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Piano sounds not based on factory?


McMick

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You know guys, in the back of my mind I keep thinking of starting a foundation to rescue all the old model pianos that people are tossing out on a daily basis and warehousing them all somewhere until they could be repaired to good working order and digitally sampled for all time. I find it minor tragedy that all of the great varieties of pianos that were manufactured in the last 125 years are going bye-bye, and a lot of people have never even heard some of them. They should ALL be digitized at some point, especially those rare and notable ones from smaller manufacturers who got swallowed up or went out of business in the pre-digital era.

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  • 1 year later...
On 11/6/2019 at 6:42 AM, McMick said:

... I paid good money for this keyboard, so I have a right to criticize it. This keyboard has a lot of great stuff on it, like I said I love a lot of things about it. But I've played a good number of pianos in my life and none of them sound like the Casio's piano, including Steinway. Roland makes a real piano sound; Yamaha too. Not so much Casio. The rolloff on the sustain is pretty quick, even though the note will thinly sustain after that. Sounds weird. And the piano sound itself just doesn't sound good.

No ya don't. Never spend a bunch of money on an instrument before you listen to it and decide you like it. If you don't like it; don't buy it. In this case, it's more appropriate to criticize the purchaser than to criticize the instrument.

 

This was an entertaining thread; now beating a dead horse.

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Criticize all you want, it won't change anything. I agree with gruvinrob-play it first before you buy anything. would you buy a car, a house without "due diligence"? or get marrie? but that's another can of worms!!!!:banghead: 

 

Get yourself a controller keyboard, go to softsynth pianos-or buy a sampling module and start sampling real pianos-see how easy that is, i've tried! Better have some good mikes and an impeccable acoustic environment for it. Or get soundfonts-there are many that you might prefer, these will work with softsynths. Sampling keyboard workstations from Korg, Roland-Yamaha you have to pay extra for the add-in sampling boards, might be a way.  Even my old Casio PX575 can load wav samples and assign across the keyboard. I have all of this-samplers, soundfonts, softsynths, workstations-and the Casio PX350/560. I've also sought the "perfect' digital piano for years before I realized there isn't such a thing. Amazing choices before you decide to buy anything you don't like. I spent hours, days, weeks listening to ALL the digital pianos available now-and in music/piano stores-before I put out any dinero for anything. Sound is so subjective-one man's gold is another's garbage. Even the major entertainers hand-pick their grands-classical, jazz or pop since they don't always like what they get.  If anything, digitals all sound compressed compared to a true acoustic to me, but then some of the real pianos I've played sound worse(!) than digitals-so its a weird world for musicians now because we have mind-blowing choices for creating music technically speaking. Having to maintain and tune several old pianos as an educator-and occassionally having to play out on acousitc house pianos-eeshhh!!! if anything the most recent sound almost too perfect depending. Also-try the piano in a mix-you might be shocked at what a difference some of these digitals sound like in a mix compared to soloing.

 

if every player agreed on what sounded "perfect"-there would be only one major manufacturer for everything-and every piano would sound the same.  I did extensive listening before I decided on-yet another piano-action board, and decided the newer Casio Privias were absolutely equal to all the other major digitals-the Kawais, Kurzweils, Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Dexibells, Nords,  exhausted myself doing this-I spent an entire da oncey-5-6 hours straight years back-playing every digital the piano center had there-they let me, and left there with a pretty pricey Kurzweil digital grand-because it was one of the few that did not give me "ear fatigue" after alot of playing-very important to me with a digital. Then bought the PX350 several years ago, after playing the famous Coakley "perfect piano" for several years which was a little more realistic than the Kurzweil but not by much-still sounded compressed.  I've tried huge soundfont pianos-frankly not impressed-then discovered much smaller soundfonts that sounded better than the 1GB soundfont pianos, which makes no sense technically, but there you go.

 

Layering and the Casio tri-sensor actions which now are being used on a few of the best digitals-you'd be surprised how many very expensive workstations and controllers still use only dual-sensors. This is the difference I hear-the ability to have 3 layers of piano samples-with 3 sensors-gives me much better velocity response and dynamic range. Not saying other brands are worse or better-but going back to 2-layer sensor workstations (I have a few) I can hear a distinct difference when playing from p/pp to mf to ff with the Casio. I don't get ear fatigue with the PX350-560-same sound engine and tri-sensors as the PX5S, but I have with others for close monitoring, practicing. for live playing, even some of the older digitals can sound pretty good with the right sound processing and mixing. As far really "sitting into" forte dynamic passages-i'd still want a grand-but I'd have to add a room to my already music-equipment exploding house. If you "A/B' listening tests online-I always use good headsets for this, not everyone on Youtube knows how to record sound accurately, I think you'll find a good cross-section of digitals to compare the PX5s. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/27/2021 at 9:54 AM, Jokeyman123 said:


Get yourself a controller keyboard, go to softsynth pianos

 

PX-5S is already a great controller keyboard. One of its strengths is how easily you can supplement its sounds with external sounds. Connect an iPad for example, and you'll have a whole bunch of other piano and other sounds available to you.

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