Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Avant Grand - impressed and amazed! But wait!

The pure marketing I refer to is the claim that the Avantgrand is nearly equivalent to the CFIIIS. It is not. I would rather play an acoustic upright of less than half the price (such as my own piano). I probably play a very different style of music than you, but for me, what the Avantgrand misses is quite important. It is probably an excellent jazz piano, where there isn't such a focus on tone (to my understanding).

You mention the convenience factor - I don't consider it that much more convenient than an acoustic. I'm not a night owl so I never feel like practising in the dead of the night, and the decreased enjoyment of the Avantgrand compared to an acoustic might even make me practise less. The high price is also very inconvenient.

I sat down at the instrument wanting to fall in love with it based on some of the reviews here, but I didn't. Who wouldn't want the quality of a concert grand for 1/10 of the price? I was still reasonably impressed with it. It's the only digital that I can envision doing serious practice on. It's not my intention to trash talk anyone's piano, but I believe that nearly all classical pianists would agree with me.

Anyway, congratulations on owning such a nice instrument.

Frozenicicles, I didn't take offense or thought that you "trash talked" the AvantGrand at all. You're definitely entitled to your opinion about its sound quality, and you're not the first person walking away unimpressed with its sound anyway. We all know that no matter how good a digital sound is, it's still just a digital sound and it'll never live up to an acoustic sound. So it's just a matter of how close the sound quality is to the real thing, and whether it's good enough based on individual taste to make it become acceptable as a trade off to the other convenience factors.

So if you clarified that you just don't think the AvantGrand sound lives up to the CFIIIS sound as many alluded to, then I agree with you. It's only sampled based on the CFIIIS, but it doesn't mean that it can deliver through its sound system the same quality that an acoustic CFIIIS can. No amount marketing can fool us AvantGrand owners about that. So if this is what you fault the marketing on, then I agree. But I truly don't think anybody bought into this marketing hype sight unseen or sound unheard. The marketing hype may have brought people in to check it out, but the superior sound quality (as compared to the lower end digitals, not as compared to acoustics) is what seals the deal. It doesn't have to be 100% as good as the acoustics. It only has to be good enough.

I just misunderstood that you were faulting the importance of the convenience factors that digital pianos deliver. That's where I would disagree. I, for one, could have afforded a nice acoustic grand all along, but I never care for the inconvenience of owning one (despite the great sound), so I never bought one. And I never bought a low-end digital piano either, because I was not satisfied with their sound and action either. Instead I had been waiting a long time for such a product like the AvantGrand to arrive to fill the need that I was looking for. So I think all products, whether they be acoustic, high-end digitals, low-end digitals, all have their places in the market. You gotta see them for what they are, and not for what they may be hyped up to be. They all have their compromises and trade-offs and you pick and chose according to the importance of your own criteria.

A person whose criteria is low price would have bought a digital already. A person whose criteria is uncompromised sound would have bought an acoustic already. Neither one of those types of people would buy the AvantGrand. But I bet you there are many folks out there who have the fund but don't want to buy for an acoustic because they place great importance on the convenience of a digital, but also high importance on feel and sound. So to simply dismiss the AvantGrand as a high price digital that doesn't fit well into any segment of the market is simply not accurate. I think there's a good size market out there for this demand and I believe over time, it'll be a very viable market against the acoustics.

I think it's a misconception that silent play is only necessary during off-hours. I think silent play is also very valuable to allow people to not feel inhibited about spending more time practicing if they're not afraid that they would drive their loved ones in the household crazy with repeated play/practice of a piece.

I think practicing is a HUGE part of a developing pianist and can easily account for 90% of the time spent on the piano. The worst thing for a developing pianist to do is to feel inhibited about being able to practice enough.

And it's not just silent play. Volume loudness is also a big issue with acoustics that may inhibit and cause less play time than should be normally.

Volume loudness is also a big issue with acoustics that may inhibit and cause less play time than should be normally.

Ain't that the truth!

I find this interesting because I own a V-piano and have been wanting to try the new Avant Grands to see what they are like. I'm particularly interested in how the action feels. I suspect I'd like them compared to most other DPs. However, I've wondered how much I'd like them compared to the V-piano. I have to echo bennevis's comments -- after having tried many DPs over the years, the V-piano is the first that feels "organic" to me. The action and expressiveness is terrific. The result, I suppose, of sound modeling, a very sensitive keyboard, and a nice action. It really feels great to play.

I acknowledge that EssBrace and at least one other person who posts here bought and returned the V-piano, being unsatisfied with the mid-tone sound. While I don't fully agree, I can see where they are coming from because I can hear where someone might take issue with it. For me, that goes away after playing for a couple of minutes, it just feels right.

I probably don't have the performance credentials of many others here. I'm rusty but I have been playing piano more than 35 years now, a good portion of which has been on well-maintained grand pianos (as well as my share of poorly-maintained pianos, something I'm sure we're all familiar with!). While the V-piano is not as good as any upper level grand piano IMO, for anyone looking for a DP, it is worthwhile to check it out and play it for more than a few minutes. The feel is surprisingly natural and you can get hooked.

I'm still looking forward to trying one of the Avant Grands at some point. It seems like DP technology has taken quite a leap forward just in the last couple of years, after having stagnated for several years.

Yep! That would be me! My signature is significant.

i thought the one I played last week was very impressive. (I would have designed the exterior a bit differently i think if I was producing it). It was so cool tho, how it worked, what it could do. I definitely want one.

I didn't try out the V-piano. The store that I visited only carried Yamahas - the salesman said that in his opinion, Yamahas are better because they manufacture acoustics. I was looking for a portable digital but the P155 that I tried was disappointing. Are Rolands any better? I'm reading a lot about the V-piano (too expensive), and the fp-7f (a bit more reasonable). If the fp-7f is about midway between the P155 and the Avantgrand, I would really consider it.

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I personally think that no digital piano (or computer program) sound or feel just like an acoustic piano. If there was, there would no more reason to make acoustic pianos, and all the acoustic piano makers would go out of business, considering most of them already have one foot in the grave. The only acoustic piano anyone would make would be the concert grand, for the sake of tradition only.

A few things I can think of that are problem areas for the N3 are its speakers, which are unidirectional. The underside of the N3 sounds nothing like a real grand piano. Also, from the pianist's perspective, the four speakers are pretty inadequate compared to the hundreds of strings of a real piano. From the audience perspective, the difference is much less so.

I also don't understand why they didn't put dampers in the action so when the sustain pedal is pressed, the tension on the keys are reduced just like a normal piano. In this way, it is still not a full grand piano action.

As for speakers they should implement something like small speaker arrays that some high end speaker makers use. Ten to twelve columns of 20-small 2" speakers drivers across the top of the piano would sound more convincing than 4 speaker configuration they have now. Of course, they would need to sample a lot more, and may have to increase target price to a lot higher, but it would be more realistic. There is a lot of potential for the N3, but it certainly is more work in progress than a product that has arrived in terms of competing with an acoustic concert grand.

In the world of technology, if you need something, you have to decide to buy at some point instead of endlessly waiting for the better revision of it, which eventually comes. If you have no need of the technology, then you're basically looking at the wrong type of product. I suppose as long as piano tech don't all die and new piano techs are graduating from school, even though fewer each year, acoustic pianos will not be obsolete, yet.