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

I got a Kawai CA97 (hybrid), replacing the cheaper end regular Yamaha digital piano and the upgrade was needed. I did play the N2 that the musician on YT talked about without saying much about it as a piano: I did not find the same physical attributes. I can't have an acoustic due to neighbours etc. My goal was to train my hands on something that behaved physically as close to an acoustic piano, preferably a grand. I went back and forth between acoustic grands and this piano when I bought it and to my semi-trained hands they felt similar.

The store also had Roland hybrids and I went back and forth between the two. The Rolands have evolved quite a bit since that time and I am thinking of switching to a Roland. I had a long talk with someone about this who knew both.

Here's what I got only partly right at the time. My priority was the physical mechanical action. I did gain tremendously over what I'd had before. For example, my cheap regular DP, a key would have to depress almost all the way down before sounding, and ditto for releasing. This trained my hands into an unnatural way of moving, and also desensitized them due to the poor response. On the first day I played the Kawai like a truck driver, just plowing through its subtleties. I had to relearn pedal because the old DP behaved similarly there, but worse. The switch was a good one. I scoffed at the idea of getting a piano with an "ideal sound" saying I'm the future musician and I should be producing the sound, not the piano. In some ways I still think that way, i.e. I don't want the instrument to create magic and hide flaws. But I was wrong in another way too. Namely:

Playing is an interplay between what your hands and body do on the piano, and the sound that's produced, and it goes both ways. For example, if the piano has an amazing action, but the dynamics or quality of sound don't reflect well what you're doing, then you will strain to produce them - or that ear-body loop doesn't develop well. I started reading in PW about some kind of loudness ceiling written into the software, which one IT expert actually managed to fix on his piano by reprogramming somehow. I encountered that kind of ceiling for fff. There was also a video by Shirley testing out a related but less fancy Kawai, where something like behaviour of dynamics changed when pedal was added as opposed to not - anyway, something where what she did with her hands produced different results dynamics-wise with pedal. Part of training your playing involves the loop between the actions you do physically on the physical construct of the piano and the quality and nature of sounds you produce. I am therefore curious about the new Roland.

In fact, even the day I was first testing out pianos before buying the present one, I found the sound coming out of the Yamaha to be awesome (the place also had amazing acoustics), but the action was inferior, and I prioritized action over awesome sound.

I am not a "grand player" but kind of hope that the DP I use is of a quality that it could act as a bridge. I could actually rent time at the Yamaha store on one of their grands.

keystring The Kawai CA97 isn’t a hybrid and Roland doesn’t make any hybrids either.

Only the Yamaha Avantgrands and the Kawai Novus instruments are hybrids.

Casio calls its Celviano GP-510 BP for a "Grand Hybrid".

Thank you Taushi, making things very clear.

SouthPark

Actually, nothing in my most recent post was a revisiting of the tangent you inserted around “what constitutes a real piano”. My most recent post was just sharing the “conventional definition” of a hybrid piano.

I’ve already been very clear on the differences between real acoustic pianos and approximative digital pianos. As much of what you’re saying is highly subjective and rooted in your own personal ideology more than in the conventional wisdom on the subject, It’s not a discussion I will be revisiting

KawaiJames However, these days (at least within Kawai Japan), the "Hybrid" term is more commonly used to refer to acoustic instruments that incorporate digital technologies (such as the ATX and AURES models), or digital instruments that incorporate acoustic piano keyboard action/pedal mechanisms (NOVUS models):

KawaiJames I don't disagree that the Kawai America website refers to the CA97 as a "hybrid piano". However, to my knowledge, Kawai Japan did not use this terminology to refer to the product.

The CA97 was discontinued in late 2017, however the product page is still online on the Kawai Global website for archival purposes: https://www.kawai-global.com/product/ca97/

You'll note that "hybrid" is not mentioned on the above page. Moreover, the CAx7 brochure from that generation also does not refer to "hybrid": https://www.kawai-global.com/data/catalogue/CAx7_brochure_EN_300dpi.pdf

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,
James
x

Thank you for these points of clarification. This is what matters.

And it’s not only true of Kawai, but also Yamaha. The conventional popular definition of a “hybrid” has settled into being a digital piano with a true acoustic action inside.

And neither the CA series by Kawai nor the GP series by Casio meet that definitions.

Now, that said, both the CA series by Kawai and the GP series by Casio are superb instruments. As I’ve said, I actually prefer the Casio-GP I now own to the Yamaha N1X hybrid I previously owned and many have extolled the virtues of the CA series.

So for the purposes of this forum can we refer to hybrids as those digital pianos which have an acoustic action inside them? Realizing that the AvantGrand and Novus pianos don't have an exact acoustic action inside them, they are enough of an acoustic action as to not feel markedly different to a grand or upright piano. We could for the sake of argument include the Casio Celviano as it has many of the components of the grand action but it is not a true grand action. In theory you could swap the hammers out of the AvantGrand or Novus and use it in a grand piano (aside from strike point issues....) which you couldn't do with the Casio.

I believe that the Roland pianos are not Hybrids, because they don't contain any acoustic piano components. They're great pianos and I've always really enjoyed playing them, but they're not true hybrids in that sense. The Kawai CA-series are acoustically hybrids because of the soundboards, but it's a bit confusing to use the name hybrid for an entirely different product. Again, they have really beautiful actions and they sound lovely, and are great for practicing on but they're not hybrids.

My two grand pianos and my upright all have entirely different actions in them. Going from the Blüthner Patent to the double repetition to the upright requires about the same level of adapting in my technique as it does going from any one of them to my P515. In the practice rooms in Glasgow I'd go from a Yamaha C3L with a bright sound and fairly light touch to the teaching room with a very mellow Hamburg Steinway A with a more robust action, and that required a level of adapting in the touch as well. Playing the CFIIIS was very different to playing the Steinway D, which is different to playing a Shigeru Kawai, which is different to a Blüthner Model 1 or a Bösendorfer 280VC, and they're all different to the Imperial.

You can only cut your coat according to your cloth - and I don't know you might have unlimited cloth but my point is that these days, a lot of the trouble that people have with digital pianos is actually emotional. Clavinova, Roland, Kawai, Casio, and all the hybrids are all good pianos for learning notes. It's a little bit harder on them to hear in full resolution what you're trying to do artistically so things like pedaling, articulation, legato, are all going to require some time on an acoustic piano.

Two fabulous pianists I know from Moscow practice on Clavinovas on a regular basis. One of my teachers, who was Goldenweiser's student, prepared for a Wigmore Hall recital in the late 1980s on a Clavinova, it was a CLP-560 or something, not a great piano by today's standards at all. I asked her how that affected her performance and she said it made no difference. She said that the real sound was in her inner ear all the time. Now, I don't like that idea of the real sound being in the inner ear, and only in the inner ear, because obviously you have to react to the instrument and the surroundings, but I also think she was making a good point that it comes from within.

After all that rambling though, I side with those who believe a Hybrid is a piano with a full acoustic action, be it slightly modified or not. I would include the Casio Grand Hybrid in that although it's not quite the same, but I wouldn't include the Kawai CA97 or Roland LX series in that - even though they're great pianos.

SouthPark This discussion is over for me. I was very clear on that, and I don’t have any desire to discuss it further with you. Thanks.

If I may contribute with my input...
While I do prefer the sound of acoustics in general, I think maybe digital piano makers have not been focusing on the right thing. So far I think the focus has been mostly to replicate the sound of acoustics as realistically as possible, and maybe that will always be a losing proposition. So I've been wondering, instead of merely emulating the sound of acoustics, why not try to surpass it in some aspects? For example, there are parameters of timbre that most people find to be pleasant, such as warmth, sustain, clarity, brilliance without being overly percussive, and so on. Digital pianos can boost those select parameters, maybe to levels that acoustics cannot match. Of course it will sound artificial, but that is not the point. Think of how animation movies can feature characters and landscapes that look more enchanting, colorful or expressive (when it comes to characters) than anything in real life. (I'm thinking about the concept of the superstimulus here.) Usually when those movies are remade in live action versions people don't like them as much as the animation versions. Could a similar phenomenon happen in the world of digital piano sounds? Would those enhanced albeit artificial sounds be good enough to compensate for the lack of realism and maybe even satisfy grand piano players? Has this already been attempted? Frankly I don't know enough about DP's so I'm just hypothesizing here.