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On my keyboard and I think all others I've tried when I hit a loud note with the pedal down followed by a soft hit of the same note - both the loud and soft note are sounding at the same time. On a real piano the striking of the soft note would deaden the sound of the loud note.
Is this standard for digitals or do some cancel out the first sounded note?
I dont necessarily see this as a problem because its kind of a nice effect to have both sounding with the type of music (Pop/Rock/Ballads) that I play but I would imagine in some classical pieces this would be undesireable.

My acoustic works the same as your keyboard.

Let me restate what I mean. The second note should cause the loud sound to diminish to some extent and obviously only one sound (perhaps a combination of the loud and soft) should be heard - not two distinct notes. At least that's what I think should happen. I was wondering if any high-end digitals do this.

Might be a false assumption.

Even the dampers need some time in contact with the string to silence it. The hammer strike is really fast and the hammer is in contact with the string for a fraction of a second. So it's very different from e.g. a guitarist touching a guitar string to silence it.

So, it makes sense that it doesn't silence the string, much anyway. But instead it adds a new impulse of energy to it. Probably in reality it's a mixture of both, but I'm not good at "physicsing".

Yes, the piano is a percussion instrument. Does hitting a drum head a second time silence it?

Only in half the cases; it depends on whether the second hammer strike is in phase with the already vibrating string, or whether it is in counter phase. Half the time it would go the one way, half the time the other. But at any rate, the hammers are designed relatively hard, so that they generate sound when hitting the strings. The dampers, on the other hand, are designed soft, so as to dampen the sound. Although there would theoretically be some dampening effect of the second hammer strike, in reality the effect will probably always be to increase the sound.

And the sounds from both "hits" are resonating in the other strings, as the pedal is down.

I think this is a good opportunity for an experimental approach. Surely there are enough people with acoustics on this forum to test out the behaviour.

We might even find an older piano with hardened hammers that hasn't been recently voiced has a different behaviour to one with new hammers or recently voiced hammers.

There are 2 approaches:

Let S1 be the first strike.
Let S2 be the second strike of the same note (with pedal depressed).

1) Output = S1 + S2. In this case the piano engine plays both the notes. I think all the piano VST and all sample-based digital piano engines do this. It's the easiest approach. This of course will reduce the number of max notes you can play.

2) The engine uses S2 as an impulse to modify S1. So only one note plays (the modified S1) with a reset envelope. Polyphony is not affected. Roland modeled engines do that (so they claim to have unlimited polyphony).

Both the approaches sound good for the listener. I'm not into Physics, so I don't know which of the two is more realistic. What I can say is that (2) is better for polyphony (but you cannot do that with a fully sampled engine).

It's the first time I hear that with a damper pedal on and re-striking a key with lower velocity should somehow "cancel" (?) the previously louder note. I don't even see how that might happen. At the strike point the hammer is detached from the key and even if it may exhibit some dampening properties due to phases, it's still too light and free to rebound from the string vibration as to not dampen it. It would have dampened it if for some reason it was held at the string as is the case with the piano dampers. But in this case it's moving and will rebound with almost no energy lost. As a matter of fact, the sound can increase because it might be adding energy to the already vibrating string, depending on the phase. But in any case, the general behavior should rather be to have the already louder sustain prevail over the lighter strike.

Like if somebody took a Casio Grand Hybrid action and put it inside a real grand.

Though I guess then the piano would work like a clavichord and the sound would cut already when you release the first note.

So, it's a Casio Clavichord Hybrid action.

And as for the original topic: even old and low end digital pianos get it right.

LOL, I thought exactly the same but decided not to mention it, so that we don't turn this thread into yet another dead horse beating (Great minds think alike )

From the start I was puzzled by "both the loud and soft note are sounding at the same time".
If it's the same note ... how can there be two of them, with one loud and one soft.
It's just one note.

Perhaps the second strike has altered the remains of the already sounding first strike.
But in the end there can be only one tone playing.
It's just one note.

So, as you say ...

Um.... beating a dead cow?

Except for the fact that the usual system used by sample DPs and VSTs doesn't play one note - as explained above, it triggers a second voice which possibly might be out of phase with the first, making a richness of tone which would be impossible on an acoustic piano. Therefore the modelled system - or a sample based one using an algorithm which modifies the first tone is more authentic.

But I agree in so far as it hardly matters anyway, so long as glaring inconsistencies don't emerge.

FWIW --

There's a video by Chilly Gonzalez that's relevant, but I can't find it.

He begins a piece with a rumble (I don't know a better word) in the low bass -- many repeated soft keystrokes, which build up sound slowly. My sense is that he keeps the dampers off the strings -- that the keys are always slightly depressed. (I think a grand piano allows that; I don't know if an upright does.)

It's roughly equivalent to a soft roll on a bass drum.

My PX-350 triple-sensor keyboard can produce several "Note On" messages, for a single key, without a "Note Off" message. I'm not sure if all DP keyboards can do that, or if it requires a 'triple-sensor" action.

The PX-350 sound generator is sampled, not modelled.

I can duplicate Chilly's "bass rumble" using Pianoteq, using my PX-350 MIDI output. I _can't_ duplicate it with my PX-350's built-in sounds.

So I'd be careful about broad statements claiming that "all DP's" or "all VST's" have a particular behavior, with that kind of (simulated) multiple-hammer-strike excitation.

I _suspect_ that it's easier to achieve with "modelled sound", rather than with "sampled sound", but I don't have enough evidence, or enough theory, to be confident.

Triple sensors are quite common in digital pianos. I would say dual sensor is becoming the exception (Yamaha GHS keyboard typically).

One way to render it with sample is to leave the voice which render the first note active when adding an independent voice which render the second... then a third voice etc. When we get out of the available polyphony, we just have to cut the lowest voice (or the least recent... this behaviour is easier to program : we don’t need to compute the current power of each voice)

Not my experience. On a real grand, a quiet strike on the same key after a hard strike (with pedal down) does not diminish the effect of the original strike.


That's pretty much the definition of what the triple sensor lets you do.

The creature in the animation has features of both a horse and a cow.

So, it's a hybrid.

A corse or a how.

And being a large animal you could say it's a Grand Hybrid.

And just like in the animation there are people who only touch a Grand Hybrid with a long stick!



The horse is dead! Long live the horse!

(We need a new dead horse to beat I suppose. This one is starting to stink...)

A how-to corse?