Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Some thoughts after comparing high-end DPs

Well, at least you know it's not a personal thing against just your piano I use my ES7 as a controller only, ever since I discovered Garritan CFX with the latest updates. And I'm planning to replace it with VPC1. You're not exactly right about me bashing every single digital piano though. I really liked NU1 and almost bought it before realizing it has a nasty bug with sudden loud velocities. And I went to great lengths praising N3 but it's outside my budget

I wonder if any of the manufacturers will venture to produce home pianos which can be updated with new engines/sounds..
Eying the software industry's success with really milking the public with DLC, I would think it not a bad strategy at all if customers could choose to upgrade their older pianos with new engine hardware and software.

^ the issue with the DLC business is that it requires volume sales to make money whereas DPs are a niche market where the money is made through low volume, high value sales.

Remember that even the cheapest DP is hundreds of dollars where even the costliest DLC is tens of dollars. There is more profit in waiting for customers to decide that their 3-5 year old DP needs replacing at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars than allowing them cheaper DLC upgrades each year meaning that they might keep a DP 10-15 years.

Actions see small incremental improvements each year so the only way to get consumers to regularly upgrade their DP is for the sound engine to be fixed to the model rather than seperately upgradeable.

Consumers want cheap upgrades to maximise their investment whereas manufacturers and retailers want expensive upgrades to maximise their revenue/profit stream, which in turn allows R&D investment in the next generation. This, at its heart, is the premise upon which Capitalism is built!

I don't know anyone spending 2000-7000 every three years on a new piano - the average age of pianos for sale on the second hand market is about 10-15 years would suggest the intervening time the company is nót making any money off them

ROI is high with DLC - if the new engine requires new hardware, that's yet another sale. Eying other lines of other manufacturers, they are giving their customers some free some payed new voices for their instruments. I think it's a missed opportunity, not something that will bite their own tail so to speak..

You have DLC with synthesizers and the Nord Pianos. It would be nice to have it on other digital pianos.

$2000-7000 represents mid-high to high end instruments which are the most niche action of an already niche market. The volume sales for DPs are the $300-1000 models being bought for kids. Parents almost certainly have little interest in paying to upgrade anything and for those few whose children do progress past absolute beginner then they will want a higher quality instrument at some stage rather than simply additional voices.

Don't get me wrong, as a consumer I would love it if my CS10 could be upgraded to a CS11 for minimal cost but I understand that Kawai would prefer I buy a whole new instrument.

Also, upgradeable hardware dramatically increases manufacture and testing costs which would make the DP uncompetitive in the first place...

Well in this case - the current generation the brains are all in a box slung under the keybed.. four screws and 5 connectors and you can swap it eh.

Upgraded keybeds and amplifiers require little or no adaption to the main board - all manufacture optimisation mostly that is responsible for any changes like types of connectors used, pinouts etc. So no expensive development costs to keep hardware interchangeable within say a period of 10-15 years.

If you want a whole new piano every 3-5 years you could - but I would lay a bet on most of Roland's customers not doing so.

Indeed, the engineering is not difficult, the economics do not add up though. As you say, customers would want it which is not the same as manufacturers and retailers wanting to supply it!

kind of derailing this thread XD but I think if someone does the numbers those numbers would show not to be all that bad of an added revenue stream with a high ROI if they did start to offer partial to-next-gen upgrades for their customers.. Its not a question of cannibalizing one's new product lineup revenue - never black n white - some people might not buy a whole new piano if upgrades were an option as soon as they otherwise would have - but do the numbers of upgrade sales offset than suffiently is the the question - far as I know none of them have ever really tried it. Does not mean it's not a good idea ^^ especially in these markets..

Like I said nobody I know ( and from what I can see age wise on offer second hand ) buys a new piano every new or even every óther generation - but those people would buy an upgrade when tickled for one.
Also upgrades do usually strengthen brand loyalty..

The problem I see with digital pianos is that they are really considered not an instrument in their own right. Instead, people want a "real" (acoustic) piano, can't have one for a variety of reasons, and therefore have to settle for an "imitation". I am saying this because, reading these types of discussions over the years, post after post seems to indicate that what folks are looking for is the closest thing to an acoustic piano they can get at whatever price range they can afford, rather than being directly interested in a digital piano as its own instrument as one would a synthesizer or workstation.

Unfortunately, digital pianos are not acoustic pianos. I can't say they never will be, because who knows what is around the corner with technological developments?

As for buying a "high end" digital piano, it will still not be an acoustic, though it may provide a closer experience to the real thing (I emphasize MAY). So, what I understand from these discussions is that folks are willing to compromise, but only so far. That "so far" seems to vary from person to person. In my case, piano is a second instrument, so my "so far" is probably a lot looser than those who are dedicated to piano as their primary instrument. For a true piano aficionado, it may well be that nothing in the current digital piano market will do. Most folks probably fall somewhere between these extremes.

I really don't think there is any kind of resolution to a thread such as this, and the many before it and the many that will come after it.

When folks are discussing what manufacturers can or can't do with their products, please realize that in manufacturing, a small difference in the cost of a component or process multiplies across a large number of units manufactured, even in a niche market such as digital pianos. Also, the manufacturer has to consider the cost of customer support after the sale. If digital pianos were made to be upgradeable (i.e. the ability to swap out parts), you would start to see difficulties in supporting these in the field because there could be many combinations of parts, just as happens in the world of PCs where we can choose what boards we want, and no two systems being alike. In that situation a piece of software may run on one guy's system without problems, but might have a conflict on another.

As for a "high end" digital piano, mine is the Roland V-Grand. My intention was to purchase once and get it over with. So far, that has worked. I have played the newer Roland products, such as the LX-17, and still MUCH prefer my V-Grand. This could be because I know the instrument and am quite used to the sound, the feel of the keyboard, etc., rather than that it is necessarily better. Even so, that is a good thing. If one is to spend that kind of money, one would want to plan on owning it for a very long time.

I learned with guitars (my primary instrument) that it really is less expensive in the long run to buy once, buy right, rather than constantly wondering if there is something better and then trading/selling as I chase after it.

When looking for advice in any forum (not just here), learn to recognize who to listen to and who to not. I won't mention names here because my choices as to who to listen to may not be the same as another person's, and we each have our own criteria on which to make such choices. You will learn to recognize the true voice of experience vs emotion vs just posting. I can't give advice on digital pianos because I am not really a piano player first and foremost, and a V-Grand may not be the best choice for somebody else. So I should probably not be on that list of who to listen to, but hopefully my posts at least give pause to think about the broader issues surrounding the discussion.

Just some thoughts...

Tony

But the manufactures dont loose no opportunity, to advertise, that you would get a "real" copy of an acoustic.


This has a lower limit, when the manufacturer is thinning out quality inside a precision instrument, and gets really annoying if you have the electronic components adding to the over all sound because of early aging or variation in quality, or repeated problems with noisy key actions.
asoasf

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My conclusion at present is, to buy cheap electronically and additionally invest in a real acoustic to have peace for years to come.
IMO buying high-end DP does not really give you any securities that you will get a high-end instrument, sound wise and component wise.

Fair enough. We will have different perspectives on this. I am not recommending one buy a high end instrument as much as I am saying to consider the broad field and what fits best for that person. There is rarely only one answer that fits all situations.

Tony

If you can play an acoustic where you live, why bother buying a digital (unless of course, you're interested in 'keyboards', in which case why buy an acoustic)?

If having a digital is the only option, because of living circumstances, then one should buy a digital that satisfies in terms of sound generation and action, and overall playability.

You're not likely to get that in the cheap digitals, if you also play acoustics and want a good simulation of them, and the ability to transition easily from one to the other.

But if you only ever play your own digital, it doesn't matter what digital you get, as long as it satisfies you.

Also many people here compare digitals with pretty good simulation of or replaying sampled notes of grand pianos - a good upright is one thing, but that grand sound and action is another beast - and pricetag - and space hog altogether - comparing digital pianos with acoustics are just about as 'fair' as comparing uprights with other uprights or one grand and another.. And any nice acoustic baby grand is still fár in excess of the price of a middle to higher end digital. That and the running costs and lifespan of most acoustics - sure an acoustic could last half a century or more - but most will not without serious work done on them before they reach that age..

A very great bottleneck with any digital in terms of sound when comparing to acoustics of any kind are the amplification and speaker systems; we enjoy a pair of Kef Reference Model Three~Two in our livingroom, powered by a nice pre and poweramp that can cook a meal in twenty minutes but it still can't hold a candle to a real grand in a livingroom - and the cost of that bit of kit when it was new was about that of the N3X.. Simply not realistic to expect 'real life' sound from digitals in anything under the price of a (cheap) real grand ^^ but not because the simulation or sampling is not up to snuff..

Pianoteq does follow an "incremental update" development / marketing model. But it doesn't do hardware.