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Hi,
I just started to use pedal recently and noticed quite a difference between my DGX640 and grand piano my teacher is using. It's like I have to use pedal more often on grand. With some parts I can keep pedal pressed all the time on DP and when I try to do the same on grand, sound gets blurry/mixed... you know what I mean.
Is it because of the shorter decay on DP which is quite often mentioned on this forum ? I am just a begginer, so it's most likely my fault as well. Any idea if moving to slightly better DP (P155, YDP181, CL36, CN33) will help ?
Thanx a lot.

Yes, it's the short decay of the digital, a very common problem.

Short decay of digital piano sounds is a well-known and, to me, serious problem. Manufacturers design the sounds to have a short decay to hide the problems they have that are associated with short samples. The downside is that the resulting piano can get you in the habit of mashing the pedal too much, which results in very muddy play when you do it on an acoustic. Of course, there is variation in the sustain of acoustics, but they are all well beyond the majority of digitals.

Unfortunately, I do not believe you will get much longer decay with the other pianos you mention. If you want a full-length decay basically your options are software pianos (which is what I use) and very expensive pianos, like the V-piano. Ironically, Casio actually has among the longest DP sustain, despite taking flak for having a short sustain.

In my opinion, your best option is to do what I have done (and which is much cheaper than buying a new piano): get yourself Vintage D or Ivory II, plug your piano into your computer using the usb cable, and enjoy realistic and much upgraded sounds. If you want to upgrade pianos, do so because you want a different action, not because you want different sounds.

The lowest A on my 2007 Roland HP201 takes about 22 seconds to fully die from a ff strike. C1 takes about 15 seconds, middle C about 9. Also, these decays are almost linear. The bass notes' decay are more linear than the midrange, but the midrange still has a long, singing, organ-like sustain, not a cliff.

This piano has the predecessor to Supernatural, it was called "Advanced SA" and was already part sample part synthesis.

My piano blurs if I get sloppy on release the pedal. It'll blur even when going half-tempo while working some passage out and I don't release the pedal.

I don't see what this "short decay" is. Maybe this is something that affects less-sophisticated tone generators from 10 years back and older? Maybe some makers just didn't put the effort into making a complex, believable tone? Or maybe they hold back on it, and give it to only the highest-priced models?

Just sayin', folks. And yeah, sustain was something I actively looked for when I bought mine. I wanted something that sustained better than my friend's Acrosonic, which is the piano I've had the most time on. In actual comparison with Samick-made Knabe "baby" grands in the same store, the Roland had longer sustain at the bass end and about the same at the midrange. I suppose the Roland behaves like what it was modeled after -- 9' concert grands of various makes.

So I measured decay on my DGX640 same way like Stringless: hitting keys really hard and listening with headphones on 3/4 of max. volume.
Lowest A 30 seconds, C1 28s and middle C 19s. I don't have grand piano around to compare, but it seems quite long enough. In my opinion there is some additional sound coming from acoustic when using pedal, some kind of resonance.

You are quite right. The difference is due to a combination of the shorter sustain of DPs and the relative lack of resonance. You'd expect a low note on a decent grand piano to sustain for over a minute.

Wrong again. Nothing personal, but you continue to make this claim and you are just plain wrong. There is no relationship between the tone generator in your piano and SA or SA+ or anything related to the older Roland sound engines. Your piano has purely sampled elements, no modelling or synthesis of any kind.

The problem with misinformation is that it gets perpetuated and repeated.

As gvfarns said, you'll need to get the Roland V-Piano or V-Piano Grand if you want acoustic-like long decay (and the resulting mushy sound that goes with careless pedalling) on a DP. Even with the Vs, in their factory presets (except for just one of the 28 piano sounds - 30 on the Grand version - from which you can customize your own), the decay is just as short as on other DPs, as if Roland didn't want to scare off customers used to the 'normal' short DP decay.

I found I had to increase the decay time to +70 or so, and damping time to +30 on the V-Piano to get the same effect as on an acoustic grand - see my old 'V-Piano presets' thread. (You can alter both those settings from -100 to +100). The trouble is that on sampled DPs, the longer the decay, the more obvious the artificiality of the decay (i.e. like a volume control being turned down) when compared to a real piano, which is why manufacturers keep the decay very short. The sound drops rapidly after the initial strike so that the decay that follows starts from a low volume point, which isn't what happens on acoustic pianos (even small uprights), though the actual decay time after that may seem OK when you measure it - and those sampled DPs that allow you to lengthen the decay time still only start from that point. Only modelled DPs (the Roland Vs only, to date) don't have this problem, and they also have a much more realistic range of resonances that contribute to the blurring effect you get if you don't clear the sustain pedal at the right time (as with a change of harmony).

So, to the OP, I suggest that if you're serious about playing piano music (especially classical) and want to learn good pedalling technique, switch to an acoustic. Or if you can't because you have to use headphones for practising at home, go for the V-Piano, like I did. (BTW, the several resonances I mentioned can all be customized to your liking on the Vs too).

Hmmm...I accept the arguments between DP's and acoustics but not so sure about the end result.

Some music shows pedal points, and if they are observed there may be a difference in sustain and resonance between DP's and acoustics.

But a lot of music does not show pedal points so you just use your ears along with some music theory knowledge about when to apply and release the pedal.

Then in both cases it's best to just use your ears and apply the pedal accordingly. So it doesn't matter a great deal if there is a difference of instruments, except for with those final long cadence chords.

Although perhaps I will admit that you will never get that seismic headache inducing orgasmic thumping resonant vibrating cataclysm on a DP like you do on a grand.

Beethoven asked for the first movement of his Moonlight Sonata to be played 'senza sordino' (without dampers, i.e. with sustain pedal kept down all the way through). This is about the only time when the short decay of sampled DPs comes in useful, as you can actually follow the great deaf man's instructions without the music sounding like an unholy mess.... (because the fortepianos of Beethoven's day had poor sustain).

Otherwise, I do actually indulge quite often in orgasmic thumping resonant vibrating cataclysm (minus the seismic headache) when I play my V-P. It's better than s#* .

I have to be honest, I never read or use the pedal markings in any edition, I always rely on my ears (and the piano).

Exactly what I will have to do - be more careful with pedal on my teacher's grand (release it more often).
V-piano is way out of my budget and acoustic in apartment... better not, I am beginner and want to stay friend with neighbors :-)

Ha! I was wondering why I could never quite get the sustain marks right when playing my teachers piano vs my own casio. That and the fact it is ON or off and I hold it right at the on off point like a clutch pedal. While my teachers requires a fair bit of movement.

Measuring decay by how long it takes for the note to get to silence is not the best idea. The relevant measure is how quickly it becomes quieter. Of course, we haven't agreed on a standard measure for that (half-life? quarter-life?). However, if you read through dewster's DPBSD thread you will see that in essentially every case he comments on the decay length, and it is almost universally too short in pianos with looped samples. It is not unnaturally short in pianos with unlooped samples like software pianos and (if parameters are set correctly) modeled pianos like the V.

Going back and forth from a digital (basically any digital) to an acoustic, one of the first things you should notice is how much muddier the acoustic is if you pedal the same way as you do in the digital. To suggest otherwise goes against a mountain of experience and analysis by many, many people in this forum. There are very few or no digitals that do not have this trait.

Actually, Roland's SuperNatural is, from what I can tell, largely a design to avoid this problem. The attack is more or less sampled, but instead of being looped and shortened, as other pianos do, the decay is largely synthesized. As a result they don't have to quiet it down to hide the artifacts. That's one of the main advantages Roland has. Whether it actually lasts the way an acoustic does it open to debate. I suspect it quiets down a bit faster in order to hide the artificiality inherent in synthesized tone. Whatever they do, it seems to work pretty well. I don't own one, so I'm not an expert. However, the OP might get away with using one of these modern Rolands if a software piano is not desired.

By the way, Stringless, EssBrace is right about your piano. It's sampled, visibly and audibly looped, and has "rather short decay." There's DPBSD post on it. If you don't find this to be a problem, more power to you--it's not a bad piano by any means--but it doesn't make your decay comparable to that of an acoustic grand.

So I bought CL-36 today and I can tell you - there is noticeable difference compared to DGX640. I would say it's much closer to acoustic now (regarding pedal usage).

That's not necessarily enough though... if the piece is slow enough and the decay is fast enough, you lose an awful lot. Give Clair de Lune a whirl on a DGX-500, for instance. Early on in the piece, by the time you get to the end of the measure the left hand notes are long gone when they should still be going fairly strong.

Not sure how bad the DGX-500 is vs. more modern DPs, but the sustain is truly awful (very fast decay) and it's what I'm stuck with for regular use aside from an out-of-tune spinet. At least the poor tuning on the spinet encourages me to not go too heavy on the pedal regardless of the decay.

Decay on acoustics is sooooooo looooooong. Never experienced anything similar an any DP so far. But is that an advantage of disadvantage remains to be seen, because these long decays on e.g. an upright may not be all very consistent over the keyrange and dynamics playing and can be more of annoyance than a gift. Nice for slow passages , but sometimes in the way with fast, or changing tempi. Still , when I play DP for a while and touch an acoustic , first thing that hits me is the long decay, completely diffuse sound radiation (correct English?) and often the shitty keybed. keybed on DP's is often much more consistent than between uprights. Pedaling is also a speciality of acoustics, slightly lifting and lowering the pedal and catching notes in between, while letting others decay and the complex resonance effects you can achieve are something I haven't heard matched in a DP so far. Physical modeling DP's maybe, but these have other slight artificial characteristics that can spoil the fun. All in all current DP's are pretty good and for practicing purpose very consistent , but not the same thing as an acoustic. Having to adjust when switching between AP and DP is therefore completely normal...

That's exactly what I thought my problem was with my Celviano 620. So are you guys saying that the problem of short decay is common with almost all digital pianos? I must say that I got to the point when I wanted to get rid of my DP since in my piano lessons
(on acoustic piano) I don't even have to touch the pedal, while my DP simply requires pressing the pedal all the time. Otherwise the sound is just "cut" and the piano sounds so awful. It's just terrible.

Are there perhaps any middle-range pianos which are better? Kawai? Yamaha?

Yes, that's the story with most digital pianos. The only solution I've found is to use a PC-based piano library to generate the sounds.

The 50 MB or 100 MB of samples in a digital piano cannot compete with the 4,000 MB to 10,000 MB samples in a piano library.

For those of us who are complete neophytes in this area, how does one go about creating a setup to take advantage of a digital piano library? i.e. what is the hardware and software that is involved?