Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Could someone tell me difference of GF II vs GF?

I would imagine... But then again, if you love your damper noise you can crank it up twice on those Kawais... By default volume is 5, but you can make it 10.

I'm sure RX7 can still do much much more, but at on CA at 10 said noise is quite excessive already.

You misunderstand. I think DP should NOT reproduce every undesirable artifact of a real piano. The beauty of the DP is that they are extremely easy to play and sound good on. They makers of DP should make the DP even easier and better by focusing on improving the tone and not worry about acoustic artifacts like the let-off or playing from the let-off. The DP already make us sound really good today compare to playing an acoustic, so progress should be have the DP make us sound even better.

If you want a really good simulation of a real piano, just buy a real piano. For the price of the CA97, you could get a pretty nice Kawai or Yamaha acoustic piano.

I hear you, but it widely depends on use case. We bought CA67 because our living situation simply does not allow to practice for a prolonged time at a full volume of an upright, let alone grand (which we don't have a place for to begin with). Yet my wife played AP all her life and is used to it and that's what she likes. Thus for her all these unnecessary sounds and little inaccuracies just make an instrument more comfy, more familiar. I guess, it's often the case. It's literally for people who want an AP but can't use one.

On the other hand, human ear likes small inaccuracies and peculiarities. Too perfect is unnatural. Maybe it makes sense, I don't know.

Would it make sense to introduce a setting that would toggle between "reproduce an AP as closely as possible, quirks and all" and "eliminate all those annoying imperfections?" Presumably one can already use existing settings to ratchet down or turn off the quirks, but a setting that lets you get there and back in a single step would be a lot easier than figuring out what settings need to be adjusted and setting them all individually.

Of course this couldn't be done for let-off, which is implemented in the action itself, and can't be easily toggled. That's unfortunate, because that's probably the most important AP "imperfection" that is simulated by DPs.

For Kawai CA67/97 this setting is there. You just turn off the noises in the Virtual Technician. It has a preset that turns off all this stuff in a press of the button.

Actually, funny you two should mention this... just a few weeks ago, I was testing the the CA97 and CA67 at a local piano dealer in NJ (Forte Piano). While using headphones with the volume high, I was listening for how long the notes rang. I noticed that the note seemed to trail off too quickly when listening without headphones... but that they lasted much longer with headphones. In fact, I eventually figured out that what's happening is that the note decay speed is fine, but if you don't have the volume on the DP turned up very high (or if you're in a place that isn't quiet), then the note decays to be too quiet for you to hear too quickly. It's still ringing, but you don't notice it unless you really lean in ... and the same was happening with the acoustic pianos in the showroom. If I turned up the DP to be as loud as the acoustic, I heard it ring longer than before, but on both acoustic and DP, the decay seemed "too quick..." when the decay on the acoustic seems too quick, you realize that it's just falling below your threshold of hearing over the ambient room noise! If it's quieter, you'd hear it longer. Or if you're wearing quality headphones that block much room noise, it lasts longer (of course, that's only an option on the DP, not the acoustic.)

Anyway, on damper noise... this was supposed to be about damper noise! With headphones on and the volume turned up, I stepped rapidly on the damper pedal and heard the noise. (Technical note; this is not the sound of slamming the dampers into the strings; stomping on the damper pedal lifts the dampers off the strings rapidly, and doing so too quickly will result in them making a sound. To make the sound of the dampers hitting the strings, you'd have to let go of the damper pedal quickly.) I recognized the sound, and thought it was natural and correct, but too loud. I though it was much too loud. I was playing the Shigeru EX concert grand sound, and I was sure the damper release was too loud, and said so to the owner. (We had just had a long technical conversation.) So, he invited me to go play his Shigeru EX concert grand.

No kidding. I didn't know the piano store had an adjacent recital space, where he had a freshly-tuned Shigeru EX concert grand. So I went back and forth, playing with different things on the CA97 (with high-end headphones) and the actual Shigeru EX.

And I had to go admit to the owner that the pedal sound and volume are dead-on, but that my pedal technique had gone to crap. The sound was correct, and the response was correct, and the volume was correct (from the pianist's perspective.) Also, the note decay was correct (when the note volumes were set to the same levels, comparing CA97 with headphones to the acoustic in the quieter room.)

My history: I started out on acoustic pianos, but my last few years, I'd been playing a Kawai CA93. Before that, I had another DP. So it was three pianos ago that I played an acoustic regularly. Because my last two DP's didn't bring out the pedal noise, I'd become sloppy with my pedaling... so much so, that when presented with an actual acoustic Shigeru EX (or a very accurate DP reproducing one), I was hearing pedal noise caused by my lead foot!

I was honestly surprised, and more than a bit disappointed in my technique, but I was quite in impressed with what the Kawai guys have acheived.



I can appreciate your position, but some of us want to be good pianists. In my case, if the DP doesn't simulate how a real piano responds, I'm not being a good pianist... and that will show when I sit down at a real piano. My poor pedal technique reminds me of this.

Fortunately, as Alerique and others have noted... the Kawai CA (and many other DPs) lets you turn off the simulation of these artifacts if you don't want to hear them.



Here, I don't agree at all. You can't get in the same ballpark. For the price of a CA97 (which does a remarkable job of simulating a $100k+ piano) you can only buy an upright, and not even one of the better uprights.

And if you want an action comparable to a grand's, and you want a good-sounding piano, a CA97 (or CA67 with headphones) goes a remarkable distance for a very modest price... even an inexpensive grand would be a huge increase in cost, and in maintenance cost, and in space consumed. They are just not comparable.

I don't really agree with the idea that the sensation of "let-off" is mere imperfection.

Yes, that tactile feedback is introduced by the physical second escapement mechanism (the jack coming off the shoulder), and yes, a well-regulated piano minimizes that feeling because we don't want it to be too prominent... but that feeling is still there, and more importantly, it ends up serving a purpose: it gives us tactile feedback of the exact depth at which the key triggers the note. That means it also gives us tactile feedback of the height above which the key must rise before the key can re-trigger the note. We don't think about it much, but tactile feedback (also called haptic feedback in the research literature) gives us important cues.

You may not consciously realize it, especially if you don't often change pianos, but since different pianos all have slightly different overall key stroke depths and slightly different action weights, the subtle let-off sensation helps us quickly and intuitively adapt to the feel of each piano we sit at.

I don't think experienced pianists appreciate the let-off just because it's a familiar "imperfection." Rather, I think they appreciate it because it's a valuable physical cue they're accustomed to... one without which a keyboard feels a little bit "dead."

I didn't mean that no other DPs do this.

I meant that I had not seen the improved note-on timing called out as a feature improvement between GF and GF2 in other Kawai literature/web site/articles.

@Mental Nomad:

Thank you for posting your experience with the CA 97 vs. the real SK EX Concert Grand. As an owner of the former (with the latter only a dream) it gives me warm fuzzy feelings to hear how well "my" piano manages to emulate its larger cousin (although I am of course fully aware that there is still a gulf between them). Since I will likely never have the opportunity to make such a comparison myself, it is great to read about yours. It's one thing to read such statements in Kawai's marketing material, but a whole different thing to read them as the opinion of another piano enthusiast.

This thread originally stared out with comparing the GFI to the GFII. I was able to play both today and noticed a big difference between the two. The GFI felt springy and had less resistance than the GFII. The GFII in my opinion sounded much more authentic. That said, I'm not sure I'm willing to shell out that kind of cash for a CA67. My other options would be the MP11 for the GFI or the VPC1 for the RM3II. Unfortunately I can't find a VPC1 to try in and around Minneapolis. Might just roll the dice on the VPC1...

That's really being picky. I assume you mean the rest of the DP!?