Roland V-Piano

so so

excellent pholyphony!!

roland is very expensive... GEM Real Piano is serious competitor... similar tech an more cheap... please Check Promega 2, 3 or RX-P module from Generalmusic. Piano Sound is really fantastic.!

nice.. is roland...

so so....

very expensive machine...! Generalmusic PROMEGA 3 or 2 are serious competitor and similar technologies...
Roland piano samples are bad..!!! Kurz and GEM are better..!

decent..!

decent poly... nice build..uhmm....

uhmmmm..
roland is very expensive... GEM Real Piano is serious competitor... similar tech an more cheap... please Check Promega 2, 3 or RX-P module from Generalmusic. Piano Sound is really fantastic.!
Roland sample piano is really bad, Kurz/GEM is better..!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5YuCSaQ8vo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92wPbbe5Tpw&feature=related

so so... is roland..!

for this price.... I buy Fazioli F-308..!!!

nice work, BUT GeneralMusic have similar technology and VERY CHEAP..!!
cons: very expensive ROLAND, bad samples...
Pros: nice tech...

Software N/A
The Presets sounds stellar, no doubt.
Editing patches can be made via their "midi" or PC editor. A number of parameters can be tweaked and saved. No that hard once you get into the PC. Manual is really, not needed here, but quite decent. Has it's "Rolandness" to it. Very easy, nothing special. Has just a few knobs and pots on the front panel and a Display.

Polyphony is full. And the thing is if you should lean over it and hammer all keys down with your elbow when pedalling, it behaves slightly different than a sample that plays all 88 keys at once, at that volume without taking into consideration all harmonics and timbres that bounces about inside the soudnboard (of an acoustic grand piano). This one takes that into consideration.

KEYBOARD ACTION.
Well, this is what it's all about. The repsonse and touch sensitivity is as close as it gets, to the real thing. No latency and especially sensitive to sostenuto and calm and silent playing. I got inspired from this, and sat around for a whole day almost, churning out windham hill (George Winston) inspired tunes. You can play rhythmically, and finally they've managed to come up with keyboard that you can groove on, like a clavinet or something. Due to their ivory imitation and "escapement" techniques these keys and action are definitely among the best in industry if not the topmost right now. Very much like a real acoustic grand. Which grand you may ask? Yes, that's the problem with reviews. They compare any MIDI keyboard action to a "real acoustic" or "real grand" but I'll tell you that I've tried many new and famous brands, Kawai, Yamaha grand pianos that differ in key action as much as electronic MIDI keyboards and digital piano. So which one's best? Steinway? B??sendorfer? There's simply not one size fits all in this. But I had no problem playing this thing directly whithout having to adjust. It responds very well to half pedalling, and pressing the key down a half way and letting it up, so the damper runs open on that string only. Very cunning.

This is the best keyboard action I've tried. They ought to implement this on lower cost keyboards too. However, action is intimately coupled to timbre, sound, and tone.

MIDI Capabilities.
No aftertouch. Would NOT be that good as a final all master keyboard with all bells and whistles. It's not meant to be either. Neither does a real acoustic grand. It can plays GM2 MIDI files on an onboard GM2 Standar MIDI player with quite decent sounds (more realistsic than EDIRO Hyper Canvas, or VSC-88). Onboard sequencer, that is not THAT easy to use, but records a 30.000 notes at resolution 120 tick a quarter note. Song length 998 measures. No expansion board for more sounds (like on RDX-700 series and so on).

Since it's not loaded with feautures, there's really no need to use this as a complete master MIDI Keyboard for everything. It's best to leave it as a stellar PIANO keyboard controller/player.

Most of the sounds are very realistic.However, since this ballyhoo with silver strings can't be A/B tested in real life, I don't know how a real grand piano would sound with silver wire instead of copper or brass. And have not heard 20 meter lenght strings yet so I can't compare that. The "All Silver" patch did have a few harmonics and self resonance at certain keys (middle Eb for example) that got on my nerve a bit.

Now, to the real grand piano sound. It's great and there's a lot of them to choose from so one can't really say which one I liked for keeps. I mean which preset gave me the LEAST LISTENING FATIGUE. I don't think you can fool Keith Jarrett just yet to switch over from acoustic to this one.The testing equipment was as follows:
1 pair of Genelec active studio monitors - the large ones, without subwoofers. Apogee digital converters that they had in the music store. Almost as expensive as the v-piano! AKG K701 Headphones, the luxuory white ones. Testing on headphones are very important to me. It reveals small latency details, and one can isolate any idiosyncacies occuring during octaves. High quality headphones also are the only ones that can give decent deep bass without any room coloring at all. I tested playing to MIDI files from and USB-stick, songs I knew. And here comes the verdict from playing after a while:

There is a tendency that you have to turn down the ambience and string resonance in order to cut through a dense mix, it didn't help to attack the keys at full velocity. There's always a very very slight limiting or digital roof which you reach, which can be detected. Granted, this is actually so with ANY digital instrument, or electronic regardless of what it is. Synth, electric piano, organ, whatever. Thus, you have to turn up master volume and turn down all ambience and resonance to be heard. It's all about the inital attack and transients. However, the sustaining tone is as good as it gets. When playing solo, unaccompanied, this thing sounds as real as a very well recorded grand piano. However, this thing with HAMMER volume leaves me doubtful. It sounds like they've applied a compressor to the sound and nothing else. It sounded like the old Rolling Stones hit "She's a Rainbow" which I managed to churn out, just because it sounded exactly like that piano on that recording. I would've wanted solved in a different way.

On the other end, the new agey stuff with just letting the pedal down and let notes sustain forever (almost) is very very realistic. You can do a lot of sound incense and meditative stuff with this. It behaves like a real grand piano. Harmonics interact with each other. And as I said, the velocity and action works very close here.Of course you can press a key down very silently and leave it pressed down, without any note ringing. HOWEVER, and here's what I've would've wanted for this price: That it should ring! I e pressing silently fown a number of keys in a row (forming a chord) and when playing with your other hand, just those strings that are "open" and without damper should ring and symphathically resonate to that chord. You can't do this on this one, and I've scrutinized the manual if this was possible but it wasn't. A real grand, or upright behaves like this. And these mechanical possibilites are available on most pianos anyway, so I wonder why they omitted this. If that should be musical useful in any way? You bet it is. To me.

The action/velocity works very well together and are the most sensitive I've played on, which is just great. I am not sure if this should be worked out with an external sampler, or software library based program, since MIDI just receives 127 different values of velocity. This hasn't these digital steps it seems. It may have it but they cover it up in a marvelous way.

Yes, it build like a tank, it should not be moved around, but rather a studio resident. Too heavy and unwieldy to call it a stage piano. The best thing is that you can have another keyboard/MIDI controller on top of it. Not as heavy as you want it though. Care should be taken. Don't think you can haul 38 kg around on stage and their unwieldy stand that comes along.

Use it on a gig without a backup? Yes, I wonder who the ---- has the money to carry around a spare one. If you're sponsored by Roland perhaps and gets them for free. I don't think I will gig with this one, it resides in our studio at the moment. But, I can depend on it I think. It seems built and weights like a tank. But so is an acoustic grand too! :-)

No need. I talk to them everyday. Work in a music store, so that's why. I can't give any opinion on this, since I am biased. Would be very inconsiderate of me to take privilege of my work, and say "they're so good at support". They'd better be or else we wouldn't sell Roland stuff. So I will not ever have a customer view on this point. I am not able to.

30 years plus of different keyboards. Mostly studio, and some gigging. I do hate that the stand is clumsy and unwieldy. The stand that comes along with it costs a fortune by itself and for that price I would have it electronically height adjusted. Say you have family and you want to have your kids playing, you could lower this piano and get it to their level. As the kids grow up, you just raise it accordingly. And at its highest level, it should be able to be played at STANDING UP - hence the resistance to use it live and gigging.

Do not ever try to put this on ANY X-stand of no matter what brand, even the reinforced double-braced ones. It will bounce and rock about. You just can use the dedicated stand or put it on a very very large ancienct table of oak that resides in some castle. But you may live in such an old castle, since those people are the only ones who can afford this thing.

The thing is, for this price of money, I can - actually - get a very decent second hand grand piano, if not even brand new ones. Think of it how long those will last. When some mechanical wear occurs, after say 20-30 years, you'll bet the spare parts will be still around. No matter what brand. Now think like this: How many years will it take before this V-piano gets obsolete in sound and some other comes along that leaves this in the dust? A couple of years perhaps. A real acoustic grands sound doesn't fade with age as new technology comes along. At least not compared to this one. The only thing that it has an advantage over a real one it's maybe that you don't have to tune it. A real grands weigh a lot more, but you don't lug this around either. It's for the few well off elite, or those who have sponsoring by Roland. At this price, I would've asked for more. At this price you just have to be more nitpicking and hairsplitting when reviewing, than with digital pianos in the 3.000 USD range. Leaving no stones unturned. You just have to have ALL requested fullfilled at this price.

As it is now, it's something of a mix between a studio resident, or full professional stage production shows (musicals, set installations) that can benefit from this. No touring, expect the most highest profile world stars would bring this around. And if they can do this, they can afford lugging around a real grand anyway. And I would never give a 10 for this (fantastic value for the money). It resides right now in our studio so it's bought "as a company" and not altogether by myself.