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What do you thnik about Steinway and Sons Spririo R?

https://www.steinway.com/spirio-r

Its perfect piano!

Bernard

I thought it was just an app but you have to buy a Steinway with it

https://www.keyboardmag.com/gear/steinway-sons-unveils-spirio-r

As long as the app is free, it's okay...

Still, Steinway has not added a silent mechanism? What the heck is wrong with these people?
They keep making unsubstantiated claims about how “precise” the Spirio system is, but the truth is that musicians don’t give a crap about this! This ‘player-piano’ feature is incidental; however, being able to control the volume, play through headphones, and now even play through the piano’s soundboard are truly magnificent features; none of which the Spirio has.
Can Steinway truly not see where pianos are headed?
Yes, the Steinway acoustic is a great piano, but just as with any other acoustic, it’s not for everyone (price, maintenance, neighboring concerns, space, etc..), so why the heck are they ignoring this reality?

The Spirio is (partially) targeted to a very different customer group that has no need for the features you mention:
The customers are (ultra) rich people who don't even play the piano themselves, who buy the piano as a status laden accessory/furniture piece to decorate their home. And with the Spirio, they can then have world class pianists play this expensive instrument for them - via a recording. So it's a mix of a status piece and an expensive juke box.
And to be honest - why not? Think about it: Instead of listening to Lisitsa or Barenboim on your expensive Bang & Olufson (or whatever), you could hear them play on an actual Steinway in your own home, whenever you want. And if that Steinway costs no more (in relation to your income), or maybe even less, than a Roland FP-10 would cost us (in relation to our incomes)? And in your mansion you have enough space for it anyway.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if Lisitsa or Barenboim actually do Spirio recordings.

I agree. Well said. We recently got to demo one of these Steinway Spirios in a Steinway store, and these were our exact thoughts. They are awesome, and sound fantastic, but certainly were made to fill a tiny niche within another tiny niche.

Spirio also allows you to record your own live playing. Instantly and easily. Don't overlook that as a brilliant feature for standalone acoustic piano!
Useful to hear real performance back perfectly from actual piano and appreciate yourself from your armchair, far better than any microphone + speaker reproduction. (And much easier than dragging out mics, mic stands, XLR cables, recording gear and almost no technical audio engineering expertise required.)
Record one half of a piano duet and play / practise the other. Record the teacher's playing for pupils to study / children. etc.
For those owning a Steinway at home or in a music school, it is much more useful and handy.
For a recital hall, sound crew can come an try out numerous miking techniques (for PA / recording) on the actual piano without needing a pianist to play for them repeatedly for hours.
For piano competitions, performers can play in one hall, (maybe for 1st set of judges) and 2nd set of judges can listen "blind" from another piano in another hall without visual bias of who performer is, just listening to piano's sound only. Absolutely unbiased judgment of playing only.
If you were buying a new model D or model B, it's hard to imagine any reason why you wouldn't want to include Spirio built in too. So many advantages.

Yamaha have had Disklavier for years, and Bosendorfer have had the CEUS system for years, and Spirio is really Steinway's answer to that.

If this is Steinway’s answer to Yamaha’s Disklavier, they’re about two decades late.
The Disklavier does everything listed above and then some.
Then there’s the TransAcoustic! I wonder what Steinway’s answer would be to that; perhaps they’ll strap a couple o’ speakers to the Sipirio and call it the Spirio II..... “The most accurate rendering of the acoustic footprint ever heard through -Mackie- speakers.”

I haven't really kept up with the Spirio, but I also thought it was always kind of a half-baked Disklavier. Didn't it originally not let you record at all, and only streamed performances from the cloud?

I have friends with a new Steinway M that has the non-r Spirio. If I were using my own money to buy a Steinway I don't think I would bother with it. But I guess if my income was high enough where adding it amounted to pocket change, them why not? Shrug...

I think the main goal is allowing Steinway owners to save on musician's fees and instead let their instrument play itself. In essence make everyone except a few "Steinways artists" jobless.

That's a bit far-fetched Joe...how many professional pianists make their living off playing in bourgeois living rooms day in and day out? Are Steinway B owners competing with major concert venues to have Billy Joel play in their home rather than at Madison Square Garden (or wherever he plays)? And who wants to see a player piano which we've had from the 1800s just go off on its own with a recorded track? If Steinway is wildly successful with the Spirio-r, it will see a small fraction of the use of the decades-old Disklaviers, IMHO.

I have a query in to my local Steinway dealer, asking if there's any technical information available on the Spirio-R. Like:

. . . Does it use MIDI ?

. . . Is it compatible with other MIDI-based systems ?

. . . Could I use my Steinway keyboard to drive my synth, or vice versa ?

. . . What does "high resolution" mean ?

and so on . . .

I await the information with bated breath . . . .

Yes, it is MIDI compatible, and can transmit the basic messages to & from other MIDI equipment, but primarily uses its own better-than-MIDI resolution to capture and record music for Spirio playback.
However, funnily enough, the recent MIDI 2.0 spec will now leapfrog and supersede even the resolution of Steinway Spirio!
Dynamic levels for key velocity :
MIDI = 7 bit = 2^7 = 128 dynamic levels
Spirio = 10 bit = 2^10 = 1,024 dynamic levels
MIDI v2.0 = 16 bit = 2^16 = 65,536 levels

MIDI with the right standard extension has a 14 bits velocity resolution.

I just wonder this system keep improving, and when your outdated will this effect on resale value? or lets say the resale value compare to non spirio system?

With a 1020 velocity resolution, 800 samples / s.... I guess that if Steinway improves the system, very few people if any would hear something better.

The main thing I would be afraid of is the regulation needed by the Spirio system.

Also, I suppose but may be wrong that the Spirio system is closed (no MIDI import) and just playback song from the Steinway library. Perhaps we will have an offer like Disklavier or CEUS which can record yourself and import/export in a MIDI format.

As long as they are the quasi standard for concert halls & schools they don't have to care about private owners. Their aren't a consumer brand, they are a brand that mainly targets profesional clientel. And I don't see that those are going to switch to digital anytime soon.

In the recording studio at which I am based we have a Hamburg Steinway Model D Grand Piano with a 'Live Performance LX' MIDI record and playback system fitted. The solenoid based mechanism is extremely reliable and able to play encoded files from disc (Zenph 're-performance' recordings) as well as play and record MIDI files from a DAW (we use Logic Pro).

We have recorded numerous albums and tracks for both solo piano and piano based pop songs. Our clients can record, perfect and edit their piano tracks using any MIDI capable keyboard or digital piano, and then send us the MIDI for playback and recording on our Steinway using premium mics, preamps & D/A converters. It's not surprising that the demand for this service has increased in the last 12 months.

This type of devices appeared more than 100 years ago; see, e.g., Welte-Mignon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8tWYmFIfI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welte-Mignon

Even old mechanical hurdy-gurdies belong to this line.

When such a record is mechanically reproduced on a different instrument in different acoustic environment (however good it is), we cannot expect to hear tiny nuances, which a human performer produces in his (her) individual performance. Consequently, a good acoustical (not mechanical) recording may sound better, depending on the music style.

First, why was my rant on Steinway redacted? Did you have something to do with this, Mickey?

Second, FloRi89, the “concert” hall as we know it is dead, it just doesn’t know it (kept artificially alive by donations). This is something the great Glenn Gould predicted, and as with many other things he predicted, he was right!

Third, many “professionals” play digitals and are perfectly fine with that. This notion that professionals only play acoustics because, you know, digitals are toys is outdated. And the presumption that only “classical” musicians can be virtuosos is also not true; as a matter of fact, most of today’s classical-virtuosos are robot-like musicians simply playing whatever seems more flashy and technically impressive to the audience, but lacking significantly in true and profound understanding of what it is they’re playing; if they did understand, they would’ve burned everything Liszt wrote!

Steinway is wrong! And they will pay for it! Mark my words!



P.S.

I’m not saying that Steinway should build average, middle-of-the-road digitals; I’m talking about Steinway building top-notch hybrids like the AvantNovus10-SEX and such........