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While holding down any midrange key or keys, silently, play any nearby chord containing the same notes and you will hear the silent keys pickup the sounds. Like an acoustic with duplex scaling. Amazing, to me anyway..

Interesting indeed, however I don't believe this feature is unique to the V-Piano.

James
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Sounds like the V-Piano has all of these really unique characteristics, and it is nice to know that many of these parameters can be easily changed, such as hammer hardness, resonance, and so forth.

Do hope that others will continue this new thread with their experiences at the V-Piano, as I have not yet had the chance to try one.

Must be a truly revolutionary instrument as one needs to have good "ears" in which to fully appreciate all of its capabilities.

Hi James,

Do some of the Kawai's have this sympathetic resonance feature mentioned above, and if so, which ones?

Also, I was interested in knowing if Kawai plans on introducing any new pianos that use modeling, instead of sampling? Or, a combination of the two?

So far I have only read of comparisons between the V-Piano and the Yamaha CP1 (with its Spectral Component Modeling), although many seem to think that the Roland is preferable in regards to the acoustic piano sounds, and action.

pv88, a number of Kawai digital pianos reproduce this characteristic with the 'String Resonance' feature. Please refer to this brochure for an at-a-glance look at Kawai's current line-up.



I'm afraid I cannot comment on this point.

Kind regards,
James
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Something I've been wondering about is whether a chord played on a real piano, WITHOUT the pedal, would sound different to how the sum of the individual notes would sound, if recorded seperately and then played back simultaneously. It would be interesting to do some testing, perhaps using a MIDI equipped acoustic piano. (e.g Disklavier)

Greg.

It would undoubtedly sound different, due to sympathetic resonances interacting between the undamped strings (i.e. the notes that are played together). Which is why trying to emulate an acoustic piano is so difficult - sampled DPs use individually sampled notes and the results don't sound natural when playing more than one note. The V-Piano is the closest thing yet when it comes to interaction between undamped strings and the various resulting resonances.

Another interesting tidbit for advanced pianists to look out for in DPs is 'half pedalling', where you can 'selectively' damp the higher notes with a quick up & down on the sustain pedal, but retain some of the lower strings' vibrations: useful when you want to sustain the same harmony from the lower notes but clear the melody from pedal wash. The V-Piano and some other high-end DPs have this feature.

I think we'll eventually see a feature that allows the tuning of a digital piano to degrade over time just like an acoustic. It would factor in the room temperature, humidity and usage to calculate and implement the detuning.

I'd like to see what the marketing guys would do with that.

If that feature is offered I hope it can be disabled.

but agree that some DP's go a bit far in faithfully reproducing the clunks and clonks of pedals and keys of a piano. Don't want them either thank you.

This feature is on the Nord Piano. When you click on the link, look on the right side of the page. You'll see various demos, specifically listen to the string resonance on/off demos.

http://www.nordkeyboards.com/main.asp?tm=Products&clpm=Nord_Piano

Hi Dave,

Do you really think that anyone would want to have any piano that actually loses it tuning, whether it be a nice Steinway "D" concert grand, or otherwise?

I sort of doubt that any of the digital piano companies would incorporate such a feature, as you already have a detuning parameter with the V-Piano.

It is an interesting idea for sure, although I see no need for it, either.

Will have to wait and see what happens with that, over time.
(As features continue to evolve and change, etc.)

pv88

My Roland FP-7F has the sympathetic resonance feature described above. It was one of the first things I noticed when I got it and showed it off to my dad when trying to convince him to get a DP for himself

I wasn't being serious. As long as consumers want the real McCoy in a digital package, why not offer them everything, was my thinking. I don't have to have pedal noise added to the sample to recreate an acoustic piano but for some people it's just another feature to write down on their list to compare one brand with another.

Same with my 700NX

It's already disabled on my piano. Permanently, and by default. This is good.

That actually sounds like an interesting idea.

Every time you step to a different acoustic piano, the new AP is not perfectly tuned, so why should a DP not offer to slightly detune differently on every startup.

Heck, the biggest drawback on a sampled DP is that every press results in the same sound, so why not randomly detune every key press to keep a small amount of variation in the sample? Long time users of the digital drums will often set their drums to randomly play slightly different samples on the same drum, so the drums sound slightly different. Isn't a slight random detuning a DP version of that?

Some reviewers have suggested slightly detuning individual (strings of some) notes on the V-Piano to make the sound more 'dirty' and therefore more life-like. No acoustic piano is ever in perfect tuning, unlike DPs. On the V-Piano, you can detune the virtual strings of any note (or groups of notes) you fancy, to as much or as little as you want. Apart from which, there's also the honky-tonk setting, but that in its factory preset form has perfectly detuned strings....(which you can retune/detune more to your liking too).

I must say, I LOVE the flaws in any instrument. So pedal noise is definitely a feature I would like in my piano.
Like sliding the strings on an acoustic guitar...the clinging of the strings of a cheaper instrument.. It is very much a part of the music. You cannot expect a sleek instrumnet sound for an old blues player. It needs to crack, detuned, cling. It's atmosphere & context.

Yup, the V-Piano allows you to customize the amount of pedal noise too. It's amazing what those boffins think of....