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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026214
02/03/13 07:53 AM
02/03/13 07:53 AM
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Joined: Aug 2012
Posts: 36 Saddleworth UK
AshwayGap
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Troll or not, it obviously hit a nerve. Of course, because that's what trolls do. It's the easiest thing in publishing just to pick a controversial subject or argument, tart it up with bit with bigotry or intolerance and then sit back and watch people fall for it.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026216
02/03/13 08:08 AM
02/03/13 08:08 AM
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Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 300 Prague, Czech Rep.
Clayman
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Putting aside any technical analysis, the DPs I encounter in my various travels routinely and profoundly disappoint me. Crap tone, crap speakers, crap keys, crap UIs, etc. I saw / heard the AG for the first time a year ago in the flesh and it struck me as pretty weak tea when compared to the real thing - the reps on hand were talking it up like it was superior to an AP, which made the experience even more surreal. I guess I'm less disappointed by the low end, where expectations are low-to-nonexistent to begin with, but it's more of a "hey, look what they can do with a pile of plastic and $20 worth of electronics" kind of thing. All DPs are seriously overpriced for what they are. And there is no technical or financial reason they can't be significantly better by this point. And their abilities are generally overhyped - their ad copy writes checks their products can't cash. Well, I think we all realize that acoustic pianos will not be beaten in realism department for the time being, simply because they are as real as it gets. Digitals are still sort of an approximation of their acoustic counterparts and I'd be the first to admit it. With that said, however, I don't really believe that digitals are "junk" or "crap" as you say. I don't know, maybe you are used to the AP's so much that you can't settle for the "artifical" flavor of a digital anymore or you have had access to many acoustic grands and whenever you have sat at a digital piano, you mentally put it side-by-side to to all those AP's and see/feel the deficiencies of the former. That's probably fine by me, I guess. But the list of institutions buying Clavinova's that someone has posted in this thread says that the DP's can't be all bad. I assume that the decisions to buy these pianos were made by people who did know what they were doing and if the Clavinova's really were "crap", it would mean a lot of wasted money. I can't really comment on the pricing with respect to the technologies used, though, since I lack that knowledge. I would agree that especially the high-end digitals are quite spendy (in my country, the top model of the Clavinova CLP series carries pretty much the same price tag as a new Petrof upright) but I don't really know if the technologies used in DP's sold nowadays are the best available or not. I've seen the Physis piano in the NAMM 2013 thread -- that one seemed to have some pretty nifty gimmicks in it but at this point in time I consider it maybe a little more than a proof-of-concept kind of thing.
Last edited by Clayman; 02/03/13 08:10 AM.
-- Zbynek N.
Learning to play the piano since 06/2013 on a Kawai CA-95.
Music is what feelings sound like. ~ Author Unknown
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026245
02/03/13 10:23 AM
02/03/13 10:23 AM
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 428 Europe, Poland
kiedysktos.
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The OP may have some more or less valid points but I didn't really like the tone of the post. Stirrin' it up a tad, aren't we? Putting aside any technical analysis, the DPs I encounter in my various travels routinely and profoundly disappoint me. Crap tone, crap speakers, crap keys, crap UIs, etc. I saw / heard the AG for the first time a year ago in the flesh and it struck me as pretty weak tea when compared to the real thing - the reps on hand were talking it up like it was superior to an AP, which made the experience even more surreal. I guess I'm less disappointed by the low end, where expectations are low-to-nonexistent to begin with, but it's more of a "hey, look what they can do with a pile of plastic and $20 worth of electronics" kind of thing. All DPs are seriously overpriced for what they are. And there is no technical or financial reason they can't be significantly better by this point. And their abilities are generally overhyped - their ad copy writes checks their products can't cash. +1 Once new model is released, repeatedly old tiny sample set is used, many short cuts are done and again we are disappointed. Even Clavia, which is quite forward looking company: if it releases 400MB piano or 100MB rhodes it would be a miracle. But at the same time we have cellphones with multi-core processors and many GB of memory.
Roland FP-4
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: Clayman]
#2026260
02/03/13 10:55 AM
02/03/13 10:55 AM
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 4,675 Northern NJ
dewster
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I don't know, maybe you are used to the AP's so much that you can't settle for the "artifical" flavor of a digital anymore or you have had access to many acoustic grands and whenever you have sat at a digital piano, you mentally put it side-by-side to to all those AP's and see/feel the deficiencies of the former. That's probably fine by me, I guess. My wife teaches private piano here at home and also has a church gig, so I hear a real, decent, maintained, brightish grand piano a couple of hours a day. Played through speakers, I can't say I've ever encountered a situation where a DP fooled me into thinking it was an AP. Looping, stretching, too few layers, and lack of resonance invariably add up to a dull, lifeless sound. The cheap speakers don't help either. But the list of institutions buying Clavinova's that someone has posted in this thread says that the DP's can't be all bad. I assume that the decisions to buy these pianos were made by people who did know what they were doing and if the Clavinova's really were "crap", it would mean a lot of wasted money. DPs are bought by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons, some rational, some irrational. If you need the things only a DP can give then you obviously need a DP and should probably buy one. That doesn't mean they are anywhere near as good as they could/should be at this point, or that they are reasonably priced.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: kiedysktos.]
#2026269
02/03/13 11:14 AM
02/03/13 11:14 AM
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 4,675 Northern NJ
dewster
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Even Clavia, which is quite forward looking company: if it releases 400MB piano or 100MB rhodes it would be a miracle. Yes, even at 400MB they're leaving ~95% of that gorgeous piano on the cutting room floor. Rather like the movie industry showing you a trailer on an iPhone and claiming it's a feature length film in an IMAX.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026330
02/03/13 01:42 PM
02/03/13 01:42 PM
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Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 77
zapper
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Even Clavia, which is quite forward looking company: if it releases 400MB piano or 100MB rhodes it would be a miracle. Yes, even at 400MB they're leaving ~95% of that gorgeous piano on the cutting room floor. Rather like the movie industry showing you a trailer on an iPhone and claiming it's a feature length film in an IMAX. the idea is the same as in light bulb conspiracy, it's a greedy business and there are no place for sentiments or drive for excellence.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026378
02/03/13 03:12 PM
02/03/13 03:12 PM
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Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 3,540 US
gvfarns
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3. Key position that is continuously sensed, not inferred from two or three switches. I don't particularly see why this would be necessary. Two switches to determine the velocity of the hammer at release and one to determine whether the dampers are engaged or not. There *might* be an issue with DP implementation in that the two switches are not as close together as we would like so instead of giving us the release velocity they give us an average velocity. If this is the case I suppose it's due to the tolerances on the switches that are currently being used. That being the case I would prefer a better type of switch, but I don't see any reason to think that it should be continuous. Do you?
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: gvfarns]
#2026447
02/03/13 06:02 PM
02/03/13 06:02 PM
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 4,675 Northern NJ
dewster
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I don't particularly see why this would be necessary. Two switches to determine the velocity of the hammer at release and one to determine whether the dampers are engaged or not. There *might* be an issue with DP implementation in that the two switches are not as close together as we would like so instead of giving us the release velocity they give us an average velocity. If this is the case I suppose it's due to the tolerances on the switches that are currently being used. That being the case I would prefer a better type of switch, but I don't see any reason to think that it should be continuous. Do you? Yes. So that the final velocity is real, and not a rough approximation. And so note-off damping is a changing position, rather than a velocity. It's trivially easy to apply non-constant pressure to a key while playing (almost certainly the norm) and it's also easy to apply note off damping on a real piano in very complex ways. Two and three sensor actions might seem pretty OK (I'm kind of shocked they work as well as they do) and many can obviously easily adapt to them, but a real continuous sensor would give you tons of extra control over what actually happens, when, and how. In many ways it would be nice to move past the bandwidth limitations of MIDI, which is how we got all this velocity nonsense in the first place. I mean, it's OK to a first order, but if you're going after realism I think you need more detailed data that key position can give you. And this isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff, it's all easily doable with 10 year old (or likely older) technology.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: KataiYubi]
#2026609
02/04/13 12:08 AM
02/04/13 12:08 AM
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Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 7,498 Raleigh, North Carolina
MacMacMac
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Torhu: Can your version accept full-length samples? Does it have hammer action? What about letoff? MIDI in and out? 
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: KataiYubi]
#2026621
02/04/13 12:49 AM
02/04/13 12:49 AM
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Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 3,019 Sydney, Australia
sullivang
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Infinite Response are already using continuous key position sensing, however they are necessarily outputting standard (hi-res) MIDI. Quoting from: http://www.infiniteresponse.com/expr.html Better Experience A sophisticated digital signal-processing algorithm (DSP) analyzes the slightest key movement thousands of times a second. It delivers MIDI messages based on acceleration vectors, not just key speed at the bottom. Its more about how you play the note than how you hit the note. For example, you can play trills without fully depressing the keys. Many of the best keyboard players in the world play the VAX77 and find it to be the most expressive keyboard instrument ever. Never before could you play a MIDI keyboard so softly. And no matter how strongly you attack the keys, it always feels like you can dig down and get a little more out of it.
Greg.
Last edited by sullivang; 02/04/13 12:51 AM.
Middle-aged Jeremy Clarkson acolyte.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: pv88]
#2026645
02/04/13 02:10 AM
02/04/13 02:10 AM
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Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 300 Prague, Czech Rep.
Clayman
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@dewster,
Have you thought of seriously sending your ideas (about the continuous sensor) to Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, etc., and see if they could make a prototype model?
Or, are you currently working on a keyboard that would implement it?
I would even consider buying one if there is someone that can do it.
As of now, there's nothing better than the V-Piano. I really don't think the engineers at Yamaha/Roland/Kawai etc. haven't thought about this already but for some reason they stick to whatever we have today. I'm not sure I share dewster's "conspiratory" point of view that manufacturers purposely sell products with sub-par technologies but it's an interesting question nonetheless.
-- Zbynek N.
Learning to play the piano since 06/2013 on a Kawai CA-95.
Music is what feelings sound like. ~ Author Unknown
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dewster]
#2026685
02/04/13 04:04 AM
02/04/13 04:04 AM
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 3,086 uk south
dire tonic
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In many ways it would be nice to move past the bandwidth limitations of MIDI, which is how we got all this velocity nonsense in the first place. - just a minor side-issue on bandwidth, I don't mean to divert the OP but do you (or does anyone) know how fast midi data is pushed through a USB port into a PC? I know both MIDI and USB are serial ports but the latter has a theoretical max rate of 480kb/s (v2) while MIDI is a little over 31kb/s. I was never convinced, when using a sequencer for real-time input, that otherwise tight chord timings were getting accurately reported by MIDI whereas I've a bit more faith in USB doing a better job. Does anyone have any insights?
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: dire tonic]
#2026700
02/04/13 04:39 AM
02/04/13 04:39 AM
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Posts: 108
Nigeth
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- just a minor side-issue on bandwidth, I don't mean to divert the OP but do you (or does anyone) know how fast midi data is pushed through a USB port into a PC? I know both MIDI and USB are serial ports but the latter has a theoretical max rate of 480kb/s (v2) while MIDI is a little over 31kb/s. I was never convinced, when using a sequencer for real-time input, that otherwise tight chord timings were getting accurately reported by MIDI whereas I've a bit more faith in USB doing a better job. Does anyone have any insights?
I'd be pretty surprised if MIDI over USB used anything other than the 31.25 Kbaud/s rate. With that rate you could send a MIDI event every 32 Mikroseconds.
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Re: Who are we fooling - digitals are junk at this juncture
[Re: KataiYubi]
#2026707
02/04/13 04:52 AM
02/04/13 04:52 AM
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Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 3,019 Sydney, Australia
sullivang
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Nigeth: I agree, in a digital system, there is no such thing as completely "continuous", however the VAX77 does NOT use a triple-sensor action - each key has a hall-effect sensor, which produces an analog signal that varies in proportion to the key-press depth, and this signal is then digitised and processed by a DSP, as evidenced by the quote I supplied.
Greg.
Last edited by sullivang; 02/04/13 04:53 AM.
Middle-aged Jeremy Clarkson acolyte.
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