Roland V-piano Grand

I totally agree. If you're going to go that far, buy a grand piano, you'd certainly have the space.

I really don't understand. The v-piano is great as it's got multi outputs for the studio and fir outboard amplification for live or the home, who is going to buy a virtual grand piano like this? It's no good in the studio, it'll take up more space and offer the same job as V-piano v1 and, probably, doesn't have all the output options of the v-piano 1. Maybe that's just me being pessimistic though, perhaps Roland HAVE thought of eveything??

It may have further improvements - here's a quote from their web page:

"Stepping up from the previous generation, the V-Piano Grand’s sound generator has been further refined, and new piano models have been added to the onboard library."

but yes, that could just mean they use the "Evolution" stuff, I suppose.

Greg

It is incredibly brain-dead, isn't it?  I think it highlights their primary view of the world as a manufacturer first and foremost.  I own a v-piano.  I respect it - a lot - but don't really love it.  but i'm slowly learning to do little things that make it sound more realistic- and it is a lot of fun to play. And i could love it, particularly if Roland would address its weaknesses more promptly.

I was very disappointed when they didn't further upgrade the software engine this year.  The Evolution upgrade was more or less useless, as it gave users 4 new pianos that were "nitchy" and didn't really correct the perceived flaws with the basic pianos.  The v-piano has a strong bottom, a realistic upper range, but a flat sounding, somewhat lifeless midrange.  People have been saying that from day 1, and you get the impression they aren't working very hard at fixing it.  could be that its just not "fixable"...

i think it still sounds better than any sample based program out there, and its dynamic range and playability are terrific.  I just thought Roland would have taken the ongoing "job" of constantly upgrading its sound realism more seriously.  And that is what i respect most about pianoteq- their non-hardware focus constantly keeps them upgrading their software.  For them - its "improve or die" ... for roland, it seems to be "build it and they will come".   Roland could certainly learn something from them.  But the cynic in me believes that Roland- ever working towards selling hardware- would hold back on releasing any major improvements until the next generation v-piano.

Honestly I don't really understand the point of these new digital grands; those are (almost) as big and heavy as real grands and very expensive. If I had space to put a grand, I'd surely save my money to have a real one. Maybe only places are restaurants where those might be reasonable: volume is adjustable and sound can easily taken out to sound system.

Anyway V-piano (grand or smaller one) is not very convincing product. It's maybe expressive and playable but its sound is still quite far from natural acoustic piano sound. And as said earlier this company hasn't done enough to develop it to its real potential.

If you listen to Liebestraum in this demo, what do you hear? I hear someone playing digital piano, and not very special or new... In fact it sounds quite synthetic to my ears.

http://www.rolandus.com/community/insid...cleId=1270

The high notes sound bad, plastic like attack and the overall sound is lifeless, in my opinion

This has been my complain from the very start about Pianoteq and it is so hard to describe a sound with words.
When you hit a piano hard there are this sharp attack (spoiing) like if the felt on the hammer was removed, with lots of metallic overtones together with a low "thumb" from the kabinet and a nice sound of vibrating wood and not so much in the middle register, especially in the low keys.
I have more than once tried to describe that sound.
I think Pianoteq has too much energy in the middle frequencies, too little attack sound and it's like too much of the sound sustain and become a little muddy becasue of it...

But i really think it has become much better with Pianoteq 3 and lately with the new Pleyel add-on... so it is going in the right direction

I think it's not possible to reproduce with rightness the extreme strong strikes (near to broke the strings), cause most or almost all digital pianos have not sensor to get the extreme vellocities, as their maximum registered velocity is lower, and if you play harder get the same midi value.
If pianoteq had such ultra FFF, your controller would activate such sounds before your touch really get ultra FFF, cause the controller sensors had not such dynamic range.

Maybe it's a limitation of the usual sensors (a pair of sensor that measure the interval to both be activated) mostly used in almost all digital pianos.  Perhaps the optical sensor, the ones installed in real pianos to get midi ability, are a lot better.

My Roland only get a bit fine velocity range if I set it to heavy, but I couldn't find graphic curve for velocity, on pianoteq, that get fine.

Anybody here have a Roland F-100, F-90 or F-50, and had the same problem  ???

Sounds like me trying to pad my resume.