Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How far is THE PERFECT DP from now?

This is the perfect answer. When AP makers are making DP's they are forced not to drive technology that far that they lose AP sales.
I agree that Yamaha can blow away synthogy overnight if they are willing to

KataiYubi points A - E could equally be applied in the search for a perfect piano.

+1

This seems to me a good summary of the weak points of DPs: 1. speakers vs soundboard, 2. pedalling and resonance and 3. fatigue dued to predictability

The first problem seems the hardest to overcome. Some DPs now include a soundboard... good move on the right direction but I think that they are still far away. The other two problems are more prevalent in sampled pianos than in modeled pianos, but modelling have other problems on its own (modelled tone is not as good as in samples yet).

In the end, I think we are not going to see pianos disappear in the next decades. DPs and APs will coexist. DPs will improve (I hope... they must). Maybe in a distant future I will sell my upright and play only on the digital... but right now? No way!

Regards,
Kurt.-

Perfection is something you can strive for but never truly achieve so there will never be a perfect digital piano let alone a perfect acoustic piano.

Secondly I'd argue that an acoustic piano is by no means a perfect instrument to begin with and that some of the characteristics of an acoustic are really flaws or technical limitations of the instrument that get 'romantisized'.

As for a pretty good aproximation of an acoustic I'd say that all the pieces are there we've simply not seen anybody put them expertly together to form a coherent instrument.

From a technical standpoint building a PCB that could be used to play a Galaxy, Synthogy or any other virtual instrument or even Pianoteq is easy albeit maybe not exactly cheap. The current crop of DSPs is easily capable of processing that and you'd need a few GB of RAM and a decent size SSD.

Basically the HW setup of the Korg Kronos X would suffice, except with a different CPU/DSP setup.

Also from a technical standpoint there are a few great DP actions that come close to the real deal out there. The AvantGrand actions (which are basically modified Renner ones anyway), the Kawai GF and RM3 or even the Roland ones. Replace the three sensor rubber 'button' design with a light or laser based velocity sensing (like in the VAX 77, the Viscount or the Lachnit Studio) and you'd be able to decently map the dynamics of playing.

Then you'd have a very good action, that maps velocity and dynamics with decent solution plus a great sample-based virtual instrument or the modelling of Pianoteq and a velocity curve that could be adapted to the instrument.

Sound reproduction via amps/speakers would be a technical hurdle but not unsolvable and there are already a few great high end DP's out there that excel at that.

The problem is. The companies that have shown that they could tackle the electronics and SW side of things (Clavia, Korg, Casio etc.) don't have access to the best actions and don't exert to much effort to built one. That's because they focus on a different segment of the market - professional or semi professional studio or stage musicians.

In that segment there are certain trade-offs you have to take into account. Portability, price, flexibility and controller functions.

The companies that have shown that they can tackle the instrument side of things (Kawai, Yamaha) don't have the best expertise in electronics and SW or don't exert too much effort in that field.

They focus on the pianist or piano enthusiast in the high end and they also sell real acoustic uprights and grands. A sufficiently good DP would cannibalize most of their high end market which contrary to popular belief is not only made up of professionals but also of enthusiasts and semi-professionals that want a 'real piano'.

I'd assume the number of acoustic pianos that get bought by hobbyists or parents is quite large.

Most professional pianists I know (admittedly not that many) own a grand of course but some of them would rather not. They are touring and need a decent DP to practice on the road and they are usually provided an instrument at the venues they play. If you're not Lang Lang you can't bring your owm grand to a concert hall.

If you play professionally for hours a day an acoustic is also not the most practical instrument if you don't want your neighbours to show up at your doorstep one day with pitchforks and torches that is.

I pretty much agree with xorbe, as long as most DPs are made by instrument companies that also sell 'real' pianos you'll probably not see a 'perfect' digital at least not by them.

If a company like Clavia ever got access to an action with the same level of quality as the AvantGrand, GF or RM3 though they could probably built an instrument that would truly upset the 'balance of power' of the traditional players.

I used to think this might be true ...
"I pretty much agree with xorbe, as long as most DPs are made by instrument companies that also sell 'real' pianos you'll probably not see a 'perfect' digital at least not by them."

... but no longer. Roland makes good digitals. So does Casio. Neither manufacture acoustic pianos.

Good, yes, but not perfect.

Casio and Roland focus on the professional/semi-professional musician that uses instruments on stage/in the studio/live.

They make good instruments but their focus leads them to a different set of trade-offs.

The instruments have to be as flexible as possible:

4 Zone Midi-Controllers, Splits, Layers, lots of different basic sounds and emulations, arpeggiators etc.

The instruments have to be 'portable' so the action has to be light-weight and the form-factor of the boards has to be so that you can easily carry them.

You should be able to play different piano and organ sets so the action will be more light and weighting will be less.

Price

This is s different set of trade offs than the ones you'd take if you wanted to build the best digital piano. They offer a set that is 'good enough' but offers you a lot of flexibility.

But I already mentioned this in my previous post.

Just because a hover car is not available, should I not go out and buy a car?

I'm quite happy with my N2 as a replacement for an upright. I do consider myself someone that needs an adequate sound and maybe it's the whole experience of the action and the sound system, but it gives me the intimacy to feel creative.

Nigeth said: I'd argue that an acoustic piano is by no means a perfect instrument to begin with and that some of the characteristics of an acoustic are really flaws or technical limitations of the instrument that get 'romantisized'.


Quite so. In fact, 'fetishised' might be a more suitable word than 'romanticised'. There is nothing inherently good, in a musical sense, about a piano keyboard action. It is just a rather cumbersome means to an end: striking a set of strings. Of course, highly satisfactory ones have developed over the centuries and pianists develop a feeling for them, it is true.

And is there really any use in copying an acoustic piano's sound board? I mean, would a tuba-shaped speaker made of brass really yield a better sousaphone sound than an ordinary high quality monitor or hi-fi? Perhaps, but it sounds like piffle to me.

Why don't we do a poll here - everyone submits what they feel is their dream DP from all the currently available models. Money and space and neighbours and dogs/cats/rabbits are no object. You can have what you want.

BUT - it will be the only instrument you can have (don't forget, it's supposed to be your perfect DP, or as close to one as what is available today), and a DP can't be perfect if you have to have two or three different ones, plus an acoustic grand. So, you can't have an acoustic either.

It would be interesting to see if predominantly very expensive, high-end models are chosen, or whether, simply, people want something very different than purely acoustic emulations, and if so, what sort.

I agree that speakers are a major factor. Real acoustic pianos, expertly recorded and played back through a pair of multi-thousand dollar high quality stereo speakers still generally won't fool you into thinking there's actually an acoustic piano in the room. Though the idea of a series of special purposed speakers placed with only the intent of recreating the soundfield of a piano, as in high end Yamahas, is an interesting (if not always practical) approach.

It sounds like that's evidence that you're agreeing with them, rather than no longer agreeing with them!

Everyone will have their own ideas of perfect. But there are people who pay $50k for an acoustic grand because it's closer to perfect than a $25k model, so I don't know how close to perfect you're going to get in a $3k emulation. ;-)

DP's are for gigging, so picking only one is not an accurate poll. I can't gig with AG and I can't fit in my house or afford a Steinway B.

I love my FP4 compared to any other gigging boards. I know I could easily get bored with action if it was my only piano.

The Crumar Baby Grand may be closest to what you want.


"Best actions" is very subjective, as are "best electronics." Not everyone would agree that Clavia and Korg have better electronics (better sounding pianos) than Kawai and Yamaha. Not everyone even agrees that Kawai and Yamaha actions are necessarily better than Casio's.

But regardless, there is nothing to stop you from using the action of your choice to trigger the piano sound of your choice, whether that piano sound is in another keyboard or a computer. You can get any combination you want, so I don't find it so bothersome that there's no one piece that does it, i.e. that someone might prefer the action of vendor A and the sound of vendor B. I mean, odds are, we would never all agree on which action and sound are best to begin with. So even if a company came out with the kind of model you and others are theorizing about, probably most of us would still complain about it and prefer some other action or some other sound. People don't even agree on which $50k grand piano sounds and feels best. So there is not a holy grail, there are countless individual holy grails... and the tools exist today for most of us to assemble something darn close to what we want, if we are so motivated. (Apart perhaps from the difficulty of the speaker issue, as discussed elsewhere.)


The idea that Yamaha won't make the best DP they can because it will cut into their acoustic sales assumes that Yamaha considers their DP's competition to primarily be their own acoustic pianos, whereas I would think they would consider their main competition to be DPs made by other companies. (And they are certainly also competing against companies who would not have their own line of acoustics to "protect" as well, even if I were inclined to buy into that line of reasoning, which I'm not.)

Imperfect is perfection! Acoustics and digitals have their own characteristics and idiosyncrasies. Acoustics are different from each other, digitals are different from each other; and definitely acoustics are different than digitals. There seems to be more differences than similarities in all subsets of pianos.

What makes a piano perfect? Is there one piano somewhere that is deemed the perfect piano that all others are trying to replicate? I don't know the answer.

I think the difference is that the companies that can make the most sophisticated pianos at lowest cost (a combination of low-overhead low-manufacturing-cost software developers developing for high-volume low-cost hardware platforms like Apple and Dell, where you then supply your own keybed of choice) are in a situation where that approach provides obvious cost advantages relative to manufacturers of low-volume all-in-one custom-hardware manufacturers.

The perfect piano is the one that inspires you to play. No more, no less whether it cost $500 or $250k. Dreaming of the perfect piano is akin to mental masturbation.

Isn't that what we do here. I mean this thread is a rehash of a recent one. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

"The perfect piano is the one that inspires you to play. No more, no less whether it cost $500 or $250k. . . "

Ya right there, man!

A PERFECT DP mentioned in the OP is
- A DP where you get the FEEL that you are playing an AP.
- Where you don't get fatigued by the sampled sound.
- Lastly one that makes you happy & dont want to think "I should get a better DP" within a week.