Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Something nearly ALL digital pianos get wrong.

Update: Yamaha tech says that DP's with sympathetic resonance will not get this mechanism right. But earlier DP's without sympathetic resonance will get it right. (Not that they shouldn't be able to get it right with sympathetic resonance. Or one would think. [Roll Eyes] ) I own a Yamaha YPD-140 (without string resonance), which is a very new model released in 2008, and unfortunately didn´t pass the test.

Doesn't work on Roland RD700GX.

Yeah, doesn't work on Yamaha's flagship portable CP300 either. But at least it supports a full 3 pedals. The CP33 only has a single aux pedal input. It amazes me how at this late stage of the digital piano game they still cheap out on some of the most basic features.

It seems to me like pianoteq doesn't do this right either :(, I use this technique in the Pathetique sonata first mov. after Andras Schiff told about it in his lecture, its a usefull technique.

I just tried this using Pianoteq 3.5 and both my CP-33 and my PF-500 it it did work.

It is my very strong suspicion that Pianoteq will only produce what the keyboard will transmit in terms of signal.

In other words, if your keyboard doesn't "pass the test" outlined by jscomposer, and thus can't transmit the signal to Pianoteq, then Pianoteq can't produce the effect.

It relies on what is transmitted by the keyboard.

My Roland KR7 (superseded by the KR107), fails the test; but on the other hand it transmits continuous damper control values from zero to 127 - not many keyboards can do this. And I find this feature quite useful, particularly at the end of a song where one would slowly drop the dampers (on an acoustic).

Glenn

I'm trying to understand where exactly is the sostenuto effect with this. You hold ALL the damper with the pedal, then you sustain the dampers of the notes you hold down, and release the sustain. On a real piano this seems... bizzare since you still have to keep your hand on the notes, in order to sustain them. The idea of the sostenuto is to hold the selected notes, but without having your hands on them... This is NOT the case.

In your example you are just hitting the notes, with pedal, then take the pedal off practially (either if you lift and put the down the hands again).

Don't have my PX110 at home anymore, so can't do any tests, but my hunch is that it has to do with some MIDI signal... :-/ But will have to run some tests in my studio for further research purposes...

Korg SP200 fails the test.

Edit:It passes when used with Pianoteq though!

Yeah BazC, same with my PF500 and CP33. Pianoteq3.5 just queries whether the keys are pushed down and if they are behaves appropriately. I imagine this would work with any midi controller and Pianoteq 3.5.

Gentlemen,
My venerable 12 years old Oberheim Minigrand piano moduled passed this test easyly. Sad it is no longer produced, if it dies, I will mourn for a year.

Baz:

I can't test my DP with Pianoteq because my soundcard died yesterday. Will check if and when it's fixed (needs some new capacitors).

Glenn

PS - how are you liking 3.5?

Loving it! Richer, more defined, fantastic! Sorry about the card

If your midi sends out:

note on note off
velocity
damper + how much (if you have a damper pedal with half-pedaling)

then the software should take care of the rest, right?

Horray, my cheap P-85 Yamaha plastic imitation passes the test.

P60 passes. Still can't stand the thing though.

kawai EP3 failed

Kurzweil 2600xs failed, but I have a hard time using the word "failed" as I would opt for sympathetic resonance over a rather awkward method of achieving sostenuto for which I have a pedal. Also, I doesn't matter how lightly I press the keys, the notes are always sounded - granted at a greatly reduced volume.

"Wrong" is subjective. "Different" would be accurate.


"real piano" is subjective. "Acoustic piano" would be accurate.

A digital piano is no less "real" than an acoustic. If you want all the features of an acoustic piano, then buy an acoustic piano. I can list a thousand features and benefits of digital pianos that no acoustic could ever hope to achieve (or should I say they would "fail the test"), but what's the point? They are very different instruments.

If your stated method of achieving the sostenuto effect is that important to you, I dare say you have failed to purchase the right instrument.

People would be much better served by exploiting the attributes of the instruments at hand.

Bottom line, Acoustic or Digital, if it can get you "in-the-zone", then it's a worthy instrument.

If I understand the test, then my Yamaha P155 passed it nicely.

Thanks jscomposer, if you are still out there, for bringing up this point.

I realize this is a dated thread, but, IMO, this is still a relevant concern/topic.

My Kawai MP10, with software version "V1.04", is not capable of doing this - and yes, I am disappointed.

On 10/24/12, Kawai James posted a heads-up notice for all Kawai MP10 owners for the minor update v1.05 - and thank you James for doing that!

I have not updated my MP10 yet because I need to get a USB memory device. However, just based on the description of the v1.05 minor update that James gave, it (v1.05) will not remedy this problem.

The reason I am "disappointed", and the reason I call this a "problem", is that this may be what is causing a problem I have notice that occurs occasionally on my Kawai MP10. And that is, occasionally some combination of actuating the sustain pedal and keying, the "sound" disappears completely. Another way of stating it is that there is just no sound - zip. And of course on an acoustic piano, at least from my experiences, this does not happen.

Another thing that I have now noticed about the functionality of the sustatin pedal software/algorithm on my Kawai MP10, is as follows. Without depressing the sustain pedal, when I softly press down and hold a lower key (maybe a bass C) (without activating its sampled sounds), and then "play" another key (maybe a C one octave higher) it activates a sample to simulate a slight resonance for the lower C key, which I am still holding down. Now, the infidelity occurs when I do the same thing, except I first hold the sustain pedal down before I do the above. In this scenario the cross string resonance does not occur. Which again is not how an acoustic piano would work.

Now I do fully realize that the Kawai MP10 is not an acoustic Kawai Grand. Yet they (Kawai) have done such a great job, IMO, of modeling so many aspects (tactile, auditory, timbre, playability) of the acoustic and digitals keyboards it represents (key action, sampling, tactile feel of the keys, damper resonace, let off action, several preset temperments, & stretch tuning - to name only a few). So I'm at a loss to understand why they either overlooked both of these needed "sustain" features, or just chose not to include them.

Now this problem with the sustain algorithm may, or may not be the cause of the problem I have experienced with my MP10 (as described above). However, given the many features that Kawai has sucessfully modeled in the MP10, I would be quite surprised if both of these "sustain algorithm blackholes" could not be remedied with a software patch.

Especially since apparently other DP manufactures can at least sucessfully implement the first one, and have chosen to include this feature in their modeling of acoustics which use the sustain feature.

Sincerely,
WJS