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I'm not convinced that this performance wouldn't sound as good or better if played through Ivory Steinway or something. Those types of instruments have amazing tonal and dynamic range as well as excellent timbre. Taking for granted the opposite is not justified by the evidence, I think.

I agree that onboard piano sounds are not really up to the task. V-Piano is a premium instrument. Perhaps *the* premium instrument where onboard sounds are concerned.

Don't forget bfb's post yesterday. He owns a V-Piano and now uses it only to drive Ivory because it sounds dramatically better. In particular he mentions Ivory's dynamics and responsiveness.

Also note, Yamaha has pros play various things on the AG and that instrument sounds like a child's toy next to Ivory. Pulling together a concert of some kind isn't necessarily evidence of a true breakthrough. It's just a different type of marketing.

Total nonsense. You are referring to bubble gum pop over compressed radio. What I would call contemporary "artists" don't use that kind of compression at all. There is a classical parallel where the main classical stations also compress the sound so people can hear it more easily in their cars (unfortunately).

Go to a Ry Cooder concert or a Bonnie Raitt concert (or countless others including Elton John seeing as you mention him) and tell me it is "compressed to be at a consistent level".

You need to stop generalising.

I fully agree (for the hundredth time) that the V-Piano is very good - probably the best - in terms of the behaviours and dynamics. Tonally it is total shite and a million miles away from being comparable to the best acoustic and sampled pianos.

Look mate, I get it. You want one. You've mentally committed to it. You've dragged your ponce classical teacher along and they had an orgasm whilst playing it. You've got to defend it, the money's as good as spent ain't it? We all want our choices validated by others - it's human nature. Some people have an ego the size of planet earth - they can't ever accept they made a mistake. I've bloody well been there, spent nearly five grand on the heap of junk and bitterly regret it. And guess what, I'm not the only one.

Seriously you can compare the dynamic and tonal range required to play Chopin or Liszt to that required to play Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt or Elton John? You are deluded.




Why are you insulting someone that you have never met and has done you absolutely no wrong except to be delighted with an instrument that you couldn't get the best out of? That is pretty ignorant behaviour.

Where is all this anger coming from? It isn't healthy.



No. If there is something that suits my needs better by the time Musikmesse has been and gone, I'll buy that instead.



It seems that YOU won't stop until everyone is as disappointed in the V-Piano as you were. You are like a bitter divorcee telling anyone who will listen just how awful your ex-wife is.

Me, I frankly couldn't give a stuff whether anyone likes my piano. I am the one who has to play it and first and foremost it should give me pleasure to play it and scope to improve.



So because you couldn't get the best out of the V-Piano, anyone else who loves it simply must have made a mistake too but won't admit it? And you have the nerve to accuse others of having an ego the size of planet earth .... hilarious.



And ... so what? Do you want sympathy? Move on. Get something more suited to the type of music you want to play.

V-Piano: The Marmite of digital pianos.

Errrr noooooope it's a matter of opinion ...yours it seems.

The world has two types of people ....

A)Those that think the V-Piano is a interesting but flawed instrument with awful mid range tonality.

B)Those that think the V-Piano is a wonderful instrument and hear no such issues with the mid range.

The interesting thing that 100% of group B actually own a V-Piano must be merely a coincidence .....

Is that a good thing? haha

man- that stuff looks disgusting. but i guess so is dipping snuff.

the things people will put in their mouths to distract themselves from reality...

i think no matter what you are playing you will go through a phase of listener fatigue where you think it sounds like garbage. that's why i fully discount the posts of someone who just got a DP or a sampled soft piano and they radiantly glow and pontificate about how wonderful it is. (I just did it myself with Alicia's Sh*t Keys- before i realized what a pig it was....).... anyway, give em six months and they will start to discover the body odor and bad habits, just like with people. the question is- will they get past that and have a solid long-term relationship, or will they dump it and look for the next endorphin fix. (or at least wait til the next software update and pray...)...

I'm afraid you're wrong there. Most of my classical friends who've played other DPs and 'tolerated' them (to put it kindly) have expressed interest in the V-Piano when they've played on it - and one of them even said she preferred it to her acoustic upright (because she could get the full range of expression and color out of it, plus richer sound in the bass, compared to her upright) while another said he'd buy one as a replacement for his acoustic when it becomes too expensive to keep it maintained.

As for the Nord, it produces nice sounds.....and that's it. It doesn't even remotely feels or plays like anything other than what it is, a keyboard: OK for developing finger dexterity (though not finger technique that is transferable to an acoustic) but not for anything else that makes music music. I'm amazed that anyone would think it is an instrument for a serious pianist.

To put my cards on the table, I'm a classical pianist but I listen to and play a wide range of music, including pop, occasionally vamping pop accompaniments on the piano for friends. Anyone who serously thinks that classical music is just like pop, only different, has obviously never been to a recital by a classical pianist (watching videos on Youtube gives no idea of the range of expression, dynamics, articulation and tone color a classical pianist can draw out of his instrument). May I suggest that if you really despise classical music, get yourself a CD of one of Keith Jarrett's solo concerts on the ECM label (maybe The Köln Concert). He's a jazz pianist but he also plays classical well, and he is able to make use of the full range of the piano in the way few non-classical pianists can. But really, to understand what a classical pianist demands from a piano you need to attend a live concert. There is tenderness, deep emotion, sadness, unbridled joy, anger and fireworks - frequently within just one piece: nothing in pop, rock or jazz gets anywhere near. (And a ticket is cheap - far cheaper than any pop concert and you actually see the pianist fairly close, not on a screen from 1/2 mile away, because there's no amplification. And no, there's nothing elite about a classical concert - I go to them dressed in T-shirt and jeans, bringing my own drinks in my water bottle in my rucksack. But you do have to keep quiet during the performance, otherwise you can't hear the pianissimos.)

For an insight into a pianist's search for the perfect piano for a Bach recording, the award-winning German documentary film 'Pianomania' (now available on DVD with English subtitles) is profound, funny and heart-warming by turns as it chronicles how a Steinway technician in Vienna tries to get into the mindset of pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard to find him the perfect piano with the perfect range of sounds (including clavichord, harpsichord and organ....) for the recording sessions. There are supporting roles for Lang Lang and Alfred Brendel as well as a couple of musician-comedians (playing Rachmaninov's Prelude in C# minor with wooden boards to get around the composer's demands that the pianist has four hands..... ).

From several posts here, it seems to me that for some people, the only criteria of a good DP is the sound per se, rather than what you can do with the sound. And for one person in particular (who continues to take umbrage at anybody who dares to disagree with him - he really needs to reread his posts carefully if he still doesn't get that his egotism and egoism is way off the Richter scale: yes, I mean you, Steve aka EssBrace), please do us all a favor and let your resentment about what your ex-V-Piano did to your psyche rest, there's a good fellow .

Nice post, i agree. but not on this point. I think there are many jazz pianist (like brad mehldau, herbie hancock, gwilym simcock, gonzalo rubalcaba and so on) that accomplish the same emotional richness and expressiveness as classical pianists, the only difference is that they improvise (apart from superficial stylistic differences). also I think that there is some pop/rock music (for example pink floyd or radiohead) with these qualities, but not played on the piano.

I grant you that Marmite looks disgusting, but it saved my life once in the Himalaya, when I had nothing to eat for several days marooned in a tent in a blizzard high up a mountain, except stale chapattis and a small jar of Marmite. So, I won't hear anything said against Marmite - even if I haven't touched it with a barge pole since then.....

Bennevis, your post is very much on the money (but you should have left Steve out of it- why don't we have a truce for 2012).

The v-piano plays incredibly well. Which is why anyone who sits down at it will be impressed. I only lost interest in its native sounds when i tried to record them. But i absolutely feel it has made me a better piano player, as it inspires me to sit down and play for hours, and its why i continue to use it instead of dumping it on ebay. if i play it through speakers i don't mind its tonal characteristics. when i play through headphones i use it as a controller for Ivory II and i'm very pleased with the combination. my only regret now is that its too damn heavy to tote around.

Which is why, for my dollar- i think the rd700nx is the best keyboard on the market, because it utilizes that action and some of the strengths of the v-pianos modeling, but has some nice sampled piano sounds. but it too lacks portability, although not nearly as much as the v-tank.

Betcha none of them end up owning a V-Piano



Probably because we would rather chew razor blades while having a bath in battery acid then subject ourselves to that kind of elitist boredom.


That's funny because I agree with you 100% I could give a flying duck what the sound came out of as long as I can get it to work for me. I never was able to make a V work for me in any way I was happy with and I've been playing keys and making records for a long time....

Did you get a crystal ball for Christmas ......



Then what makes you qualified to comment on the suitability of the V-Piano for classical piano when you have precious little experience of the genre? That would be a bit like me stating that Gibsons are useless for thrash metal when I have absolutely no interest in thrash metal whatsoever.



But obviously not playing or recording elitist classical crap ....




I am quite convinced it would be disastrous and laughed at by anyone accustomed to the real thing.



If the software was up to the job, demos demonstrating the fact would be all over their websites and Youtube generating sales. They aren't there. They have wisely chosen pieces that highlight the excellent tone of these products rather than their ability to handle the kind of dynamics, articulation and complex harmonic interplay required for virtuoso classical piano pieces. Put it frankly IMO you would probably need 18 sample layers just for the ppp too pp range for a convincing stepless crescendo, never mind the rest of the dynamic and timbral range.

We must agree to differ. If one of these sample companies proves me wrong I will have no hesitation admitting it and buying their product but I won't be holding my breath.

I take it from your language and comments that you have not had the experience of playing Ivory II or Galaxy II, then. Otherwise instead of saying you would have no hesitation in buying them you would just do it. Perhaps you should make a leap of faith and get one. It's a lot cheaper than buying a V-Piano and many people on this forum can attest to their quality.

The fact that Roland has the resources to do a decent marketing campaign while software pianos are made by much smaller companies that are very poor at marketing is not evidence that one product has superior performance to the other.

Reviews are a better, though imperfect, measure (they can also be bought and paid for by large companies and often are). The V piano has many mixed reviews, while it is very difficult to find someone who has actually used Ivory II and has bad things to say about it.

You can correct me if I'm wrong about your background, but to me it sounds like your disparaging comments about software pianos are pure supposition. Indeed given my experience with these pianos and their universal acclaim it's hard to believe otherwise.

This will be my last comment on the matter as this is starting to sound like a stuck record:.....




I have played neither. I won't be buying either, either. It's a shame they don't allow trial versions like Pianoteq so I most certainly am not going to risk wasting my money on software that might not run very well on my computer or work very well with my FP7-F unless there is a very good reason to do so, like outstanding sound quality.

The demos on both sites are very good but the limitations are crystal clear for me even in the demos for the type of music that I want to play and maybe one day perform. I have outlined IMO these limitations previously so I won't do so again.

Again some of the performances that people have uploaded on this site and others for software pianos and other high end pianos feature really good playing but the limitations of the equipment used is also pretty evident.

So I have heard nothing that has made me really go wow, let me take a risk.

One thing I will say about the V-Piano and probably the one reason why I will buy one, apart from the awesome sound quality is that unlike a lot of sampled products, it is not a flattering instrument at all. To play it really well requires the development of very fine control. Owning one, or something as sensitive will make me become a much better pianist with skills that will transfer more easily to an acoustic piano.

For example, there are pieces that I play (IMO) very well on my FP7-F but can sound ragged on the V-Piano if I am not wide awake. Any loss of control immediately sticks out like a sore thumb on the V-Piano just like it does on an acoustic piano. I really like that, it will make me a better pianist in the long run.



This makes no sense. They obviously spent money on good pianists to record their demos. Why not ask some of them to record the Polonaises, La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsodies, Allegro Barbaro etc instead of the usual light jazz, Nocturnes, Etudes, Satie and (some of) the less demanding Impressionist pieces that suit their products? They know what they are doing. They don't go there for good reasons.



Are you talking about professional reviews? I haven't seen any which have been less than glowing about it .... not that it matters.

I couldn't care less about reviews. If I lived on a desert island maybe. But I live in a great city where I can try these instruments for myself. What more do I need? People need to buy the product that suits them not anyone else. I don't necessarily want the same things from a musical instrument as you do or another reviewer.

Reviews can be useful for helping you to narrow down your choices but in the end it is your ears / touch that counts.



You stand corrected.



The acclaim is far from universal. Many pianists from the classical world regard sampled pianos as seriously compromised instruments.

Anyway, speaking of your experience, what music do you play? My opinion is these instruments are brilliant for certain music and certain circumstances but not for every musical piece or circumstance. Just like you wouldn't say that a Fender Stratocaster is suitable for everything written for the guitar I presume?

So it would be very interesting to know what you are playing right now.

I am playing:

Bach fourth movement from Partita No. 6,
Liszt Andantino and
Bloch Joyous March for my upcoming Piano exam.

I am working my way through Bartok's Mikrokosmos Vol 3 for pleasure and in search of improved technique.

I am also (very slowly) learning Pavane pour une infante Defunte for pleasure.

What you play is not relevant. It's the fact that you have not ever played the instruments you disparage that is the relevant part of your background. I have not played a V-Piano and therefore do not disparage it. But I have played these software pianos and know that they are wonderful. People who consider sampled software pianos seriously flawed instruments pretty much universally (i.e., in every case I've seen) have not played them--this is rampant among PianoTeq users, which makes them such a forum scourge. On the other hand we have heard from several people who played the V-Piano and software pianos and would disagree with your dour assessment of the latter--some of them also disagree with your glowing assessment of the former.

But since you apparently won't comment further on the matter, we can just leave it at that. Your opinion about software pianos is, for the most part, purely speculative, and should be taken as such.

If you say you love the V-Piano that's completely valid. Most people agree with you. But if you say sampled pianos would fail horribly when the same material is played, you are just making stuff up and it's a load of crap.

I want a flattering sound - I want a really good tone, with lots of sustain, so I can play simply, and let the piano "speak" on it's own, without having to play rapidly. E.g I have started to learn the song Icehouse and I want to be able to do a reasonable approximation of those long sustained synth bass notes.

Greg.

The tonal quality of the sound isn't what I am referring to. If you mess up, over hit a key, have clumsy fingering, it really lets you know. Even to play scales smoothly requires more concentration than it does on my FP7-F which I think is a pretty sensitive instrument as sampled pianos go.

It really feels exciting to play and very rewarding when you get things right, just like it does on a good acoustic piano.

Greg, I just watched the video. That takes me back to the Camden Palace days of OMD, Numan, Japan, Visage, Ultravox .... nostalgia.

I don't have enough experience of progarmming the V-Piano to make new sounds like the synthy filtered bass but the bass sustains on the V-Piano are very good, rich with no looping and easily long enough to last at that tempo.