Roland’s 50th Anniversary Concept Piano
articles.roland.com
articles.roland.com
I'm about to just buy that P515... I can't stand the indecision any longer.
Got the P515 + L515 + LP1.
The new Casio, for example, looks relatively modern and fits like furniture, but you could remove the body and put it into any crazy design you like.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PXS7000BK--casio-px-...
My absolute favourite is the Nord Grand, but it's a little too expensive.
Was really pleasurable, also wistful, taking my son to try them out. We could just hang out in this large room in a retail store in the middle of NYC for a few hours, he just playing whatever was there. Sometimes other kids would drop in too. That kind of relaxed vibe now incredibly rare.
And though I can hear and feel the music, I can't make it, never learned. Don't have time and space to do it now. Really glad he is getting it into his brain at a young age.
You could go Kawai VPC-1 which is just the controller, and then connect it via MIDI to whatever you like. That way, you get a wooden action without paying for the sound engine (I've got my VCP-1 connected to a CP Reface):
I looked up the VPC-1 and while I probably would pay a bit more just to have speakers and a sound engine - the weight difference is interesting. It's 29.5kg for the VPC-1 vs. 17.0kg for the ES920!
I've noticed there is also fierce debate between digital pianos that are based on sampled sounds versus modeled. I believe most Roland digitals are modeled with Fourier series, while all/most of their competitors are sampled (not sure about Nord). That said Pianoteq is a popular after market VST that will bring a very convincing top tier modeled sound to even a low end digital piano.
If you use a decent quality open back headphone, I feel like this is even more true, because the onboard sound becomes irrelevant.
Exception if you're going to travel with it. Built-in sounds save you on setup time.
One of the things I plan to do is connect my iPad and laptop and play around with all the newer piano VSTs that I’ve missed since being away from that world for about 10 years. Sadly Kawai pianos don’t work as USB audio interfaces, so you can’t pipe the VST output back into its onboard speakers. The Roland pianos all support this feature, as do I believe most or all Yamahas.
Not having a built-in tablet means it is future proof and can work with the latest tablet, even a decade into the future.
My preferred digital workstation (cubase) works (started with an atari version) great - also on my phone. My son has the same phone - does not work (slightly different processor? Different size sd card?). I can't find the forum message where someone went out and got a new tablet for the program..doesn't work. "Future proof", isn't even today proof.
I highly recommend them if you are considering a digital piano.
I remember discovering this feature when I held down all keys from A0 through E1 (without sounding them), depressed the sostenuto pedal, and then played a bunch of other keys.
I don’t think you can go wrong with the equivalent Kawai models either. They somehow didn’t quite do it for me when I played them in store (compared to the CLPs), but couldn’t quite pin down what it was, and it was probably just a personal thing.
Anyway, definitely second FlyingRobot’s recommendation about Piano World (though seems like you’re set on that) and trying before settling on anything.
Good luck, sure you’ll end up with something you love!
I can't wait until I get prompted to install updates while playing, have to pay a subscription fee to use the sustain pedal, and have the instrument become non-functional 15 years after purchase once the manufacturer finds the service is no longer profitable and decommissions its server.
In-App Purchases
Roland Cloud Core Year $29.99
Roland Cloud Core Month $2.99
"Roland Cloud is an evolving cloud-based suite of software synthesizers, drum machines, and sampled instruments for modern creators."
It's not hard to predict how that's likely to pan out in the coming years.
I recently saw a second hand Roland AT-900 organ for sale near me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfm_AYqI1No). I'm tempted. The fact that comes with all it's sound and functionality built-in and doesn't have any internet connectivity which can be used to disable said features after my subscription expires makes it more compelling.
Nonsense. Fiction. Not even plausible fiction. Might as well have them hover by magic. HN, move on.
Can't you just have an extra noise cancelling drone that creates an equivalent cancellation sound wave?
Even if it is "fiction," it fits into the "science fiction" category and I love it as such. The rendition is such a beautiful idea that I'm happy they created the web page to showcase the idea.
Besides, a lot of "innovation" in the music space seems to be about how many different ways we can bolt on cloud functionality
This PR exercise is not about how Roland is sticking to its proud tradition of timeless, handmade craftsmanship, but about how they are so cool and pushing the technological envelope. The market reaction might be summed up as 'amused skepticism' eg https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2023/01/06/roland-creates...
Personally I'd buy the crap out of a Jp8080 Boutique :)
They haven't invented anything new AND exciting for a good decade, though.
I think I mostly want to see little blimp/airship swarms be a thing that I could buy, given a lottery win or two.
It’s startling how much things have changed from when I first started using computers, when it seemed that nearly anything could be improved through electronics. Nowadays adding a computer means malware, spyware and losing support after two years.
Like, what are they performing, a cover of Buzzsaw by The Turtles?
Also in keeping, and something I truly despise, is the ubiquitous and obtrusive thick-bezzeled touchscreen just slapped in the middle. I don't think it looks good in the render and looks even worse in the photo.
Instead of spending money developing ways to introduce noise into the speakers, I'd have rather seen the screen match the curve of the panel; though I'm not sure if shaped screens are even possible yet. At the very least they could have done a nicer job of blending the screen in for this art piece.
Square screen in this is as lazy as the rest of it.
> As of now, the drones’ propellers are still somewhat noisy. But as quiet drone technology becomes available, they’ll be able to add it to the existing framework.
Unless the function of these drones is to emit a constant underlying tone to add to the musicality, allowing you to mimic bagpipes, a banjo or a tambura. Which has clearly always been the ambition of any serious pianist.
Which other word should they have used?
Get the hardware as others are saying.
My understanding is that that's why until now no serious electric piano has ever proposed bluetooth audio connectivity for the player.
[Edit]: they use an other tech with zero latency, as described in the article. Thanks for the replying comments.
It would, but they are not - it's in the article.
Which is to say musical experience is complicated and hence live sound design is also complex in ways that aren’t casually obvious.
The rule of thumb is sound travels one foot per millisecond (30cm per millisecond). So at 30m, ten milliseconds latency wouldn’t change the spatial perception very much even without correction. Of course 90ms is plenty of time to correct for latency if you want to be spot on.
My wild ass guess is a microphone on the drone could be used to sync the remote speakers with the piano speakers to phase align the sources.
Basically ordinary audio signal processing succumbed to compute about twenty years ago.
> So at 30m, ten milliseconds latency wouldn’t change the spatial perception very much even without correction.
My intent was that 10ms latency correlates to about 3m. The difference between perceiving reflections at 33m/110ms and 30m/100ms is unlikely to have a significant impact on a live music experience...though it might matter in a recording studio or in live performance monitoring.
It was called "radio".
So really everything you would expect from hanging a speaker from a drone, noisy and power hungry.
I guess if you want a gimmick piano you can have it.
One thing the news release didn’t cover was whether there were attempts to integrate sound production into the coils of the motors.
A common audio engineering strategy these days is to direct phase shift effects of multiple point sources vertically, e.g. linear speaker arrays. For audience members, reinforced and canceled frequencies fifteen feet off the ground don't effect musical experience.
Although I still can't see drones being good for this even with good designs.
Even in the absolute theoretical best case scenario of an idealized disk-shaped actuator inside a duct with proper lip shaping and 0 turbulence around the actuator, the shear boundary of the high velocity output plume is unavoidably going to cause turbulence. The best you can do is "woosh".