Test of Roland's V-PIANO and new PHA-III keyboard.

[Son of HuHefner]

 

Don't car dealers sell vehicles at $100 over invoice? My experience is that I can absoltuley get this kind of deal. Retailers don't exactly love doing it, but they will to keep me from taking my business elsewhere. I pay 30% off retail on every piece of equipment I have ever purchased.

 

 

no the auto dealers don't do that. Some might

 

you make these general statements ( see your original V piano $4199 remark) that simply don't wash

[Honch]

 

I think the V-piano might just be over-hyped. Everyone thought it would be the end-all-be-all of D-piano's, but it dissapoints when you actually play it. I still think it's just way overpriced.

 

 

Sorry for weighing in late, but I tested it with a pair of AKG 701 headphones (the white expensive ones) and also, digital out to two Apogee converters (one for each channel) that was about the same price as the V-piano. To two Genelec large ones. Thus, as good as it gets. My test period was almost a full day. Office hours.

 

I tend to agree that it really is a bit over hyped. The action and feeling though, is top notch and among the best if not THE BEST. Testing with a pair of cans, leaves you hearing without any latency and how it bounces back, and sound and key sensitivity reacts. Bet you can't split that up in 127 digital step as it does with MIDI.

 

However, AT THIS PRICE, I would really ask for more things. One just have to be more picky about things on this level.

 

You can get a decent acoustic grand second hand for this price. That sound will never be outdated. For how long does the V-piano stays around and be top notch? A couple of years before anything else leaves it far behind, and gets on the bargain bins on e-bay. We just don't know.

 

I would've like to see the damper opens, like on any acoustic, where you press down a chord silently and let those dampers open, and when you play with your other hand just those strings and chords ring and drones sympathetically. I use that a lot. Also, all this "silver strings" one can't make a proper judgement of, since it's not really viable to do an A/B test. I found some middle Eb tones have a resonant ring to it, that was, not unpleasant, but rather annoying. Not so with the other patches though. It does still - as all digital pianos, not a special unique thing to v-piano - has some digital dynamic limiter to its sound. One has to cut back ambience, and string resonance to be heard over a dense background mix/music playing. It just doesn't cut through that much in ensemble playing. And when raising the HAMMER function it just does sound like a compression unit put on reminiscent of the old Rolling Stones hit "She's a Rainbow" intro if you remember that one.

 

I would've like it to be a complete MIDI mother keyboard at that price too - with aftertouch and also polyphonic aftertouch - but I do think that they concentrate on internal stuff, and you just can't send that much MIDI information out from it, to get all the nuances of the key sensitivities translate to a regular MIDI or software sample player.

 

I just want them to put out another, more stage friendly version of it, in 3-4 years that technology will cost half the price if not less. The key action however, is definitely top notch. I was inspired to play around and make up new things as I noodled along. Very few keyboards (if any) has done this to me.

 

The main crux of the biscuit with such a gear at such a price is: How long will it last? No matter how stellar it is. I could hear from the George Duke demo on Rolands site that it was a digital piano though. You won't turn Keith Jarrett over to this one, any time soon I think. At half the price, I would consider it seriously though. It's just for the few well off elite right now. Or sponsored by Roland. If I had a large studio, or it was resident somewhere, in some set and done installation at conference hall, church, musical theathre or something, where you have some large production company with high budget I would consider to make the plunge, but definitely not as a semi-pro free lance struggling musician.

 

It's too expensive for what it does.

[Dr.Wu]

i agree on the ringing Eb.

Not too bad but definetly noticable.

The first thing i tried was pressing down a couple of keys silently to undampen their strings and playing some short notes with my rght hand and low and behold i got that sweet sympathetic resonance. Just like the real thing.

Regarding the risk of becoming obsolent i expect the japanese to supply some updates-why would they give the thing a dedicated USB port just for that otherwise?

[Honch]

Well, I did not get the sympathetic resonance no matter how I tried. I would love to know on which patches and what to tweak? Maybe you need the editor program first, or pressing some pedal?

 

You know, in SWEDEN they're at 8,000 USD!!! (no, not lying and that's street price too!) WITHOUT their bulky stand that comes along with it as an optional thing only. The stand costs almost a grand extra. And for that price I want it electronically height adjusted. So I can let my kids play on it and grow up on it, and have it raised so high that you can play standing up only on it. Or everything in between. Do not attempt to put it on any Quiklok doube x-braced stand. I've found no other stand that suits this one, apart from a regular kitchen table. Maybe at IKEA perhaps? :-) It's nothing to lug around and tour regularly with. Not stage friendly. It seems you can put another MIDIboard on top of it, that's about it. I wonder why they had to do the main body that large and deep, just to keep the keyboard "long enough" or something.

 

The USB port may very well upgrade some things but the engine and DSP chips are just capable of so much.

[The Audacity Works]

i agree on the ringing Eb. Not too bad but definetly noticable.

Can't you adjust each key separately? I thought that was one of its selling points.

[Dr.Wu]

Can't you adjust each key separately? I thought that was one of its selling points.

 

True-one could probably tweak that key to dampen the ringing but i wasnt too offended by it anyway. its not ike the heavy ringing i get in some of the Ivory Yamaha samples.

To get the sympathetic resonance you can use any patch with no extra tweaking.

No Pedal needed either. Just hold down some keys silently and play short stacattos with the other hand.

Of course turning down the ambience helps. If it is set to high it will overpower the resonant strings.

[Dr.Wu]

i agree on the too high price for the stand but there is actually an alternative from Roland itsself. the KS-8. its a lot cheaper and is just as sturdy.

[Dr.Wu]

 

The USB port may very well upgrade some things but the engine and DSP chips are just capable of so much.

 

 

If the engine can calculate 264 pianostrings it sure can generate 88 tines for a Wurly or a Rhodes plus a bunch of masterkeyboard features etc.

Thats what i am hoping for.

[JohnBenussi]

 

Don't car dealers sell vehicles at $100 over invoice? My experience is that I can absoltuley get this kind of deal. Retailers don't exactly love doing it, but they will to keep me from taking my business elsewhere. I pay 30% off retail on every piece of equipment I have ever purchased.

 

 

Car dealers make more (off the top) then want us to feel sorry for them

making a measly 100bucks a car, when it's actually more than that.

 

Agreed. It might even take a bit of talking, but 30% off is about the norm, unless the company has a hard-on for zero room for discounts.

 

I love the people that sell on Craigslist and say they paid the first listed MSRP of an item (say an Oasys) of about 9grand, and say what a deal it is to get their lightly used *O* for $6500. lmao:facepalm:

[Honch]

True-one could probably tweak that key to dampen the ringing but i wasnt too offended by it anyway. its not ike the heavy ringing i get in some of the Ivory Yamaha samples. To get the sympathetic resonance you can use any patch with no extra tweaking. No Pedal needed either. Just hold down some keys silently and play short stacattos with the other hand. Of course turning down the ambience helps. If it is set to high it will overpower the resonant strings.

 

Found out that in the manual there are global settings like string resonance, and such things. If set to 0 as default, no such things occur. It goes from -100 to +100 so there's a lot of nuance there. So one has to raise that one a bit before these sympathetic things occurs it seems. Or so I've read. I did get rid of all ambience (reverb). There's also soundboard resonance and damper resonance which can be set. I will probe deep into this tomorrow when I will be at the studio again, in which it resides. They've just bought one.

 

I agree that the sound doesn't give me goose pimples and "holy crap" that was expressed before by someone... it is very very good though, but I can't get past hearing certain tiny digital or modelling artifacts that you just have to cope with or live with. Albeit, tiny. They've just got past another decimal at the 99,99 percent like a real grand sound. Running through Apogee converters and Genelecs may reveal too much though. Those are magnifying glasses. I don't know. Headphones revealed the same thing, but those were audiophile quality as well. And since I hear these small tiny things, I wonder what would happen in 2-3 years. Will this turn obsolete? Its a full professional gear, that one can deduct and will be written off for tax purposes within 3 years anyway, when something even more "wow!" comes around. So it's geared towards those people. I ain't gonna spend 8 grand on this. Bastards, you can get it for 4 and a half grand it seems ...spolied brats are you all...

[The Audacity Works]

 

It might even take a bit of talking, but 30% off is about the norm, unless the company has a hard-on for zero room for discounts.

I've mentioned it before (even in this very thread?) but percentage off means nothing. Some dealer nets are 70% off list, some are 10%. If you get only 30% off something with a 70% off dealer net, you got a really crappy deal. If you get 30% off something with a 10% off dealer net, the dealer just lost a ton of money.

 

The standard killer deal is dealer cost + shipping + 10%. It's something I used to give my very best clients, and then only if they weren't annoying about the price.

 

Believe me, if one's the type to constantly bug the sales guy to the point where their profit is eaten up, they'll stop hooking you up. And they'll resent your business.

 

Hint: If GC tells you what their dealer cost is, they're wrong. The sales guys have absolutely no clue how much corporate really paid for the thing.

[JohnBenussi]

 

I've mentioned it before (even in this very thread?) but percentage off means nothing. Some dealer nets are 70% off list, some are 10%. If you get only 30% off something with a 70% off dealer net, you got a really crappy deal. If you get 30% off something with a 10% off dealer net, the dealer just lost a ton of money. The standard killer deal is dealer cost + shipping + 10% . It's something I used to give my very best clients, and then only if they weren't annoying about the price. Believe me, if one's the type to constantly bug the sales guy to the point where their profit is eaten up, they'll stop hooking you up. And they'll resent your business. Hint: If GC tells you what their dealer cost is, they're wrong. The sales guys have absolutely no clue how much corporate really paid for the thing.

 

 

Certainly you were or are in a position to conduct business on some higher plane than my own or am I missing something here?

 

Since you mentioned it, what are some items that *you* personally know of that net dealer's 70% off of list?

 

As an example, Monster cables are insanely marked up, yet have a Minimum price attached to them and for the most part cannot be budged on...

 

In this example *IF* you were a consumer, and not an authorised dealer

what discount would you expect to get On say a 6ft 1/4 to 1/4 priced say (approx.) $25.99

 

It sounds like you were in a position to sell authorised goods.

How can you as a business expect to stay in business if you are giving away your margins away?

[Honch]

Tried it again today, and could not - despite plowing through the manual - get the sympathetically string thing going no matter what I did. But I do have totally succumbed to the feeling of the keys, and their dynamics and nuances, and sensitivity. Especially with working with the left and middle pedals. You can do the ONE KEY damper open and let that one ring while playing staccato on others (or a chord). And then when doing fast tremulating on ONE KEY very silent, middle and forte then it dawned on me.

 

You can't fake any kind of mechanical feeling with electronics, and this is MAYBE why it cost so much. They've jumped leaps forward on the 99,999 decimal scale on the keyboard feeling. Try to play "low-key" silent and pianissimo. When accenting certain chords/notes try to play "clavinet" funky! It works perfectly. Definitely verdict : CIGAR!

 

On the sound, timbre, they've gone forward too, but just not that close to a cigar, than they have on the keyboard thing. The very low keys and high keys are no problem, is the middle octave range that always seems to be the most trouble (on all digital pianos). There are some kind of .. tiny tiny ... digital gnarl...(in lack of a better description!) in there on some notes regardless of how you try to fix it, with eq or not. If the sound just was equally as stellar as the key thing. Close but no cigar. The closest you can get without having a cigar, I think!

 

Thus, wanted: Just a mother midi keyboard with this action (JUST like this, not almost) and no sound to it. Then we can choose PianoTeq, NI Akoustik, or The Grand or whatever modelling or convolution piano thing that will show up in the future. Mechanical keyboard action doesn't wear that much in time, as the sound from a modelling software/or sampled software.

 

/Honch

[Dr.Wu]

Thats really odd. Roland is providing a sales guide manual for dealers how to present the benefits of the V-Piano and the "hold down a couple of keys silently and play stactatto notes with the other hand to hear the sympathetic resonance" is the first point in that manual.

I tried it and heard the resonant ringing right away. As soon as you lift the fingers off the silent keys the resonance is muted. Just as the real deal.

[The Audacity Works]

 

what are some items that *you* personally know of that net dealer's 70% off of list?

A few guitars, certain drumsets, a lot of smaller accessories, and a few microphone bundles, if bought in bulk. Sometimes if a product is discontinued, a dealer will buy up the remaining units at a huge discount, but the MSRP remains the same.

 

Of course, dealer net means nothing either. A lot of times, there will be a free shipping deal with the manufacturer, or a free cable deal, or a bonus at the end of the year depending on how much was ordered in that timeframe.

 

If someone uses the term "A-mark", that generally means that the listed dealer net is 50% of MSRP. That doesn't generally include shipping or any taxes, but it also doesn't include any other discounts or bonuses the dealer receives.

 

A "B-mark" is 40% off MSRP, "C-mark" is 30% off MSRP, etc. Smaller companies may have their entire line at "A-mark"; others may have different categories within their lines at different marks. And there's A+, B-, etc. as well.

 

I mean, check any online store. Some stuff will have a sale price only 10% off list and others will say "Insane Blowout! 70% off!" The markup from dealer cost may be the exact same percentage... or the blowout may represent a loss-leader (but more than likely not

[Honch]

Thats really odd. Roland is providing a sales guide manual for dealers how to present the benefits of the V-Piano and the "hold down a couple of keys silently and play stactatto notes with the other hand to hear the sympathetic resonance" is the first point in that manual. I tried it and heard the resonant ringing right away. As soon as you lift the fingers off the silent keys the resonance is muted. Just as the real deal.

 

Still, my hearing is intact, and didn't get it to work. Well, there are a sh**load of parameters that works in conjuction with the pedal:

 

Adjust the ambience AMBIENCE LEVEL

AmbLvl Linked with the [AMBIENCE] Knob.

Adjust the tone parameter SOUND LIFT S.Lift

STRING RESONANCE S.Reso

DAMPER RESONANCE D.Reso

SOUNDBOARD RESONANCE Sndbd

KEY OFF RESONANCE K.Reso

CROSS RESONANCE C.Reso

DECAY TIME Decay

 

Maybe there's some global "overspill" setting that I forgot. It was dead silent in the studio, no reverb or ambience at all. Maybe you have to have some INITIAL reset of the pedals function. I mean all this, SOUND LIFT, wtf is that? Key Off Resonance maybe? It can be anything, and of course I think such a setting should be editable. I mean, if the other, left pedalling and half pedalling works, i e letting just one or a few notes have the dampers off, and play staccato on the rest, then it's no big deal, it just has to work. Maybe that unit is something of a "limited edition"

 

 

/honch

[Dr.Wu]

That really sounds like its broken or set to some superodd values. Have you tried the factory reset function?

You can assign all kind of things to the pedals including songstart or MIDI Out on/off but I dont have to press any pedal down or adjust any parameters to get the undamped strings to resonate.

The Sound Lift parameter actually shrinks the dynamic range.

Key off resonance is very subtle-I really need to concentrate and experiement with different release velocities to hear a difference.

Havent tried the String Resonance parameter but from the manual it seems that turning down String Resonance to -100 could eleminate all sympathetic resonance.

Next time i sit down at a V-Piano i will check that.

[Son of HuHefner]

 

That really sounds like its broken or set to some superodd values. Have you tried the factory reset function? You can assign all kind of things to the pedals including songstart or MIDI Out on/off but I dont have to press any pedal down or adjust any parameters to get the undamped strings to resonate. The Sound Lift parameter actually shrinks the dynamic range. Key off resonance is very subtle-I really need to concentrate and experiement with different release velocities to hear a difference. Havent tried the String Resonance parameter but from the manual it seems that turning down String Resonance to -100 could eleminate all sympathetic resonance. Next time i sit down at a V-Piano i will check that.

 

 

I think you should buy one

[Dr.Wu]

if i only could afford it!

Sofar i satisfy my GAS by noodling on it at my local dealer.

Here is a little something that i made with it

http://www.vimeo.com/5823605

Not a very typical setting mind you-its one of the more esoteric presets called Glass Piano, run thru a backwards reverb

[Honch]

Thanks, I think I'll do that by convincing my studio owning friends, to say "there's something that needs to be reset on this one, it doesn't work as it should". The main thing, all these cross resonances, damper resonance, all works in conjuction with each other.

 

 

That really sounds like its broken or set to some superodd values. Have you tried the factory reset function? You can assign all kind of things to the pedals including songstart or MIDI Out on/off but I dont have to press any pedal down or adjust any parameters to get the undamped strings to resonate. The Sound Lift parameter actually shrinks the dynamic range. Key off resonance is very subtle-I really need to concentrate and experiement with different release velocities to hear a difference. Havent tried the String Resonance parameter but from the manual it seems that turning down String Resonance to -100 could eleminate all sympathetic resonance. Next time i sit down at a V-Piano i will check that.

 

[Zietto]

Did you hear this new demo clip on youtube?

 

I haven't played it yet, but when I listen to it I can't tell any difference with a real piano, all the digital sounding crap of the past seems to be gone. I think there will always be space for improvement on the speakers area, all I can say about the V piano is that it makes obsolete all the previous digital pianos.

[Son of HuHefner]

if i only could afford it! Sofar i satisfy my GAS by noodling on it at my local dealer. Here is a little something that i made with it http://www.vimeo.com/5823605 Not a very typical setting mind you-its one of the more esoteric presets called Glass Piano, run thru a backwards reverb

 

that's well done

 

I like your chord and melody work

 

I am going to add this to my list of tunes to figure out

[Son of HuHefner]

 

Did you hear this new demo clip on youtube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IEwTaSmnoo I haven't played it yet, but when I listen to it I can't tell any difference with a real piano, all the digital sounding crap of the past seems to be gone. I think there will always be space for improvement on the speakers area, all I can say about the V piano is that it makes obsolete all the previous digital pianos.

 

yep. we had this discussion going for 6 months

 

Its the $6000

[Dr.Wu]

that's well done I like your chord and melody work I am going to add this to my list of tunes to figure out

Thank you for your kind words.

Figuring out stuff is half the fun but I can send you a midifile if you want to.

Just let me know.

[Zietto]

 

yep. we had this discussion going for 6 months Its the $6000

 

 

LOL, we are just waiting for Yamaha answer to lower the price....