Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Do Roland customers still care about the SuperNatural brand?

"This is Roland's "SuperNATURAL Piano sound engine." This is not an inorganic tone generated by a tone generator. It produces an organic and natural sound"

www.roland.com/piano/SuperNATURAL_Piano.html

My opinion is that customers are voting with their wallets for inorganic tones.

Translation: "everybody except me with my P-105 is a stupid moron with more money than sense."

Don't feed the troll!!! LOL

No, actually he's right. I so wish I'd consulted him before buying my FP-7F, and now I feel really stupid for having traded it for an FP-50. What was I thinking? I know nothing about DPs, and I was completely taken in by Roland's marketing. Where were you, Starving Lion, when I needed your deep knowledge and expertise? And to make matters worse, I actually had a P-105 for a while! Goodness, I'm feeling almost suicidal now... Please HELP!!!

Well, at one time SuperNatural was considered a real breakthrough that offered Roland a distinctive advantage. Now it seems more of a novelty than anything else. And the future? Seems like its a liability because, "Who cares, I just need a huge fast store for all my favorite replicas of German, Italian, etc acoustic pianos faithfully sampled a zillion times over with the most expensive equipment, etc".

Algorithmic enhancement seems to produce organic experience at the expense of artifacts somewhere in the range of tones.
In short, the Dull (but increasingly playable due to a massive store with a fast interface) conventional approach trumps organic that contains these weird artifacts.

Well, I see you`ve got Pianoteq. So that makes everything fine . .Happy Ending!

If we made fun of all the times digital (and acoustic) piano marketers said things that don't stand up to scrutiny or are silly, we'd have no room to discuss anything else.

To be fair, though, there are only so many different ways to say "this DP sounds good," so it's natural to expect someone to eventually call SuperNatural organic and imply that it's not a tone generator.

StarvingLion seems to imply that SuperNatural has not been a successful tone engine, though, or that people don't buy SuperNatural Roland DP's. Neither is true. One could argue that the V wasn't successful in terms of market adoption but SuperNatural has been warmly embraced by wallets and hearts alike.

Personally, I love and use software pianos, but as a proportion of all DP owners, we are an exceptionally rare bunch and always will be.

Even purely sampled pianos can have artifacts or areas of play that sound "weird". Though I do agree that the algorithmic approach so far has had more than it's share of this kind of thing.


Oh, I'd take fully sampled over SN any day of the week. But I'd take SN over almost any other built-in DP sound simply because it gets rid of looping, which I would most strongly prefer to never, ever, hear again.

The SN sympathetic resonance algorithm isn't bad either.

I forget - what was the point of this thread again?

[EDIT] Everyone else here has heard this, but StarvingLion, give this a listen, particularly the first movement (SN studio), I'd be interested in your opinion of it. I think SN does quiet pretty nicely (for a DP).

I don't think *any* improvements on dp's in quite some time have proven themselves to be indispensable. The SuperNatural engine hasn't cornered the market away from the two pinnacles of dpdom: The 105 and 155. The fact that Kawai is addressing that juggernaut at this point in time probably with a significantly reduced price proves my point.

Some people don't like to have to endure the Yamaha sound.

SN is used for their E-drums engine as well. So far nobody could sample enough drum samples to come close to the rich variety of indeed organic and natural sounds of the SN tone generator in their E-drums. It translates by its apparently indefinite nuances of reaction the playing decently into acceptable sound, if original drums can´t be used. And the hardware of their E-Drums is so far the unbeatable best on the market.

To my experience the almost same applies to their digital pianos. The only drawbacks here are the too loud thumping of the keys, and that the bells and whistles haven´t been implemented ambitiously but too sloopy. Some people don´t want to favor the SN in digital pianos to be the very best tone generator around, personal taste differs, but for sure will have to admit that it is one out of the premier league.

I am usually not commenting on stupid posts, but this one might be found by unexperienced people seriously searching for a new instrument, and only in support of them I here added my opinion.

It WAS a real breakthrough and it DID and DOES offer Roland a distinctive advantage. That doesn't mean everyone likes the tonality of it. You have no knowledge whatsoever about any of this stuff.

So true! Likewise, Bentley hasn't cornered the market away from the two pinnacles of cardom: Ford Focus and Fiat 500 - ergo Bentley is no good.

No, I love the Roland tones, I can't get enough.

They are such wonderful value too.

Shirley, anyone who dislikes the fabulous SuperNatural tones of the Wonderful Range of Exquisitely Superb Digital Pianos, must be a cloth-eared baboon.

Roland pianos are so fabulously affordable, as well.

Go to your Roland agent now and buy one thousand Roland SuperNatural Digital Pianos, you'll be glad you did.

By the way, better buy at least one of all the other pianos because fair is fair and they are all so CHEAP.

God Bless The Mighty Roland and all digital piano makers.

And you believe the stampede for the VPC1 are folks seeking the Ford Focus? C'mon, those folks can get top of the line SuperNatural for the same price and they still don't want it! So, what gives? Whats missing that they prefer extra cables and config headaches?

I just want to know, who is going to feed those starving lions? Certainly not Roland, by the looks of it...

Edited (for rudeness).

Right, I've bitten a couple of times and regret it. I know it is going to require tremendous self control but we need to stop responding to this tosser.

Well, I think Roland has to either get off the pot or XXXX already. Meaning, they had better dump their load (refined and fixed V-Piano lite) into the general marketplace and see if they can keep a big pricing premium alive. No more carrot of a $7K engine you can't touch and the usual stupid hardware upgrade cycles with junk like side speakers.

If you glance down to my signature you will not currently see Yamaha or Kawai mentioned. My needs and preferences are met by the boards I have presently. Roland provides me with a superbly playable piano engine that I can turn on and play instantly, and a form factor that allows me to move it relatively comfortably for semi-professional use. The SN engine is the closest I've experienced, within an affordable and easy-to-use package, to playing a real piano. It is by no means perfect, and other, purely sampled, DPs may sound more realistic at first, but I've found none that offers such an overall fluid and satisfying playing experience. I even prefer Roland's SN to Pianoteq.

Nord provides me with a stunningly well-sampled range of APs and EPs that surpass nearly every other non-software board for authenticity. The Nord doesn't play as well or have as good an action as the latest Rolands, but it's a great board for live ensemble work and recording, with a beautifully clear sound.

Korg gives me a gritty, ballsy vintage sound in the SV-1, and an unlooped, remarkably good AP plus some great EPs in the Krome. Neither of the Korgs lends itself to solo playing due to other flaws in their implementation.

The Yamaha P-105 and P-155 are very good basic DPs, and I have quite a soft spot for the 105. They are also very competitively priced, but they cannot compete with the Roland in terms of expression or natural-sounding decay, and they cannot compete with the Krome for its unstretched, unlooped, <>3GB sample set - neither can the Yamaha EPs come anywhere near the Nord's or Korg's professional EP soundset.

If you play a fast chromatic scale up and down the P-105 it actually sounds like you are bending the notes, due to the stretching, whereas an 88-note sampled instrument has an individual sound for each note. The relatively short, static sustain and looping is so very obvious in the Yamahas compared to the long SN sustain with its naturally changing harmonic overtones. The three velocity layers in the 105 cannot compete with the smooth, wide-ranging dynamics offered in the Roland or the eight layers in the Krome. The short attack samples in the Yamahas are no match for the considerably longer ones in the Nord.

These are some of the reasons I don't own a Yamaha at present, and my peripatetic musical life doesn't lend itself to either a VPC or a heavyweight self-contained board. Other people will have their own reasons for what they own, but I don't go around telling them they are wrong or suckers for what they purchase. The purpose of these boards, and our presence here, is surely to offer well reasoned advice based on experience and knowledge to help others when asked - not to denigrate everything that doesn't support our own narrow prejudices (there's too much of that in the world at the moment).

You've selected Roland SN to take a crap on but it's arguably one of the few things going slightly less wrong in DP land. There are plenty of better deserving targets out there for your squatting pleasure.

Unreal. The troll can't even write an original post without making it a thinly veiled polemic against a manufacturer, and by implication, a backhanded insult to their many satisfied customers.

Unfortunately I don't think you have a point. I hear complaining words, but nothing coherent enough to call a point.

SuperNatural is a Roland feature put in pianos that outclass the P105 and P155 by a good margin and come in at a very different price point. The P105 and P155 are hardcore budget pianos and Roland doesn't really make any budget pianos so they aren't really competitors (I don't know why you would call them pinnacles of dpdom except that they were among the first recommended to you because you said you wanted a really cheap piano). Now there are rumors that Kawai is making a budget piano. Ok, but what does that have to do with SuperNatural? Nothing. If Kawai does make a budget piano it won't compete with any of Roland's offerings...certainly not the ones with SuperNatural. Are you implying that Roland should start making budget pianos? That would be a real argument but I don't see you saying that anywhere.

On the other hand if you are saying SuperNatural is not the be-all-and-end-all, you are quite right, but no one disagrees with that. SuperNatural is just one particular feature Roland has. Some people love it, a few hate it, but most don't have strong feelings.

Supposedly this thread is about you denigrating SuperNatural, which I doubt you've ever played, but you are bringing up irrelevant info as if it supports some kind of argument. It doesn't.

Here is how I imagine our incredibly annoying troll, StarvingLion, interacts with people in real life:

Monty Python sketch

Except, subtract out all the warmth and charm of Michael Palin's character, and just leave the annoying bits.

I sense a seismic shift going on in the dp market: users want to spend money repeatedly on software, only once on keyboard hardware.

Its going to be pretty hard for these hardware piano co's to keep up now. I don't think ANYONE gives a crap if they reduce prices either. Dead investment.

Look around these parts of the woods, its obvious what people want. They want competition to the VPC1 to reduce cost. Not another bells and whistles plastic portable piano with bad speakers if thats what Kawai comes up with next.

I am sad to inform you that the VPC1 has instantly obsoleted your RD-700nx. Its like the old IBM Personal Computer versus Minicomputer debate. People couldn't see the obvious back then either.

But the situation for Roland is not completely hopeless. Roland can let the V-Piano monster out of its cage and wreak havoc on the VPC1+samplers possibly devouring them in one fell swoop.

I just don't think they have the guts to do it.

Tell us more!

Ummmm ...the FACTS are.
The RD-700NX is the best DP ever made ...period.
The RD-700NX is a FAR BETTER Midi controller keyboard then the VPC1 will ever be... it's not a one trick pony.
You don't have the slightest clue WTF you are talking about.

What Mac said.

Mac x 3, could you speak up a little? I didn't quite get what you're trying to say.