Roland V-Piano: impressions

All,

You may be aware that Roland has recently begun shipping a new
instrument, the V-Piano. It's a professional stage piano in
the $5000 range. Importantly, it's physically modeled (like
pianoteq, and Roland's V- Accordians). It also touts Roland's
latest fake piano keyboard action, and some fancy 'fake ivory'
keytops. I went to my local shop yesterday to audition it.

The shop had it running through some truly massive PA system
right next to it, which sounded incomprehensible at such short
distance (the massive sub was on my left, resulting in a really
unbalanced sound, etc etc). So take the following with a grain
of salt: sound-wise, it was good, but no better (and perhaps
even inferior to) pianoteq. The presets include some neat fun,
such as what would happen if you made strings out of silver,
or had tripled unisons all the way down the keyboard, but
nothing especially useful. I spent most of my time between
two concert grands.

It should also be mentioned that I don't like 'fake piano'
keyboard actions, and historically I've liked Roland's least
of all. So again, take this with a grain of salt. The action
was better than I've experienced on other Roland instruments,
but still posed no threat to the fellow who's renting me the
Yamaha U5 in my living room. It was responsive and relatively
quick, but trills reveal right away something rotten in Denmark,
and after about 15 minutes a type of fatigue set in which is
characteristic of these actions.

Also granted, that with time one's technique can possibly
adapt to suit any action, including this one. That said, these
fake actions seem to me to go to contortions to replicate the
surface features of a piano actions (escapement let off, etc),
at the expense of being normal physical systems whose linear
responses correlate to the sound being produced (which is what
is truly important in piano actions, and all acoustic keyboard
actions).

As for tuning features, it had the standard Roland front-panel
affair, with a handful of 12-tone tunings like "just major",
"just minor", "pythagorean", "meantone", and "kirnberger",
along with a key center setting. I suspect the tuning
implementation is the usual Roland one, restricted to 12 tones
per octave, but have not verified this.

For now, I'll put $4700 in the bank and stick with pianoteq
and its excellent Scala-file support.

-Carl

It's regrettable that most manufacturers stick to 12-tones, and the standard
temperaments, without at least offering a user scale.

I wonder what Yamaha's latest is in the way of digital pianos. I have
a nice, but heavy, P-200, which still sounds ok, but it's certainly
not bleeding edge. At the time I bought it, it beat every digital
piano out there, in sound and action, and that includes the much
touted Kurzweil--at least to my ears and fingers.

The next digital piano I buy will be light. The tradeoff, though, for
my home studio setup, is that when they are lighter, they tend not to
be as deep, so it's hard to put your laptop on top to save 'working
real estate'.

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
> All,
>
> You may be aware that Roland has recently begun shipping a new
> instrument, the V-Piano.  It's a professional stage piano in
> the $5000 range.  Importantly, it's physically modeled (like
> pianoteq, and Roland's V- Accordians).  It also touts Roland's
> latest fake piano keyboard action, and some fancy 'fake ivory'
> keytops.  I went to my local shop yesterday to audition it.
>
> The shop had it running through some truly massive PA system
> right next to it, which sounded incomprehensible at such short
> distance (the massive sub was on my left, resulting in a really
> unbalanced sound, etc etc).  So take the following with a grain
> of salt: sound-wise, it was good, but no better (and perhaps
> even inferior to) pianoteq.  The presets include some neat fun,
> such as what would happen if you made strings out of silver,
> or had tripled unisons all the way down the keyboard, but
> nothing especially useful.  I spent most of my time between
> two concert grands.
>
> It should also be mentioned that I don't like 'fake piano'
> keyboard actions, and historically I've liked Roland's least
> of all.  So again, take this with a grain of salt.  The action
> was better than I've experienced on other Roland instruments,
> but still posed no threat to the fellow who's renting me the
> Yamaha U5 in my living room.  It was responsive and relatively
> quick, but trills reveal right away something rotten in Denmark,
> and after about 15 minutes a type of fatigue set in which is
> characteristic of these actions.
>
> Also granted, that with time one's technique can possibly
> adapt to suit any action, including this one.  That said, these
> fake actions seem to me to go to contortions to replicate the
> surface features of a piano actions (escapement let off, etc),
> at the expense of being normal physical systems whose linear
> responses correlate to the sound being produced (which is what
> is truly important in piano actions, and all acoustic keyboard
> actions).
>
> As for tuning features, it had the standard Roland front-panel
> affair, with a handful of 12-tone tunings like "just major",
> "just minor", "pythagorean", "meantone", and "kirnberger",
> along with a key center setting.  I suspect the tuning
> implementation is the usual Roland one, restricted to 12 tones
> per octave, but have not verified this.
>
> For now, I'll put $4700 in the bank and stick with pianoteq
> and its excellent Scala-file support.
>
> -Carl
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--

Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.untwelve.org

Aaron wrote:

>It's regrettable that most manufacturers stick to 12-tones, and the
>standard temperaments, without at least offering a user scale.
>
>I wonder what Yamaha's latest is in the way of digital pianos. I have
>a nice, but heavy, P-200, which still sounds ok, but it's certainly
>not bleeding edge. At the time I bought it, it beat every digital
>piano out there, in sound and action, and that includes the much
>touted Kurzweil--at least to my ears and fingers.
>
>The next digital piano I buy will be light. The tradeoff, though, for
>my home studio setup, is that when they are lighter, they tend not to
>be as deep, so it's hard to put your laptop on top to save 'working
>real estate'.

I think the S90 is still their state of the art workhorse -- it's
been the favorite recommendation on the Keyboard forums for years.
I played one yesterday for comparison, and liked the action feel
slightly better, but the sound isn't as responsive as the physical
modeling of the V-piano.

I'm just now looking at this:
http://www.avant-grand.com/

If you click "technology", it looks like they've actually got a
different kind of action in it, that seems like it might actually
be good. It's sampled, not physical modeling, though.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the pedals included with the V-Piano
were anemic. Teh sux.

-Carl

>I'm just now looking at this:
> http://www.avant-grand.com/

Alas, only $20,000. -Carl