Vidal Boutique Controller Keyboards

[davinwv]

44 minutes ago, CrossRhodes said:

I wonder what's up with these guys? Seems like the IG has gone silent since August of last year and haven't seen a single review out in the wild. Seems kind of odd.

I imagine that they are heads down trying to deliver that first batch of preorder units to customers/backers.

[CrossRhodes]

19 hours ago, davinwv said:

I imagine that they are heads down trying to deliver that first batch of preorder units to customers/backers.

Hope so as I'd love to finally see some user reviews and they were supposed to start shipping end of last year. Seems more likely there's been a delay for some reason as no company would go completely silent on social media as they role out their debut product. 

[CrossRhodes]

Looks like I was right. Vidal posted an update today and they have been busy with a re-design:

https://playvidal.com/blogs/news/february-2024-update

"Today we're announcing a new name for the instrument: the Vidal Piano Controller.

Based on feedback, we’ve shifted our design focus to making the best-feeling piano action ever in a digital keyboard. We’ve rethought every facet of the design to create an instrument that fully captures the tactile experience of playing a concert grand piano. Our biggest design change was to remove the springs and switch to a fully inertial action. This new design has large steel weights at the front and back of the keys, creating the same feeling of inertia as in a grand piano."

 

[ElmerJFudd]

6 hours ago, CrossRhodes said:

Looks like I was right. Vidal posted an update today and they have been busy with a re-design:

https://playvidal.com/blogs/news/february-2024-update

"Today we're announcing a new name for the instrument: the Vidal Piano Controller.

Based on feedback, we’ve shifted our design focus to making the best-feeling piano action ever in a digital keyboard. We’ve rethought every facet of the design to create an instrument that fully captures the tactile experience of playing a concert grand piano. Our biggest design change was to remove the springs and switch to a fully inertial action. This new design has large steel weights at the front and back of the keys, creating the same feeling of inertia as in a grand piano."

 

I wish them great success.  There are so few manufacturers focused on building piano actions for controller keyboards.  Most just buy a Fatar action.   Roland, Kawai, Yamaha, Korg are not quick to sell their actions to others.  The Kawai action in the Nord Grand was like hell freezing over.  
 

19” long keys, a magnet scheme to simulate escapement.  Very curious to play this thing.  

[stoken6]

Shame they've dropped the smaller variant, and are offering an 88 exclusively.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[uhoh7]

"The keyboard landscape today is bleak. There have been no new innovations for the past 20 years, and today's MIDI controllers and digital pianos feel more like bloated tech peripherals than real instruments." If this was written after 1/1/23....it's either poorly composed or oblivious. Even if you restrict the statement to piano actions, choices have steadily increased. As a general statement, I can't really disagree, and it's great they are having a go. 

 

The actions look nice....but what are the midi specs? These boards should be sending MIDI 2.O MPE. Aftertouch? You could make the case pianos don't have aftertouch. On the other hand my old TP10 SL880 has channel aftertouch which is no detriment. Most AT is after a hard stop, with very short range. I don't really feel like using it, though I want it. 

 

Nektar T4 and T6 actually have a really nice Channel AT feel. Osmose has an unbelievable Poly AT which seduces a player into regular use. You would not use the Osmose in a piano recital....unless you were going seriously avant guard LOL. 

 

Which brings up a stale aspect of pianos today...and I love my upright....it's the highly standardized iron frame and string layout. The result is impressive volume, but great weight and and nightmare to change temperaments. When most "classical" piano pieces were written, the variety of instrument design was great. Iron frames only came into wide use after 1850 mass production in the USA. The largest building in the United States before the civil war was a piano factory.

 

In 2024 the I'd like to see some acoustic innovations, which would include actions. The Harpsichord revival in Europe...creeping into the USA might offer inspiration. A light, easily tunable clavichord with dynamic variation and aftertouch vibrato only lacks TLC to design and market. A harpsichord can be tuned by a player in 20 minutes to any one of a number of temperaments. Which did Bach hate worst? Equal temperment. He was not alone. Our major thirds made them puke. (In Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, Bach explains that he doesn't like equal temperament because it reduces the diversity of scales).

 

I always thought "The Well Tempered Clavier" meant the "equal tempered clavier". The 20th century was full of pompous misconceptions in classical teaching and performance which are now really entrenched (EG AP Music Theory), but under heavy attack from some performers and a few schools. "HP" Not the printer. Historical practice. First the older instruments were researched and reproduced. More recently the training, which involved a particular type of improvisation from early age, and a background in the now dead hexachordal solfegge, is being revived. 

 

Beethoven became famous because given a surprise theme at a party, with an adversary usually more famous at the time, he could turn it into....something really impressive. No written music involved. 

 

Like alot of you guys, actually. 

 

Bla bla. Let's see how these turn out

 

 

[CrossRhodes]

Looks like the new model is ready for production:

https://playvidal.com/products/vidal

Only making 10 units then closing orders again. At 6K and with no online demos/reviews and no where to try them, I am surprised they have already sold 3 out of 10. I'm still rooting for them as it's awesome to see them trying to bring something new to the market but at 6K, I'm definitely priced out.

[JoJoB3]

On 6/23/2023 at 8:06 AM, davinwv said:

I started a thread about these over at V-Control, but I thought there might be interest here, as well. These are uber-expensive, but still pretty cool. If you live near Philly, you can schedule an appointment to go to HQ and play the prototype(s).

 

https://playvidal.com/products/vidal

Killer! Let's applaud things like this always (the actual missing link - feel is fun. Fun is creativity).

[Nathanael_I]

The thing with controllers that is rarely discussed is the output quality in terms of the data stream.  The feel is critical, of course, but how good is the output data? 

 

Specifically:

 

1. How controllable and consistent is it at low velocities? Cheap controllers rarely have good data below 30-40, and consistently triggering the very lowest dynamic samples is hard or impossible. I've noticed that consistency is very hard with cheap actions but pretty achievable on the better ones. 

 

2. What does it take to get 115-127?  Having an optical rail in my grand piano, I can say that 8 bits for velocity seems very constrained.  I can't find a way to map the quietest and loudest playing and get the same quality of data as I would with a microphone.  I've opted for settings that maximize the pp to f range.  A real piano is capable of responding to very hard strikes. 

 

3. How fast can it scan all the inputs - keys, pedals, sliders?  I don't have a specific figure, but several thousand times a second seems appropriate.  High-Resolution MIDI (14 bit) made a noticeable difference in the VAX77.  My Nonlinear labs is scanned 4000 times a second, much faster than MIDI, and has a very connected, responsive feel even though the action is unweighted.  The Bosendorfer player system uses 1024 values, sampled faster than MIDI.  Keyboards need more than what we have been given with 8-bit MIDI.  I have a camera that shoots 14 bit RAW video 8k/60fps (a huge datastream)... and musical keyboards with data rates from the mid-80s....  I hope someone who wants to make instruments in a physical sense also understands that the electronics are part of it.  We need BOTH.

 

3. How are things like sustain and other pedals scanned and sent out as data?  Hopefully continuously.  Plenty of sampled pianos support partial pedaling input

 

I get the 88 notes only.  If they are making a controller designed to be as much like an acoustic action as possible, that's 88 notes.  And by far the biggest market.

 

The price is realistic for a hand-made controller made of real wood, with a lot of R&D to recoup. 

 

The form factor is great - lots of flat space for music, ipads, laptops, whatever.

 

I'm watching. But won't be an early adopter.  If it is instrument priced, I need to know that someone worked on the whole thing from wood to digital guts and is bringing out a fully expressive instrument. 

 

 

[tnelson]

15 hours ago, Nathanael_I said:

The thing with controllers that is rarely discussed is the output quality in terms of the data stream.  The feel is critical, of course, but how good is the output data? 

 

Specifically:

 

1. How controllable and consistent is it at low velocities? Cheap controllers rarely have good data below 30-40, and consistently triggering the very lowest dynamic samples is hard or impossible. I've noticed that consistency is very hard with cheap actions but pretty achievable on the better ones. 

 

2. What does it take to get 115-127?  Having an optical rail in my grand piano, I can say that 8 bits for velocity seems very constrained.  I can't find a way to map the quietest and loudest playing and get the same quality of data as I would with a microphone.  I've opted for settings that maximize the pp to f range.  A real piano is capable of responding to very hard strikes. 

 

3. How fast can it scan all the inputs - keys, pedals, sliders?  I don't have a specific figure, but several thousand times a second seems appropriate.  High-Resolution MIDI (14 bit) made a noticeable difference in the VAX77.  My Nonlinear labs is scanned 4000 times a second, much faster than MIDI, and has a very connected, responsive feel even though the action is unweighted.  The Bosendorfer player system uses 1024 values, sampled faster than MIDI.  Keyboards need more than what we have been given with 8-bit MIDI.  I have a camera that shoots 14 bit RAW video 8k/60fps (a huge datastream)... and musical keyboards with data rates from the mid-80s....  I hope someone who wants to make instruments in a physical sense also understands that the electronics are part of it.  We need BOTH.

 

3. How are things like sustain and other pedals scanned and sent out as data?  Hopefully continuously.  Plenty of sampled pianos support partial pedaling input

 

I get the 88 notes only.  If they are making a controller designed to be as much like an acoustic action as possible, that's 88 notes.  And by far the biggest market.

 

The price is realistic for a hand-made controller made of real wood, with a lot of R&D to recoup. 

 

The form factor is great - lots of flat space for music, ipads, laptops, whatever.

 

I'm watching. But won't be an early adopter.  If it is instrument priced, I need to know that someone worked on the whole thing from wood to digital guts and is bringing out a fully expressive instrument. 

 

 

These are all great questions.  Why not ask the makers directly? The Vidal makers are very responsive and want interaction and feedback from potential users.

[Matthiola]

There is some info on their website:

“Our electronics capture hi-res MIDI, with over 16,000 velocity values where most keyboards only support 127. With a scan rate of over 10 kHz, it has incredible precision and fidelity across all dynamic ranges.”

[CrossRhodes]

It's a little perplexing that they haven't made any promotional demos. That's pretty standard fare these days and doesn't cost much to do. Even though it's out of my budget, it would still be fun to see a real world demo/review. Hopefully after these 10 units ship, we will get to see it actually being played in the wild.

[GovernorSilver]

I thought this thing was the same controller that a happy customer on another forum is using, but it turns out he's actually using the Extra Deluxe Sixty-One.  Yep I even got the number of keys wrong lol

 

https://www.extradeluxemfg.com/

[stoken6]

1 hour ago, GovernorSilver said:

I thought this thing was the same controller that a happy customer on another forum is using, but it turns out he's actually using the Extra Deluxe Sixty-One.  Yep I even got the number of keys wrong lol

 

https://www.extradeluxemfg.com/

Oh yeah, the thing without an expression pedal input.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Aynsley Green]

On 6/24/2023 at 1:06 AM, davinwv said:

I started a thread about these over at V-Control, but I thought there might be interest here, as well. These are uber-expensive, but still pretty cool. If you live near Philly, you can schedule an appointment to go to HQ and play the prototype(s).

 

https://playvidal.com/products/vidal

 

You could get a decent upright for $6000