I understand and really will think about your suggestion, but I think I will want to choose something that's easy to just sit down and play at.
I've never been WOW-ed by a built in DP sound, they always sound like DPs.
And I have listened to a lot of acoustic grand piano records, thus I'm very well aware of how they should sound like. And that's the sound I'm aiming for.
The only way to get WOW-ed and to approach the realism / sound quality of recording of a real accoustic grand is by using large sampled VSTs (like Garritan CFX).
Pianoteq (which is a synthesized piano VST) has it's pro's too - more life-like string/soundboard resonance, and just overall playability.
But in terms of pure, record-like sound quality, nothing comes close to a large sampled VST.
Unfortunately there are very few - if any DPs - with built in sample size big enough to capture the sheer beauty of those high end concert grands.
The next best thing - of course - is a real instrument.
My recent trip to a big piano store probably resonates with you. They had all the DPs I wanted to try out, fantastic.
Before I went there: convinced the most expensive are the best but trying to find my compromise point.
When I was there, it was hard to differentiate between all the DPs. I'll need more time. At the end, the store people encouraged me to look at their multiple storeys of acoustics before I'd leave. I'm not used to acoustics and the ones I encounter are sometimes sluggish or hard to play for me, but now I found a Kawai K300 Aures which was amazing, a whole other beast.
My conclusion was that no DP is close to the acoustics, and this is probably going to lower the price point I'm willing to pay. Why pay for a CA99 when it's digital, going obsolete at some point, and still not even halfway there? :)
I'll find a compromise DP for convenience I think. The plan is to get access to acoustics maybe through a music school or friends, and look forward to an acoustic if/when I move to a house.
Yes, most of the time.
There are some rare exceptions to this, like Korg Kronos 1/2 (more like a music workstation), which has a built in Intel Atom x86 processor and an 30 GB/62 GB internal SSD. It has full length grand piano samples (with 8/12 velocity layers) without looping, and the piano samples themselves in this rare occasion is in gigabytes :) (~3-4 gigs per piano sample if I recall, which is very rare in DPs)
So it should sound pretty good for a sample based piano. However the piano action on it is... somewhat basic. Then there's Korg Grandstage (has ~19gig total sample size, I believe it uses the same piano samples as Korg Kronos (Kronos just has a whole lot of other instruments too)).
That taken into account I just focus on getting great action, and then hook it up to PC with low latency audio drivers.
Honestly that Kawai K-300 Aures sounds like a good deal, an actual acoustic piano, as well as optical sensors to read velocity of hammers and get MIDI output. I'd probably try to get the Kawai K-500 Aures, the slightly taller model if possible.
Yamaha u3/u5 uprights, properly tuned and well looked after, with front and top panels wooden panels removed can sound fantastic.
>I'm not used to acoustics and the ones I encounter are sometimes sluggish or hard to play for me
Usually long-time DP players struggle with pedaling once they hop on a real acoustic.
This is because DPs are generally speaking very forgiving in terms of sustain pedal use - you can kind of be pretty sloppy with it and just kind of hold it down for extended periods of time with it rarely if ever getting muddy.
That's enabled by most DPs having a very short decay sound, plus each note is kind of thin/narrowband and isolated, with minimal string resonance (compared to a real instrument).
On a real instrument you kind of get audibly punished for being sloppy with pedalling. :)
And it takes takes a bit of time to re-learn proper sustain pedal use on a real acoustic.
Either way, good luck!
