Poll: keyboard with the best stock sounds

[locture]

Just trying to grab some thoughts from the keyboardist community.

 

Which keyboard (say workstation or stage board, let's not do Rhodes for Rhodes sound or Hammond for organ) has the best stock piano/Rhodes/organ sound in your opinion?

 

My preference:

Piano: Kawai MP11SE

Rhodes: Korg Nautilus

Organ: Nord Stage 4

 

 

[MartinLeo]

Piano: Nord Stage 4

Rhodes: Yamaha CP/YC

Organ: Yamaha YC

[ProfD]

Piano--Kawai MP7SE/MP11SE

Rhodes--Korg SV-1/2

Organ--Nord Stage 

 

No shortage of KB choices is very cool.😎

[AnotherScott]

Some years ago, I did a very thorough check into virtually every board's piano sound... Kawai MP10 was my favorite. So I would not be surprised to find the MP11SE to be my favorite today, but I have not had the chance to play that one. My second favorite was Nord Grand Imperial (which was their latest sample at the time). 

 

Korg didn't have a piano sound I really liked until they came out with Grandstage (which was not yet released when I did my eval).

 

Even today, Roland, Dexibell, Casio, and Kurzweil don't have any pianos i would put in that top tier (though I should qualify that I have not evaluated the pianos in the Kurzweil Forte or K2700. but only as high as what's in the PC4, nor have I tried the higher end current Casio slabs, which for me are not very appealing choices as gigging boards based on interface/ergonomics and lack of 5-pin MIDI).

[ElmerJFudd]

Your favorite keyboard or favorite keyboard controller with an iPad and your favorite patches from any of these boards sampled with Virsyn AudioLayer.  
 

http://www.virsyn.net/

[drawback]

When I think of stock sounds, I think of presets. So for the "big three" in ONE BOARD (Hammond, Piano, Rhodes) I'd have to say it's a toss-up between Nord Electro/Stage, and the Yamaha YC. INDIVIDUAL boards would be

 

Piano: Kawai or Yamaha depending on your preference of ice-pick

Rhodes/Wurlitzer: Crumar Seven

Hammond: XK-4

 

If we're talking stock sounds that can be deeply edited from base samples, I'm having amazing success with Kronos (so I guess Nautilus would be the same). Not having any time with the latest Kurzweils, I'd still venture to say that brand at the top also. There aren't any others in hardware that I can think of. 

[CEB]

Hammond is the best Hammond.  Even my little SKX sounds pretty good.  
 

Piano- Not the Kronos.  Yammy, Kurz, Kawai, and Nord is all good.  
 

EPs.  I don’t know. Probably the Yamahas.  This is more about what action digs in the best.  
 

Brass winds and orchestral- Depends on the gig.  Symphonic and Orchestral I like Kurzweil.  For pop and R&B I like Yamaha layers.   Kronos layers are good also but I like Yamaha myself.  
 

Synths I like the Kronos engines because I learned to program the hell out of them. 
 

The best is the one you play.  You play the thing until the thing plays you.  The sound is just a small factor.  

[YashN]

A nice way to have an idea is to read the comments on YT comparison videos. Of course, you can listen as well with the caveat of YT's audio compression losses.

 

Keyboard comparisons

 

1st comment from the first video in the result:

 

Quote

Never been a Kurzweil fan, but have to admit that it's overal the best sounding in this video.

 

[El Lobo]

12 hours ago, locture said:

Which keyboard ... has the best stock piano/Rhodes/organ sound in your opinion?

I'm going to be a bit of a semantic dick here, but I have to say that if you easily can load in a huge number of pianos or Rhodes sounds, then the question of "stock" sounds is kind of fuzzy. I can load dozens of pianos and Rhodes into my Nord, so the issue of what comes "stock" (already loaded from the factory?) is irrelevant. I like the organ in my Nord 5D, I like the White Grand piano (out of many pianos I can choose from), I don't use any of the Rhodes because I prefer the Wurly. If I can load in many pianos and Rhodes, then either they're all stock or there is no such thing as stock. What comes pre-loaded is irrelevant. 

[JoJoB3]

13 hours ago, locture said:

Just trying to grab some thoughts from the keyboardist community.

 

Which keyboard (say workstation or stage board, let's not do Rhodes for Rhodes sound or Hammond for organ) has the best stock piano/Rhodes/organ sound in your opinion?

 

My preference:

Piano: Kawai MP11SE

Rhodes: Korg Nautilus

Organ: Nord Stage 4

 

 

 

Aside from feel, control, and stability concern in setup today's VSTi will usually have better sounds and range btw (depending on your vsti choice).

[Baldwin Funster]

Only one mention of Roland on this thread and it was negative. It seems that few or none of the respondants use much synth sounds. 

To quote Arte Johnson " very intetesting".....

[MathOfInsects]

14 minutes ago, Baldwin Funster said:

Only one mention of Roland on this thread and it was negative. It seems that few or none of the respondants use much synth sounds. 

To quote Arte Johnson " very intetesting".....

I can't speak for others, but to me Roland's strength is in the upfeaturing of its boards so they offer a bit of everything for everyone. Their sounds haven't changed since the 1980's--12,000 saws, some swirly pads, and three of those jazz "doh" patches. 

I do think some of their pre-fab EPs are nice, though in no danger of ever being confused with the "real" thing. 

 

[RABid]

Here is an overall vote for Roland. With my Fantom 7 I can pull up a German Grand that sounds really nice, or load up an excellent virtual Jupiter 8. Yes, organ is just okay but I have a Hammond XK3c with a Vent 2 for that. I really went in depth to find my favorite overall keyboard to purchase as my "forever keyboard" to play during retirement. Synths helped push the Fantom over the top. Yamaha was a contender with the first Montage. I bought one and then sold it after a month. The primary reason was every patch was so drenched in heavy reverb. They didn't need to do that. It sounded great without all of the mud. I had no desire to go through every patch and dial down the effects so I sold it. If they ever release a Montage M6x I may grab one. They seem to have dialed down the reverb on that version. 

[16251]

Roland has best Scat patch. 

[analogika]

Fairly limited, but I was rather enamored with the stock sound on the Petrof concert grand I played in a studio a while ago. 

[CEB]

1 hour ago, Baldwin Funster said:

Only one mention of Roland on this thread and it was negative. It seems that few or none of the respondants use much synth sounds. 

To quote Arte Johnson " very intetesting".....

 

I love Roland.  As with everything this all absolutely depends on the gig.  If I was in a WELL PAYING  80s retro gig a rig I would love to have would be :

1) A Kronos to run the rig and provide a lot of programmed sounds.

2) A Jupiter 80 if I could find one or else a Jupiter X.

3) A good analogue poly with full on deck controls,  probably a DSI,  some sort of Prophet, probably my REV-2 16 because I would be too cheap to spend more money on boards.  Vintage stuff stays home do to noise floors and reliability.

 

I don't need all this and I wouldn't haul all this shit if the gig did not pay well.  But Roland is killer for this.  My  D-50 is still one of my favorites and I will still bring out a D-05 for those Eric Perishing esque pads.  

 

One of my favorite slab pianos was my RD-500 but I sold it when I had friends breaking hammers on theirs.  The action was prone to doing this.

[JoJoB3]

Roland probably wins for overall amount of shows. They allow one to get the gig done just fine and GTFO (usually easiest and fastest). Predicted winner. 

And if you think we haven't pulled their scat patches up once in a blue moon you'd be dead wrong. That's some terrible-funny shiz right there.
Every Nord should come with a swedish scat section.

[Baldwin Funster]

51 minutes ago, JoJoB3 said:

And if you think we haven't pulled their scat patches up once in a blue moon you'd be dead wrong. That's some terrible-funny shiz right there.
Every Nord should come with a swedish scat section

Especially when extra velocity makes the Doo go YOW!  That's as funny as 2 kids with their first cassette recorder.

[jerrythek]

3 hours ago, Baldwin Funster said:

Only one mention of Roland on this thread and it was negative. It seems that few or none of the respondants use much synth sounds. 

To quote Arte Johnson " very intetesting".....

 But the OP is only asking for piano/Rhodes/organ sounds. 

[AROIOS]

2 hours ago, 16251 said:

Roland has best Scat patch. 

Eric Persing did a fine job sampling Take 6 for those sounds

[miden]

Montage by a long way! For an "in the stage mix" sort of scene...probably individual dedicated romplers/AUv3 apps are better, but for an "everything" 'board, imo the Montage

[ElmerJFudd]

Genos 2, Pa5X

[Delaware Dave]

The GSI Gemini module attached to any keyboard, in my view, has the best sounding rhodes, organ/leslie and a very good sounding acoustic piano. Included are a Steinway D, Yamaha C5 and a Yamaha CFX which in my view all sound great. The beauty of this solution is the ability to midi this module to the keyboard of YOUR choice.  Piano-centric show: midi it to your favorite weighted action; organ-centric gig: midi it to your favorite organ action; full show where you need a full compliment of sounds (piano, EP's, Clav, organ/leslie, brass variety, sax, mono/poly synth, strings) midi it to several keyboards.  The Gemini has it all, all the sounds are top notch and YOU decide which keybed to use for the gig.

 

The only disadvantage is that it is bi-timbral meaning you can only play 2 sounds at once. This has never been a limitation for me.  Highly recommended ....

[Dave Ferris]

I only really have a valid opinion on the piano sounds. I hear/feel the two Yamaha boards I own as currently being the best, at least for me and what I do.

 

P515 has a thicker, richer and less-digital sounding piano, with superior action but the CP88 sounds better live with a rhythm section. More clear and crisp. I have to admit, I'm very curious about playing/hearing the newer Montage 8x at some point.

 

I have never even played a Rhodes patch on my CP88 live but I heard Jeff Lorber at the Grape in Ventura awhile back use the CP88's Rhodes for a whole set and it sounded great out front. Being a former Rhodes owner, I closed my eyes and couldn't tell the difference. Of course much of that has to do with the player.

 

The now very popular Nord piano/grand/stage always can sound great when I hear recordings of them but whenever I've owned them (NP Classic & NP2) and then went back again after a decade away (NP5), they just aren't for me.

 

I know nothing about organ anymore and feel it's best to keep it that way.

[ElmerJFudd]

Anyone try one of these things to supplement a shortcoming or three on a single board you drag around?

 

https://www.v3sound.com/en-sonorityxxl.html

 

Or some other relatively small box other than iOS or a laptop?

[locture]

8 hours ago, El Lobo said:

I'm going to be a bit of a semantic dick here, but I have to say that if you easily can load in a huge number of pianos or Rhodes sounds, then the question of "stock" sounds is kind of fuzzy. I can load dozens of pianos and Rhodes into my Nord, so the issue of what comes "stock" (already loaded from the factory?) is irrelevant. I like the organ in my Nord 5D, I like the White Grand piano (out of many pianos I can choose from), I don't use any of the Rhodes because I prefer the Wurly. If I can load in many pianos and Rhodes, then either they're all stock or there is no such thing as stock. What comes pre-loaded is irrelevant. 

Well, many stage keyboards allow easy importing extra sounds today, and the workstations could even do sampling by themselves.

 

That's the reason for me to put the limit of stock presets. Otherwise this poll would become something like "the best 3rd party audio engineer for keyboard X" and then no stage keyboard could fight the workstations because of their deep sample editing capability. That would be weird and meaningless.

[locture]

13 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Some years ago, I did a very thorough check into virtually every board's piano sound... Kawai MP10 was my favorite. So I would not be surprised to find the MP11SE to be my favorite today, but I have not had the chance to play that one. My second favorite was Nord Grand Imperial (which was their latest sample at the time). 

 

Korg didn't have a piano sound I really liked until they came out with Grandstage (which was not yet released when I did my eval).

 

Even today, Roland, Dexibell, Casio, and Kurzweil don't have any pianos i would put in that top tier (though I should qualify that I have not evaluated the pianos in the Kurzweil Forte or K2700. but only as high as what's in the PC4, nor have I tried the higher end current Casio slabs, which for me are not very appealing choices as gigging boards based on interface/ergonomics and lack of 5-pin MIDI).

I have always been a piano lover and have also done my comparisons.

 

Actually IMO the Nautilus has better stock piano samples - it's currently the only keyboard which offers 5 GB of samples for a single piano with 12 velocity layers and multiple mic positions, and the sound quality is up to par even when compared with many software VIs. However it is geared more towards a softer tone and it's very difficult to get a very bright sound (Korg should definitely do a close mic for this). While the MP11SE also sounds warm and mellow, the brilliance setting is extremely nice to work with and makes my life much easier. There are also a few artifacts and glitches in the Nautilus' stock presets that I have to put up a combi and do quite a few individual note edits while the MP11SE is well balanced along the keyboard. We are comparing stock presets here so my ultimate piano option definitely goes to Kawai.

 

For the Roland, I actually played a Fantom EX earlier this week. While all their stock sampled pianos suck in one way or another (I just don't think anyone could get a nice sampled piano with only 4 velocity layers), the new German V-Piano sounds so much better than the old stage grand V-Piano and feels nice to play. It still lacks a bit on the timbre side but I think overall on the same level with the other modern keyboards now.

 

I am not really a fan of Nord's piano sound but ultimately it's only personal preference and very subjective.

 

 

[El Lobo]

43 minutes ago, locture said:

Well, many stage keyboards allow easy importing extra sounds today, and the workstations could even do sampling by themselves.

 

That's the reason for me to put the limit of stock presets. Otherwise this poll would become something like "the best 3rd party audio engineer for keyboard X" and then no stage keyboard could fight the workstations because of their deep sample editing capability. That would be weird and meaningless.

Ok. I accept how you think about it. How I think about it is that, if you can load in many sounds, the concept of "stock presets" - whatever sounds come in the board when it's shipped from the factory - is meaningless. It doesn't matter to me what the best piano or Rhodes sounds are when you first take the board out of the box. I may not use them anyway. If you can load other pianos and Rhodes into the board you have, the question of which board has the best pianos or Rhodes when it's shipped seems weird and meaningless to me.

[The Piano Man]

Piano: Korg Grandstage 

 

Rhodes: Korg SV2

 

Hammond: Hammond SK Pro

 

 

Nord pianos sound really good to everyone apart from the actual performer

[retrokeys]

2 hours ago, The Piano Man said:

Nord pianos sound really good to everyone apart from the actual performer

I don't know why this is true but it is.  Years ago I had an Electro 2. I got it primarily because it was reliable.  The sounds were certainly serviceable but nothing to write home about. Still, on gigs, other musicians were commenting on what a great piano sound I was getting. The amp was (and is) the stationary speaker of a Leslie 21 system.   All I could figure was that somehow, Nord had done something to these sounds so that they worked better when some distance was added. I have since updated to an  Electro 6 and while I think the sounds are much better, no one seems to be drawing attention to them. Maybe every other brand has upped its game?  I don't know but the Piano Man's observation is right on the money.