Roland’s 50th Anniversary Concept Piano (opens in new tab)

A good percentage of the producer digital pianos are just the flat keyboard and controls housed in a structure meant to look like a traditional piano.

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-...

Got the kids a $2k Roland FP 90x for Christmas to replace a $1k Casio. I don't play but they liked the Roland action when we tried their models in stores over Yamaha, Casio, and some others. Now that we have it- incredible instrument, well worth the upgrade, good match for their skills. It is a really, really good sound producer, better than most analog pianos I've heard, though I can easily tell the difference between it and their teacher's Steinway grand. The sounds emitted by the Roland are very fine, but still digital. It feels like a $10k digital would get much closer to being able to trick a listener into thinking it was a fine analog.

Did the same search about a year ago, ended up ordering the CLP-775 after testing Kawai and Yamaha in stores. It _finally_ arrived last month, completely love it so far. On the somewhat cheaper side the 745 also felt great in store.

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!

Kawai makes quite nice digital pianos. The CA95 that we bought about 5 years ago has real wooden hammer action and a wooden soundboard. It also reproduces the harmonics (through digital samples) that you get when you hold the sustain pedal down and play a different string (resonant frequencies can vibrate other strings that you haven't played).

I highly recommend them if you are considering a digital piano.

Looked at those exact brands about a month ago. Went with the Yamaha N1x hybrid. (Which means it has a conventional acoustic action with hammers and everything) so far pretty happy with it. I suggest going over to the piano world forums and doing a dive. The threads on these models are long. Also above all go see them in real life if you can.

The higher-end Kawai models have an Android-driven touch screen. It would be great if someone would manage to jailbreak those.

Same.

I'm about to just buy that P515... I can't stand the indecision any longer.

i know this is tongue-in-cheek, but roland is not that kind of company

Moonlight sonata interrupted by the windows crash sound or a message notification beep.

Well, I wish I could see it at CES (as they state it will be) to confirm or disprove your assertions.

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.

They're releasing plenty of products that excited people, it's just that the Roland products that are exciting all came out 20-40 years ago, and they just keep re-issuing them in various formats.

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've always thought of them as a maker of reliable workhorse stuff. The MIDI keyboard I have from them has been rock solid and it's outlasted at least two others.

For a small monthly payment you can gave access to g.

You can shape a screen by hiding or removing elements of a square screen and solve the rest in software which confirms to the visible shape.

Square screen in this is as lazy as the rest of it.

Compose a piece that actually uses the prop noise, and have them vary the speed of the motors during the piece in order to alter the noise.

They don't look to uses props, but bladeless air flow tech, based on the renders anyhow

> That is not what ‘drone’ means in a musical instrument context.

Which other word should they have used?

Quadcopters sound like an enormous swarm of bees. I doubt the sound quality coming out of them is very good.

It's even a render, I think. Just add 6 seconds of one of Rachmaninov's recordings under it (https://youtu.be/L3Xp2Djqh3s?t=30), and you'll have a good impression.

Reverb is the result of latency, and in large spaces the audio signal to distant speakers is delayed to minimize dead spots due to wave interference.

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.

It is almost certainly using FM as it’s cheap and zero latency.

You know, before wifi and bluetooth we had this amazing technology designed to transmit audio through the air with zero latency.

It was called "radio".

> Wouldn't latency be horrible, if e.g. the drones are connected through wifi or bluetooth?

It would, but they are not - it's in the article.

The article addresses latency. They used a proprietary system repurposed from headphones.

My immediate thoughts. If only pianos were typically positioned in the same spot for a long time, allowing to do those measurements once and hang the speakers appropriately from the ceiling. Or make a speaker array in the base and do all sorts of spacial Fourier/phased array madness.

I guess if you want a gimmick piano you can have it.

DJI has made a shocking amount of progress at making its drones quieter over the past few years. What used to sound like a loud swarm of bees 20 feet overhead is now almost imperceptible.

Mic up the prop, phase shift 180 degrees and cancel the prop noise…kinda like noise canceling headphones?

I can think of a few genres of music where drone sounds would not feel out of place. Unfortunately, they're genres of music which aren't suited to a piano either.

Seriously. My first thought was playing the piano while waiting to be shot by a sniper. Ever since I saw some of the Syrian war vids, I just can't disassociate that sound from mortal danger.

> 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.