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I have a Yamaha P-115 but not all that happy with it. I m thinking of buying a synth (76 keys) as a replacement as later I want to create sounds. But for now I still want a range of piano sounds typically available on a digital piano. I want keys which do not cause noise when hit or when rebounding (actually I don't know if an acoustic piano makes much (physical) noise) as digital weighted key pianos seem to.

Any suggestions (disregarding price) welcome. I am in the UK so hope to visit a store soon to try some but guidance from someone with one would be much appreciated. Thanks.

When I got interested in sound-creation, I bought a microKorg XL+. As the salesman said, it's a full-scale synth in a tiny package. Editing sounds is not easy (a PC-based editor helps a lot), but it's fully programmable.

I can drive it (if I want to) from my PX-350 MIDI output. The "mini-keys" on the Korg are playable, but frustrating for sensitive work. The polyphony is limited, just adequate for what I do with it.

There are lots of synths with good sound generators, and small keyboards. Available used, if price is important. Korg's Radias is one example.

I don't know if the keys on 76-key synths are weighted, or "synth-action". If they're synth-action, you might want to keep your P115 for piano-playing.

Behringer has just come out with its "DeepMind 12" synth. Lots of features, around $1000 US. It's worth looking at.

You might move this thread to the "Digital Pianos & Synths" forum -- there will be lots of opinions, there.

There are all kinds of really great synths available on iOS, particular for iPad, if you want to go that route and hook something up to your existing keyboard. I'm not sure if you can route sounds back through speakers of the P115, though.

If your looking for something with 76 keys, great piano samples and ability to sound design, take a look at the line of Kurzweil keyboards with V.A.S.T. capability.

If you really want to create your own sounds, look for a Kawai K-5000 additive synth, or the K-5000R synth module. With these, you are REALLY creating your own sounds. You can usually find them used on Ebay at reasonable cost. There are a couple of the keyboard version and one module on ebay and also on reverb.com now.

There are a number of these older synths from back when people were still creating their own sounds. Then there are the older Roland Juno 106 and others of that era, for subtractive synthesis. For FM synthesis, there is the Yamaha DX-7 which can be had pretty inexpensively these days.

Of course, these days you can get a software synth and play with it to see how willing you really are to dig into sound creation before getting a decent hardware synth.

Tony

Do you need a synthesizer, or more a workstation? A true synth allows you to make your sounds from scratch plus a ton of pre-made sounds, whereas a workstation has tons of sounds on it that you can tweak, but not to the extent of a synth.

Since you still want the range of sounds you can get on a DP, I recommend looking at some stage pianos or 88-key workstations.

I really would look at the Kawai MP7. Lots of sounds, and there are special touch curves for organ, string or synth sounds, since you don't want the full capability of a piano action. But then the piano sounds have the piano feel to them. It's also 88 keys, so you can play piano and do the other stuff.

FWIW, all keys make a sound, some are more, some are less. Acoustic pianos are quite noisy, but it's harder to hear because the volume of the piano itself overshadows it. If you hear too much key noise, then you need to turn your volume up most of the time. Kawai actions tends to be on the quieter side.

For workstations, check out the Yamaha MOXF6 or 8 - not a great action, but I like the sounds it has and you can alter quite a bit of the onboard sounds to create something unique.

Another possible route to take is to get whatever digital piano you want, but make sure it supports mid out (which I assume they all do these days...). Then get a Roland Integra-7 or a Yamaha Motif XS module and connect the midi out of your digital piano to the midi input of the sound module. Most digital pianos these days should have stereo audio inputs, so you could connect the audio outputs of the module to the inputs of your digital piano and not need to have two separate keyboards. You should be able to find these modules on the used market.

These modules are not raw synthesizers like the synthesizers I mentioned in my earlier post, but instead are the keyboard-less versions of the type of product that Morodiene is talking about.

Unless you REALLY want to create sounds from scratch on a pure synthesizer, you would do better with the kind of product she is talking about.

Tony

+1.

This makes a lot of sense, since the OP has a "MIDI-over-USB" keyboard, not a "MIDI-over-5-pin-DIN" keyboard. To use the P115 to drive a hardware synth, you'd need both a USB-to-MIDI adapter (inexpensive), and MIDI-OX software (inexpensive or free).

The P115 has "Aux Out", but no "Line In". So you can't route the PC's (or Mac/ iPad) sound back into its loudspeakers.

Getting a synth, with an action _better_ (more like an acoustic piano) than the Yamaha "GHS" in the P115, might be expensive. The MOXF8 (a logical "workstation" choice) also has a GHS action.


Edit -- Applied Acoustic Systems (AAS) has its software synth "VA-2" on sale -- but only for 3 more hours . . .

https://www.applied-acoustics.com/ultra-analog-va-2/