Can even the top end hybrids really satisfy a grand player?
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.
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Rubens This is a good way to look at things! Digital pianos attempting to faithfully replicate acoustic piano sound is a bit of a losing proposition, but digital pianos doing things that only digital pianos can do is intriguing and coherent (I've never played on one but that one Roli keyboard comes to mind as something that seems to come from this mindset). I mean, just think about electric vs. acoustic guitars.
"You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."
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TheBoringPianist As can be seen with PTeq Bosie ..... substantial progress has been made in terms of the sound impressing a lot of highly experienced musicians and piano players. The impressiveness is ..... credit to the people that have been doing the hard yards in that area.
Plus those people that accumulatively contributed ... from the beginning. The math people, the physics/science people, the audio people, musicians, recording people, electronics people, the materials people, chemicals people, engineers, manufacturing, techs, supporters etc. Hats off and on to them. They are good. Very good. Excellent in fact.
To some extent, there are some that do that.
The “felt piano” VSTs come to mind with their super exaggerated felt sounds, soft attacks, dreamy sonic ambience, and even added synth sounds. There’s been a number of these which have become super popular, and, may be a even better choice than an acoustic piano for certain genres of music, like “Lo-fi”, New Age, Meditation, and Modern Classical.
I actually consider keyboards and synths to be the keyboard equivalent of electric guitars, in how they’re based around many of the characteristics of pianos, but take things in a different direction that can actually seem authentic in a way that emulative sampling hasn’t.
Even Pianoteq seems to really win when it’s creating “new” or capturing lesser-known piano tones/timbres instead of attempting to capture name brand/well-known timbres.
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Also, I think that while no digital piano has a sound set that matches an acoustic, there are a lot of VSTs that come quite close. And I still don’t think there’s a VST out there that fully captures what VSTs are capable of.
I’d still love to see a company like VSL sample a more general piano, like a Steinway or Yamaha, in an acoustically treated room (to avoid room ambience and truly capture every aspect of an instrument’s sound), and sample both sustain and una corda with the same level of comprehensiveness with which they’ve done their previous pianos. I think that could be THEE VST that creates a new level of authenticity and immersion. And it’s possible now that we have the computers, processors and drives that could handle something like that, the microphones that could capture it, and the coding that the best VSTs makers use is pretty excellent now.
I’d also love to see digitals finally start using better sampling that what they come with, as that would help the close the gap much more. Instead of using four and five layer samples recorded in medium fidelity, they could do much better in terms of their sampling and really take digitals to a new level.
I’d love to see a digital running a native VST-level sound set. It doesn’t have to be VSL level, but it could be better than what it is.
I don't agree with that. I think this idea is maybe nice as an additional instrument for people who already have a nice acoustic instrument. But there are also people who can't afford a good acoustic piano, or people who live in a small house and have to play with headphones because other familymembers are watching tv 4 meters away from the piano.
I want to play the piano, not another instrument. And I want it to sound like a piano.
Josephine I don't think we actually disagree. I'm one of those people that can't afford the acoustic grand that I want and lives in an apartment. I like hybrid pianos for their touch qualities and would like it if their sound production qualities were closer to acoustic pianos. But I do think there should also be more exploration in piano-like digital instruments that take advantage of, well, being digital.
"You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."
Taushi in addition to the sampling/modeling element, it feels like another limiting factor when trying to approximate acoustic piano sounds is the quality of the actual sound production mechanism, i.e. speakers. I haven't looked enough into it to know if it's a frequency range thing or something else, but there's always something missing even in listening to a high quality recording through good speakers vs. live on a good instrument.
"You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."
As long as they don't stop trying to replicate the sound and touch of an acoustic piano I agree. But it's a different instrument, and not something I'm looking for per se.
TheBoringPianist Very true. It’s interesting how many of the best digitals seem to skimp on the overall quality of the speakers/speaker system used. Even if they had superb samples inside, the speaker system wouldn’t maintain the quality of the samples.
The best speaker system I’ve seen thus far was on the Yamaha CLP-785. Good speakers inside the piano part, and the base was also full of speakers and transducers.
That and the Kawai CA-series with the soundboard seem to do the best overall job.
I think Roland has one or two with some great speakers, too.
But I’d really love to see an overall improvement with the speakers in the upper level digitals.
Speaking of speakers (hehe), here again I'm thinking that maybe to compensate for their limitations we could take advantage of other parameters such as the number of speakers (the more the merrier?), and the location of the speakers (like in movie theaters??). All in the theme of using the advantages of a digital system to compensate for its limitations...
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Taushi It’s interesting how many of the best digitals seem to skimp on the overall quality of the speakers/speaker system used. Even if they had superb samples inside, the speaker system wouldn’t maintain the quality of the samples.
My and other peoples digi pianos have speakers that provide sound pretty much directly to our ears .... plus some reverb effects and other environment effects. When we play these pianos, and when we have much experience and music and audio passion as you, and have hearing as good as you, and we say that the digitals provide adequate substance in sound and music expressiveness (and not to forget we play acoustic grand pianos too) for generating excellent music - then it's a case of your opinions against ours. So it pretty much is even. That's not unusual.
Rubens I’d love to see this. In my Casio, the lid lifts to show the hammers moving. But I wish they’d taken that opportunity to aim the speakers AT the listener instead of just pointing them up in the air.
And many digitals have speakers that are either under the instrument, or on top of the instrument pointed upwards, or in the instrument but not really considerate of the location of speakers. The way the speakers are aimed have a lot to do with creating the stereo image, and even overcoming some of the limitations inherent in most set ups.
I’d also love lots more speakers. If they’re going to use such small ones, they can least fill them up lol. That too would do well to deal with some of the sonic limitations we see in many digitals.
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Taushi But I wish they’d taken that opportunity to aim the speakers AT the listener instead of just pointing them up in the air
I have a similar wish, or preference for the speakers to be optimized for more holistic sound, with speakers pointed towards player, or ability to add more, etc.
My best guess of why they don’t, is that manufacturers aim to make them aesthetically look more like an acoustic upright/grand. Having additional tweeters, speakers etc take away the look of an acoustic. Just a guess.
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Taushi And many digitals have speakers that are either under the instrument, or on top of the instrument pointed upwards, or in the instrument but not really considerate of the location of speakers.
The low frequencies are not directional. Subwoofer placement is usually determined based on room mode - that is to avoid having dip (point of cancellation from direct and reflected sound wave) at the listener location. For DP, it would mean finding the proper distance from the wall.
The mid frequencies are not very sensitive to speaker aiming. So they could be firing upwards and straight without causing big difference in listening experience.
It’s the high frequency tweeters that needs to be precisely aimed. Not only need they be at the ear level, but they also need to toed in so that the center line extending from the tweeter intersects with the corresponding ear (left, or right). In addition, Harman Kardon research has established that the lateral off-axis frequency response linearity of the tweeter is almost as important as on-axis frequency response. If you noticed the intricate shape of the tweeter waveguides in Harmon/JBL speakers, that’s what makes them special.
Good sounding studio monitors costs at least $400 and upwards. It makes sense to that DP makers do not want to add that to their cost, with no guarantee of good result because limitation for precise placement, and considering people who really care will probably buy their own studio monitors. Upgraded built-in speaker may only make sense for those really high-end DP/Hybrid that is designed to look like an acoustic piano.
Taushi The way the speakers are aimed have a lot to do with creating the stereo image, and even overcoming some of the limitations inherent in most set ups.
I have a question regarding stereo image. I have no experience with acoustic piano at all. But I wonder, when playing acoustic piano, do you really hear the bass notes coming from the left side, and the treble notes coming from the right side? Although the sound originates from the corresponding string, is it the soundboard that we are actually hearing? And the soundboard is a really large surface, the opposite to a point source.
If your answer is yes, you do hear notes seem to come from the direction of their location on the keyboard, then I ask you to further consider whether that is due to hearing it, or psychologically imagining it. I have seen people pinpointing source direction of low frenquency sound (which is impossible in theory) based on visual feedback.
iternabe whether that is due to hearing it, or psychologically imagining it
I would reckon it’s both. Perception is a fascinating thing. I’ve been to an audiologist recently because I felt my left ear is quieter than right ear.
Audiologist indicated it’s in my brain processing, versus a physical issue. I was at first skeptical, but it makes sense (for my own case).
(I know this subtopic may be off from the main topic)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem much like the digital piano makers take into account any of what you’ve said with speaker placement or choice.
And while good monitors cost that much for the consumer, I think digital piano/keyboard makers would probably get a much lower price in production when they just have to buy the internal parts, and would be buying at scale. Most of the major companies pay pennies for what the consumer spends dollars on.
As for the stereo image, I’m less referring to a sense individual notes coming from a particular direction, and more referring more to the entire wall of sound that comes from the instrument. The sound from a piano comes, as you pointed out, from the very, very large soundboard, and also from additional resonances in the actual body of the instrument. When you reduce that to a few tiny speakers, that overall sense of sound is loss.
Headphones help with this, as do properly calibrated and aimed monitors. Speakers, also properly calibrated and aimed inside the body of the instrument, especially those which benefit from aiming, as well as overall proper placement would help with creating that sense of sound.
As it stands, the vast majority of digitals do not do well at recreating that sense of sound.
Of course, no digital is going to sound like a real piano at a 1:1 level, but I do think more speakers and better speaker placement would do a great deal toward closing the gap more.
And, of course, one wouldn’t expect this in every digital - the entry-level and medium-tier ones probably wouldn’t have this. But for the ones costing into the several thousand, especially those aiming at great authenticity, I think this should be par the course.
iternabe But I wonder, when playing acoustic piano, do you really hear the bass notes coming from the left side, and the treble notes coming from the right side?
Yes, but it's not quite as prominent as you'd hear in say, anipiano recordings. The effect is more prominent the closer you get to the rim, so mic'ing can make a difference here on acoustics (I've heard actually that classical recordings tend to emphasize the lid and room reverb more, whereas more "modern" piano piece recordings place mics in a way that bring out the stereo separation.
On my piano, I can switch between digital (both headphones and under-the-soundboard speakers) and acoustic mode, and I always feel that I can perceive the stereo separation, but I don't really "miss" it when outputting mono. My guess is that its impact is generally eclipsed by all of the other differences that come to the fore during acoustic play.
However, when listening to piano recordings on YT, it bothers me greatly when a piano is mic'd from the "audience" perspective, because I'm really used to hearing the clear bass-left, treble-right separation when using headphones.