Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Does anyone drive Ivory II from a Kawai CA65

Hi all,

The Kawai VPC1 seems to have filled a gap in the market for those who want to play Computer based Virtual Instruments.

What it doesn't do is fill the gap for people who want to play Computer based instruments from a static bit of furniture that looks vaguely like a piano and comes with key bed and built in amp / speakers

The VPC1 feature of approved pre set velocity curves for popular software isn't available on Kawai's DP's so I was therefore wondering is anyone is playing Ivory II from a Kawai CA65 (simliar action to the VPC1) and if so what velocity curve setting have been used? (Kawai James - could you find out if there is a manual setting for the CA65 that is the equiv of the preset for Ivory II on the VPC1

Secondly, having seen that some people have had probs playing very softly using the CA65, do Ivory II users of the 'GF tri sensor action with let off' experience the same challenge?

I'm looking to upgrade, but the only part I really feel needs upgrading is the Keybed and that means changing the instrument (it's an old Technics).

Best choices appear to be Kawai CA65, Kawai CA95, Yamaha CLP470, Yamaha CLP480 and Yamaha NU1.(I've tried and don't like the Roland action). Might also consider Casio AP650 but not sure the system has enough 'oomph'.

Any advice you can give based on action and compatibility with Ivory II would be much appreciated.

Hope you gurus can help.

The 'approved touch curves' are created especially for the VPC1, and are therefore not available for other Kawai models, I'm afraid.

Kind regards,
James
x

I use the Kawai CA95 with Ivory II American D, amongst others.
As I always play with headphones, the soundboard of the CA95 never comes to use, so the CA65 would have been totally sufficient for me in retrospective. I have not yet tried to feed the audio output from Ivory back to the CA95 to use its internal speakers, so I can't comment on how well this works.

The GF action however works perfectly well with Ivory. I use the normal touch curve and adjust the Ivory II touch curve to taste.
I can play pp without problems, too. Please note that you can define a minimum amd maximum touch value in Ivory. As I never managed to get anything higher than MIDI value 120 out of the CA95 with the normal touch curve (and that was a rather violent karate hit), I set my maximum to 115, and my minimum to 9 (so no sound with lower MIDI values, and the softest ppp note triggers at value 10).
If you happened to experience problems with playing softly, you could adjust the minimum value to taste and adjust your touch accordingly.

BTW, I prefer the GF action to the RM3, as it felt slightly lighter and more grand-like to me when comparing the CA95 and CS9 in the store. So I'm not unhappy to have gotten the CA95 last year, when the VPC was not yet announced.

Thanks Aeons Holle, that puts my mind at rest. I'll make the journey to test out the CA65 in the knowledge that I'll be able to use Ivory II ok.

I'm almost in the same shoes, after relative extensive research I now decided to go for the CA65, used a little excel decision matrix all aspects weighted, evaluated and normalised to yield a comparable score for all models on my present short list. (I am still awaiting the first overdue reviews about RM3-II vs. GF).

The CA65 was my clear winner:

I think this is self-explanatory for this factor weighting chart: (All factors have I evaluated by a number 0-10, mind you all within my own range!):



Some thoughts:
- I went in more occasion to differents shops to try the instruments. I spent some 4-5 hs playing all kind of instruments there, mostly those in my short list.

- I added a column to capture my most subjective preferences and desire: "GAS" to take this also into consideration (and weighted it with 10% which is not a low value). It was interesting to see how the resulting scores differ from what I would like to do as an impulse buyer!

- CA65 against the CA95: in a narrow place I cannot place it right (close to the wall behind and to the left side, one side is ) so the benfits of the soundboard will be probably reduced. I will enhance the sound with good monitors and a sub perhaps to the qualities of the soundboard system or perhaps even beyond. And I am using very often good headphones (Sennheiser HD650).

Compared to the VPC1: the cabinet of CA65 is not portable at all, (but I don't go need it very much), it brings a nice wooden stand, key lid, hides the cable jungle beneficially in a home, has a sound system, a decent standalone piano to play on instantly for children and guests. Beyond that it has the GF which is supposedly better than RM3-II with its shorter keys.

If you add all these benefits and components you get much more value with the CA65 the 800 EUR price difference between the VPC and CA65.

I cannot get rid of thinking of the velocity curves as something just for dummies, but it s not a bad thing at all. (Like Plug&Play).

(Like Aeon Holls, I am using SW Pianos for most of the time now, mostly Galaxy VintageD and Bosendorfer and Pianoteq.)

Thanks Temperament, you're a superstar!

Did you rule out Yamaha and Roland or are they just not shown on this part of the sheet?

I ruled them out because of my specific purposes and personal preferences.

Rolands PHA-III action has no pivot point shift, but the keys are long - this is on the positive side. But they are very hard bottoming for my fingers. V-Piano are expensive, their price premium over SW instruments is not justified for me. I found the Roland S/N sound very good, the V-Piano sound was generally jast on par for me with Pianoteq. (V-Piano Grand was substantially better in this regard.)

With Yamaha GH3 I disliked subjective, something was missing, albeit I felt the action probably "faster", than the GF.
With the action of the NU1 I just couldn't follow the dealer's enthusiasm for keyboard and the instrument's native sound (latter is not that important for me - he was otherwise a very friendly and intelligent guy.) The AGs are not my category, I buy much better acoustic instruments for their price nowadays, (I have a friend here in Hungary a restaurator of excellent old instruments) but I couldn't feel their action better either as the GF. Even if I would would have been swept away by the AG action - it would be too expensive for just a MIDI keyboard for which I mostly use them. The Yamha sound I felt more clear - even sterile - but built in sound is not that important to me. (But could be interesting, when being able the sound system feeding back the SW-Pinos sound as external sound source).

The Casios Pivot point is just too near, I had the feeling that their keys are shorter (is not the case). But the AP450 is a very complete package, full blooded 3 sensor, let off velocity, continuos half pedal, connectivity, but harder key bottoming, and the general sound quality is - WYPYWYG (=WhatYouPaYWhatYouGet).

The Acuna73 has aftertouch (interesting for SW clavichords) but not polyphonic, only 2 sensor, short pivot distance, but good price, right size for me, very portable, not very beautiful case.

(I think I was honestly trying to like all of the instruments I played, without being very preoccupied).

Just briefly my long story...

Not such a long story Temperament and it all makes complete sense to me. Thank you.

James, thanks for clarifying. I suppose I just assumed that the ability to set up a user velocity curve meant that I could enter a set of values on the CA65 that would give me a known neutral start point from which I could then manipulate the curve in Ivory.

Just as a thought, any chance of Kawai coming up with a great action and pedals, great amps and speakers, midi connectivity, line in, all in a beautiful piano case, no sound generator or samples required. I.e a VPC1 in a bundle for those who want to use the instrument at home.

My story is long enough, beleave me. I have learned a lot about technology and about this special market in the past half year - just as good model for representing our post-industrial time.

There are many details comprised in the decision table above but mentioned in other posts, including technical comparision of the MIDI implementations available in the manuals or otherwise.

I mentioned it in other posts, how much better I felt the CA95's sound over the CA65 in the shop where I compared them: not only that the soundboard is a super feature with the very elementary vibration feedback, but from the CA65 Boxes the sound was not that clear, I think there was more audible distortion in the resulting output (good measurable THD - this would probably be the most interesting single parameter about sound quality of a DP beyond the capacity of the DPBSD project to compare.)

I thought to get some more distortions out of the CA65 headphone output (compared to the CA95), but this was ruled out by James.
Three possibilities: 1. other setting in the DPs in the shop 2. self deception 3. I felt it right despite of that.

I have tried to summarize all these obeservations in the evaluting scores of my decision matrix above. (This simple method was frequently suggested verbally by others in this forum but I thought it could help to see it materialized and in action.)

I couldn't fully understand it either, in this case the velocity curve is about the keyboard velocity characteristics and should be similar for all the SW instruments. Otherwise, it was taken a musician engineer (or a group of them) asking them to build an optimal velocity curve for their instrument. Than similar differences they found are about the SW instruments and it should be applicable to other apply on other controller keayboards as well.

Like Viscount offer now a dedicated stand with BuiltIn amp and boxes for their Physis Piano, for about 2000$?

it is just not always workable to set the keyboard or the software piano's velocity curve to completely linear and then use the other to set a usable curve? i use the vpiano to drive Ivory II and i've wound up setting the Ivory's VC to linear and then using the vpiano's settings to tweak a curve i like. main reason i do this is because you can't actually see a curve on the vpiano so its hard to know how neutral the medium touch setting really is.

and i might be naive in assuming a linear curve is a neutral setting?

just curious.....