I tried the heavy keytouch setting (default is Medium) and in my opinion it represents the (different) dynamics of a real piano better.

Have you tried it? What were your impressions?

I use it too, and agree with you. In the default setting the sound gets too sharp too fast in my opinion.

OK so this is OT but relevant, it has been noted on here in the past that the same applies to many of the Kawais', certainly the CN23/33, CA63/93 and MPx.

I agree with you both. Roland SN and the Kawais do this: a transition to a metallic harshness at velocities that are too low, especially in clusters of notes in the midrange. This behaviour is very much more marked in the Roland in my opinion. I found with SN using a slightly heavier touch to be beneficial but it is a balancing act because doing that also tends to make the pianos (even more) dull at low velocities.

Steve

Good to hear that it seems common sense to use Heavy keytouch.

Steve, what you mean when you say the piano gets 'dull' at low velocity?

Well, you want a piano to exhibit a good, linear degree of tonal change according to velocity. One of the problems with Roland SN is that for a couple of clusters of notes in the midrange that change is not particularly linear; you get a lot of tonal change (to a very metallic twanging) within just a few velocity steps.

Making the touch slightly heavier postpones the point at which that happens, which is good because the twanging is quite a jarring sound. But the downside is that within normal playing velocities there can be a limited tonal change (on a heavier touch setting) which to my ears can make the piano sound quite dull and undynamic (I know that word does not exist!) across the entire keyboard. Making the touch heavier is a compromise - an acceptable one if you don't go too far.

I used to use a medium + value I think but stopped short of going to a heavy - value. You have to find a balance. I still think the basic problem is this jarring timbral change at medium and above playing velocities. It only affects a few notes and Roland should design it out because to my ears it is a clear fault with the SN voices.

Cheers,

Steve

Exactly right. This balancing act is difficult. When I had the metallic problem, I responded by using the the Heaviest setting. But the timbre of the piano changed and lost brilliance.

This is what caused me to give up on the SN pianos at least for live performing.

I ended up with something less than the heaviest (I used the Touch Offset to dial it in and saved them as Registrations) but even then, I could still make the metallic overtones come out on occasion. Frustrating experience.

I think this is also related to style of playing so I don't make a claim that this is an issue with everyone. It may not be obvious when playing chords loudly. It's distinctly noticeable playing single notes loudly.

When we got our NX I made a MIDI file which plays a note quickly 8x at increasing velocity (15,31, 47, 63, 79, 95, 111, 127) to hear the timbre variation, and then plays it again at velocity=79 to hear the decay detail. All 88 notes are covered, and I did this for all three distinct piano voices in the NX ( LINK ).

I know the "Concert" SN voice (default AFAIK for all other Roland SN pianos) is prone to twang if driven too hard, but I'm not hearing a few notes that are especially problematic. Steve, could you be more specific as to which notes these are?

Also, the "Studio" voice can be driven harder without becoming excessively twangy, I kind of wish Roland had picked it to be the dominant SN voice instead.

I found it quite noticeable in the octave above middle C.

Me too.

Dewster, I haven't got a SN Roland now but from memory it is especially G flat, G, A flat...that area. It happens on the MP10 around the same cluster actually. Some voices more than others but if you play a note loudly the similarity between SN and the Kawai is quite uncanny. It just seems easier to work around on the Kawai. Not sure why.

Steve

So if middle C is MIDI C4, do you mean Gb4, G4, Ab4? Or the octave above that?

C5 and D5 have the most noticeable whine on a FP-7F, metallic whine.

Thank you guys!

Apologies for the long post -- this is something of interest to me, and I feel strongly about it.

Can't speak to the SN Rolands, but I have one of their near-ancestors, the HP 201 from 2007. This series used a highly evolved version of what Roland called "SA -- Advanced Synthesis". It's the fore-runner of SN. (SA goes back to the late 80's.. Roland never quite was a 100% sampled piano.. always had modelling in it, only now the modelling is much more extensive, and in the VPiano, total.

In regards touch and sound:

I have met real pianos that are even more difficult to control than Roland. Little change in key pressure brings around huge tonal and volume change. It takes practice, practice, practice and more practice to control such a beast. Or one can throw in the towel, call the tech in, and have them make it suit you better. But I bet the wilder one, the harder to control one, once mastered, will bring out your emotions better.

Setting the touch to heavier narrows the dynamic range. I tried it a few times -- what it did, in my opinion, was make it behave more like a mediocre piano, or a poorly regulated one. The ability to play quietly without the soft pedal went away. Everything became duller, as was mentioned further down the thread. Didn't like that. I especially loathed not being able to go real quiet on fingers alone. So I went back to default touch.

The default Roland piano sound is very "alive", and PHA II (and I suppose III as well) has exquisite expressive capabilities -- what I mean by that is that yes, there's a huge range between barely a whisper to chest-pounding rage and fury. And it takes little key pressure to go from whisper to thunder. At first. Then you start realizing just how subtle a touch one must develop to make it sound even. Then you find that when you really stick your spurs into it, it pretty much explodes, and then just sits there, singing this organ-like silvery song. But to hit that fff, even in default mode, you gotta hit like you think it's gonna break. Like doing so in a real piano. Conversely, to get ppp without unacorda, you better be caressing those keys with precise control. OtHErWiSE You'Ll cLANk liKE I dID foR A WhILE. <-- that's what my 1st roland year sounded like

I've played real pianos even more hair-trigger than my Roland, and I was actually looking for a DP with that kind of crazy response. The wildest piano I've had my hands on was a late 1800's Pleyel, 1885 I think. Explosive doesn't even begin to describe how sensitive it was. Listening to the owner play a couple of Nocturnes on it almost broke me. It sounded like falling snow. Or rain. Or tears down a cheek. It was the owner's skill that made it sound that pretty. The Pleyel was merely doing what the player was telling it to do -- and she did it far better than I did. I was utterly unable to make anything sound good on it.

Bluntly put, it took me about 3 years to get this Roland monster under control -- then again, I'm not a gigging musician, just an amateur who spends anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day on the piano, intermediate classical stuff. 3 years, to control this monster. I'm so glad I spent the time learning to do it with fingers alone vs. narrowing it down artificially. Now that I'm getting into truly pianistic music (D. Kabalevsky at the moment) I find I can really paint a picture with it!

I realize this is all subjective, and we each have our own ideas of what it takes to be a proper piano. Mine is the crazy hair-trigger type. I find fiery fast responsive pianos to be the best outlet for what I feel.

So in short, yes, they clang like the dickens and with little provocation. My thought is don't try to fix what is by nature -- learn to control it, and ultimately, exploit it. That was my teacher's suggestion. It's hard. I won't lie. It was hard and time-consuming. At first I honestly thought something was wrong, I sounded s god-awful. Terrible. Then I remembered that Pleyel, and how badly I sounded on it, and how sweet it sounded when played by its owner.

Now, without changing a thing on my piano, I can be as even as I need to be, or I can bring out certain notes in a measure, while subduing others, if what I'm playing, how I'm feeling, calls for it. With both hands. The worst one to control was my left. Doing runs or scales on the left WaS ABJecT CLaNKiNG MiSery until the last year or two. And I'm sure in due time, I will be at a level where I can play for a crowd, instead of just a friend or two, or the recorder.

After I bought my piano (2007), just withinthe past year, I started reading up on Chopin, and i guess his music rubbed off on me -- he prized quick, fleet, crsip pianos with great tonal range and control, and discouraged students from getting easier-to-play pianos with narrower range. He thought pianos that made everyone sound good are actually terrible, because they don't teach control, and mask lack of skill. His words, not mine.. but I agree with them.

Hi, thanks for some interesting observations.

On a factual note you are wrong to say HP-201 uses SA sound engine - or anything like it or related to it. Roland developed Structured Adaptive Synthesis in 1985. It is a purely modelled sound based around mathematical algorithms. Whilst it provided unmatched expressive power and entirely realistic timbral change with changes of playing velocity it does not provide an accurate sonic representation of an acoustic piano. However, its sound signature is sufficiently different to a real piano to make it an instrument in its own right. It behaves just like a piano but doesn't sound like one (er, rather like the V-Piano in fact, which is the true inheritor of the SA Synthesis technology). I would draw a parallel between Roland SA and a Yamaha CP80 or Fender Rhodes - all have unique tonal qualities. The man within Roland who invented and pioneered SA Synthesis died and the technology stagnated for many years.

For a while Roland used SA+. This was SA modelling with sampled elements - an attempt to inject the tonal realism SAS lacked. That technology was abandoned in the mid 90s and all Rolands since have featured purely sampled sounds. Including your HP-201 - there is no connection between that piano and SA Synthesis.

The Superior Grand sampled piano, which was the basis of Roland's piano sound for some years - and will be the basis of the HP-201's sound, simply exhibits a somewhat sudden timbral change, as does the Expressive Grand (which exhibits this behaviour even more) - and SN pianos have inherited that behaviour because it is my belief that the SN voices (or some of them at least) are actually based on the Superior Grand samples and Expressive Grand samples.

Without SA Synthesis there would be no SN and there would be no V-Piano so all credit to Roland for pioneering this technology in the '80s. It's a shame that it is still to be perfected, over a quarter of a century later.

Stringless, your point is very valid.

My concern is also making piano playing unrealistically easy by setting the Heavy keytouch, instead of embracing the difficult and be a better pianist by developing a much better control!!

Thoughts??

So practicing with the Medium keytouch (and learn to control it) will make me a better pianist?

anyone?

One has to exercise much more finger control I've found on a dp than ap.

I've been playing for 40+ years. Good ap's, bad ap's, fabulous ap's and indifferent ap's.

My dp (Kawai) has been a whole new learning experience for me.

I think if I had a child starting piano seriously, I'd start with a good dp which IMHO would force them into perfecting their technique. After which I'd invest in a high quality grand and watch them fly!

Really?
In my experience, a good acoustic piano has a lot of sound range, while a poor acoustic piano has closer to "on/off" sound. It takes a lot of control to play the bad acoustic well because there is so little to work with, but that skill doesn't translate to a good piano.

Digital pianos don't have double escapement/repetition, and they are in good regulation all the time so they are more like a good acoustic piano in that they have consistent touch and good tonal range.

A digital piano gives you sound closer to a good piano, so you are more aware of what you can do, but the touch is completely wrong.

@stringless

Thanks for taking the time to write your post. I agree with you 100%.

I take piano lessons one a week on an acoustic piano, a very good, well regulated one and for months after I started my teacher kept pointing out that my left hand was too heavy and drowning out the melody.

I only started to make improvements in this area (at his suggestion) by setting the key touch to LIGHT and the volume to maximum when I am learning pieces, practising scales, arpeggios and Hanon. It is definitely working. At first I would deafen myself but I am gradually starting to gain the fine control necessary to play an inherently loud instrument softly and quietly. My touch is more even and I find the transition to acoustic piano is easier.

I generally leave the key touch set to medium when playing familiar pieces (it is the most realistic setting for me) but in practice mode these days I choose LIGHT.

To me on the heavier settings, my FP7-F sounds like a dull and somewhat lifeless recording but on the medium to lighter settings it feels more like being in the room playing the real thing.

One further point, easy access to a harsh metallic sound is a good thing IMO. That is what real pianos sound like above mp. As I am writing I am listening to Pollini's acclaimed recording of Chopin's Polonaises. The piano sound is utterly transparent and sounds like it is made of wires and glass rather than wood. In all but the quietest sections the sound is bright, bell-like, metallic and percussive.