Hi folks - I've in general been a quiet lurker on this forum for some time. I've had my fair share of synths, but as of late I've been shopping for digital pianos for both my family and my sister. I'm trying to get a sense of what is "good enough" for casual piano playing & for a child or adult to learn on. (I'm a sax/guitar/drummer/keyboard player, not classically trained on piano, so I may not really fully appreciate some of the nuances)

My main question is just how much digital piano technology has changed over the past 20 years or so. Some folks have brought up (over the years) that digital piano technology is similar to computer technology - in that even 5-10 year old piano would be vastly out of date and you'd be better off buying something new. I'm not so sure I agree with that.

I've done more research on Yamaha's than other brands. But the GH(E) keyboard mechanism has been in use for 20+ years.

The sound creation methodology hasn't changed - modern pianos still use sample playback technology, though from their feature lists, you'd think that Yamaha resamples their acoustic pianos every 5 or 10 years.

The primary difference seems to be polyphony, which has grown from:
80s: 8 note
90s: up to 32 note
2000's: 64 note
2010's: 128, 192, and even 256 note

The other big deal seems to be a move toward 3 pedals (instead of 2) and adding half pedal effects.

Minor details for a digital piano are midi, USB, iPad connectivity.

In short, I bought a Yamaha Arius YDP C71 PE in NYC (basically a ~4 year old version of the YDP16X with piano black finish - 128 polyphony, AWM sound) for $250 - a killer deal for something that was $1300 new!. I'd be curious to play this alongside a modern equivalent YDP 163 (192 poly, "Pure CF"; slightly taller cabinet; synthetic ivory - tho one would argue that haven't the digital piano keyboards always strived to mimic the feel of real ivory?) and try to hear/feel a difference.

I'm struggling a bit with finding something used in Southern California, though - Sellers want more, and for older models. There are a number of mid-90s/early 2k's Yamaha Clavinovas and Casios where the asking price is $300-700, and a handful of late 80s/early 90s Yamahas (many with some cosmetic or mechanical (sticky keys) flaws for $200 or less.

So yeah, basically I can get something that was $2.5-3.5k new 15+ years ago, but will that be notably inferior to what I might be able to buy for $600-1000 new (let's say, a Yamaha Arius 143/163, P115; Korg B1SP; Casio PX760/860). The Clavinova's generally have the mid or higher end keyboard action.

Yamaha doesn't change much, but their current actions are GHS (low-end), GH, GH3, NWX, and maybe I'm missing one or two. But Roland and Kawai and Casio change quite a bit. Regardless, DPs do not retain their value, and as you have discovered, people think they should get close to what they paid for them.

This is why it's often better to get a new model or 1-2 years old used.

Polyphony isn't that big of a deal unless you plan to play with the pedal a lot. It can also be a factor when playing something like piano & strings and other layers.

The addition of half pedaling is huge. Playing any style of music without this is awkward sounding. Certainly a beginner pianist wouldn't notice, but after a couple of years it would be apparent.

The main thing that I say is advancing is the action. Overall, DP manufacturers are really trying to mimic the feel of a grand piano action and getting pretty darn close. IMO, this greatly increasing the overall playing pleasure one has.

Areas for improvement IMHO.

Amp/Speaker Tech - It is difficult for a digital piano to recreate the immersive sound of an acoustic piano whose strings and sound board work together to resonate in all directions and reflect and grow in the performance space. Traditionally with digitals, the source instrument is recorded in stereo and played back in stereo on a pair of "so-so" amplifiers and speakers that conform to the space permitted by the case design. More recently we are seeing attempts to record the source instrument in 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound then equip the digital instrument with amp+speaker systems located around the instrument the way the micing was done to reproduce the sound in the performance space so it's not only decent to listen to for the player but also those in the room which is of great importance in performance halls, houses of worship, etc. and of course even at home.

Storage space and Speed: Certain types of memory are just better at playing back high quality samples at low latency allowing for a greater connect between the player and the sound via the instrument's action. Ideally, we would want full length samples for each and every key of the instrument without stretching or looping (brought up many times on this forum). Now, make them 5.1/7.1.

Always room for improvement. Happens very slowly.

It sounds to me that modeling might be poised to make a pretty big leap--in that it seems pretty good already, but we may start seeing more and more manufacturers start to use it?

And second the storage space/speed comment. This has been going on for a while, but CPU power, RAM and flash storage are such commodities at this point that there isn't much excuse in 2016 not to take a crack at whomping the stretching/layer switching/looping boogieman for good.

Actions seem weird to me. I'm sure it'll continue to evolve, but it doesn't seem like the field that's going to see really explosive development or paradigm shifts in the next few years.

Short answer: The technology moves very slowly.

As has been pointed out, the actions have improved, with Kawai making some nice advances. And some here are fond of the Roland half-sampled/half-modelled approach.

But the TECHNOLOGY? Almost nothing has improved since the 90s.

The sample sizes are only marginally bigger. The speakers are still stinkers. The increased polyphony is nearly pointless.

Strip away the buzzwords and there's not much left.

And the sound is no better. Digital pianos still don't sound like pianos. You STILL have to use outboard piano software to make it sound like a piano.

Sad.

And even then, sound from speakers just doesn't come close to a real acoustic sound. I think in order to achieve this, though, you'd have to have some pretty expensive speakers - like thousands of dollars.

Not having ever owned speakers costing thousand of dollars, I can't say whether they would give us what we want. But certainly the mundane speakers I do have do not. Headphones are, for now, my only solution.

My father was a bit of an audiophile, so I did get to hear hi def recordings of solo acoustic piano on a nice stereo system. It was pretty darn good from an audience standpoint. Obviously, duplicating the sound of sitting at the piano while playing it takes a different set of variables with speaker placement.

Still it would be cool if a manufacturer were able to develop something like this for the fun of it and to know it can be done.

I've been auditioning digital stage pianos in preparation for an upgrade from the Roland synth I've had since I was a teenager in the late 90s (current leading candidate is the Kawai MP11). I also get to play with a baby grand at my in-laws' house when I visit them. One of the key things that is missing for me when I play the digital pianos is the deep rumble that an acoustic piano delivers. You can feel the sound. I think in order to have any hope of replicating the experience with speakers you would need a subwoofer in addition to high quality monitors. For me, that's not an option since I live in an apartment and my neighbors would HATE me. Another (very expensive) option that might improve the acoustics would be (rather than using surrounds) to use electrostatic speakers like Martin Logans which radiate sound from the front and the back and would "disappear" more than traditional stereo speakers.

I don't agree. I bought my first DP in 1998 (Yamaha CLP 840) around 2000 USD at that time I believe, then I played Kawai CA 950 (2002), Kawai CA 91 (2007), Kawai CA 15 (2013) and Kawai CA 95 (now).
The improvements on the last 15 years have been huge for my ears. The key action is by far more responsive, and the sound quality is MUCH, MUCH better. I would not want to move back to a model from the 2000s in the price range 2000 to 5000 USD, I just couldn't stand it, compared to my present piano. Having the latest model is not that important, but I would not settle for a used piano from more than 5 years ago.
E.g.: Soundboard and (e.g.string) resonance simulations have brought the DP MUCH closer to sounding and playing like an acoustic IMHO.

I've wondered why we haven't seen this incorporated into high-end concept digital pianos yet. I'm assuming there's a good reason but they seem like a perfect match for a "digital Grand". You could put one where the soundboard would normally go, and put a 2nd as the "lid" of the Grand, add a sub-woofer, I bet it would sound gorgeous.

Or if it's an upright design, turn all the flat surfaces into electrostatic speakers.

Yes, it's sad that things are not improving as fast as we would like. And there are some things to improve that are too obvious:
1) Sampling more notes at once from a real grand, rather than just one note for each sample.
2) Speakers tech: to me the most obvious improvement will come in the way exciters are attached to the spruce soundboard. Basically I think that a spruce soundboard shouldn't be attached to anything, why adding weight to it?? The spruce sounds much better when is light and free. Like in this videoclip,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRJdIv_zvag,
it sounds so well simply because the exciters are not attached to the spruce, but to the back of the guitar.
3) And I would throw in a third thing, I don't understand why they still haven't found a way to make a hybrid (digital keyboard that plays a real grand through tiny electric hammers on top of the strings).

Thanks for that link - those sound exciters look really cool. I'm excited to hook these up to my Roland FP-30 and start experimenting with different materials!

Now I guess the question is - what gigantor material can we buy off the shelf from Home Depot that would make a really cool amplifier. From some other videos, it sounds like the larger things will give you crazy bass response (like the dry wall in your house).

... and now I'm wondering how can get a hold of some old freestanding Piano soundboards.

If you want to experiment with exciters and soundboard you can try 4 exciters on 2 cheap acoustic guitars. The way speakers are used on digital grands until now have been disappointing, because speakers are big and heavy. Look at a violin, you can put a lot of tension on the spruce plate, but the only things touching it are just tiny bridge feet and a soundpost with a 6mm diameter, that's it.

You mean like this?
MP11 Cabinet Project

That's a cool project Oasismfg, but I think after seeing that, I want to avoid taking apart a piano, looks like a lot of work.

I'd rather just build a large free standing soundboard (salvaged from a piano or built out of DYI materials). I'm going to try the guitar and Cajon ideas - but eventually I'd like to create a single large flat panel that I can put in front of the digital piano. It's interesting that it can act as a speaker for the audience at the same time as a monitor for the player.

This PDF has some interesting advice on selecting acoustically friendly materials + exciter placement.
http://www.parts-express.com/pedocs/buyer-guides/understanding-and-using-dayton-audio-exciters.pdf

It was a lot of work for me, just because I took care to put the action and all critical parts away in long term storage in case I ever decide to rebuild it as a real piano someday. I even clipped samples of each string and taped them to their respective keys. But if I wasn't worried about salvaging anything but the sound board, I could strip it down in about an hour. And frankly, there are lots of these old pianos destined for the scrap heap you can get for free (mine was). With the soundboard out you could do what you want with it. Or you could just get a piece of plastic laminate foam core board and do this: Audio Exciters white paper . I think it would be pretty cool to follow these guidelines using a real sound board. Maybe it wouldn't sound any better than foam core, but it would be the real heart of a piano FWIW.

What I am observing here in Germany is that used DPs see to retain their value very well. I mean, people can obviously sell a DP in the price range of 1000-2000EUR which has been used for a year for only 1-200EUR off. The previous model is, like, 2-400EUR off.

As far as I can tell, people do not only think they should get close to what they paid, they actually do. And I am amazed, because I was expecting the market to more behave like digital cameras or so.

I am also still amazed how hard it is to get a current or previous model used. It looks like people are keeping them quite long.

That is documented transactions? Or just wishful thinking in craigslist ads? Where ancient Clavinovas get praised by their sellers like the next coming of...


When there are no or very few transactions, then there is actually no market, so no way to seriously quote prices. A few anecdotes don't change that, unless there is a real used market with standard models regularly being traded at this or that price point.

If there is no market because there are too few sellers, that still tells us something:

I think with 80 million people living in Germany, we can safely say that if there is indeed no market for used DPs, it's not because there are no DPs in Germany. The DPs are there, so why isn't there a market to trade them?

One obvious deduction would be to assume that people (mostly) seem to hold on to their DPs. They do not exchange them for new models every two to three years, like they do with smartphones for example. Because if they did, then there would be a market for relatively recent used models.

And if the few that are on the market have high prices, even if that is wishful thinking by the seller, it shows that the sellers think so highly of their used DPs that they are not willing to sell them cheaply, even if they don't find any buyers. Even if that means that there is a disconnect between what sellers expect to get and what buyers are willing to pay. That disconnect may mean that there are indeed few transactions at the high prices sellers want, because buyers then realize that for just a bit more they can get the next generation model new. But it still would also mean that the market for used DPs is a high price market. Or in other words: if you want to get a used DP, you have to pay the high prices, or no one will want to sell to you.

(All this under the assumption that Hendrik's description of the German used DP market is accurate. I can neither confirm nor deny that.)

A extremely high bid-ask spread with almost no transactions is the definition of a failed market. I'm sure there are a lot bids in the usual 300-bucks-Christmas-present range, while the sellers expect to recoup their 3000 spent on their Clavinova.

The definition of a functioning market is actual trading happening on a regular basis. That means there is a broad selection of used models being available at any time and you can sell your own digital near those prices ("market value") almost instantly without waiting a year for that one buyer to show up.

That sort of market doesn't seem to exist for digitals it seems. A few flukes here and there don't make a market. Digitals seem to be highly illiquid goods, means: Wait ages for a buyer or try to sell quickly at an almost full loss.

From a pure monetary investor's point of view that's not a positive and called a bad investment. But we love pianos for different reasons.

I'm sure that you are correct with what constitutes a failed or functioning market. I'm not arguing that.

I'm just saying that from the point of view of the buyer, there's no functional difference between the two:

If all (relatively recent model) used DPs on the market have very high prices (except for a few outliers here and there) and you simply cannot find such a DP for a reasonably cheap price, then it doesn't matter for you where the high prices come from.

They could be the result of a failed market, where sellers expect inflated prices even though they never actually sell at these prices, but also don't sell at lower prices, because they stubbornly stick to their high expectations.

Or they could be the result of a functioning market with lots of transactions that have established that the high prices are actually the result of what other buyers are willing to pay.

The result is the same: If you want such a recent-model-but-used DP, you have to buy it at a relatively high price.

For the seller there's of course a world of difference between the two, but for the buyer, both result in expensive DPs. Well, as a buyer, if its a failed market, you can always try and wait for this one seller who loses patience and sells at a big loss. But then you've likely got a lot of competition from other buyers, so you need a lot of luck for that.

Let's not jump to conclusions. There's not enough data.

A few thoughts based on my time working for a synth/DP manufacturer's R&D group:

Technology is moving, sometimes with big strides, but the progress pales in comparison to the enormous steps taking place with higher-volume gadgets like smart phones, tablets, etc. A successful run for a keyboard is 10K units. 20K units or more is rare and considered a triumph. Even the greatest selling keyboards of all time - the DX7, Mirage, M1, Motif - didn't even begin to approach a million units sold. This affects the rate of progress. Happily, some of the developments from the big selling devices do trickle down into the keyboard market.

The most obvious advances have been with sound quality and sample memory. We now have several hardware boards like Korg Kronos and Kurz Forte that feature multi-GB piano samples. That's a pretty big deal considering the scale of the industry. But some of the coolest advances aren't as obvious (nor as glamorous). A ton of progress has been made with power supplies and keyboard actions. Both contribute to the overall weight AND reliability/longevity of a keyboard. Huge win. These advances make it possible for Casio to have a 24 lbs stage piano (PX-5S) at $999 that smokes almost anything from 10-15 years ago. I saw it firsthand at Kurzweil when we helped Fatar develop the TP40 action as a replacement to the older TP10. The difference in quality was staggering.

Regarding used boards: companies are constantly working on improving the reliability/longevity of the components used in keyboards. The older the product, the less longevity you'll see (plus you have to factor in the age of the product). With boards over 10 and especially over 15 years old, some of the components are going to have an increased chance of failing in some way. If you're looking at something of that age, do some research and check on service/support and availability of parts.

Of course.

I added this to my first post:



but it also applies to my second post. All of this is just an interesting thought experiment for me. I have no idea how it relates to reality.

Heh, not even I know if my observations are correct. It is likely that I do not observe used DPs that get posted in the morning and are sold before I look in the evening. And sometimes I do not look for a few days.

One would need to stream the ads into an database/Excel and then follow up when they vanish, at least on a sample selection.

It could be that it is all quite normal given the low number of DP sales in comparison to the acoustic pianos sold in the last 100 years. Because some of those are still sold and brought.

I can give my observations on the German market via ebay-kleinanzeigen.de.
I was looking through the offers regularly looking for a used Kawai CA 9x/6x. There are usually appr. 5 new offers per week for the Kawai CAs and they are mostly sold within 1 to 4 weeks (if the asked price is reasonable). The total number of offers is basically remaining constant with an equilibrium "new offers-sold"
For a recent "old" model 2-4 years you get approximately 70% of present price for a new one. E.g. you can presently buy a CA 97 new at approximately 2800-2900 EUR (good price). I bought my CA 95 (from 2015) 3 months ago used for 1750 EUR via ebay-kleinanzeigen.de which is a good, realistic price I think.

For a CA 93 you can get appr. 1500-1600 EUR, for a CA-91 1300-1400 EUR.
These are my observations over 2-3 months looking for a "Kawai CA-9x".

And there are much more offers for other Kawai DP and even more for Yamaha CLP/CVP.
Anyhow, Yamaha sellers think to get/demand usually higher (%)prices than Kawai ones.

I think that in Germany there is a stable (small) market for used DP, it's easy to find and buy a used DP at reasonable price, or to sell one.

What makes you assume, they are sold?

When a sell offer is made and the offer will be taken off within 1 to 3 weeks, then it usually means it has been sold (in one way or the other), why else would the seller take the offer out? An offer stays (without special retraction) at last 4 weeks and can easily (without cost) be continued for further 4 weeks. Of course, it is not necessarily sold at the indicated/asked price since they are mostly open for negotiation.
The (realistic) prices I have indicated are by experience. I have looked for a good price and made various offers to different sellers. Usually my low prices were not accepted and they sold in the mean time to others (as said by seller) and the offers taken off.

I will not pretend that I am 100% correct, but according to my (relatively intensive) market research, I believe them to be close to reality.

The asked prices are usually higher than the ones I indicated that are the ones buyer and seller can reasonably compromise on.

Nope.