each other up.

Thanks David and others for your replies.

I suppose I was not clear as to the reason for this post. It was not meant to indicate that...well, here is an example of a digital piano on a par with a real grand piano.

It was to illustrate what technology has given us - with a mid-level digital piano. With what it has given us the ability to do; to learn to play, the joy of playing this instrument, in a form factor that is portable, convenient, play privately if need be, cost effective, and all with a good sound. We would have , most likely, far fewer of us enjoying this fine instrument if it were not for the digital piano.


The fella in the video loves to play on the real grand piano -when he can. Most of us (I'm assuming) don't have the opportunity to play a real grand. Or any real piano.

That fella had this to say about his digital piano.

"Now that I am on the move, I got a Yamaha P-155 digital piano. The realistic sound and feel of this instrument has me truly passionate about practicing/playing."

I can't wait till Christmas and get my digital piano. I don't know how to play it. At all! I hope I have half of that fella's passion to practice and play because I've got a lot to learn over the next several years. Of course, I'm assuming again - I hope to be around in several years' time.


Les

Maybe I'm one of those glass-half-empty people, but to me this video presents the DP as something that is tantalizingly close to an acoustic piano, yet frustratingly miles away from where it technically should be. The portability of DPs is probably their strongest suit, realistic decay and sympathetic resonance their weakest.

I'm with dewster, if you need portability then nowadays you can get some mighty nice digital pianos (although in my opinion the ones that qualify as "mighty nice" are also "might pricey"). But it is best not to A-B such instruments with a decent, in-tune acoustic piano because it simply makes it impossible for most of us to mentally filter out the quite obvious shortcomings in the sound of most DP implementations.

I'm frankly a bit amazed that for a couple thousand dollars, there are not DP's on the market which, through headphones, are indistinguishable from an excellent recording of a fine piano. I have yet to hear any that are even remotely in the ballpark. It sure seems doable at the price points you're talking about for a performance-grade DP.

My theory is that so many of these are used in circumstances where they can't be heard clearly that there just isn't a market demand for realistic sound quality.

I think there are - as a stand alone solution any Roland with the Supernatural sound engine can make good that particular illusion. And for less than $2000 you could equip yourself with a decent weighted hammer action keyboard and play any number of software pianos that would sound just as good as a recording of a fine piano (because that is what they are).

Getting a DP to sound like "an excellent recording of a fine piano" is the easy bit. Sitting down at one and hearing and feeling like you are playing a fine piano there in the room with you is the difficult bit.

I disagree. Or, I guess I should say, at least so far, I have not heard anything from a Roland that I would consider indistinguishable from a real piano when recorded.

But indistinguishable from which real piano? They're all different. A properly tweaked RD-700GX or equivalent can sound like a real piano in my opinion.

As different as real pianos are from one another, they all sound like real pianos... I did not find the Rolands to be convincing, though they can certainly be nice and pleasing to play. For one thing, the difference in brightness between soft and loud velocities was more exaggerated than I think any real piano would be.

I will say the Roland I auditioned at a local dealer (FP7F of something like that) when played through its speakers sounded indistinguishable from how a recording of a real piano played through a similar set of speakers might sound. And for an awful lot of purposes that's plenty good enough. Recorded or with the player wearing headphones the simulacrum is not quite as convincing.

At least the better Roland models' sustain doesn't seem to have that uncanny effect where it sounds very like a piano for the first three quarters of a second and then exactly like someone turning down a volume knob as it decays. I hear that in recordings and just can't get past the mental volume-knob image it elicits. But the basic attack envelop and timbre do get pretty good on some DP's.

The problem is, I can pay a few hundred bucks for a software piano to run on a PC costing at most a few hundred bucks and the simulation of a real piano is terribly close to believable through headphones. Is the storage and CPU capacity needed for that just simply too expensive to bundle into a digital piano?

Yes I think I agree with you. The Roland SN pianos become metallic and brittle too suddenly, especially in a couple of clusters of notes in the middle of the keyboard. However, I possess recordings made by another forum member where a RD-700GX with SN upgrade sounds uncannily good and to my ears extremely authentic. On material that doesn't excite the Roland's twanging noises in the mid-range it is an entirely believable representation of an acoustic piano to my ears. And I would suggest the Roland, whilst providing very high sonic quality, also provides the connection between keys and sound that seems so elusive with software pianos.



Yes, it's a dead giveaway.

Thereby rendering that Roland BETTER than any real piano, because that renders it more EXPRESSIVE than any real piano, and more expression is a good thing. I don't want a digital piano to merely be "as good" as a real piano - I want it to be BETTER than a real piano! ;^)

"Beautiful In My Eyes", by Joshua Kadison is one example of a song in which the (obviously digital - or is it? Is it a processed acoustic?) piano sounds perhaps more expressive than any real piano, and it sounds excellent.

Greg.

I don't anyone was questioning the beauty and expressiveness of the best digital pianos. It just seems if you can do "BETTER" and "MORE EXPRESSIVE" there ought to be a knob you can turn down and get "JUST LIKE" an acoustic.

The Roland SN is highly tweakable, isn't it? Perhaps it can indeed be adjusted to have it's expression reduced to be more authentic. (I've never tried. Anyone?)

Greg.

Mostly with amateur A/B tests we can tell right away which is the acoustic piano because the acoustic recording is technically of poor quality. Few home recording studios will have the space or the equipment budget to record a grand piano properly.

Today's technology is such that only professional recorded acoustic pianos are better than digital pianos

I think if we limit the discussion to home recording, the digital piano wins.

The obvious case where the acoustic piano wins is for live performance of solo piano music.

None of my comments were directed at the limitations of bad recordings or out of tune acoustic pianos. But I suspect comments to that effect are indeed why no maker of digital pianos can be bothered to go to the trouble and expense of providing truly state of the art sampled/modeled/whatever acoustic piano sounds. As long as the intended buyers consider the current DP's good enough (because they compare them to bad acoustic pianos or badly recorded ones or to ones used in a mix where you can't tell a Steinway from a Yamaha) there's no compelling reason to do any better.

In a very real sense the target of a digital piano is not the sound of an acoustic piano. It's the sound of a whatever piano filtered through numerous distorting, limiting, compressing and obscuring elements in a finished recording or performance. Which makes perfect sense now that I think of it that way.

So can I assume that MIDI keyboards into software pianos are the order of the day in more sound-quality-conscious recording projects? If you want a track as part of a project that will sound beautiful and expressive in the same way as a Steinway or Bosendorfer piano then you either put a Steinway/Bosendorfer in the studio or you fake it with some high-end software. Makes sense.

It makes sense that DP manufacturers only feel the need to make their pianos sound better than bad acoustics because bad acoustic pianos are the real competition for digitals. Almost everyone who gets a digital would get a nasty old upright if digitals were not available.

Very few people say "I'm trying to decide between a mnint-condition Steinway D and a Yamaha P155 and I can't make up my mind." More like, "my friend is willing to give me the 1910 no-name upright that his cat has been living in for some time, but I was thinking a P155 might be better."

DP manufacturers might aim higher if their main clientèle was more similar to many members of this forum...people who actually want them to sound as good as top shelf acoustics and could tell the difference if they did.

I should take a lesson from the consumer electronics and computer markets. What matters is how many things it does, not how well it does them.

Then again every musical instrument I've ever played my ears have been operating at a budget about 10x larger than my wallet...which in turn is about 10x larger than the budget justified by my ability.

if only there was a "software DP". Take a DP with a good action, and have it directly run with internal hardware to run up-gradable software like Ivory or Gallaxy. Do away with all those silly (imo) frills/sounds and just do piano right.

It's likely not a representative sample, but there are plenty of DP users her at PW who are so dissatisfied with the internal sounds of even the very best DPs that they end up substituting them with external sample sets run on external hardware.

And I imagine recording studios could really use something like an unlooped Kawai MP10, where the performer plays to MIDI on a thumb drive, which is then edited on a PC for mistakes and such, and finally rendered on the instrument so that the nuances and dynamics of the original performance track perfectly.

The industry seems to be completely ignoring both of these groups, and why that is I have absolutely no clue. Surely there is money to be made and prestige to be gained by manufacturing a product such as this, and certainly it is doable.