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@Jaytee66's pics - that is a sight to behold my friend!

Good evening everyone,
Some participants in this forum state a clear preference for external sample banks such as 'Garritan'
I do not understand why Kawai or Yamaha's research labs fail to create banks of at least equivalent quality.
My question is quite naive but for me it's a real mystery
Good evening to all
Rovert

That’s one of the century misteries. Some will tell you it costs money but I’ve ran it successfully on a €300 machine.

There are significant drawbacks and benefits to VSTs.

A VST has the benefit nearly unlimited resources (the user must have a full general purpose computer they bring to the table), particularly storage space, memory and CPU, meaining you can simply store and playback vastly higher fidelity and lengthier samples. And the more powerful PCs get, the larger the sample libraries can get. The flipside is cost (you must bring your own additional hardware), and setup/optimization for latency and noise may be tedious.

A hardware DP needs to meet a particularly price point, and operate seamlessly and immediately. Additional storage and RAM add to cost, boot-up and instrument load/switching times need to be near-instant (you can't select piano and then wait for 2 minutes for a Garritan-sized bank to load), etc.

There are a few digital pianos that kind of bridge the gap. The Nords have user-accessible storage and downloadable sound banks. And Dexibell has larger samples and user storage as well. We may continue to see greater sample sizes in DPs, or we may see more and more components move to computational modeling, which is arguably less resource intensive and easier to bake directly into hardware.

RAM, ROM and CPU power is not more expensive when put in a DP than in a PC.
I still don't understand why a €10'000 DP can not have a least as much processing power, RAM, ROM, SSD... as a €500 notebook. They could just put the PC in a corner of the DP's case...

T

It is not only about costs. Most contemporary electronic devices, including digital pianos, are designed based on the principle of "planned obsolescence". If a dp included basic hardware that enabled flexibility and upgradeability that would kill the current business model.

I don't really buy that as a primary motivator. DP often go several generations without updating their sound engines or samples, and yet they still have new versions. And unlike iPhones, most DP users aren't upgrading their instruments every year (present company is probably the exception), particularly not in order to stay in the same tier of instrument.

And there are always ways to improve even if large sample sets were used. Higher fidelity recording, multi channel output, additional sampled or modeled behavior, action, faster hardware, even just new color/finish. And as technology improves, newer versions of these hypothetical DPs could support even larger samples still.

Paf and Rovert84,

I imagine that day is coming (it would certainly shave off a lot of development time for an upstart manufacturer) but I agree with Gombessa that there are still challenges. I’m curious how many of you running a <$500 computer setup are getting 100% reliability and low enough latency in terms of VST performance... although I was completely impressed by the level of realism, expression, and performance when I tested them for the Piano Buyer, I never once had a practice session that was completely error free using various VSTs and an inexpensive computer setup that purported to meet system requirements. When the primary motivators of digital piano buyers then to be low cost, ease of use, and little/no need for maintenance within the expected lifecycle, these sorts of problems would be considered unacceptable. Along those lines, the VST needs to be housed in a way that will last— some people still play digital pianos 10,15, even 20 years old. Not many personal computers are still running past 10.

(Wearing my asbestos full body suit in preparation for the responses)

I'd love to see a DP manufacturer partner with Pianoteq. Ya, ya, ya. I know many people are dissatisfied with the sound compared to sample libraries, but the overall quality and playability of all those instruments...built into a DP? It only makes sense if upgrades and new instruments can be added as available (obviously requiring a PT license on the side). (BTW- I own ~15 piano packages, not just PTeq so not making this suggestion randomly. I just think modelling may work better as a supplement to the internal DP sounds)

Of course, if they'd design the internal sound system to fully support external VST sound sources (i.e. dedicated configuration settings for them)... In other words, the manufacturers marketing this as: we know you want to use external sound engines and we've designed our piano to make them integrate seamlessly with our piano. Anyone who comes out with a piano with a great action and sound system and offers this will make a lot of sales IMHO.

I don't have any problem using a PC to house the external sound generator system. As the requirements for VSTs change (more, faster CPU/memory/storage) it's a lot easier to upgrade a PC than a DP.

I hope the manufacturers don't expect the upgrade path to be replacing a hybrid every few years as one might with a standard DP or stage piano. They are comparing these to acoustics and most people don't replace an acoustic every few years.

I hope I'm not a spoil sport pointing this out, but this is quite OT in this thread. It would be a good topic for its own thread though (well, has been, of course - several times, I would guess).

I think we are saying the same thing. One of the mains goals of this business model is to maximize revenue by diluting costs (especially R&D costs) along the maximum possible period of time. A way to realize this model is to force short buying cycles, for example by making a customer perceive a product as outdated or to actually make the product technically obsolete (for example, by making a product non-upgradeable or just by releasing the strictly necessary updates). But this just part of the strategy. The rest relies on reusing the same design in different models for the maximum period of time. Just look at the car industry, where the same design undergoes a series of cosmetic upgrades for a number of years. This is exactly what happens in the DP industry where the same software, electronics and mechanical components (samples, sound engines, keyboard actions, etc.) are reused for long periods in several generations of DPs that are marketed as "new" but which include very few innovations, if any.

If a DP manufacturer introduced a keyboard that could be upgraded or run VSTs then there would be no need to replace a DP until it fails. For this to change we need a new DP manufacturer or model that disrupts the market or to have the current DP manufacturers shifting from being just hardware manufacturers to selling services and products like sample upgrades, sound engine upgrades and VSTs as part of their business.

Where can i get the 1.0.2 update? On the german Kawai page, there aren't any downloads for the NV10.

This is a premium instrument and as such it's not expected for you to fiddle with firmware upgrades. Besides, it's a very complex procedure that also takes time, so it can only be updated by specialized and trained to do so personnel Joke aside, no, you can't update its firmware yourself. Only dealers are allowed to do so. Don't ask me why.

So, now that the honeymoon is over, are we ready to trade-in them Novus’?

You can get the firmware by contacting Kawai Germany.


That is not correct. See above.

Ah, OK, sorry. It's still unclear why it isn't available for download and you need to contact Kawai though. What's the difference?

I'm not perfectly clear about that myself. When I contacted Kawai for the firmware, the reason they gave me was something about the Bluetooth license, and that the pianos (CA78/CA98/NV10) are also sold in some markets without Bluetooth and thus a different firmware. Something like that. I don't recall the exact details.

Yes, that's correct.

Kind regards,
James
x

My fellow NV10 owners (and also CA78/98 owners) around here, could you please confirm the following bug (in 1.0.2) for me before I contact Kawai about it. I want to make sure that it's not simply my ears deceiving me.

The bug that I think that I have found is, that it is not possible to store a favorite for "Pianist Mode - Romantic" with a different ambience setting than the default.

To explain in a bit more detail: The default ambience for the Romantic rendering character is "Echo", which I don't like at all. So I wanted to store a favorite for this rendering character with a different ambience, in my case Natural. However, I think that this favorite was not stored correctly. When I selected it and played the piano, it did not sound like Romantic at all. Instead it sounded like the standard Classic.

But it could of course be that my ears deceived me, so could you please try the following and tell me what you think:

In Pianist Mode, select Romantic, set the ambience setting to Natural and then store this as a favorite.
You should now still be in Pianist Mode with Romantic/Natural. Play a few notes/chords/scales/whatever and remember how it sounds.
Then use the icon in the bottom right to switch to the favorites screen and select the favorite that you created above.
Again play a bit and compare the sound: Does it sound like it did when you were in Pianist Mode Romantic/Natural?
You can quickly switch between the two modes for some more tests: Just tap the icon in the bottom left to go to Pianist Mode (which should still be set to Romantic/Natural) or the icon in the bottom right to go to the favorites screen (where your new favorite should then already be selected). Switch back and forth playing a few notes in each mode and tell me if it sounds the same.
For me it does not: in Pianist Mode with Romantic/Natural, the piano is quite mellow. In the favorite (which was stored with Romantic/Natural) it is not so mellow but sounds more "normal". Actually, I think it sounds exactly like in Classic, so once you have done the above test, try this:
Tap the bottom left again to go to Pianist Mode and then swipe to Classic (which should automatically default to Natural).
Then make the same test as above, i.e. switch back and forth between pianist mode (now Classic/Natural) and favorites screen (with your new favorite selected). Do you hear a difference?
If my ears don't deceive me, it sounds as if the favorite, that was stored as Romantic, defaulted back to Classic.

I'm relatively sure (although not 100%) that this works with at least some of the other rendering characters. If you want to test that too: I think either Full or Rich (I never remember which one is which) has a default ambience of Large Room or Large Hall. For this too I changed the ambience to "Natural" and stored this as a favorite, but there it seemed to work, i.e. that the favorite still uses Full (or Rich), but also uses the non-default Natural ambience.

Thanks!

JoBert, I will try this a little later today and let you know what I find. (it is only 6:30 here.). But it brings up something I have been wondering about. I find that the sounds I use, only a few of them, in both Pianist and Sound mode, sound better with reverb turned off or ambience at small room with the slider at the far left for minimum. The room itself provides plenty of reverberation. Even with head phones on the reverb seems too much. Is that just me and my old ears? What do you guys normally set it at?