Kawai MP8

On the MP8, you choose the sounds (about 264), or your own setups (or deafult setups), by using combinations between three different rows of buttons (f.ex 1-1-c is mellow grand). I find this very easy to use. Other functions are easy to use too, and the manual was good.
Take in mind that I am not using it for live or professional use, and play seldom anything else then the concert grand.

I dont know anything about the features - I didnt buy the piano based on this, my priority was the piano sound and action, and to comment on the latter - I think it is just superb, I really love the touch, the keys can be pressed down slowly, like on a grand piano - no springs or plastic "feel"., and I don`t think there are any either.

The expressivness is why I bought this instrument. The piano sound is more than good enough for my standards, and it is very dynamic and "lively" and the tone is warm and full. I feel the sound respons very well indeed to my play, but had hoped it to be more sensitive to pianissimo playing. The sound or sample in it self, however (when just struck a cord)is not the best there is.
I find some others flaws, like some bad notes with some wrong overtones on the "concert grand", and a distortion on a few tones on the mellow grand (around middle b-flat)on my piano at least, this was very irritating when heard it, but for my use, I can live this. Also I find the other piano samples to be very uneaven in quality. The concert grand and the mellow grand have a richness the others don`t have, and I have never been tempted to use any them. And I can mention that some of the other sound are really wonderful, though never had digital piano before, I cant compare them to others. I really like the e-piano sounds, and I think the harpsicord , and guitar samples sound good, but sounds like strings and brass, sound terrible and artificial, but I think they always do. (on digital pianos that is.. )

The strongest competitor for me, the "superior grand" on Roland rd700sx, was just breathtaking. Compared to other quite expressiv, "piano like" digital pianos I tried, like the Generalmusic rp800 - the Roland sound, when struck a cord - was like going from a mono sound piano, to hearing almost the real thing. The Roland had some "air" and "space" to it that made it wonderfull through headphones. The mp8 has a much dryer sound, but then again quite clean and pure, at least compared to the rp800. BUT The Mp8 surpassed the Roland (not by much however) and the Gem (and the yamaha 300) in keyboard touch, AND the pure expressivness of the instrument has impressed me. After all.., even life is made of comprimises - and a digital piano sound is in itself a huge comprimise, a real Boesendorfer is not, but the fact remains, I really enjoy playing the mp8 too!

Software Version 1.30 Display is rather small, but there are a lot of knobs and faders for different functions, which makes editing very easy. A value-knob would have been nice, especially for renaming user patches etc.

The strongest part of this instrument: the KEYBOARD-ACTION!! For a explicit piano player there's nothing that comes close to this superb heavy touch!! The MP 8 has wooden keys, and this is what makes the difference. I've never practised on DP's, it made me sick after playing for ten minutes on plasic keys. The finishing of the keys is great, you can even feel the wooden stucture of the black keys on their surface. I've never thought I would ever prefer to play on a DP ... until now. The action is very well adjusted to the piano sound, possibilities to play an expressive piano are great!

Polyphony is 192, so far I never had any situation where this was not enough :-)

Overall, the MP 8 is built very solid, it has a beatiful finish, nothing that gives the impression of cheap manufacturing (except the volume faders). Unfortunately it weights a lot but that's the price to pay for the wooden keyboard.

Hmm, here is where I had to make a compomise.

I'm a pianist and the piano samples are what I am mainly interested in. The MP 8 has two main Piano-Patches (of course there are a lot more but it's obvious that they're just variations of the main piano samples).
Concert Grand 1 and Concert Grand 2. After playing for three months on the instrument I have to face the fact that CG 2 is not usable for me. It sounds like a children piano, very bad.

So there remains one single preset which I really use, the CG 1. The authenticity is pretty good, altough I think kawai could have done better. Especially the low velocities lack of clarity, they sound to mellow, just like you would hear the sound through a filter. The bass register is strong and mighty, tends to be to loud in the mix compared to the other registers. What I relly like are the samples of the upper three octaves. Very authentic, the imitation of the hammer noise in this area is beautiful.

Another element of the piano sound are Damper Resonance (the "noise" from sring-overtones you here when the piano is played with the damper pedal down) and the String Resonance. They are both adjustable and give a very authentic touch to the whole sound.

Onboard effects are good, especially reverbs sound great. Choose a large stage reverb give it the right depth and you really find yourself on the stage of a big arena sitting in front of a Steinway...

Overall, I like the sound of the CG1, and I restarted to play single note lines in the tenor and bass register just because it sounds so great to here these notes in perfect tune. It's true that you may find other (Software-)Pianos that sound better/more authentic for THE LISTENER. But the strenght of the MP8 is to combine a good sound with the best feeling for the one who plays the keys.

There are a lot of other sounds. The drawbar organs are pretty nice, the church organs too. There are some good and strong pad and string sounds which sound nice layered with the piano.

The rhodes are kind of a dissapointment. I own a Rhodes Mark II Stage Piano and there is not a single patch on the MP8 that comes close to sound like the real thing. I consider the E-Pianos of Yamaha's S90 ES or Roland's RD 700 SX to be better, not to metion Clavia's Nord Electro.

I rate the sounds with a 7. 1 Minus for the CG 1 which is good but not as good as it could be, one minus for CG2 which is not worth to be put in this keyboard and one minus for the rhodes sounds which are not state of the art.

Never had a problem so far. The installed OS seems to be stable. I don't know if the wooden keyboard could cause any problems when moved around a lot. I probably will not transport it very often.

There's a german internet-site with a very useful online-forum. Most of questions can be answered there.
I've never dealt with customer support, and I hope I will not have to.

Would I buy it again? I'm not sure... if it was my only instrument probably not, since it is really heavy to take with you to every rehersal and does not cover all the sounds I expect from a high end stage piano. I thought about reselling it but I probably won't because of this unique keyboard action which brought me to play and practise a lot more than I did before.

I wish it would have an upgradeable sound engine (who does not??) But I doubt that we can expect the big DP manufacturers to do us this favour. :-)

Well, after reading the manual (some people try without doing that...) the MP8 is overall pretty easy to use, at least for the basic steps (setting different sounds, changing basic parameters like touch, tuning, reverb, etc). The English manual is in PDF online (www.kawai.de), this is handy for testing and understanding the MP8 before you buy it. There have been some software patches (mine is version 1.23), but version 1.32 is already out fixing a few minor problems. Interestingly the latest software patch is available from the excellent German/UK website but not from the US website and on the Japanese website the latest version is v1.23. The one tiny criticism I have is that after turning the MP8 on reverb is always turned on, and the default volume after turning it on is not the same as after resetting to initial state (which can be done by hitting two buttons simultanously).

Polyphony 192 notes, enough for playing most classical pieces. The keyboard action is one of the reasons why I bought this beast -- it is excellent (wooden keys, graded weighting), very similar to a real (grand) piano, and this at a much lower price than any real piano. I compared it to other keyboards out there (Yamaha, Roland) and IMHO this is definitely the best. The possibilities in being able to control the overall piano feel and sound is amazing (damper effect, touch curve, string resonance, etc.) -- I was after some experimenting able to get pretty close in feel to mimic the real piano I have. Built-in effects are easy to use after reading the manual. For extensions there is of course MIDI, but no on-board sequencer.

Besides the keyboard action this was the main reason to buy the MP8. I use it for practicing classical piano at night and the sound is just amazing for this price. Make sure you use good headphones (AKG K501 for example) or a good PA to listen to the sounds, otherwise you won't know how it sounds. Also make sure you listen to the effects of damper effect and string resonance for reality and set the touch curve you are used to -- man, what have keyboard sounds changed in the last ten years! There are many, significantly different (grand) piano choices, enough to make everybody happy. For comparison to other pianos (hard- and software) the piano shootout samples at www.purgatorycreek.com are great. Some people reported bad sounding notes etc. for some sounds on the German discussion board (an excellent source for information by the way, accessible under 'FORUM' from http://www.kawai.de/homepage_de.htm) when the MP8 came out. Some of that has been fixed with the software updates and I at least didn't notice any problems. I only cared about the piano sounds but there are 256 total (e-paino, organ, etc.). Overall, the only way to get better piano sound is by either using a state-of-the-art software piano or an expensive real one.

I only use it home, so far no problems. It weighs a bit (~35kg).

Customer support is amazing... if you read German -- because of the German Kawai website and the discussion board on it (access 'FORUM' from http://www.kawai.de/homepage_de.htm). Some English posts are there as well (use translation software for the German parts). The MP8 is apparently developed in Europe and some of the main developers seem to be the moderators of this board and answer most questions posted within a day or so. There are even phone numbers there! I haven't had any serious problems with my MP8 yet but overall this makes a very good impression and I am sure these people would help me in case I had a real problem. I bought the MP8 in Japan, and service here is also excellent (although no Japanese discussion board) and they were extremely friendly (but that is the default in Japan for most companies).

The MP8 is amazing, I would buy it again. I bought it for the keyboard action and the piano sounds to be able to practice classical piano at night, and for this price (218000 Yen = 1600 Euro = $1850 including stand, delivered to my house!) this is an excellent deal. Customer support is amazing because of this German discussion board. The only problem I had was finding one for testing -- not a lot of stores carry it. Make sure you bring good headphones and manual when testing it out.

After ten minutes everything looked simple and in the right place.It did remind me of the rd 600 I had a couple of years ago.To me ease of use is not that important and i'd never had a stage piano wich was complicated or so.The main thing is sound... sound and sound. Well that was before I bought the mp8. I never knew that the keyboard action on a digital piano would make such a difference in sound experience. When you listen to the subjectiv mp3 files of the purgatory creek you will never find out the unbelieveble subleties in this peace of top gear. I still have my yamaha p120 and the purgatory mp3 does not do any justice to either boards.It's fun and a joy to play the p120, but a totally new expirience playing the mp8. Just so real.

Well as stated above, a keyboard action so close to perfection. That along with 2 very good key-responding main piano sounds.Almost unlimmited polifony [192]wich is indeed needed when you use a great amount of damper peddeling. the rest of the internal sounds are good, some very good. But for the better organ simulations you need a nord electro or so. It is also a powerfull master keyboard, but to me of less inmportance.

the first piano sound is based on the software piano called 'the grand'[wizoo steinberg]and sounds deep and warm in the lower range.The middle and high register sounds more cristal and clear.very good for pop and rock. The second has more 'wood' sound in the mid and high tones.It sounds like a major mp9500 update.Good for classical, but mostly slow righthand pieces.But as said before the intergration with the keys is fenomenal. The mp8 also anylises your way of playing and gives you your own velocity curves.This is not just a gimmick but the icing on the cake of expresiviness.I cannot stop playing.

I am a little bit worried to be honoust. I bought the mp8 in Germany, because in Holland where I live, not one store bothers to sell kawai.They wanted me to buy the obvious. s90es ,nord stage ,rd700sx. All fine boards but really not as good.So this makes one wonder......

Just have it for two days, no problems so far.

I bought it without trying and I'm really glad I did. For me it is alot of money to spend and a lot more then initionally planned.I would buy it again and again. This is realy the first time I was and am this impressed by a digital piano. I think it's fair to tell you that my proffession is pianotuner. [and without being arrogant, a very well skilled concert tuner, without electronic devices, and also intonation and regulation of top grands] My colleges would snob me over this review because they keep comparing things wich have no real comparising needed for. Enjoy both....... I most curtenly will. Don't believe the nonces you reed about the flaws of digitals [just let them be for what they are] The so called experts would not be able to tune a correct 'equaltempered' third or sixth but seeme to know exactly how soundboard and damperresonance should sound like. Stick to your ivory gigasised software or too expensive new ones, while I enjoy this totally overlooked kawai beauty.