Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kawai CA98 : "boxy" sound or not ?

First, sorry for my possible bad english : I'm french, and as many french, I have a strange english accent (some english girl find it romantic), and a globish way of speaking ... I hope I will make myself understood)

I decided to create a new thread on this very topic : "boxy" sound or not, concerning Kawai CA98.
This issue has been tackled in another thread, but I think it shound be interesting to gather all information on this topic in a single place.

The story :
I would like to replace my old (rest in peace !) Yamaha CLP 170.
A wonderful, but almost senile (2002 !), instrument, with broad sound, except for a famous vice in the key action (the keys break one after another after 10 years).
I've tried 3 top level models :
- Yamaha CLP 685
- Roland LX 17
- Kawai CA 98
The Yamaha has a good a powerful sound, but sometimes, a bit "speakerish" sound (You know the sound come from speaker in front of you). The problem is the action, with a kind of threshold you must achieve with the force in your finger for the key to begin moving. Very strange. Too strange.
The Roland has a good speaker system, but the sound is too strange for me : interesting and "living" but not realy like a real piano.
All my hopes were in the Kawai. Potentialy, everything was OK for a wonderfull experience : new speaker system, new multichanel recording, new sound engine, new soundboard transducteur, etc, etc.
Very hard to find in France (especially in Lille), I went to Paris to try one.
And then ... TOTAL DESILLUSION ...
Tyr described this in such a perfect way that I quote him :
It was like all the sounds were mixed, with no possibility to distinguish the notes played, a kind of "soup of sounds", especially in the mediums. The bass and trebles were better, though. Each individual notes was quite good, but the issue comes when you play many notes together, the overall sound is indistinguishable.
It is a phenomenon different from the resonnance modelling. I rekognized very well the resonnance of the Pianist Mode, which add a kind of blurriness and reverberation in the sound, which is great, but it is not this I heard : I really speak about the sound reproduction : like if there was only 1 speaker who suffered with too much sound and who mixed everything with no details at all at the end. Like if I had coton in my ears.
I asked the salesman to play, and I moved around the instrument, close to it, far away, in every angles.
The boxy sound came clearly from the midrange speakers placed on top of the instrument. The tweeter in front were great, and the soundboard too with nice vibrations.
How is it possible ?
My desillusion comes because, on youtube, where the sound is recorded through the internal recorder, this Kawai sounds so great ! I love it, It is wonderfull, I can recognize it immediately in blind test when compared with Yahama CLP, Roland and Casio.
I like the action very much too, the best I've tried : I want it, really.

In the shop, I tried different things :
- move the instrument away from the wall (it was against a wall) : no difference
- change the WallEQ setting : better with Wall EQ ON (OFF by default when you switch on ...)
- change the EQ, the brightness etc. : no difference
- change volume level : the sound was much better with higher volume, less boxy, more clear and opened, but more "speakerish", less natural.
With headphone, the sound is very great (you need very good headphone, though)
- I tried a Yamaha N1 just nearby (more expensive, I admit) : the sound was too puchy for my taste, but so ooopened, so broooooad, so cleeeeear, I cound hear all the strings like in front of an opened grand piano.

So I really think this comes from the speaker system who seems to be of bad quality or badly tuned (?)
Maybe the intrument was in a bad position in the room ?

The intrument I played was in 1.0.0 system version, so with no update.
May be the EQ update improve this issue ??

So I have many questions :
- did someone try both firmware version (with and without EQ update) : was there a difference in speaker sound reproduction ?
- is Kawai aware of this particularity of this instrument, which can make many buyers leave this model, or leave this brand ?

I would really like to love this instrument : I like the action, I like the samples, I like the concept of the soundboard (the fact to put some "real" elements in this virtual world of digital piano) but I don't like the speaker system.

I'm waiting for CS 12, I dont know when it will be announced.

Thanks in advance for your help, and your advices, I am totally lost ... :-(

Olivier

I tried a Kawai CA97 at "La maison du Piano" in Lille few months ago, and I had the same impression : a blurry, muffled sound. In my opinion this is the way they sound, not an hardware or factory issue or whatever.

I was in this very nice shop yesterday, talked a bit with the boss. He had the same impression with a CA 78 (I think).
However, he said that people who own a Kawai, very often, love it afterall.
I think that in fact, the sound is strange, but when you are used to it, you finish by loving it : like a new kind of intrument : not a real piano, but a real instrument.

My question is more about : why is this intrument sounding so much different with speaker than with headphone ? If they want to make a blurry sound, why only with speakers ? So for me, it looks like it is not deliberate but a speaker limitation.
This shop will have a CA 98 soon, I will try it again, so with different room configuration ...

Something to consider, I am no sound engineer or expert, and have not tried these model myself ... as yet, but here it goes anyway.

With headphones you will get the "perfect" stereo image free of room effects, a simple configuration for L/R output resulting from a multi sampling input to give you an intended result.

Onto the speakers, now you have 4 speakers coming out the top, 2 in front, and a soundboard, the imaging or spatial projection will have to be produced be the speaker configuration giving it some sense of space, i.e. where are sounds are coming from. Presumably there are cross over frequencies and it may that there is some overlap in some frequency ranges, who knows, anyway, It all sounds very complicated to me. Interestingly, the later models got rid of the speaker grills at the front ,but instead we have a small gap at the top which may well make some of the projection worse for those frequencies ( I suspect), but that's another matter. Dropping the grills makes the cabinet look somewhat nicer though

It would not be too surprising to me that in combination with in a real room, you are going to get a very complex sound field, with all manners of constructive/destructive interference happening, playing havoc with the actual sound projection before we even worry about complicated multi channel sampling input, it may will give you a sense of sound projection that is confusing your ears. My suspicion ... you are perhaps sensitive to it ... and not liking it.

I always find consoles boxed in sounding, some to do a better job than others ( IMHO Roland LX17 leads the field in that department) but mostly, to me, it's as if the sound is too contained for me personally, lacking a well defined spatial component also. I am more of a fan of the simple stereo field solution with monitors at ear height, simple, but effective, it projects well, and you know what you are dealing with, and it is much simpler to deal with the room.

There are reasons sound engineers mix this way and not complicate matters. Noone would put their speaker facing upwards and expect to get a decent stereo image for example, though it would work to some degree, a lot of imaging is lost that way, things get very complicated, and then having to worry about your sampling with multi mics ....

Perhaps they are trying to be too fancy for their own good sometimes ... in some respects.

Personally I have liked what I heard of the multi channel sampling over headphones or monitors in demos, I have no idea, not having tried them how well Kawai paid attention to the interaction of such a complex input model with a multi speaker output. It sounds like a hugely complicated task .. to me.

I'm about a month into my CA98, and really enjoy the sound. Although at first, I was a little disconcerted about Pianist Mode, generally preferring the Sound Mode initially. However, I found that I needed to work on Pianist Mode EQ via the User Tone Control in Sound Settings. Not sure if this was where you made the adjustment to EQ when you adjusted the CA98 you tried.

That made a big improvement in the sound. For me, I widened the frequency range in the Mid-Bands (there are two adjustments you can make with Mid-Low and Mid-High Frequency Range), then lowered that new range Decibel level. That really took out the "boominess/boxy" sound, and made a much clearer sound. I have two Pianist Mode models I saved, one uses the Normal Voicing (set in Virtual Technician) and the other uses Bright2 Voicing. I'm quite pleased with those models and the Normal Voicing is my default.

I had both the V1.0.1 and upgraded to the V1.0.2. Can't really tell much difference on the EQ between the two. Just know for my ears, I needed to make some tweaks to the Pianist Mode to make it really usable for me.

On a side note, I recently tried the Garritan CFX Lite engine using the Line In on the CA98. Now I'm a bit conflicted, since it sounds really pretty amazing. :-) Just started experimenting with that, I'd say that Pianist Mode is in the same league as Garritan CFX IMHO, but I didn't really tweak the CFX Lite yet. I'm sure there's more potential But with the CA98 keyboard action and sound system, the CFX Lite is a real joy to play.

Good luck, and I'd say don't give up on the CA98. With a small amount of effort, you can get a great sound.

Tommy,
Thanks for your answer.
So I will wait for this (wonderful) shop "La maison du Piano" to get one CA98, and take the time to adjust the sound, as you mentioned.
When I tried the CA98 in Paris, there was a lot of climatisation noise (in winter, yes !) in the shop, which did not help me to analyse the sound.

I still think that even if it is not like a real pinao, when you are used to your instrument, you can love it. For instance, I'm used to my oooold CLP 170, even it is very far from a real piano (the sound is not very rich, the dynamic is low) but i'm used to it, and the 8 speakers configuration is a wonder.

Olivier

This place starts to look like Kawai’s official forum.

It’s simply because Kawai arguably provide more bang for the buck compared to current offerings from other manufacturers.

Aye, lad. And Kawai acoustics sound even better. No Piano Mode or Sound mode to worry about. One sound! Wonderful.

AND if you get the silent version, you get a decent digital in a little box to the left, underneath.
With all the variables . . . . .

I am a Kawai user too, only curious why there are so many kawai posts here.

BTW I think Kawai and Roland are both good choices.

There was a lot of Yamaha post when they released the new new 6xx serie.
The fact is that the CA x8 has just been released and many people have just tried it and want to share their impression.

The board seems to go in cycles. Years ago all the talk was Yamaha and Roland. More Yamaha, but both were prevalent. And Kawai was little spoken of.

Perhaps that's because they were so hard to find. I was looking for a Kawai piano ten years ago. I had a Kawai acoustic ... a full-size 50" upright, and I wanted to look at their digitals. I couldn't find a shop that stocked any Kawais, and I didn't like the Roland HP-series. (That was before the age of super-natural.) So I bought a Yamaha.

That was in South Florida. I don't know what is available there today, but I'm now in Raleigh, NC and Kawais are easy to find. The local Maus Piano shop had a wide variety when I visited late in 2016. But that was long before the CA98 came on the market. I'll have to go back there one of these days to see the new pianos.

Perhaps Kawai has improved their distribution channels? Perhaps it's because they've introduced some real improvements in the action? Perhaps it's because they've filled a need with that VPC model? In any case I'm strongly inclined to make Kawai my next piano.

Me too. I'm just waiting for that VPC-2 and that lovely GF compact . . . . you lot need to try that out. It's good.

+1. I agree with this - and the fact that they just released a lot of new models makes for all the Kawai-chatter here.

Osho

I'll add that having Kawai James, an official company rep, frequent the forums with honest and useful information, creates a lot of good will and gets people enthusiastic about their products which causes engaged discussions. It's also easier to talk about the Kawai's in some respects as they are very open about their development, versus for example, Yamaha which we still don't know what the GT action looks like (and sorry no, I'm not ready to open mine up )

In the high-end trim level Yamaha had a dominating position for several years. Kawai is doing things right to grab a good chunk of the cake. Roland is catching up too since the newer versions of sound modeling. This is a good thing because it will shaking the market up and Yamaha has to deal with its competitors.

It's also a good thing that the DPs differ from one to another which gives us the opportunity to choose what we like instead of dealing with the same thing in a different look.

I think there's a lot to be said for "bonding" with whatever piano you have. I had a decent Yamaha Arius (see, not all Kawai only posts. :-) ) that I really enjoyed until I got the CA98. And it took a few weeks to really get tuned into the sound and overall personality of the piano. Of course, I fell in love with the action immediately!

Who knows, maybe the more metaphysical folks here would say the instrument chooses you. :-)

Good luck with your piano search, Olivier. On a side note, I fell in love with all that a keyboard has to offer when I heard Olivier Latry at the Cathedral of Notre Dame about 10 years ago. An amazing moment! I believe he's has a performance there this March, be well worth seeing.

Tom

Well that was a valiant effort but not entirely successful ;-)

Salut Olivier,

I was recently in the market for a new DP, and tried all the models above. Like you, I found the CLP action too weird (there is a 'notch' you have to push past to get the keys moving). I liked the LX17, but found the action too light, and the sound a little 'electronic'.

My favourite was the CA98, and I initially decided to buy it, but... The longer I played it, the less I liked it. It's hard to describe why, except that I became more and more aware that I was playing a digital piano, rather than an acoustic. Of course that's inevitable to a point, but I didn't feel happy spending so much money on something that wasn't close enough to the real thing.

However, in the same showroom was a Yamaha NU1X. I wasn't that impressed initially - the key action felt a little abrupt and clunky, but the more I played it the more I liked it. After a point, I forgot that this was a digital piano, and just wanted to play it more and more - especially through headphones, where the sound was amazing.

I ended up buying it, and after a month, I am very happy with it. Please, if you get a chance, do try one of these instruments, as I think you will be impressed.

However, one huge point to be aware of... The phantom loud note. This is covered elsewhere in these forums, but there is an issue with the NU action in that occasionally a soft note gets processed as a very loud one, which can be very disconcerting. The issue varies from instrument to instrument I believe, but it can be a show-stopper.

Anyway, bonne chance with your piano hunting, let us know what you end up buying!

Hi
I've not tried the NU1X but only the NU1.
I remember, the first time I hit a key with my finger, I was so surprised to feel the same impression as I was learning piano at home (when I was young), really different than other DP, that my brain really buggued : I was convinced it was a real upright piano, and I remember looking to the floor if there was an electric coord somewhere. Nice memory ...

May be I need to try a NU1X. I found one at 4800€, which become to be a bit expensive for me. And it is heavy, and can not be take to pieces (like the CA98 ...), and complex to move in another house because of the action which I imagine to be fragile etc.
I really need to try it.
But I need to go back to Paris because there is no shop in my town (Lille, France) where I can try one :-(