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Why don't we have a VPC 2 with full controller capabilities? Why don't we have a Korg Kronos Rack. Why didn't Roland put amazing sounds in, and bloody well support (many products also) the Fantom G? And wtf is up with the Ram in keyboards and notebooks?

We should crowd fund a new company for keyboardists. Show of hands?

Ps.. Pianoteq on Tablets.. :P

In fact, there is a Kronos rackmount.

IMO it all comes down to competition. Most of these companies have patents on their own key action designs and just kind of phone it in on the digital components. They seem to offer the bare minimum to stay competitive with everyone else in the market.

I was kind of surprised when I did a market-wide search for a new digital piano. So many units have cheap speakers and digital components that are decades old tech. It's the kind of market that a newcomer could totally come in and shake up, but the digital piano market is a bit too niche (aka unprofitable) to bother.

So sadly unless one of these companies become bored and feel like challenging the status quo I doubt it'll change anytime soon.

I suspect the opposite..... companies are working togeth...

Good luck fitting that into a 19" rack.

It should fit just fine in a 56" rack though.

Pianoteq from the Cloud doesn't sound so good does it?

1. Yeah! Where's my foldable 61-key "travel piano" with weighted keys?!

2. And ... why didn't the Intel Compute Cards ever take off? I wanna be able to stick one in any keyboard - so I can play any VSTi I want.


3. Last but not least - Why is USB-C such a mess?
State of USB-C 2019 - https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/

It works on Windows tablets.

Yet it still sounds mediocre on tablets, right?

There must be an infinite number of ways of saying Pianoteq's crap. Wonder what the compulsion to post them all, one after the other, is about. Must be something in the North Carolina water. Is it radiation?

I think Roland is one of the few companies that (maybe) use relatively recent hardware inside their digital pianos, being that piano modeling requires much more processing power than sampling technology. But the problem is that many don't perceive an "incredible" jump in sound quality (and there are also people that don't like at all how the Roland DPs sound), so the other competitors are happy to continue to sell products in the thousands of dollars range, when I guess they spend much less than $100 for the logic-board, speakers and amplificator. Maybe other $100 for the keyboard mechanics and $100 for the wooden parts if you consider a cabinet-style piano (but I'm exaggerating, being that the wood they use is very cheap). So, about $300 for something that you pay between $2000 and $3000. I think it's a profitable business: maybe they don't sell an incredible amount of units, but from each unit sold they make a very BIG profit.
You can see that from cabinet-style Casio digital pianos: in Europe they cost MUCH less than Yamaha and Kawai similar products, but I don't think they are so inferior as the price difference would suggest...

Yep. Take the Korg Kronos, even when it was released, the PC components were severely dated.

Yes, there is.Just as there are many ways to say it's wonderful. Right?

And yet the Kronos still remains today the best workstation/synthesizer on the market. Even the newer Yamaha Montage feels like a toy in comparison. That's how it works with the exponential development of technology nowadays. The more complex the design, the more chances the product can appear obsolete by the time it comes out of R&D. But specs alone means nothing. Lots of people are blinded by specs and that newer is better.

I've worked in the translation field a few decades. By the time a team is done translating a book about the latest version of Windows, MS Office or of a programming language, the book is already obsolete because there is a new version of the product coming out. But people need to read about technology and wait for the translated books to be out.

How old are the patents and designs for the Steinway D, the Hammond B3, the Mellotron or Moog modular systems ? Yet, no manufacturer of digital instruments can correctly emulate them today in their newest "most perfect yet reproduction". In 1989, I bought a MIDIboard to get the best keyboard controller available then. I payed twice as much as a VPC-1 back then. Calculate the inflation rate. Nobody would pay that much today - the product would be a total failure profit-wise for any company. Yet, it works perfectly after 30 years, has poly aftertouch, wooden keys and offers quite complex MIDI/SYSEX programmability. Are its components obsolete ? Sure. But try to find a better and more complete controller today of similar quality. Good luck.

Yep, I don’t disagree. I had a Kronos, a superb instrument (well it was when I got my third one, first two had keybed problems). But it could have been so much more. The biggest pain for me was having an idea spring into my mind, going to the Kronos, turning it on, and having to wait what felt like 5 mins for it to boot up (probably about 2 mins in reality). That was one of the main reasons I sold it. Something that I believe could have been avoided with a more modern 64bit CPU and motherboard etc.

The original Kronos had an off the shelf intel D510MO motherboard and unless they’ve changed things, you couldn’t simply replace with a motherboard of your choice. There was concern at the time about lack of replacement parts in years to come.

Things like the B3 were built to last and can still be repaired today, I wouldn’t want to spend £2500 on a synth only to find 10 years down the line the motherboard has blown and the synth is now useless.

But there’s zero competition for the Kronos.

What? Some minutes to boot up? Maybe it has a mechanical hard disk with gigabytes of data to load at startup?

P.S.: I'm glad I can play on my digital piano after 2 seconds from the power on...

Yes, the load time was getting oppressive for me. A new, faster computer with SSD was a big improvement.

But you gotta pay the price for realistic piano sound. There's no way around it.

With the Kronos, always remember you have to turn the unit on before you have a good musical idea.

Personally, it doesn't bother me so much. Maybe it's because in the past I was used to a similar situation when starting my Hammond C3 and Leslie. On Hammonds with the full-size tone generator, you have two electric motors. So to start the organ, you need to hold a first switch about 30 seconds - this makes a strong but imprecise electric motor initiate the rotation of the many wheels and gears in the tone generator. Then, you turn on the other switch which calls a more precise but delicate electric motor to keep the thing rotating. Meanwhile, the Leslie amplifier vacuum tubes are not done warming up, so they remain silent for a while.

I also have happy memories of an old sampler I had, called an Ensoniq Mirage. At startup, it needed to load a 3,5" diskette before making any sound and this took quite a moment. The worse was that every time you wanted to change sounds, you had to load another diskette and wait again. I remember doing live gigs with this thing, I would always glue a piece of paper on it to remind me which disks to load before each piece. I really like my Kronos now, despite its startup time. About 400 lbs lighter than a Hammond and I can change sounds right away.

But in ten years, there'd be a new and better synth on the market, cheaper! And your musical taste would have changed, so you wouldn't need all the old patches . . . <g>

You just haven't bought into "planned obsolescence" in its full glory.<G>

PS -- I am faced with replacing a ROM sample-holding chip on my PX-350, _if_ it's still available; I have more sympathy for your point of view than I express.