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This is good to know. I'm considering the same solution myself knowing that the sound will be a compromise but a hybrid is possibly better than a poor AP.

I'll toss in my two bits on the sound of the AvantGrands. I don't consider them to be on par with good VST's in terms of sound, but I spent a few hours going from one piano to another with my headphones recently (it was mostly a Yamaha shop) and I felt that the AG sound was very noticeably better than its other Yamaha peers. Significantly better than the best Clavinovas in the shop.

While it still has the same type of technical limitations almost all digital pianos have, on a subjective level, I felt that it was pretty good overall.

It's probably the longer attack samples and noticeable pedal sympathetic resonance that set it apart from the other Yamahas. Though even with that VST material it ain't.

Hit the nail on the head. The AG is far from perfect but does a decent job. Those that consider it a grown-up Clavinova are wide of the mark; the AG is very superior.

I would choose the AG over a poor or ill-maintained acoustic. And I would choose it over many uprights that are themselves fair-to-middling. But a decent upright is a much more rewarding thing to play than the AG. And any good grand blows the AG away. But for those that are operating within the limitation that simply says an acoustic is out of the question (volume issues and perhaps those extremely sensitive to tuning issues) can't go far wrong with the AG. And as a practice tool specifically for technique-building - where feel is more important than sound - the AG is probably a better solution than other digitals.

I'm very glad it is working out for you Susan!

Thank you, everyone. I'm glad it ended up to be the right choice for me, at least right now. The sound doesn't bother me much anymore. It's a wonderful practice instrument. As far as action, there is little or no adjustment now when I transition to my teacher's Bosendorfer.

It strikes me as strange that none of the other big manufacturers also jump on the hybrid wagon. Why aren't Kawai or Roland trying to make something similar?

I suspect Roland doesn't because they don't have the acoustic expertise and manufacturing capability. I just don't see that in their future.

Kawai could for sure, but they would have to feel that there is enough room in the hybrid market for two players. If they made one there would be basically no difference in action and they would have to compete on sound quality, which means more R&D and they would probably be also rans anyway because of the smaller brand recognition and distribution. And with two players the price might go down, which lowers incentive anyway. There's a big first-mover advantage, I think.

Not saying it's impossible. It would be cool, actually. I guess we can cross fingers. Somehow I actually think Kawai would do an even better job at it. Their engineers seem to be quite focused on action authenticity.

Of course Yamaha has an advantage since they've been developing the hybrid technology for years. However, I agree that Kawai might do an even better job if they tried! Imo Kawai beats Yamaha hands down when it comes to "ordinary" dps - at least in terms of action. My dream hybrid: Good action and speakers - AND a integrated mini-pc that is able to run software pianos. If Kawai did something like that they would still distinguish themselves from Yamaha. How hard can it be to accomplish that? This is 2012! (for some more days)

I'm afraid something like that is never going to happen. The reason is simple your dream hybrid will probably need to be priced somewhere below the most cheap baby grand. And the cheapest Kawai is GM-10 which costs ~8000,- Euros, so basically you will have a grand rim, soundboard, action and all the electronic together and you will price it lower? Also for running VST you will need computer and more importantly OS and M$ is heck expensive these days. So where is your price and where is your dealer margin?
I think what Kawai does great is that they are constantly improving their DP actions like we've seen in RHII and GF. If you need hybrid, then go to Yamaha, but be prepared to pay nearly baby grand price. Now, what would you choose? Hybrid with so-so power/sound or real acoustic small grand? Well it also depends on music you are playing. I've seen people here playing jazz and be happy with hybrids and I've seen here people very unhappy with hybrids playing classical/romantic music. Also how much of real sound are able your neighbours to "survive"? Do you practice for an hour a day or for 5 hours a day 7 days in week? If the later the choice is probably obvious, if the former then real grand and kind of cheap DP would also do the job.... I really like unlimited possibilities provided by the current piano market. :-)

I agree with ClsscLib. It would be nice to have an acoustic as well as the AG. If I could only have one, I would pick the AG over again, for the grand action and ability to play silently. I may add an acoustic later.

Good points. But I wonder about the costs you mention.

Shouldn't it be possible to price hybrids lower than most baby grands?

Consider that the AGs don't need a fine quality rim. And the rim they have is smaller than even the smallest baby grand.

Also, they don't have a sound board. They don't have a plate. And they don't require all of the fine labor needed to make and fit those items.

As such, I think the AGs are grotesquely overpriced. Throw some competition in there and the price might drop. A lot.

But, so far, the demand for these pianos is small. So is the market rich enough to attract additional players?

I think most DPs are way overpriced. I mean, I can see paying more for say a Kawai wooden key action, where some effort, time, and skill has to go into the construction and assembly. But the vast majority of DPs are hunks of plastic with cheap speakers, asthmatic processors, and virtually no memory. If there were real competition at work in this market then something like the P95 would be selling for $199 tops IMO.

Also MacMacMac, I agree completely with your previous post in this thread.

I wonder about that. Actually Kawai's actions are pretty dang simple. I wonder if they really cost more to develop/build. It's not that I don't like them (I own one) but I think all these things are expensive primarily because the volume is pretty low, not because the materials or workmanship is inherenty costly. Just a gut feeling.

The AG action, on the other hand, is very complex, as are all acoustic grand actions. Luckily they have factories that kick them out a zillion at a time so they don't have to develop them or set up much specialized equipment.

Simpler than real piano keys definitely, but I would think they are more difficult to manufacture than 100% plastic keys, no? There's woodworking involved, all those paper washers to stack, and the threaded hammer thingie.


Good point.

I wonder what the worldwide sales figures are for DPs vs. guitars? 1:5? 1:10? Guitars sell for considerably less than I would expect given the input labor, though I suppose we do have plenty of effectively slave labor lately.

You know, I had forgotten about those paper things. I wonder if they are actually installed by hand (or whether they have a machine that does it). An exceptional amount of work seems to go into regulating an acoustic action and if even a small fraction of that is spent on Kawai's wood action, it could add up.

We really need someone to make a documentary video going through one of these factories so we know how it's done. Those types of videos seem pretty easy to find on the acoustic side. Not so much on the digital.

The keyboard (and other) labor in the better Kawai actions would make an interesting video. But I think there are other important considerations, ones that have nothing to do with what happens in production.

The selling price of an item is driven by more than just material, labor, transportation and distribution costs, fixed overhead business costs, and some margin of profit. Those costs only dictate a minimum possible selling price.

Cachet, prestige, and other gloss help drive demand. Smart marketing works to convince a customer that a product is worth more, simply because it's portrayed as more special.

As an extreme case: My wife used to tell a story about how she, as a small child, would sell rocks to neighbors. Nice rocks, mind you: geodes or some sort of crystallized neat stuff. But still, just rocks. For a dime.

Fifteen years later some schmuck got rich when he went national and sold rocks ("Pet Rocks") for a pretty penny.

Perceived value can be driven more by hyped and false perception than by anything of real substance.

Obviously I'm not an expert on price issues related to hybirds or digitals, but here's my thoughts, for what it's worth: For me it seems clear that at least the N2 and N3 Avantgrand are grossly overpriced - and probably the N1 as well. Look at the NU-1, it is so much more cheaper - but how much cheaper can it be, production-wise, to put an upright action in there in stead of the grand action that they already HAD developed for the older models? Pretty obvious that they did it in order to distinguish the lower-end model from the others, and thus keep people buying the N1 and N2. I think they could slash the N2 price almost in half and still make a profit, probably. Therefore: If I'm right about this, it should indeed be possible for Kawai or others to make something that is as good (or almost as good) as the N2, sell it cheaper, and still make a profit. Obviously Yamaha would then lower their prices - but that would only be good for us consumers:)

Concerning my proposal to integrate a mini-computer that runs a software piano inside a hybrid: I honestly think that it doesn't have to be that expensive. Such a pc could be tailor made to ONLY run VSTs. They could do it simple by developing a linux-based system and put it on a basic chip, putting in 20 gigs of ssd and 4 gigs of ram, a sound card, a USB connection to add the VST software, and voila - there you have it (take the new Raspberry Pi, for example - 25 dollars, and fully functional as a linux-based media center pc: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/entertainment-cheap-affordable-ways-set-home-theater/). As fas as I know most VSTs today require OSX or Windows, but I guess the manufacturer of such a hybrid could cooperate with one of the VST companies in developing a linux VST package that would work. This is not that big a deal - obviously it would raise the price somewhat, but I don't think it would have to cost more than 100-150 dollars extra (at most) in production cost for each unit (based on my very amateurish understanding, of course).

I think the big for-profit suppliers of OSes and processors have hobbled embedded computing for a couple of decades now. I bought my first 286 with the intention of using it as a general purpose hardware but found that both the processor and the OS were total dogs, almost a complete impediment to getting anything real done at the lowest level.

With Linux and ARM we're seeing an explosion of development and equivalent computing power at a much lower price point. It's too bad ARM isn't open source, but it's more efficient and flexible than the creaky old bloated Intel architectures.

You got it, and the fact is that Yamaha cut several corners with the AvantGrands. I don't know if it's just sloppyness or consciously trying to make AvantGrands inferior "enough" to their acoustic pianos. They cut corners with the soft pedal (only on/off), the CPU/DSP (it takes 10 seconds to process a short midi-recording WTF?!, and there's still some very slight lag when performing big multioctave chordal sections with sustain pedal), the damper pedal/DSP (too simplistic effect, unaturally boosts the volume), too short samples/being cheap on RAM which is very inexpensive these days, boxy speaker sound from the N1, which is still a very expensive instrument (don't know how the N2 speakers fare in comparison)..
Another thing is that an acoustic piano will have a lighter touch with the sustain pedal pressed down, this detail is not present on either of the AvantGrands (this would however be difficult to mimic without some serious extra hardware and price increase). The AvantGrands' double-escapement is also a bit "iffy" for playing very fast note repeats.

Anyway, AvantGrands are still the best digital pianos on the market, and I don't regret for a second getting the N1 instead of the N2/N3. The way I see it, the N2/N3 core features (samples and action/pedal response) are in essence the same as N1, which makes them even more grossly overpriced. (For instance the more expensive keytop material used on N2/N3 is not as good as Yamaha's HQ acoustic grands.)
I would certainly welcome more competitions with hybrid pianos (Kawai etc.), that would almost certainly lower the price and further improve the quality.
Having said all this, I'm very happy with my N1 as a practice instrument, and it is certainly very useful for proper practicing without annoying the neighbours or family members. But should it have been even better (with proper 2012 technology)? Yes!

Very interesting observations Karnevil, thanks!

I think what happened with the AG is they called their AP guys into the room and had them modify a short grand mechanism so it suited their DP keyboard guys, who then instrumented it with light pipes & shutters. Then they called their DP sound guys into the room and all they could do was whip out the same old $5 processor and $1 memory they've been using since the dawn of time and everyone else threw up their hands (and lunch). Since this is industry and there is never enough time to do it right the first time, they bolted it all together, shoved it out the door, and called it a day. Marketing then stepped in and hyped it into the stratosphere.

I'm continually flabbergasted that Yamaha can't get sympathetic resonance right, even on a sky's-the-limit kind of product. It's such a fundamental and conspicuous aspect of AP sound.