Can even the top end hybrids really satisfy a grand player?

petrofied It's not the same. Even acoustic grand pianos among various kinds aren't the same as each other.

Digital pianos - even not hybrid ones - have their own powerful features and sounds, and mechanical control mechanism (coupled to the digital side of the system). Yes indeed, a lot have sounds that are recorded 'samples' - but then some special conditioning and amending and adding is done - some technological magic.

So - overall - depending on the music played, and depending on the person doing the playing - and the environment etc - even a digital non-hybrid piano (which is a piano, a real piano, just as acoustic pianos are pianos - also real piano - from which the essence is piano forte comes - shortened to piano) cannot be matched in musical 'fire power' and musical elegance.

I have a Kawai VPC1 I use for practice. I am fully satisfied with it as a practice instrument. But “satisfied” vs. “same thing” are distinct terms.

Because I have acoustic pianos as well, I can enjoy the sonic differences and have a real acoustic sound. Had I had no acoustic and only the VPC1, my satisfaction level might’ve been different.

But because I have the choice to play whichever one, then yes it’s quite satisfying and the VPC1 ends up being complementary for my playing.

Thus, a high end hybrid certainly would be satisfying for me… so long as it’s an addition and not replacement.

Perhaps digitals have progressed to the point where its time 'pianists' looked at electric v acoustic the same way guitar players do. They both have 6 strings, a fret board, generally roughly the same shape, but considered by guitar players as two totally different instruments. One not better than the other, just different, each having their own unique qualities to create great music.

And for what its worth, my favorite 'piano' player only uses a digital.

MacMacMac Digital pianos have there place.
But I can readily feel the difference.
Even when just listening to YouTube videos the acoustic piano wins.

I was brought up on acoustic piano - upright and grand - acoustic, just as a lot of people are/were/here. When I listen to both - acoustic and digital - they both win. A music and piano exponent will be able to showcase outstanding essence of music in one form or another on any piano. Even a 10 dollar one is special - and not to be out-done by a piano that cost eg. 200,000 or million dollar plus. What is important is essence of music. And play pianos. Any pianos. Piano players unite!

Josephine @Navindra Josephine wrote: "Oh, I'm in the wrong thread, I thought this was the thread about practicing on a digital piano. I don't have a top end hybrid piano. So just ignore my post.".

This exemplifies a basic design problem with Piano Tell (and with PianoClack). It is often hard to know which thread you are looking at. This never happened with PW, because every post there contains the thread title. Aside from Josephine's observation, I have noticed that not infrequently I find myself "lost" here, in the sense of not knowing what thread I am in.

So @Navindra if at all possible, you should do something about this. I don't mean put the title in every post - but there might be somewhere in a non-scrolling part of the page where you can put the title? Maybe at the top?

These days - the digis are able to inject other forms of interesting and wonderful 'goodness' into the sound, so that the piano player is able to get adequate variation and richness to generate music that provides every bit an excellent or outstanding musical experience.

Those very skilled pianists - including classical etc - will find ways to get the best out of any particular piano after they take some time to check out its behaviour, and then it's piano time.

Piano players can and will be hop onto any piano and give an excellent account of themselves. And when the time comes for a classical concert pianist to prepare for a concert, then they will have their preparation processes, and the show goes on.

It's known that at least one very well known concert classical pianist was/is using not only digital piano in their home ... but in particular ... playing digital 'slab' piano in their home. Their own digital slab piano. And it's not for advertisement, and not necessarily to practise her concert classical pieces, but we can expect they will/can play classical in one form or another on any workable piano.

There are examples of her digital slab online, which she parks very near to her acoustic grand piano, parked front-to-front (face-to-face) style, so she can hop from one to another by just turning around.

It is this concert pianist here ...

LINK

I think they will have considered it Rubens! It could surely be added as an option - as in for example slight randomness in the amount of added harmonics/tones to a note. It may be works-in-progress, as they have to make sure that the feature doesn't lead to issues like the effects etc interfering with other ones, leading to audio or sound quality problems.

Another consideration is control. If particular piano players want to switch over to the other option - where they want reproducibility - which could be quite difficult or impossible in itself (as most or maybe all humans can't control their body like a specialised electro-mechanical machine/device to consistently have 'machine' type reproducibility) - there could be that option to set the non-random feature, to work towards the ideal 'perfect' control scenario. And then it becomes down to the person themself - to see how they control consistently and reliably their own body.

The topic of perfection and reproducibility is an interesting one - because on one hand, if some people are striving for having music played to be reproducible - as in performance, then they might think along the lines of they want an ideal instrument that ideally does exactly the same thing when they push exactly the right velocity (or ballpark velocity, because it looks like humans most likely can't push a key at exactly the same velocity repeatably down to some ultra precise value that is). And then there's the other perspective, where some people really like the unexpected behaviour - which is a departure from the ideal/perfect control. This is probably why - it's the entire collection of pianos and people and music that is amazing and special.