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#SamplingvsModeling #RolandvsKawai #digitalpiano

0:00 - Introduction
2:10 - Early Sampling Techniques
4:58 - Modern Sampling Example - Kawai ES920
9:02 - Sampling Engine - Audio Playing Sample
12:12 - Sampling Engine - Observations and Discussion
17:05 - Modeling Engine Example - Roland FP90X
20:50 - Modeling Engine - Audio Playing Sample
22:30 - Modeling Engine - Observations and Discussion
25:55 - Blind Taste Test: Best out of 3 Comparisons
28:35 - Conclusions

Hello and thanks for being with us on the Merriam Pianos YouTube channel. Today, we’re going to be discussing the exact differences between Sampling vs Modeling when it comes to digital piano sound technology.

You’re going to run into both terms when shopping for a digital piano, and unless you’ve already done some research or happen to be quite familiar with the subject, these concepts might be new to you.

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Concept of a Digital Piano
The concept behind a digital piano is pretty straightforward - the idea is to digitally recreate the sonic experience of playing an acoustic piano. For a long time, the only way to go about doing so was to record a real acoustic piano note by note, and store the samples, which are then triggered by the press of a key.

The problem is that regardless of how good a recording would be, sample engines simply can’t reproduce all of the subtleties and nuances that an acoustic piano is capable of - there’s lots of harmonic information that just isn’t there.

Due to the inherent limitations of sampling, companies have been developing a new technique over the last couple of decades, referred to as modeling, which instead of using a real piano as a basis, synthesizes the entire piano sound through a series of complex algorithms.

These days, digital pianos and VSTs are available with both approaches to sound. Let’s listen to some examples of both.

Kawai ES920 (Sampling)
The Kawai ES920 is a great example of what a great sample-based sound engine looks like today. Sampling technology has come a very long way over the past several decades, from using 10 stretched samples for the entire instrument, to a sample for each note recorded at multiple velocities. VSTs can take this even further as their sample sizes and sample banks can be substantially larger than anything loaded on a digital piano.

Where sample engines with digital pianos still run in trouble has to do with the decay of a note - the trailing end of a given note is typically looped to minimize the size of the sample for the sake of memory. Samples are gradually getting longer with newer engines, but this is still a challenge.

The ES920, courtesy of Kawai’s Harmonic Imaging XL engine, offers great tonal variety across different dynamic ranges. The decay sounds fantastic, and without high-end headphones, we can’t even hear the limitations.

Where this engine and sample-based engines in general still fall short is in missing the harmonics that occur on an acoustic piano when many notes are played at once since any piano used for sampling has to be recorded one note at a time. There are also certain resonances, such as cabinet resonance and string resonance, that get lost along the way.

Kawai synthesizes all of these resonances and adds them to the sample to make up for their absence. Less expensive digital pianos won’t have these added complexities.

FP90X (Modeling)
The FP90x represents a similarly priced alternative to the ES920 and uses an entirely modeling-based tone engine. This is the only fully modeled digital piano at this price point, but there are various VSTs available which also offer modeling.

Modeling attempts to recreate all of the sonic information of an acoustic piano from scratch in real time through synthesis. The challenge with earlier modeling engines is they sounded too sterile and clean, and missed out on the sonic imperfections and anomalies present in all acoustic pianos.

Current modeling engines do a much better job of adding sonic imperfections, and the FP90X’s PureAcoustic engine is a great example of this.

The decay is pulled off really well, and this engine also offers a wonderful degree of tonal variation across various dynamic levels. Still, there are certain things, such as aspects of the bass and treble that still aren’t perfectly imitating an acoustic piano.

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