Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards RD800 Demo with Scott Tibbs at Kraft Music

Good demo of features. Wish he demoed the the AP & EP piano sounds in detail a bit more without rhythms. Regardless, Scott Tibbs is damn good.

Tried one very quickly in a shop. Sound and touch and especially the connection between both is really good. Nice board. Not really an eye catcher , but it's a workhorse and will do it's job very well. Tilted connections on the back are a bit ....; must bend way over the entire keyboard to plug something in/out or be able to see what the connections are. Also headphones out on the front of the instrument please ! Anyway - minor nitpicking - board is real nice.

I met Scott a couple of years ago when I bought my Jupiter. He seems like a great guy and his in-store demo was fantastic.

@Hideki: Have you tried high res MIDI on your new Roland piano and perceived any benefit? I'm wondering how the RD800 or other new Rolands will perform as Pianoteq MIDI controllers when compared to the RD700. Also, aside from Pianoteq and archiving performances for the RD800, itself, I'm not sure what other applications presently use high res MIDI. And, finally, I don't know for sure that Roland's high res MIDI would be utilized by Pianoteq; I've not seen that discussed anywhere yet.

I saw a demo on Youtube, which made me go out and try the Roland before making my final decision on a DP. It compared the RD800 against the Kawai MP10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc3RRGNCdE0

The RD800 is a very nice instrument. I really liked the piano sounds.

Not Tibbs, but a very good demo. I like RD800's new APs. Very nice. Usable voices are a bonus.

Yes these guys do good demos. Again as I've already posted, I was very impressed with my 90 minutes on it at GC last week. I know I've never spent that long on a Roland DP before in the store...so many things about it must've grabbed me.

I really should go to the trouble and schlep in my speakers and pre-amp to get a better sense of how this will sound as opposed to my AKG 240s. Everything can sound good through phones.

Like the acoustic bass. It sounded better here then I remember it last week. And that's an important feature for me as I'm considering this mainly for solo gigs where I need the drum tracks, play LH bass and sing.

The Wurli sounded better too. I thought that was the weakest of the EPs on first listen.

Strings @ 2:00 and the one Winwood-ish pad @ 7:07 sounded great too.

I don't expect it to take the place of my Nord, but again for solo gigs, this might be perfect for me. Really dug the drum sounds and the patterns. It didn't sound canned or have that cheese factor. Plus like I mentioned already in another thread :

"One thing very cool about the 800's drum patterns are - if you have the drum pattern window open - you can scroll down for multiple variations on the original loop, seamlessly, without any hiccups in the groove. The tempo stays constant. VERY great feature for gigs. Could not do that on the CP5".

I'd prefer to keep things simple having these internal drums then - getting an iPad/phone and trying to find out which drum apps work the best for all the different kind of tunes I do. Not to mention the learning curve with it all. Even being the low-tech guy I am, I pretty much had the 800 wired to do a gig on within the hour. I know I'd be futzing a lot longer on an IOS device. To add - I'm not so sure that's what's coming out of that iPad or phone is sonically going to be as rich & fat as what you hear in a *pro* keyboard of this high quality.

Most important - this is time that I'd rather be practicing the piano or working on my vocals with.

I finally sat down and played the RD-800 for an extended period of time. I was blown away, I have to say. I could not believe how damn good the Concert Grand sounded. I think it's brilliant Roland is now using their very own creation, the V-Piano Grand as a sample in their keyboards. It's the same thing Yamaha and Kawai do of course. The 800 is a huge step forward in sound vs the 700NX IMHO, the action was fantastic too. The thing really feels like an acoustic when played amongst a room full of DPs. I have no idea what it sounds like live, but it made the CP4 sound very dated. The CP4 still has that boxed in super synthetic Yamaha sound. I'm just not a fan of the tone. The CP4 does have an incredible action though. As good or better than the RD800. If they could just do something with the sound. The display in the RD800 is also quite nice. All in all I was very impressed with the RD800. I was playing the fast section of Rachmaninov's Prelude in C# Minor and had several people behind me stop and listen. It sounds very very convincing. I think the thing that surprised me is how real the sound behaves and the overall connection with the action. The newly added ability to tune each single note further takes away the reason to purchase the V-Piano. Kudos Roland.

I noticed you have a Nord Piano 2, which is shipping to me, as we speak. The RD800 was never on my radar, but I like to hear a comparison if you could. I only plan to gig with it.

Hey 36251, you made the right choice. I still think the NP2 is the benchmark for all other stage pianos for piano centric players if you have one gigging battle axe. The weight, dimensions, sounds, flexibility, ease of use. Software updates, sample updates, build quality, etc. etc. etc. I wouldn't trade my Nord for any other stage piano. I would however love to add the RD800 for a home DP to practice a night with. It's incredible sounding and playing, but not still not my choice for gigging.

I stand by my opinion that anyone purchasing the Nord Piano 2 for a home DP should look elsewhere as there are other options better suited. But, for the gigging piano player, especially jazz, blues, rock players, the Nord Piano 2 is the best choice out there.

my impressions exactly same during my last trip to GC. I thought the RD 800 felt and sounded outstanding. I didn't think the CP4 came close.

Roland really stepped it up with their new products. PHAIV is about as perfect as I could have hoped and the way it mates with the SN pianos really makes for a uniquely dynamic digital piano experience. I tried the RD800 today and thought it was great too. The LX-15e has been fantastic and the first digital piano that I truly enjoy playing.

Sorry, I missed this post. I haven't tried the high res MIDI. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't even aware of it. I'll take a look and see if I can test it with Pianoteq.

Are others taking advantage of the Roland wireless iPad applications? Playing music through the LX-15e wirelessly from my iPad has been a very convenient practice tool.

I tried it too recently and I found the keyboard to still make a dull hollow sound that is only acceptable played through headphones. I know it's the Far West of Roland's keyboards that's on the RD-800 so I won't criticise further in that area. It may be very good, but it's still under the water. Let's say the texture surfaces, the delicate ivory and wood colour touches, are really beautiful.

Coming from a silent acoustic piano at home playing the sounds of the Integra-7, I just found there was nothing really new in the RD-800, the tone quality of the first pianos are about the same to each others as they are the same in the Integra-7, and sounding very similar to it too. Especially I had been unable to identify the V-Piano sample, and unable to find any novelty in the new upright sample.

But the pianos sound really nice for the SN series at least because the PCM older ones are rather very outdated, as opposed to the Integra-7 where the SRX cards still hold PCM pianos that are as sexy today as they were at first, or maybe more since we now have lots of comparison points in the software world.

The RD-800 has many options to edit and tune the piano tones and I would advice the buyers to check thoroughly the editing capabilities, because here as well similarly to the Integra-7 and I guess other Roland DP, the real character of the pianos samples are often hidden from the presets, and you can bring out much more out of the SN samples than there is upfront, provided that you correct the exaggerations of the most extreme tonal variations with a proper EQing in order to remain in the pleasant and acceptable boundaries of a good sounding piano. Without the EQing these tonal changes sound like caricatures, and again, without using these extra settings all the pianos in the RD-800 sound about the same paste, though a pleasing one. So check it out, as there are many parameters it can take time to find out, but it's really worth in order to find out what's really inside this DP, and you'd be surprised.

The other sounds in the RD-800 are similar to the Integra-7 too, it looks like a "best of the best of" and that's nice to have them. The drum loops are useful and sound good (quite compressed though) although very basic.

Overall it's a great entry to the world of Roland, and it can as well serve as a backing tool as much as a sound source for a computer based sequencer, and it's the same with any other Roland gear recently, they are very unified by the SN capabilities. For instance you can probably play the drums on a Vdrum kit from the RD-800 as much as you can do it with the Integra-7 and with the same basic tonal qualities that you find in the TD-30 high end drum sound module, if you accept a few compromises, as you can find the tonal qualities of the SN pianos of the RD-800 in the BK-9 or the FA-6 if you don't mind the keyboard and seek their other features. Buy one, get the main line of them all. Which is a good news. And which is a bad news too...

thanks

I have to clear this up for anyone who might take it to be the truth.

The pianos in the RD800 are completely and totally new. Different to the Integra-7.
The subjective quality is up for debate if you like, I'm ok with that.

But let's be clear that they are not the same SuperNatural tones. They are completely new.

The Original RD700NX Pianos are in there too. Those would be closer to the Integra 7 tones than the brand new Concert Piano tone and its variants. Concert Grand is patch number one, and is the V-Piano based SuperNatural tone.

Jay

Hi Jay - question regarding the 800. Are the drum sounds and lot of the "other" sounds , like strings, organ, synth , etc. , the same as what's in the arranger BK-9 board ? I'm most concerned with the drum sounds and loops/patterns , along with the basses (for LH bass) for doing solo gigs.

Thanks.

Hey Dave,

The Drum loops are for the most part very good and useful. I like 80% of them and use them for just general jamming. They felt more like FP series than BK series to me. But the layout is awesome. They kind of go sequentially so you would have Rock-1 then Rock-2 right after it. Rock-2 is just a bit heavier. Rock-3 even heavier etc. Kind of like variations on an arranger board.

Can't confirm the PCM Wave data comes from Bk series though. With the exceptions of Grand Piano, Upright Piano, Various E. Pianos and VK Organs, the rest of the sounds on the RD800 are PCM based. There's some really cool Mellotron sounds in there. Strings Flutes and Choirs. Worth checking out.

I really like a couple of the Acoustic Bass sounds. Played properly they really do quite a good job.

Jay

Thanks for all the clarification Jay. I know there are limitations in processing power which make it difficult to use SN across the board, but it kind of bummed me out to realize that none of the other sounds on the LX-15e were SN. It doesn't really matter for me because I have the Jupiter, but once you have access to the SN engine for things like acoustic bass, it's hard to look at the PCM sounds in the same light. That being said, the LX-15e is an amazing DP and the RD800 was equally impressive as a stage counterpart.

No doubt about the fact, it's just that : 1) they sound about the same (good) paste, same tonal quality all over with more or less brightness in response. That's why I couln't identify the V-Piano sample patch #1, it's about as good as the other pianos that are about the same sounding as the older ones. The real difference comes when you go down to the PCM pianos that are more 1990 (and some certainly are 90ies productions indeed). Same goes for the new upright, it's about as "grandesque" sounding as the others, and about as much as the older ones.

But these pianos are really good nonetheless, and if the edition goes as far as on the Integra (not in doubt either as there are more parameters on the RD-800), I think you can really make the real differences appear for instance between the grands and the upright. So for instance when Scott Tibbs says sthg like "here the knob turned all the way to the left you basically have an old upright", I think what he refers to mostly is the recording techniques used in the old days of the XXth century when uprights were the kings of the daily sessions jazz studios, but an upright is not that, it's not simply a recording technique.

When you compare to the Nord piano sounds, you can really identify each of their pianos to be very different from one another, in tone, behaviour, recording technique. On the RD-800 you have nothing like that, all the pianos sound approximately the same, you couldn't tell from one preset to another right on, you'd have to think about it and maybe you'd mistake one for another easily.

And once again, I really believe the presets are not really fair to the real tonal qualities of these piano samples, that reveal themselves more when tweaked quite a lot. What that means for the user by the way is that when/if she's tired of the same sounding piano club of the presets she can dive into the editing and reveal marvels she wouldn't suspect at first. I think it's a good thing for a gear to let dial in to discover things that are not mentioned on the box.

I give you just one example you could reproduce with your Roland SN DP provided it has at least these 3 parameters and an eq : tale any SN sample, reduce the "tone character" parameter to its minimum value, crank up the hammer noise to its max value, set the sympathetic resonance to 3/4 of its range, and then eq it so to reduce the extra volume given by the hammers on the high freq, retrieve the mid range loss across octaves 3
to 5, and reduce the bass freq so you don't get a disproportioned response. The piano is probably another entirely, it becomes intimate, closed miked, it feels older, smaller, maybe some hiss appears, details you didn't thought were in that sample, but it has something charming the original preset didn't offer. That's what I'm referring to, Roland kind of hides (unintentionally maybe) the real nature of its samples, and luckily tweaking the sounds help to discover the possibilities.

And once again as well, even as is out of the box, these preset pianos sound really good, very clean and convincing, to the point you can compare to the top software and decide for yourself if the extra time running a computer has become or not a waste of time. As far as I'm concerned, I think it has.