Subject: Digital piano guide, was: Opinions on Digital Pianos

From: [email-masked] (Michael Dunn)
Date: Sat, 6 Aug 1994 23:06:05 GMT

A Guide to Buying Electronic Pianos

by Michael Dunn
[email-masked]
rev.2  94/4/14

What I will try to cover here is: 
1. Some things you should check out to help you make your purchasing
decision.
2. My personal opinions and observations of a number of currently
available instruments.

     For starters, you may want to check out the December 1993 issue
of Keyboard magazine.  It has a fairly complete review of EPianos.  I
should caution you to take such reviews with a grain of salt.  They
can be good starting points and reference sources, but *never* blindly
put your trust in them.  Use your own ears, fingers, and judgement!  I
believe they also come out with an annual(?) EPiano Buyers Guide.

     So you know where *I'm* coming from, my main interest is in
"classical" music.  I mostly play the harpsichord (that'll influence
my ideas on keyboard feel!), as well as electronic keyboards and
occasionally other keyboard and non-keyboard instruments.  Needless to
say, I was very surprised that the Keyboard review panel did not have
a single classical pianist on it!

     Now, your interests and requirements in an instrument are going
to be different from mine, so you must decide how much weight to
assign to the various points I bring up.  You may like an instrument
for the same reason I dislike it!  That said, here is a checklist I
made up to help me in testing the pianos' capabilities, and to find
their strong and weak points.  Of course, the most important criteria
is how it "feels" and sounds to *you*, playing your kind of music. 
For some people, looks will have an important bearing on their
decision.  And there is also the question of Bells & Whistles - do you
want features like instrumental sounds, built-in sequencing, or other
fancy doodads?  This I leave up to you.  I'm only going to cover basic
piano functionality.  When shopping, try to keep away from noisy,
pushy stores/salespeople.  If you can't hear the subtleties of sound
and can't relax and spend time alone with the instrument, you're not
going to be able to make good judgements.  Anyway, here goes:

1. Listen to the basic sound of the instrument, both in single notes
throughout the range and in chords.  Is it realistic or otherwise
acceptable?  If there is a tone control, set it to your liking.
2. Play several notes over the keyboard from ppp to fff.  Does the
timbre change in a realistic manner?  
3. Play very evenly, mf, from the bottom to the top of the keyboard. 
Are there any sudden changes of timbre or loudness between adjacent
notes? (bad!)
4. Listen to the decay of several different notes, struck both softly
and loudly, all the way to the end.  Do volume and timbre change
realistically during the decay?
5. Does the timbre change when the una corda is depressed?  It should
of course be quieter, but ideally, the sound should also become a bit
"softer", "rounder", veiled, and more singing.  This is a matter of
taste.
6. Is the top 1.5 octaves undamped like a real piano?
7. Do the bass notes have a richness and aural animation similar to
that of a real piano's? (caused partly by inharmonicity of the
partials).
8. Are various tuning temperaments available?  Do you care?  Are
stretch tunings available?
9. Are the damper and/or una corda pedals just on/off switches, or can
you achieve half-pedalling and/or una/due/tre corde effects? (sp?)
10. Is harp resonance simulated when the sustain pedal is down? 
Strike and hold a note, first with the pedal up, then down.  Is there
a change of timbre?  Do you hear the sonic fog associated with an
undamped harp?  Is the level of this adjustable?
11. Restrike a note several times, going from ppp to fff and back to
ppp, while holding down the sustain pedal.  Is the effect realistic? 
Try this with the sostenuto too if there is one.
12. *Is* there a sostenuto?  Do you care?  Does it work properly?
13. Play a sharp staccato note.  As the sound is quickly being damped
out, raise the dampers.  Can you "catch" the note, and is its sound
realistic?
14. If there is a built-in reverb, can you live with the sound
quality?  Is it adjustable?
15. Are the amps and speakers sufficient to handle the maximum volume
you'll want to play at?  With big chords?  With the pipe organ stop? 
Is there a headphone jack?  You may want to verify the sound quality
>from it too.
16. Turn the volume to maximum.  Is there any noise or hum?  Turn it
back down.  Is there any mechanical (transformer) hum from the piano
chassis?
17. Is the instrument sturdily built?  Can you play a bunch of hard
chords without the keyboard starting to bounce like a car with bad
shocks?
18. Are there transpose controls?  By semitone?  Continuous +/-0.5
semitones?
19. How is the keyboard feel?  This is of course where things get very
personal.  Can you trill rapidly and evenly?  Can you repeat a note
without fully releasing a key (e.g., to get legato without pedal;
related to trillability)?  Can you play evenly on both the naturals
and sharps?  Is the action too heavy or sluggish?  Too light or fast? 
Can you play an even pianissimo?  And do you feel in control of note
timing when doing this?  Is the pivot-point back far enough?  Does the
velocity response seem okay?  Can you select different responses?
20. Does a note fail to sound at very low velocities, like a real
piano?  Would you prefer otherwise?  Is it selectable or adjustable?
21. Is there enough polyphony? (simultaneous notes)  Play a loud low
note with the pedal down, then a very light gliss or arm cluster in
the treble.  Does the low note get cut off?  If it does, try again,
but hold the low note.  Very bad if it still gets cut off!  Play arm
clusters.  Does the piano handle this gracefully, or does the sound
get ugly?

     Well, if you've gotten this far, you must be serious :-)  Now,
I'm going to get all subjective on you and tell you what I like and
don't like that's currently on the market.  Note that I'm only
covering all-in-one, home type instruments.  That's because they can
do things, like position sensing of the pedals, that more generic MIDI
instruments can't.  Also, I've never seen MIDI boxes or piano patches
that implement, say, harp resonance, although *this would* be
feasible.

     For me, the most important thing about this kind of instrument
(hell, any kind of instrument), is that it have an "organic" feel. 
And until Roland came out with things like resonance simulation and
"analog" pedals (since copied by others), I was not satisfied with
*any* E-pianos on the market.  After studying the Keyboard review, I
went shopping.  I had the field pretty much narrowed down at this
point to the following, based on the above mentioned features:
     Yamaha CLP-123 and 124
     Technics PX107
     Roland HP-2800, 3800, 5700, 7700

     I tried all the other models that I came across, but none were
acceptable to me.  The Kurzweils impressed me neither with their touch
nor sound.  The Korgs I tried were even worse.  And all of the lower-
end Clavinovas were as bad as I remembered them, with little or no
change in timbre vs dynamics.

     Yamaha's CLP-123 does not have resonance simulation.  I found
jarring volume/timbre changes between some notes.  The amplifiers
seemed under-powered.  And the dampers were weak (i.e., released notes
did not cut off as quickly as I'd like).  Still, the sound had
qualities some people would probably like.  The CLP-124 struck me as
having a weak treble and extreme unevenness between many notes.  Not
sure if it was worse than the 123 or the same though.

     The Technics PX107's nicest feature was its harp resonance
simulation, which was my favourite.  That was all I liked.  The una
corda was very weird, with a sudden timbre change at a certain
velocity.  The treble seemed overly "woody" and the tenor had a nasal
quality and a funny sounding sustain.  "Catching" just-released notes
with the pedal also produced some weird sounds.

     If you haven't already guessed, I'm going to confess my
preference for the Rolands, in particular, the HP-2800.  I found them
to be the most organic feeling by far.  Both damper and una corda
pedals are analogly sensed, and the way the timbre changes with
changes in dynamic just feels right.  One can make beautifully subtle
cres/decrescendi using just the una corda.  Resonance level, keyboard
response, and many other parameters are adjustable.  On the down side,
the action is not as good as it could be, although still one of the
best IMO.  It can be hard to play softly.  The polyphony/note-stealing
algorithm can sometimes misbehave in a torture-test, but I've never
noticed any problems with normal playing.  You can't turn off dynamic
response, even with the harpsichord and organ stops.  All settings are
lost when you switch off power (although sequences are retained - go
figure).  And some may prefer a more "realistic" sampled piano sound
to Roland's synthesized one.  More realistic, perhaps, for an isolated
note at one volume.  However, I find the Roland, taken as a whole, far
more convincing an instrument than the others.

     One thing I should mention - both normal and two stretch tunings
are available.  The 2800 powers up with normal tuning.  I find this
actually sounds out of tune in the bass, and usually switch to
"Stretch 1".  The HP-2900 is basically the same instrument with a
better, bigger sound system.  Oddly, I preferred the 2800.  The other
models are similar, but with fancier styling.

     If *you* can figure out how Keyboard mag reached some of their
conclusions, please let us all know!