Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Casio Celviano Grand Hybrid Announced

Dewster's a huge fan of stretching, looping, and overall, tiny samples.

The DPBSD project shows that most DP vendors have in fact arrived at 88 key sampling. No stretching ("extrapolate") anymore.

The criticism is still that the attack and decay samples are too short and that decay is looped where not modeled (like on Roland). This can be seen in music/sound analysis software. Some people can hear it (I can not, but I am a novice).

So they fixed what was not so important (88 key sampling) and left untouched what matters so much more (the sound). Should I be surprised?

It remains to be seen (heard) whether this new Casio offers improvement.

Can I presume that this high-end Casio will only be sold at piano stores, not at music shops like Sam Ash? I know where to look for a high-end Roland, Yamaha, or Kawai. But I've never seen a piano store that stocks Casio.

How do you know they've left this sound untouched?


Indeed, so why prejudge it?

The connectivity is there: midi and usb out and stereo/mono line in. Its trivial to swap in a VST if you don't like the sound.

It's not so easy to swap out the action which takes priority.

The schmidt's music here stocks casio digitals. However the current privia actions don't compare well head to head with the ca65, etc that are sitting right next to them. I have yet to see a kawai digital anwhere but one piano store in the whole region. I can find yamaha and roland slapbs (including cp4 and rd800) in guitar centers.

IMO, the new grand sounds are revolutionary for Casio, but perhaps evolutionary in comparison to some other high-end DP sound sources. They are clearly playing in the same league as any of the best hardware DP sound sources. The sound elements that they talk about (damper resonance, string resonance, etc) work very well together to my ears. I look forward to playing the new Roland's, too.

Over the next few days, I'm hoping to get more alone time with the piano, learn my preferences, experiment with settings. At some point soon, we'll make our own video, hopefully with satisfactory samples. What I can never control is how people listen (from their phone speakers, their computer speakers, any of a variety of headphones, etc). When I record our acoustic pianos, I get decent results from modest equipment. However, when I listen critically, I have a good setup with some very nice open-back (AKG K712) and closed-back (Shure SHR940) reference headphones that really expose a recording, good or bad.

This product is well designed for a piano store but would probably not be well served in a regular musical instruments store. Casio will inevitably pick up many more piano dealers now that they offer a product that not only competes with other high-end DP's, it competes with even more acoustic pianos. I feel fortunate to be on the very short list of piano dealers to get one of the first Grand Hybrids to show, and not because I have one to sell, but because I'm pleased to offer this to my customers. I feel excited for the people who will discover, play and use this instrument.

Mac, I don't know where your nearest Grand Hybrid dealer will be, but I get many web inquiries for Celviano that I pass on to the reps at Casio so that customers can locate their nearest authorized dealer. All I would need is contact info and a zip code.

If you're making a video, could you please record the sound with a microphone (or two, if available, for stereo) from the player position, as well as demonstrating the digital output? It'll give some sense of the speaker quality and player experience. Also play some long low notes, to demonstrate the decay speed and how good the looping is. Finally, if you really want to be a Piano World hero, you could make a submission to the DPBSD thread - it might be enough to bring Dewster out of retirement!

I've done this ...(But not the line in part. I wouldn't want to spoil quality sound with the poor quality piano speakers.)

I have over a dozen software piano libraries. But the point is, why should it be necessary? In the $5000+ range I'd expect VST quality. But it just isn't there.

This is true ...That's why I like the idea of the Kawai VPC. Why pay a high price for crappy piano sound when you'll just have to bypass it with PC software? If only the VPC had been on the market when I bought this Yamaha!

I appreciate the request, but I hesitate to try to mic it. It's adding a tremendous number of variables as well as effort. I've done that a couple of times in the past and don't care much for the results, especially now when I look back.

I'm a dealer, so our videos are designed for people learn a little and to inquire further - to come experience for themselves. For all their usefulness in introducing a product, videos just aren't a great platform for critical, subjective evaluations as there are too many potential weak links in the transmission of information. If I make a video that meets more of your requests, I will post it here. Honestly, I'm very pleased with the speaker quality, so I'll give it a try. No promises.

Dewster's DPBSD project is fascinating, and I'll look into what the process is to enter a submission, but no promises that I'll get to it, especially now that he's retired. Is there a short version of his instructions?

There's nothing a mic recording could tell you that a direct digital recording can't. Well I guess it can tell you about the equipment you're recording with but nothing about the piano.

No recording can replace the experience of playing the instrument in person.

The Casio Hybrid has a substantial amp/speaker system, and it's marketed as a "replacement grand", not a stage piano playing through a PA.

So if you put a stereo mic over the player's head, and recorded the Hybrid playing through its own amps/speakers,

and put the same mic over the same player's head, playing the same music on an acoustic grand, in the same room,

and equalized the volume levels, and didn't change anything else --

. . . that might tell you something interesting.

Especially if you picked pieces with long sustains.

The manuals are available for both models. The most
interesting difference is in the "Scene list" setting
where you can optimize the sound for different periods
(on the 500 model, not the 300 model).

Baroque, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Satie...

I guess this is where all the different resonant settings
come into play. It perhaps explains the somewhat fast
decay of the Beethoven recordings in the Casio site.
It may have been set to a "historic" mode

Hmmmm. This has been mention a few times in this thread. Maybe there is something worth noting here.

Tony

Can you post a link to them? I couldn't find them.

Manuals are here -- all Casio pianos
http://support.casio.com/en/manual/manuallist.php?cid=008


there is also a third new instrument AP700 which seems to have similar electronics, but
not the new mechanics.

Thanks, August.

Looking at the overall weight of these pianos (77kgs+), I guess a slab version - just the action alone - would be a back-breaker so perhaps not on the cards? (not expecting an answer to this, tbh)

Since Kawai already said publicly (can't find a link right now) that they didn't put the GF action in the VPC1 due to the additional size and weight that it would have entailed, I think that you are right.

170 pounds is, indeed, massive ... almost 7x the weight of my Casio PX-5S.