Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Some observations about digital piano

what needs to be remembered is that digitals are not stagnant, they are constantly improving. I could almost state that some of the digital actions are at a good enough level for responsiveness. Perhaps they aren't up to the level of a 20,000usd grand piano maybe. It seems the sound reproduction is the remaining piece and that's mostly software modelling, the computer hardware is convincingly there. I would think systems like the laminate soundboard of the kawai ca95 are pretty close to providing the reproduction part.

Comparisons of digital pianos to open stringed instruments are fairly irrelevant. I know especially on electric bass guitars there's huge variety due to finger style vs picked vs tapping vs slapping and the variation of sound where the string is picked and the balance settings between having multiple pickups, and there's the fret hand pitch bending, etc. The number of inputs makes it inordinately difficult to model.

Other than trying to model standing up and playing the strings inside of a grand piano (i don't like that anyways) the model has fewer and more predictable parameters.

I predict that the acoustic market will only continue to erode even further and preferences will become more of a generational thing. Acoustics will be around but the low end market will mostly disappear.

Sorry, having gone through a decently drawn out search for an acoustic piano I found the whole process to be a huge pain. With digitals the pain is trying to figure out which model to buy. With an acoustic it's more like a used car selection and the prices start above the most expensive digitals.

This is a common myth:Digital pianos change very slowly. Very.

what myth is this? in the past 20 years the change in digitals has been dramatic. The improvement in action alone is quite phenomenal. The improvement would have been faster if the yamaha clp990 hadn't been killed so quickly.

20 years ago the industry was just emerging from FM sythesis and was working on a few megabytes sampling with a few megabytes disk storage. Current embedded computers easily and very cheaply come with 1GB ram and 16+GB storage, both components costing in the 1usd range.

I don't think pianoteq or whatever other like software had near the capability 10 years ago even if they were around much.

I would agree.

Over hundreds of years of the acoustic piano, not too much change really.

The paradigm of digital sound generation has changed markedly in the 40 years since Roland released the first touch sensitive electric piano, the EP-30.

Jay

I haven't come across any classical recordings on the original V-Piano, and obviously jazzers etc have a different idea of what is a good piano sound for them.

But there are quite a few decent recordings of the Grand which have been recorded in concert halls, using only the sound from its speakers. Like this one: http://youtu.be/w0-dC7eT_Oo

Try playing a kit of drums. The noise generated is boomy and nothing like whatyou hear on records, or even when listening tto a good live drummer in say, a gig with his band. The same applies to electric bass, or guitar. The raw sound is what you get, even from the guitar speakers. So different to that you hear recorded, or at a distance. . . .what you get from a DP or, to a lesser degree from Pianoteq, amounts to recorded. There's nothing raw about these. That to me is the difference.

You can't record raw! Get over it. . .:)

Not buying it - not for a New York minute.

Over the last 10 years have you any concept of the dramatic changes in digital pianos? Sure, they may still be a long way away from perfect, and the changes may come in fits and starts - so more quantum leaps every few years, but all the same...

Over the same 10 years, what has changed, of any note, in acoustic pianos to shift the goalposts for digital pianos?

DP evolved fast in the 15 years maybe, but then it's getting slower. Roland is the only one pushing modeling on hardware, maybe if the others catch up and make hybrid engines there would be an step up.

...and I always thought a "digital" piano meant an instrument played with the "digits" (i.e. fingers).

Tony

Whilst it's entirely plausible that not every particular range has improvements to either the sound engine, or action, they tend to get improvements with every major update to various makes and their model ranges.

It's completely fatuous to try and suggest that digital pianos don't continue to improve, and almost smacks of some agenda or pre-existing bias.

Given the competency of entry level digital pianos, now, I can't see any value in buying used from a few years back, unless it's a truly premium model at rock bottom price, that's been largely unused.

chiming in to add a comment regarding "digital other things", (as compared to analogue things).
electric guitars are played through guitar amplifiers.
there is a German company named Kemper.
they make a gizmo called the Kemper Profiling Amplifier.
it is digital.
it has digital profiles of guitar amplifiers. (and can make more.)
absolutely amazing.
here's a link:
http://www.kemper-amps.com/home

I love what people are doing with music related technology.

Listen to a fifteen-year-old digital. Listen to a new one. Not much difference, eh?

Thin sound. Lack of resonance. Endless looping. It's very disappointing.

That's not rapid change. It's slow staganation.

So if you truly feel that there is no difference, go listen to a Roland HP-1 then listen to an HP-504 and tell me that there is no difference.

Then go listen to an HP-302 and the new HP504 and again tell me there is no difference.
Tell me how much the action hasn't changed. You will not be able to do it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but Roland has constantly pushed the envelope for sound generation in Digital Pianos. Starting WAY back in the days of the RD-1000 with SA synthesis, and progressing to today's SUPERNatural and V-Piano modelled engines. And always more coming.

We cannot re-invent the wheel every year, but we can make constant and steady progress towards better and better digital pianos. Roland has always been a leader in the fine art of the Digital Piano

Jay

Count me unimpressed. I've given up on the sounds of digital pianos.

I find all native sampled pianos inadequate. (Caveat: I've never tried an Avant Grand.)

I find modeling (Pianoteq) inadequate.

I find the V piano pretty good.

I find the large sampled (PC-based) libraries adequate. Not excellent, but better than anything else in the digital realm. I'm not entirely satisfied, but I can't reasonably buy an acoustic (so long as my wife is alive). If not for the wife factor I'd dump the digital and buy another acoustic.

Whether the digital piano of 2025 or 2030 will satisfy I cannot say.

You claim no progress in 15 years which is demonstrably incorrect. As cited in my example above.

There has been significant progress....Although in your opinion not enough.

Which is fair enough, because it is after all, your opinion.

Jay

And once again - sound isn't the only measure of a digital piano - since plenty augment use of an acoustic piano with a digital, more for practice than true enjoyment.

And whilst you may be unfulfilled with the sound of digital pianos, it is truly folly to assert that there's hardly been any change in the sound they produce over a decade or more.

But equally important, the action also tends to improve, as does other aspects to the sound engine, not purely to do with sampling or modelling, per se - polyphony, other simulators / add-ons to the sound engine.

Then there is the Fractal Audio AxeFX II, which is a product line that has been evolving for a number of years and really has come into its own.

Tony

yes. I chose the Kemper after much reading about it and the Fractal.
I have only used the Kemper a tiny bit.
it is astonishingly cool.
the Fractal looks fantastic too.
as for digital pianos, I bought one of the first touch sensitive Rolands (methinks).
HP100.
here's one on ebay right now:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roland-HP-100-Electronic-Piano-Keyboard-/331395942693
digital pianos have come an incalculably long way since then.
thanks to people in companies like Roland, that kept working to make them so much better.

I think the great virtue of Pianoteq is it's ability to play midi files at various tempi on various period instruments, in various temperaments. I use it as a learning tool for a variety of difficult classical pieces. I also use it to get into the mind of the composer based on an electronic copy of an instrument he or she might have played.

Playing Schubert on a copy of a c.1828 Bosendorfer in one of the unequal temperaments lets me understand how to play the music better. I also can come to my own conclusions on tempo, since the modelled instruments appear to have different repeated note response characteristics from a modern piano.

I also use digital keyboard for recording my own music in MIDI format, which is far more compact than anything else, and easier to edit. I really don't think of electronic and acoustic instruments as equivalent but complementary.

This complementarity is even more evident when playing an electronic replication of a pipe organ. Hauptwerke allows you to play on multiple organs in far flung locations, which is simply not possible for most practicing musicians. Also, electric action organs tend to have more in common with electronic instruments than pianos.

Regarding the V-Piano as a musical instrument experience, I found this comment from a guy Piet De Ridder, a V-Piano owner, to address what the V-Piano brings to the table very well...

---
I agree that there are a number of sampled pianos out there with a better raw sound than the V-Piano. Strike a few isolated notes or chords on the ArtVista, the Imperial, the Galaxy II, the Bluthner, the EWQL’s, the Kawai-EX, some of the Sampletekk pianos or even the Garritan Steinway, and there’s no denying that this will sound more ‘like a piano’ than what the V-Piano is capable of producing.

However, that’s not telling the whole story, I feel. Not even the first chapter. You see, the problem with all these sampled instruments is that, even though their individual samples can be very convincing, as instruments, these things simply don’t respond the way a player expects a piano to respond. They are not instruments you can ‘interact’ with’. This is probably a negligable consideration to people who aren’t interested in the ‘playing an instrument’-experience and merely want to hear a believable pianosound coming out of their computer (no matter how it is being triggered), but it is tremendously important to anyone who’s addicted to the joy of playing an instrument. It’s this sensation of being absorbed by the piano, while playing it, which I never experience when working with sampled pianos but which, seated at the V-Piano, quickly becomes a wholly satisfying and inspiring physical (and musical) reality. But again: I fully understand that many people wouldn’t care for this argument. I do though.
---

This person had more to say, both pro and con about the V-Piano and about sampled pianos, but these particular paragraphs, I think, really express what otherwise seems to be missing when people discuss the instrument, while at the same time acknowledging what samples do well. Bennevis (and a few others here who have played/owned the V-Piano) does bring this up, but his/their comments seem to get somewhat overlooked. To me, this aspect of the V-Piano (and Grand) is something to be experienced in person rather than seen on Youtube. I think people who have not played the V-Piano (or Grand) assume that these instruments are really pretty much like other digital pianos, but maybe with a sound more like that of Pianoteq. But having a computer connected to a typical DP or controller is not the same as having an instrument built from the ground up to recreate the experience of "piano".

The entire thread is in the "Gearslutz" forum:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/hig...anybody-tried-bought-roland-v-piano.html

The thread is from 2009, but I don't think the comments are any less valid today.

Tony