dore_m This a little like apples and oranges.
Thanks, that helps me understand my conundrum a little bit better
navindra Here are professional musicians getting fooled by virtual instruments -- you can listen along and test how well you do:
Thanks for posting this. Before I watched I thought this was a more systematic test. I'm specifically talking about pianos here, so I don't care about the other instruments they showed. Also, having an either/or choice, is on one hand misleading (for the one piano pair which she got wrong, the acoustic was excessively bright, and that is what misled her) and on the other hand unnecessarily helpful (if one is obviously "digital" the other must be acoustic). So in the end, I think this video is moot.
A perfect test would be like @Frédéric L long list of same piece with different instruments, to the best ability of the performer. Unlabeled and some acoustic some digital in random order. Ideally in a setup like the Harvard's implicit bias test. I'm certain to achieve a high score with that, and I'm also certain that the vast majority (if not 100%) of my mistakes would be mistaking acoustic pianos for digital, rather than the other way around (why? because of poor recordings). Different pieces would be adequate too, hopefully with the same interface.
navindra The funny thing is, if you pick any any regular piano, and you play a single note, you may well find the sound of that single note is intensely ugly all by itself... I know I've had that experience while shopping for pianos. Yet, when you start playing chords, letting things resonate and reverberate, that's when the magic starts to happen.
Yeah, I can see how this would happen. For an instrument that I would consider buying, even single note should be beautiful, because occasionally there are single note things to play and I wouldn't want them to sound ugly, but I digress.
HZPiano Long story short: if a piano, real or virtual, isn't capable of making individual notes sound lovely, it lacks the essential basic integrity to make music, however minimalistic or complex.
You said it much better that I could!
So, to reiterate, my "wishful thinking" is a digital piano that sounds somewhat closer to an acoustic one. I don't care if it's a Fazioli, Bechstein, Gotrian, Baldwin or a no-brand.
In fairness, the "digital piano" has indeed come much closer to the acoustic sound in the last 35 years (the first time I heard one). Back in the day, even my young self, who very seldom heard acoustic pianos in person, and did not even have a decent way to listen to any recordings, immediately said: "this is absolute crap, it has nothing to do with piano" (digital strings, brass and the likes sounded more convincing to that listener). Today, I'm complaining about something more subtle, like the image I posted above. The corresponding 35 year old image would have been an ASCII art trying to represent that picture, so I do recognize the immense, but still insufficient, progress.
