Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Do we expect too much from a Digital? From a Distance . .

Does it matter? Put simply, they don`t sound the same as an acoustic when you play `em. But listening? At a distance? Not bad at all I think. Fit for purpose? Yes. Most definitely, I`d say. And the difference between high end and entry level? Again at a distance . .. .not as much as you`d imagine, although the application of the instrument comes into it here. Recordings tell their own story .. .

Now, this is just one aspect I`m raising which I feel is so significant. When someone records a CD on a piano, the sound is pretty well faultless. Almost digital in fact. Perhaps recordings are digitally enhanced, I don`t know, but suspect this happens . . .

I've had nothing but bad luck with all of my digital piano purchases as it amounts to changing brands (i.e., letting Casio's go) due to issues and then having to deal with flaws in other digitals including yet another one with pedal problems. Looks like there isn't going to be a happy ending to this story.

As players we're the most critical.

However I think as an audience unless you play yourself you don't really notice how unreal they sound. I mean how many piano concerts do you go to every year? How many does Joe sixpack?

Therefore do many of them know what a real piano sounds like? Or a intune one sounds like? I've played many a battered piano in public they were seriously out of tune but people still thought wow!

Heh, ever seen a CP80? Old 1980s and 90s music videos were filled with them (Real gone kid has one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTI31XuQxk

Except the Cp80 does NOT sound like that in real life! I've played one, it sounds like an electric guitar setting on a digital!

The prevailance of MP3 makes this worse. MP3 is super lossy compresed format, compare it to a CD and there is no contest, most people live blissfully ignorant however. I last bought a CD last month. Younger folks don't even know what CDs are.



However you've also got to think that CDs are remastered and adjusted and never sound like the live concerts and thus sound perfect!

Compare

First song way to answer

Live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34FCIm-Reps

Production version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FBkJRR8_Q

Even with youtube's low bit rate I can tell one sounds better than the other.

pv88, I think you're overcritical of the digital pianos in general and you're often chasing after negligible details. When you were dealing with the "key lifting issue" on your CA-95, which Kawai James clearly said was a design decision and not a problem, you insisted on having someone check it out and that someone pretty much botched the job and left you with a piano with a noisy keyboard cover.

I wonder how long it will take until you find something of a similar sort on your CLP-990.

Nothing is ever perfect, much less a product that is half digital and half a work of good old craftsmanship.

Heh, ever seen a CP80? Old 1980s and 90s music videos were filled with them (Real gone kid has one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTI31XuQxk

Except the Cp80 does NOT sound like that in real life! I've played one, it sounds like an electric guitar setting on a digital!

The CP80 was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the late 70's, early 80's, until the DX7 came along, more or less. I remember hearing one demoed at Hessey's in Liverpool - sounded so subtle and vibrant compared to even the Rhodes.

You get a good idea what they sound like from this at 15:29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rOh4f43ZRA
Not very inspiring really (the l/h octaves!!) - like a broken toy compared with a Casio £400 CDP or Yamaha P105 for example - and it was neither one thing nor the other since, in those days, electric pianos only goal was to sound like an acoustic, and the Yamaha easily won - and therefore lost in the posterity stakes.

But concerning the Deacon Blue video - well they would stick what ever keyboard was around (or looked better) for the video, wouldn't they? This would have no bearing on what was used for the recording (which sounds like a studio grand of some sort).

No were not expecting too much. Because it can be done. Digital in general lags what it can do. Ever since it started. All kinds of talk about how good it is. That is still going on. Instead of acting on it. The king still has no clothes.

Bear in mind. I've heard really good. So good... My sister in law. Even when she was told that it's the stereo. She still insisted on going over and picking up a coin off the floor. The coin was in the recording.