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Do you set up the digital to closely resemble the acoustic?
And how did you fare?

I started wondering if on an acoustic, due to natural resonance/feedback, do the notes of chord tend to phase align? If so, notes that are slightly out of tune might "pull" closer in tune when played together? Or are the string tensions too high for that?

Since all our keyboards are tuned in equal temperament, there are no intervals that match the overtone series. Perhaps you could ask the same question of two open strings on a violin, that are tuned exactly a perfect fifth apart and plucked.

The acoustic makes my belly fat jiggle.

Especially when playing big chords.

I try to set up my digital to respond like my acoustic as much as possible.

The biggest difference for me is still control. Over time I upgraded my digital to a vpc-1 with vsl d-274 light, which combination is the best I experienced so far. But, while imo impressive, It still doesn't give me quite the same kind of control, predictably, of my acoustic.

Then again, my u3 doesn't sound like this incredible d-274, but the control over the sound is still just better compared to my digital option. I will upgrade to the d-274 standard in a next sale, I wonder if I will notice an improvement worth mentioning by having double or maybe even more the velocity layers.

That said, my practice on the vpc-1 results in trouble-free transitioning to the u3.

I have my acoustic and electric about as close as is reasonable, as you can see from my sig line, without shelling out for a Shigeru Kawai concert grand and a big enough room to put it in. That said, they are different instruments, and I don't get the same sound or playing feel from them. But I have little trouble adapting to whatever piano is available. And in concerts, I've played on some far better pianos, and some far worse.

In my small-ensemble silent film scoring work, there are some compilations where I use the acoustic piano in some scenes and the electric in others, and so far no one seems to have noticed. Now that I'm recording the ensemble remotely, I'm mostly using the ES8. I don't need to add tuning issues and room sound to the complications of remote recording. Besides, my wife is working at home in the room with the grand, so even getting it tuned would be disruptive.

You would think that the SK-5 sound on the ES8 would sound more like my SG-2E, but I've never warmed to that patch. It feels weaker in the lower-mids than my real piano. (And what is going on with G2?) So I usually use the EX or the SK patches. For dance band and folk music, I have a "registration" saved with the "pop grand" preset, light touch, and even add some brightness, because it has more presence in a mix.

I was under the impression that the main difference between the standard and full libraries was just additional mic positions. So although there are more samples will this really make a difference in the fundamental sound or expression?

Your impression is correct. I'm talking about the "light" version of the d-274, not the "standard" version. It is not available as a separate buy, but it is included in a package with orchestral instruments I bought. This light version has "just" 30 velocity layers and 2 microphone positions. Still it beats anything i had before it, so I will be upgrading to standard later on, and I wonder if this upgrade will be very noticeable or not. This light version already plays very well, I think the evenness of sampling made possible by this robot finger is no joke, it is sampled extremely well.

Before this, I was always sceptical about vsl library's, since I hated the idea of dealing with a usb e-licenser. But I have to admit the quality of even this light version made me forget about that very quickly. The only thing that's a shame is the lack of una corda samples, or even an emulation.

In my experience Digital in terms of control is much more predictable/ repeatable than acoustic because they're mechanically simple. For VSTs, it may be the fact that your overall latency is still too high. Did you lock your CPU frequency and disable power states.

Um, I think I looked into that once a while ago, but I'm not actually sure if I succeeded.. How do I do that exactly, and is it supposed to make a difference really?

I do feel like I have a very slight latency issue with the vsl libary, but I don't think that's where my opinion comes from. I feel it's coming from the way the sensors work or something, or maybe an actual mechanical connection like on an acoustic just always gives a feeling of more control. Digitals always feel more jumpy to me in terms of velocity.

To me my U3 feels more controllable (especially in velocity/nuances) than any digital option I ever played, and when I try out a good grand piano at a piano dealer, usually I'm really amazed with the level of control a good grand piano offers, which can exceed my u3 by far.

My guess is that there's a much higher level of dynamic range available from the huge soundboard, compared to what you are used to hearing from home headphones/speakers. With any decently regulated and voiced acoustic, you can go from whisper quiet to thunderous very easily/naturally.

Yes. Although I need the soft pedal for my u3 to go whisper quiet. (this is easier on the digital) But there seems to be more between soft and loud, and all that is also very controllable.

But I suppose having all these velocity layers the standard or full version of a vsl library could make the difference smaller. This should also add "more" between soft and loud. I highly doubt it will be as controllable, but that probably has more to do with the controller itself.

U3piano, I remembered in another thread someone is complaining about the bright sound in Yamaha U series upright, and in that thread you said that you have your U3 voiced. Do you think voicing makes a big difference in your U3? For example, if I just sampled a random upright U3 from craiglist or a piano dealer that did not go through a lot of voicing or preps, does it feel better than, say your VPC1 and VSL Steinway?

Regarding to the dynamic range of U3, I only played U3 once more than 2 years ago. That is a relatively newer U3 and the impression was really good. However, recently I played VI Lab Modern U VST which is sampled from a U3. I do feel like the dynamic range is little bit lacking compared to VSL's concert grands. The tenor of Modern U feels weak, and the treble gets bright easily. How do you feel if you compare Modern U to your acoustic U3, in terms of dynamic range and control?

This concept is kind of antiquated, but common in high end software and equipment. I remember Avid Media Composer and other film editing software and other graphic software that required licensing "dongles" to operate. The modern equivalent is a subscription service that requires a login every 30 days in order to continue to operate like Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc).

And I would add, a very negative aspect of e-licensing that is based on internet connectivity is when that connectivity is no longer possible. Adobe customers experienced an issue a few years ago where the server that authorized products from Creative Suite 3 crashed (this included sales of Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Indesign, etc). Adobe either chose not to restore that particular licensing server, or did not have the ability to restore the licensing server to it's original operating parameters. Basically, anyone who purchased Adobe products of that version couldn't use the product they purchased if they had to install it on a new computer. I consider this a BIG DEAL, but it must not have bothered anyone at Adobe because they didn't change anything.

EDIT: I wanted to add that I paid several thousand dollars for that software, which became useless when their licensing server crashed. They did provide a substitute software upgrade for a period of a few months, but by the time I needed to re-install the software, this option had expired. $2500 down the drain!

So I have a Kawai MP11SE, and the touch is very even and the touchweight optimal, in my opinion. Therefore I try to adjust the touch on my acoustic to match the weight I feel on my digital, which is a tad lighter than my grand piano. The sound on my acoustic is still richer, with the wonderful vibrations and feedback inherent in an acoustic that a digital can't recreate. If I could just reproduce my digital's touchweight on my acoustic grand, the world would be perfect. I have a few more tricks to try, so maybe I'll get there.

IMHO one of the (many) differences between the sound of a typical internal piano engine and a true acoustic is that on a digital when you play gradually from pianissimo to mp there are very few changes in the details of the sound. It's more like a volume change (sometimes with a low-pass filter added).
You feel some substantial changes only when you go in the forte/fortissimo range, with the sound much more harsh. I think that happens because manufacturers use to arrange most of their (3-4) velocity layers more in the upper range of the velocities, because in this way the DP sound is easier to mix with other tracks (and IMHO because beginners pianists are happier when they bang hard on the keys and feel that typical pop/rock harsh piano sound, rather than playing soft and hearing a very sweet and round soft sound).

All of this should improve considerably when manufacturers finally decide to use a decent amount of velocity layers (i.e. at least 12 velocity layers for each key) or when they take the path of the physical modeling. I would not be surprised if Roland digital pianos with modeled engine are very pleasant to play in the low velocities range.

Wouldn't have thought so. Two or three velocity samples should be sufficient; anything inbetween is electronically calculated and will probably result in a cleaner, nicer delivery at the fingers, though not perhaps how an acoustic might.
You would need more samples for that, but they'd need to be pitched in the right place as per instrument which it had been sampled from.
That would be tricky, and expensive.
And when the engineers have finished with it, would that still be the case?
I rather think not!

I'm pretty sure anything inbetween is just the closest velocity layer sample with a low-pass filter applied on it. Being that the few layers are neatly modified so that they are not so much different (I checked with the spectrogram in Audacity), in this way it's possible to make a very smooth transition from a layer to another one. But, unfortunately, this at expense of many details you lose during this process. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean when you say "the samples need to be pitched in the right place", but anyway even if it's difficult and tricky, that's the audio engineers work and that's the reason they are payed for, I guess...

Time for another BDPSD project!