Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Older stage pianos sounding better than older ones?

So pretty much, I've heard things like the the older RD (300,800 ect) series and older MP (MP8, MP5) series and then compare them to things like the RD2000 and the MP7/11, Ive noticed that those older stage pianos sound way more realistic and sound more convenient. Even the strings/pads, they sound super professional and the newer ones sound very synthy (I'll demonstrate in a video on another subject for a question on my MP7SE). For a while I was turned off by Yamaha because at one point, they didn't carry a lot of (or any at all) harmonic/string resonance and made a lot of playing seem super computerized even though the samples itself sounded realistic. But now they're starting to incorporate that in their sample-based products and sound amazing. Is the newer lines of keyboards sounding synthy temporary? I'm really starting to consider going old school and getting a older keyboard for certain uses and keep my newer keyboards to practice technique on. Is this just me though, or do other people notice this as well?

You might want to consider changing the thread title as it doesn't make any sense:

"Older stage pianos sounding better than older ones?"

John

For Roland it might make some sense as they've been moving from full sampling to full modelling.

With Kawai they've just sampled some "fancier" acoustic grands of theirs in the newer products (and improved on the resonances), so maybe a "flagship concert grand meticuously prepared by master artisan piano technicians and recorded in an unechoic chamber" just isn't your idea of realism. 😀

I have an old MP8II at home.

The action still feels great to play, however the built-in sounds are really starting to show their age.

The MP11SE's sounds are soooooo much better!

If you believe older stage pianos sound better than more recent iterations, that's perfectly fine, however I doubt too many would agree with you.

Cheers,
James
x

The older ones sound just like the older ones, to me at least.

The subject line nicely captures the paradox where my same old digital piano sounds good to me one day and horrible the next

the Yamaha P250 from 1992 in my band room sounds and feels better than anything I've played today: But it's 70lbs and you really can't carry it with one hand.

As far as the sound goes, it might be a case of preferring something you've grown accustomed to over something that sounds different from what you're used to. Everyone agrees that old music sounds better than new music, right?

As far as feel, it's not unusual for newer products with lots of mechanical parts (or which require significant manual labor to assemble) to be of lesser quality than older ones due to the higher cost of labor and materials, and the desire by manufacturers to keep reducing cost and increasing profits. The well-known saying "they don't make them like they used to" comes to mind.

You and all of us have grown up believing in an illusion: that things arise out of their components---that cause gives rise to affect: double the cause is doubling the effect. This world in maths is called the linear world, and in science we have a major principle called occams razor. Occams tazor neatly fits this illusion of linearity: if there are lots of ideas about how something might work, the simplest one is most likely.

In this world, if sampling rate doubles, we should feel the sampling has gotten better and as the sampling rate goes up, our perception of the improvement should be linear.

This isn't how the real world works---you do not judge the new by its improvement on the old; rather, the old imprinted on you, and the result is the thing that judges the new sound.

Non-linearity results from interactions between components that aren't necessarily foreseeable in advance, but lead to emergent outcomes.

In otherwords, the past changed you, and that alteration changes the way you perceive the new information. In the non-linear world, the input (cause) drives the system to create an output, but the output changes the system or becomes an input ie feeding back into the system.

Imagine a block of Jelly. You heat up some water in a kettle. You dribble some of the hot water onto a teaspoon and then gently move the teaspoon over the jelly. Then you turn the teaspoon and poor the hot water over the jelly. It hits the jelly and melts the jelly at the contact point. This creates a valley in the jelly in one spot. When you repeat this process, if you tip the teaspoon of hot water over the jelly near enough to the previous spoon's spot, the new hot water hits the jelly but quickly flows down the depression left by the previous spoon's water dump. This melts the jelly creating a deeper valley in the same spot rather than creating a new depression at the new contact point.

This situation is non-linear because the past has affected the present such that new information (input) gets processed differently.

This non-linear characteristic of human consciousness means that after being exposed to one brand's piano sampling, one can find a rather different brand's sound source synthetic, thin, etc. Not only does this non-linear nature cause us to prefer one brand over another, but it can cause is to favour older sampling over newer sampling; favour older sampling over newer sound modelling etc.

This is why we also tend to prefer music from our era over current music, and/or get influenced by our parents records which permanently changes one's taste in music.

We don't hear what is, we are what is hearing (encoded in memory), and the past has made our memory which we use to hear with.

It's not a phenomena limited to hearing. People find others who look like their parents younger self more attractive than people who do not, and why we find those who are unusual to us to be unfamiliar, causing one to be wary.

That said, it is possible to acclimatise to the new. When I got my MP7SE, I hadn't sold my MP7 yet. At first, the MP7SE action felt alien to me, and the sound was so different, I didn't immediately feel it was better. I kept playing the MP7SE and comparing it. After a while, listening to the new sound, I began to hear subtle aspects of the sampling that the older sample doesn't have. Over time I felt better about the action. I had about 6 weeks with both instruments and by the end, I preferred the MP7SE. I also had the ability to play the same sample using different actions, so I started to acclimatise to the new action.

Perhaps if I hadn't had both instruments to compare for quite a while, I might have kept a rose tinted view of the MP7.

I'm quite sure if I was given a Casio PX-S7000 and had long enough with it, I'd eventually see its subtle natures and enjoy the sample despite it not being an SK grand.

I have a Yamaha CP 300. Yamaha came out with different models after they stopped making the CP 300. The keyboard action on the CP 300 was better than the newer models that replaced it. I also have a CP33.
The CP300 has internal speakers and stereo outs for line level signals and XLR outs for balanced. It also has onboard speakers so it would suffice to use for solo piano gigs. I used it for that application and it worked well. It also had inputs for the three pedals, unacorda,sostenuto,
damper. I liked the softer sounding piano presets since sampling artifacts tend to make it sound different than a real piano. They alter the harmonic series since they store the values as a binary value. I used to have the older yamaha models . The CP 300 is the most current one I have. They discontinued it for a while and then brought it back only to replace it with newer models. The best digital piano I’ve played although it’s considered a hybrid is the Yamaha avantgrand N3. Yamaha also has the N3X. The N3X cost more today than my august forester model 190
did back in the day. The Avant grands sound and feel great. Much better than my CP300 stage piano does. There’s a vast difference in price though. The N3X is state of the art. I use my CP300 mostly for Rhodes electric piano sounds as I really don’t like the way digital sampled pianos sound compared to a real piano. When I play my august forester model 190 I can hear the difference. The tone is superior. Nothing like the real thing . The N3X is real nice. For that price you might be able to find a decent used baby grand somewhere. I remember early on when digital pianos came out. They didn’t sound as good as they do today in comparison.
The hybrid pianos sound better since they utilize a powerful amplification system that I believe is aided with a soundboard . They also have a real grand pianos action and they sample different grand pianos. I like the sound of German pianos best. The Avant Grands are the closest I’ve found to sounding and feeling like a real acoustic grand.

Old thread I'm replying to.

I have a Roland RD 300s that I bought in 1990.

Guess what? It sounds just like a piano.

I also have a Roland RD 700 NX that I bought in 2011.

Guess what? It sounds just like a piano.

If I had to choose which one I prefer I am certain I would choose the RD 300s.

Even I'm surprised by that, as I know I was convinced the 700 was better when I first got it.

A piano is a piano. Manufacturers need to keep on coming up with reasons to buy the newest product, but I think now the tone is fully captured and this piano sounding "better" than that piano is simply a matter of taste. Improvements are now more in number of features, connectivity, etc.

The fact is they each sound different, not "better". And I believe if we bothered to search the world we could find an acoustic that sounds exactly like our digitals at home.(IMO)

I think what has changed is the resonance modeling and length/depth of samples.

And in some cases the whole sound is modeled, that is relatively new.

Many times marketing makes us believe that only the newest latest technology is good.
But then you listen to recordings made in te 60s, even live recordings, and wow.

In a more extreme example, i remember watching a video from the 1936 Olympics, when Jesse Owen was performing long jump. I had never before experienced how long actually a long jump is. All the modern cameras just show a lot of colour and slow motion, but the sense of really long jump is totally lost. And that camera from 1936 was not even specifically dedicated to long jump. It was the same camera they used for everything.

You need the latest technology to try and reproduce all the imperfections from instruments in the 60's (not just 1960's but 1860's and 1760's)

Organ VSTs and hardware clones, for example, go to great lengths to simulate things like tonewheel leakage or aging capacitors.

On the recording side, DAW plugins go to great lengths to simulate the imperfections of things like old mic preamps or analog tape recorders.

Someday in the not-too-distant future we'll be buying instruments with fancy new technology to reproduce the classic sounds of an RD700 or MP11SE, and Modartt will be selling copies of Pianoteqteq

Bet my older piano sounds better than yours . . . .mine was a CLP820S. Marvellous sound, but too heavy to gig as regularly as I did. Bought a Kawai to replace it; similar price, but lighter. Build quality was super cheap in those days, and I lost that super stereo sound the Yamaha had. Nor have I heard it since.except on the CVP 609 I once tried.

Maybe that's the key of the problem. Instead of using the latest technology for making instruments that sound fine and inspire musicians to create music, they are lost in a ocean of detailed emulations, aimed not so much at musicians, but at fetishists of the sounds. When i see that most modern vst do great effort to replicate key noises and similar stuff, i can see why instruments from 30 years ago sound better to many people. They were designed to sound good, no to mimic some vintage thing at the slightest detail.