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JoBert; Thanks for your reply.

A bit of a tangent, but there's some interesting background info about this behavior:

1. It didn't always work like this; when the NV-10 was released, you could reliably push a key silently and still have resonance. I think I may be partly responsible for this behavior, as I (and presumably others) reported a bug to Kawai where a key strike sometimes resulted in a silent second strike. It didn't affect normal piano or most VSTs, but for some instruments, or with features like Concert Magic or Touch Curve Off Setting, which don't use a velocity curve, you would hear a double-note. The fix for this was essentially to eliminate the ability to strike a silent note-on, but resulted in the change to the silent-key-resonance.

2. Since this worked before, and because the NV-10 has a reliable key-on sensor, there's no technical reason why this can't work. In fact, it would more realistically mimic an acoustic piano if the top key-on sensor always lifted the damper, regardless of whether a key is pressed all the way down or if a note is ever struck. This could work for any DP, including normal double- or triple-sensor keybeds too. Why don't manufacturers do it? I dunno. I have a feeling it would require a different sensing algorithm for piano versus all of the other instrument patches, and would also require additional translation to get it right for MIDI. Essentially, it would require 3-4 events per keystrike instead of two--damper up, note-on, note-off, damper down. I think that may be too big of a change to deal with from the accepted "note-on, note-off" paradigm. And in keeping with the thread title, apparently the AvantGrands don't even do this, even though they absolutely have the hardware and sensing in place to track absolute key position with Active Sense. Shrug...

As you know, this is how an acoustical grand piano works. Not only that, but there are contemporary composers who have made compositions using this effect. For example, Bela Bartok has at least one piece in Mikrokosmos where you are supposed to silently press and hold one key while playing others to have the string for the silent key resonate. The NV-10 would have behaved correctly with such pieces before, but no longer.

Yes, that's true. Bartok's is a rare but real-world example where the NV-10 doesn't work for that use. My point does go further than that though (in a kind of broad, industry-conspiracy way). Nearly all digital pianos (including the N1X I believe), depend on the equivalent of a note-on event to trigger the note resonance. So you have to trigger a "silent note" meaning you press the key all the way down lightly enough not to trigger a sound. A real acoustic has a continuously actuated damper, which lifts within the first 1.5mm or so of key travel, even if a note is never registered. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, ALL DPs have the ability to detect this state, yet none make use of it to activate open resonance on that string, even though it's absolutely how a DP works. Casio PX-150 doesn't do it. Roland's FP-60 doesn't. Neither does a Yamaha CLP-645, N1X or Kawai NV-10. I totally get that it's a bit of an edge case, but if you have something called "VRM" or String Resonance, and your goal is to accurately mimic how a piano does resonance, this seems like such low hanging fruit....so why doesn't anyone do it? Even the N1X/NU1X, with continuous key position sensing via Active Sense, which is even used for "smooth release" once a note is played, still won't lift a damper unless the key is fully depressed first. I wonder if I'm just missing something fundamental.

I don’t care much about Bartok (at the moment) or having key-off velocity and I can compare the Cybrid that behaves like a NV10 and the N1X and to me they are equally good.

But the piano geek in me wonders how come the NV10 supported silent press initially and then stopped supporting it through a firmware. I simply can’t relate it to my current knowledge about how sensor detection works 🤨 On the Cybrid if you silently press a key, the hammer will activate only the first sensing point but not the other two since they are after the escapement. Well, maybe if I press it a bit firmer to make the hammer jump ever so slightly to activate them but below certain limit it will send silent press (1), I guess that’s what JoBert describes. But how come the NV10 changed that behavior through firmware. I really have no explanation.

P.S. Now that I think about it more, is it possible that on the NV10 the second sensor is activated before the escapement? Then if you silently press the key it will activate first and second sensor and if some short time elapsed without activating the third sensor you can say “OK, that’s a silent press”. But maybe that led to side effects and they removed this logic? And so now only very very low velocities (that trigger all sensors though, e.g. a standard velocity measurement) are mapped to send a silent press?

I think I understood it better when the various fixes were being tested out, now I don't remember (though it's documented in JoBert's monster thread). I think the first fix involved simply filtering out velocity-1 strikes when touch curve was turned off, which eliminated the most egregious instances, but didn't address when the issue would happen in features like Concert Magic, and some VSTs like TrueKeys still reacted oddly to velocity-1 strikes in other touch curves. For the official fix, I think they just eliminated velocity-1 entirely (or something like that) so you need a real strike to register a note-on, and just pressing the key down slowly doesn't register the silent note.

Confirmed that the NV-10's second (middle) sensor is activated slightly before the escapement. I actually tried modifying the sensor strip height to get it to activate past the escapement so it could play off the jack, but due to way the strip is mounted, I couldn't get it consistent across the strip. It did work on several keys though! I was stoked

Not really. You wouldn't be able to switch between ur favorite 3 grands with the flick of a switch..... just think about all the walking you'd have to do. And then there is reverb. You'd at least need a concert hall and put em on a stage. And even then ur reverb "settings" are set in stone. Extremely unflexible and probably only suited for players with a mindset like that of Keith Jarrett.

Isn't that just a question of velocity curve adjustment? Or is there a shortcoming with the raw velocity measurements delivered by the sensors, ie. they aren't capable of measuring slow velocities?

Indeed, there is a setting on the Novus where you can tell it what MIDI velocities to consider silent. For example, you can configure it to consider MIDI velocities 1-20 to be silent. Then you can press the key silently while effectively lifting the damper off the strings.