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Dear all,

Here it comes again. I just identified another defect on my second ES8 unit.

All keys above G6 sounds sustained regardless how long they are pressed. The sounds remains for about two seconds even if the keys are immediately released. Up to F6 all sounds as it should.

The velocity control works properly but the notes just keep on playing and gradually fades away as if the keys would be hold pressed. It happens with all sounds on Piano 1 and Piano 2 sets but it is just fine with all other instruments.

The sustained pedal is not connected and the firmware is the latest v1.07. I've already tried a factory reset with no luck.

Could it be an issue with the software? Or rather one sensor that is not needed by E. Pianos, Organs or Harpsichords?
Surprisingly I never noticed it before, even with the older firmware, but it also true that I rarely go so high on the octaves.

I'm going to contact the retailer support service, but I'm just wondering if anyone has experienced the same issue.

Too bad for me, this is my second defective unit. (here my previous experience) So depressing....

It's normal. Acoustic pianos have no dampers on the top octave and a half or so (it varies slightly from one make of piano to another). The strings are so short and therefore their sustain is short such that dampers are not necessary. All digital pianos mimic this behaviour.

[EDIT: I see EssBrace answered slightly quicker...]
This is not a defect but works as designed. It mimics the behavior of an acoustic piano, where the upper keys do not have string dampers.

It is kind of amazing how many times people will cite this "issue" with new acoustic and digital pianos. I wonder if there should be a warning label or something...

Really? Is that so?

That sounds reassuring but the difference between F6 and G6 sounds so weird. It's too late now to check how my old acoustic behave but I will have a go tomorrow morning.

I guess I jumped the guns because of my previous bad experience. Truth is that I really don't go so high on octaves and never realized that.

Thanks a lot for the quick replies. There is always something to learn.

Cheers,
F.

Picotin, I was surprised by this too (live an learn). RD2000 has exactly the same behavior.

Some acoustic pianos have addressed this issue by starting the undamped region with F6. No more drastic difference between F and G, thus solving the problem Once And For All

Well, it's mentioned on the 'Troubleshooting' page of the owner's manual (p.135), however perhaps this information could be placed in a more prominent position?



Kind regards,
James
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You don't necessarily need to play your acoustic to check this - if you open the lid I believe you will see that there are no dampers on the topmost notes.



Indeed.

May I kindly request that you edit the subject/title of this thread to reflect the fact that this behaviour is not a defect, please?

Kind regards,
James
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Fair request. Done it.

I thought about it already yesterday but I didn't want to change the post in order to reflect my original misunderstanding and the proper corrections by other contributors.

I agree with you tough that the title was misleading, so I removed the mention of "defect" in it. I kept it in the post in order to conserve the thread's narrative and my lesson learnt.

Thanks all for the enlightenment, it also spared me the time to write back and forward to the supplier.

Thank you very much!

James
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How many people over the last couple of centuries, having taken delivery of a brand new piano - great or small, grand or upright - write letters of complaint, or post in public forums/magazines to report a fault, when they realise that notes at the top of the piano do not sustain? The effect is exactly the same for DP and acoustic. It does sound strange at the crossover point - always has done.

Could it be that acoustic piano players are, on average, far less demanding about these details? Including key noise and the minutiae of key action, and slight differences in tone from one note to the next.

Yes, I believe we are all becoming obsessive about the qualities of DPs. In the pursuit of the perfect instrument with silent action and none of the idiosyncrasies in acoustic pianos, we are slowly robbing the beauty of what makes acoustics pianos so desireable-their imperfections. I think most DP users with limited to no experience of an acoustic piano would be appalled at the clicks and clangs of acoustic piano actions, the noisiness of the dampers, and the odd overtones here and there. The DP world is evolving an instrument into Something else. Which DPs are of course something else. Its no wonder we all love when DP manufacturers incorporate the imperfections of acoustics into their samples and modeling.

Some do users like the imperfections of the real piano, others don't. I think both of them are right in their own way. I like the flexibility of the better VSTi such as Garritan CFX and Pianoteq to regulate these effects. But my point wasn't quite that. It was more that, until DPs came along, most pianists were not so demanding and exacting about every tiny aspect of the instrument. Tuning was important, a 'beautiful tone' was important. And it was important for the keys in the middle of the piano to work.

For more advanced players, expressive capacity was important, and perhaps key weighting - but this was the realm of the highly sensitive concert pianists like Pollini, Frankl or Gould.

By the way, in the post above, I should have said 'the high notes don't dampen' not 'don't sustain'......my mistake 😣

You are so right. I have a Kawai Es 110 but once a week I go to piano lessons and get to play a 9 foot concert grand and yeah there are all kinds of sounds going on. Of course it sounds beautiful while most of those sounds are heard only by the piano player.

Perhaps we should have a FAQ where this issue is addressed.

Or at least they should. ;-) They should also slightly ring when you play other harmonically related notes.

This thread opened the discussion on an interesting topic. I quite agree with what has been said so far. If we, for instance, were to take the "loud" Fatar action and test it against your average AP, I'm willing to bet the AP will be louder. Thing is, since the sound produced by the piano is even louder, you'd hardly even notice it. The ability of the DP to play silently with headphones seems to have created this unreal expectation of having a Maxwell Smart, Cone of Silence thing going on in the practice room.