Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Just accept it: it'll NEVER be a real piano...

I don't think the sound of an acoustic piano will change in 300 years. In the same way I don't think an acoustic classic guitar or violin sound will be different. They are mature instruments, so the manufacturers are not interested in changing their typical sound timbre they worked so hard to find and refine. In the past centuries it was different, because the piano was a completely new and revolutionary keyboard instrument, evolution of the harpsichord.
So, in 300 years we could have a completely new keyboard instrument, successor of the piano, but it would not be a "piano" anymore. The piano is what we have now in the same way an harpsichord was and "is" an harpsichord and not a piano.
But, personally, I think it's very unlikely there will be an "acoustic successor/evolution" of the grand piano (I mean, a mechanical instrument, not digital) as the piano was for the harpsichord. Maybe in 300 years all the acoustic instruments will disappear, replaced by digital things.

i see DP as a cheaper alternative, a simulation, to have at home or with reduced space. I picked a DP that tries to sound like a $250.000 piano rather than a cheap sounding upright piano that needed maintenance.

You look around, you'll find a perfectly serviceable pre-loved piano for $250; might even get a grand for little more than that.
Sand it down, tweak it a bit, and . . .happy days!

Actions are a nearly-solved problem. Today's digital actions are quite nice, and those who still don't tolerate them have hybrid digitals as a no-compromise option. Output is really where it's lacking, and no foreseeable way to bridge the gap. No matter how many, how big, or what type of speakers you use, I've never sat down at a digital and thought "Wow, it feels/sounds like I'm playing a a real acoustic piano." I just don't think the air moves the same way.

A bit of a different angle.....

My RD-2000 is better than an acoustic... and I am not talking about the electronic stuff.

Feel: it feels better than an acoustic
Sound: It sounds better than an acoustic

Wha?!?!?

Yea, grind on this factoid (hey I made it up)... 95% of all the acoustic pianos ever made suck. They just suck. And... they are almost never in good tune. Remember those awful "mall pianos"? I played a Schroeder growing up... it sucked. I never knew it did. I never played on a good one for any length of time. My teacher, The Nun, had a Steinway.. small grand... but I was just a kid. I didn't really understand until I went to college. Even today, I don't have much opportunity to play a really good acoustic. So.... for me....

My RD-2000 sounds and plays better than 99% of my total playing time on acoustics.

Think of it this way: Modern digital pianos really raised the bar and just turned 95% of acoustic pianos into junk.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Wow, that's a strange viewpoint. Yes, an acoustic piano can go out of tune. And a neglected piano (tuned or not tuned) can be crappy.

But any decent acoustic piano beats any digital ... by a country mile. There's so much missing from the digital.

I don't know much about the RD-2000 ... but until I tried a Novus with its grand action, I never found a digital piano that felt anywhere near as good as a grand. Not even close.

I won't quibble with your your experiences or opinions ... but this all seems quite strange.

I doubt it. Nothing digital will ever take the place of, for example, drawing a real bow across real strings and producing this powerful singing tone with nothing but that bow, strings and a wooden box. And feeling that music vibrate through you.

There are times I visit this sub-forum just to get a good laugh from one of the feistier peasants. You guys never disappoint! 😆

I kid! I kid!

I would say though that when it comes to photography at an artistic level, digital still can't beat a roll of film and a darkroom. Digital is great and convenient for getting pics of the kids at Disney World etc.

I'm sceptical, too. But ... never say never! You just don't know what lies ahead.Would anyone in the 18th century have predicted flight, space travel, telecommuting, genetic engineering ... or anything else that has been discovered in the last 300 years?

No, but some things though just can't be improved upon that much. Getting from point A to point B, yeah. Time required for communication, ditto. Actually making music, I don't think so. It'd be like digitally-enhanced shower-singing.

They haven’t even recreated the real keyboard action in any other way than using an entire real grand piano action. And this is easier than recreating the sound. So, no big hopes of anything improving soon. Digital pianos are good. But no more than that.

The key item was "300 years". Things thought impossible will exist. Things not even dreamed of will exist.

But ... I can't wait for 300 years. I'll just go buy a Novus and be done with it. It'll be plenty good enough.

It's always like this. People now can't imagine what things will be in the future. People now have attachments to what they know and don't want to give them up. That's cool.

Your experience and opinions are what they are, but I humbly disagree. If any grand acoustic piano is in reasonable tune and has been decently maintained, it sound will run circles around even the top-end hybrid digital pianos.

Osho

+1. Sound system is where the DPs truly lack.

Osho

I would disagree, but I've shot better digital cameras than one you would see of "getting pics of kids at Disney World". But hey, to each his own viewpoint.

Each and every one of us is "clinging" to it. We're not talking about a whole new instrument with its own techniques and tonal characteristics. Most if not all of the debates and discussions here are how close this or that DP comes to being like "the real thing"...that is, the low tech hammers on strings. That's the standard. The improvements on the acoustic are really marginal: more portable, able to use headphones etc.

IMHO the current Roland V-Piano technology used in the RD-2000 (and I think in the top-models of the cabinet series too) is still not enough to get a good piano sound. To me, the previous SuperNatural technology (much more similar to traditional sample-based engines of Kawai, Casio and Yamaha) gives much more realistic results. You can hear this in the following video where the user compares the new modeled piano sound timbre with an old piano patch of the RD-700GX (a Roland DP from 2008). I think the old piano patch sounds better. More warm, more natural, more detailed, less boomy.


Starting from:
0:44, 2:52, 3:17 - new modeled piano patch
1:57, 3:03, 3:25 - old sampled piano patch

But I respect and praise Roland for taking the risk of researching and developing a new piano modeling technology (and allow the user to choose the old piano engine too, if he/she doesn't like the new) where most of the other manufacturers still are in the "short attack samples + boring looped parts" world, when with the current technology (and for "current" I mean with standard technology from 5-6 years ago) we could easily have so much more.

There is so much room to improve.

Well, the RD-2000 doesn't play and sound like an acoustic piano at all. It doesn't play like one because of its digital action. And it doesn't sound like one, because it sounds like a Roland SuperNatural Modeling Piano and this is how Roland wants it to sound like.

I think your standard for "acoustic piano" simply doesn't exist in reality as an acoustic grand piano, regardless of how well built and maintained it is. Just like a $100,000 concert guitar still will never play and sound like a Fender Stratocaster.

So when we use comparative terms like "better" or "worse", we measure towards a certain goal. For a traditional digital piano this goal is replicating the acoustic piano experience. Stage pianos like the RD-2000 are not made with that goal.