Speakers for High-End Digital Piano

Is considering a refurbished acoustic piano out of the question?

With a $4K budget (plus the $600-$800 you could add by selling the Kawai) you should be able to obtain a nice instrument.

I would not purchase hifi speakers to amplify a sampled piano. Check out Barbetta keyboard amps. They sound like high-end studio monitors and reproduce keyboard sounds incredibly well. The secret is to use two amps, which will give the piano a spacious, realistic sound. Trust me on this one.

Hello,

Thanks for your responses.

The digital keyboard is my second keyboard (i think it's a keeper; no plan to sell it). I actually own a fabulous Mason & Hamlin 7' BB, too. So, i don't need another acoutic piano. I'd like to give the Kawai keyboard an upgraded speaker (primarily because I wish to enjoy the full potential of the Ivory II sampled Steinway and Kawai EX Pro that I got. I was able to test out 3 brands (not remembering the exact model name) that my friends loaned me -- a Mackie, a JBL Eon, and a Yamaha XDR. I think they're appropriate for a 'different' space (not my living room) and for pop/rock music genre, in my opinion. I am looking for speakers that would give me a rich, elegant, room-filling sound (but not harsh or heavy loud or sterile/canned piano sound especially when i play in the high registers). I am aware that it's impossible to fool the ears completely when listening to sampled piano sounds, but i'm curious to know which brands/speakers could actually come close to what I'm looking for.

I have received some suggestions from other forums -- Genelec, Event Opal, Legacy Studio HD/Expressions, Aperion audio, Dynaudio and Focus. Any thoughts on them? I'm not familiar with them, but I suppose i have to actually hear them first (when i find local dealers).

Thanks.

Adam powered monitors are very high quality and much less than your price range. I dont think a warm hi fi system to power the kawai will sound the way you want - they arent made for the type of dynamics you will likely produce playing live and the texture of the sound may be off - as much as we talk dynamics in the forum, the audio engineer who mixes or masters the recordings we hear on hi fi systems does level out the sound quite a bit. Give some good powered monitors a try and you may be surprised.

This is an interesting question.

I have a Steinway M, but with a MIDI strip, so it can also be used with a synthesizer as a "high end digital piano."

Over the years, I have experimented with a lot of things, including Audio Research and Levinson into my Tympanis, thinking it would be wonderful, warm, room filling and more natural to hear the digital piano this way.

In the end, however, this was not satisfying at all and I used active Genelec monitors sitting on top of the piano for best results.

Although a bit forward relative to my usual hi fi taste, there was something about 1) the active configuration, 2) clarity of the biamping and 3) the ability of those speakers to attack and sound dynamic that made them more fun to play with the digital synthesizer.

This was true whether for acoustic piano sounds or for more contemporary synthesized sounds.

Also, on top of the piano gave a better illusion that the sound was actually coming from the piano, rather than from a stereo in the room. For me, this proved to be as or more important than the actual sound.

So I would agree with Chayro and others!

Enjoy your pianos, but you could spend your money on other things.