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Comment by pama | Hacker News Reader

I’ve often wondered about the reverse. Get the finest grand piano action, like the ones used in the Fazioli, and create a minimal mechanical unit that has just that piece and the pedals (with the action mechanics that connect the left/right pedals to the keys) and then nothing else but a couple of sensors and a couple fast USB-C. The Kawai Novus series did an OK action and left pedal, but then they connect it to a whole furniture and their sound synthesis and vibrations are imperfect. With modern powerful GPU the sound should be possible to become near perfect and easy to tune to one’s preference.

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Very high end digital pianos have an action that is quite similar to a real grand.

This is a relatively cheap digital piano action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_VT0IpM66k

These are 2 versions of a mid-high range digital piano action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJEAKI2jBLU

This is a very high end digital piano action https://kawaius.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Kawai-NV10S-M...

That very same action is also used in acoustic pianos, and the acoustic version looks like this (you can see the main difference is that the hammers have felt) https://snadenspianos.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/MG_9...

And this is another (more traditional) acoustic grand piano action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5O1Kfd_4Fw

Kinda like a silent piano? There are aftermarket options like PianoDisc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_piano

Yes but without the need for the full furniture. One should be able to miniaturize everything else but the action. I think such compact designs will eventually appear but the difference in real action versus very good hybrid digital actions is of highest interest to musicians who typically have access to real pianos. Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, and others have been moving in that direction over the years and the top models by Yamaha and Kawai have passable actions though they still have a large piece of furniture around them.

A large part of the experience comes from the actual sound. GPUs don't matter. Mozart has some very good physically modeled pianos that respond very naturally. But to get that to sound like a real piano in a real space is a greater challenge than reproducing the feel of Fazioli.

I am no master pianist, but I imagine much of the feel of such an instrument comes from the physical weight of the keys, and the feel as they strike the strings. Although good quality keyboards have "weighted" keys, they don't feel exactly the same. I think it would be hard to reproduce this exactly.

The top-end Yamaha electric pianos have a near-complete replica of the action inside of them. If you adjust the volume exactly right, you almost replicate the feel of playing a real piano.

I agree. Perhaps I was unclear. I was hoping that someone can use the exact action of the grand piano, but skip the strings, soundboard and so on.

Silent grand pianos exist, though the ones I'm aware of also include the acoustic bits as an option, e.g.,

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/pianos/s...

https://www.boesendorfer.com/en/pianos/silent-edition

craigslist is full of free upright pianos and occasionally free baby grands. Of course if you show up with a chainsaw instead of 5 men and a dolly...

The kawai vpc is pretty much that, right? You don’t need fast usbc for audio and it’s the best action on a midi controller

GPUs may not be great for latency.

Real (proper) pianos also have latency between a finger pushing on a key and sound coming out. There's mechanical bits that need to move some distance before a string is struck or muted, and these bits do not have infinite acceleration -- they've got mass, momentum, and inertia.

Can these latencies not be balanced between techniques?

I'm no expert on synthesis or pianos, but my immediate thought is that the digital thing may need slowed down to match the latency of the analog thing.

You may have a point. Perhaps naively I imagined that if competitive gamers can handle it, they may be useful enough for piano. Currently the CPU software is lacking in quality (though improving over time) but has acceptable latency compared to grands (which also have latency due to the mechanism and the location of the sound source).

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