Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Physis Piano

This idea came up for the second time from the same poster...

Does one really protect an investment by posting on an online forum? Somehow I have my doubts.

I have vastly more expensive investments than V-Piano and it never occurred to me I could protect them that easily. Perhaps time to go to car forums.


Anyway, the reason I criticized Physis is because I'm tired of "progress" in digital piano market.

It's high time to stop playing around and actually make a better DP. After two decades of sampled pianos, V-Piano was a quantum leap. Physis is-unfortunately-a variation and not a breakthrough when it comes to purely acoustic piano sound.

Maybe Gary could record the first minute or so of the rhapsody on the Physis -- you know, the part before it starts getting too hairy;-) -- even that much would be an interesting thing to hear and compare to those others.

"Protection of investment" was my very nice way of saying fanboy. But fine, there you have it

V-Piano is already indistinguishable from a real acoustic, according to you. So how can anyone still make a better DP? What is this breakthrough that you expect from a new modelled piano? How can you expect quantum leaps when you already believe to have perfection as it is?

Finally there is another fully modelled piano instead of another sampled one that you dislike so much, yet you have nothing but contempt for it and dismiss it based on a handful of early demos. You don't think that's a bit off?

Sorry, I was comparing to the V-Grand piano action....which uses wooden keys.

Hi James -- more precisely we use 6 TI OMAP DSP+ARM PROCECESSOR

hope this helps!

1. There's always room for improvement.
And there's always room for making things worse.

2. In my rejection of Physis sound (which you for some reason refuse to accept), I am using the real data that's publicly available. Sound samples provided by Physis.

What are you basing your open-mindedness on? "It looks promising, it has 24 billion cycles per second and a bunch of onboard instruments, therefore it will sound better than it sounds right now in the audio samples, which are premature and are nothing like the final product. Nobody should express negative opinions at this point. Only good things -- or become labeled a fanboy".

Precisely.

I'm an optimist I guess. That and the fact that I have heard horrible V-Piano demos alongside great ones and because modelling allows to alter the sound in a lot of ways (one of the main selling points of the V-Piano by the way). So after hearing so few demos which apparently all use the same preset that is way too bright for my taste, how can I already dismiss the whole product based solely on that?

From my experience, what you hear in first public demos is usually product pushed to the limits. I don't predict a wonder. If it happens, Physis will be the first DP or software piano manufacturer that made a sound demo that underrepresents the product.

When you need raw throughput it's hard to beat an FPGA. I'd definitely look into that before I started lashing multiple processors together. Many physical model algorithms (waveguides and second order filters) can be done quite efficiently with the ALU / block ram found in most FPGAs.

I think it makes sense to, at least, acknowledge this truism.

Certainly, when they make the initial demos.... they are not just randomly throwing some settings together without regard for the sound they are generating. They want to demonstrate their product to the very best of their ability.

So, do not expect the actual product to be much better than what you hear. They have decided that those demos present their product as best it can be presented.

On the contrary, early demos are sometimes done on prototypes, and further improvements can be made before the unit goes into production.

Also, in this case, we've been told that there are 32 preset pianos in it and we've heard, what, one or two of them? And you can't say "well, they surely demonstrated their best one," because these things are subjective to some extent. If everyone could agree which of the 32 was best, they could leave out 31 of them.

@pianoxcape

Thank you for the information re: the Physis piano. A good modelled piano with a 21st century user interface is a tantalising prospect if it can really deliver on sound and usability.

Can you tell us how soon will the Physis piano be in showrooms for the public to test?

Sorry for posting a trivial idea, but it is infinitely harder to make 1 very good sounding piano than 32 (or 256) usual pianos.


If Physis team somehow, by mistake, used one of the less acoustic-sounding models for the demo, then you may be onto something. Do you really believe in such a mistake ?

Gary said:

"there are 32 'preset' physical models in the Physis piano that include European, American and Asian concert models. Although not written specifically on the piano (probably due to licensing or trademarks?), the preset models reference Steinway, Bosendorfer, Bechstein, Fazioli, Yamaha, Kawai and others"

What I'm suggesting is perhaps one of the models is not as appealing to you as another might be.

I don't like Nord's Steinway and C7 samples. But I really enjoy playing their Bosendorfer sample.

Is this really so hard to understand?

I'm told that it will be commercially available this Fall - probably November or December. I'd expect it to arrive in showrooms first in Europe and soon after in the US.

Kind regards,

Ha! It seems Italians can never quite escape food! Personally, I like the analogy, but I like 'regular' Italian food much better than cakes and cookies

What you wrote is not hard to understand. But it isn't the topic of the discussion.

The discussion was whether Physis brings the sound closer to a real acoustic piano than its predecessors or not.

People even can disagree about which DP sound is closer to an acoustic than another, since they're all imperfect, but often in different ways. So it is certainly conceivable that someone will find one Physis model more like a "real piano" than another, and it's also possible that you won't get consensus on which one that is, that was my point.

I'd like to hear more samples of different presets, though it's all somewhat academic until production models exist.

So this really is some kind of prototype.