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Looking for THE pianosound-in-a-box I became interested in the nanopiano. The reviews on this site sometimes contra dict eachother. It does amaze me how people can be so different in their opinion. Of course there is the factor of taste, and the sounds they compare it with (next to a grand piano every electronic version will "suck", I think) but that would explain minor differences, not the extremes I read here. What does make a lot of difference, is the way the unit is amplified. On a small hifi-set the sound will differ significantly from that on a PA. I once rejected a synthesizer after hearing it at a friend's, while falling in love with it when I heard it in a shop a few weeks later.
So I have two bits of advise and one suggestion: first, you should always listen to a unit yourself and never buy something just because a few reviewers say it's okay. Second: try to listen to it on an amplifier like the one you will be using it with: what sounds great on the professional PA in the shop might not be suited for your own amp. Suggestion: we reviewers should mention 'how' we listened to the item, like a description of the amp and speakers we heard it on. There are a lot more factors involved with how we perceive sounds, like even the mood you were in when you listened, but this seems the one having the greatest impact on the resulting sound.
And the nanopiano? Well, I bought it. It sounds very fine on a Boss BX16 mixer, Bell PA2202 amp, LEM SoundPressure satellites and a home-made passive subwoofer with a 12 inch twincoil car speaker in it. When concentrating on the acoustic piano, I think it sounds much better than an EMU Proformance, Kawai GMega, Roland 5000, and slightly better than the piano's in the Yamaha TG500. There is enough variation in the piano- section to satisfy both lovers of bright and darker piano's. The Rhodes-emulation is the best I heard so far, but that does not mean that I find it excellent! Organs are surprisingly nice, due to the Leslie-effect. When using strings the downside of this type of module shows: I wish you could create your own combinations and alterations and store them in the unit itself. I like one of the string-sounds, but it should have a shorter attack. And since I am not planning on carrying my pc on stage, it leaves me without any usefull (for me) strings-patch. Clavi. spinet, vibraphone are ok. I am not interested in the other sounds like leads and effects, so I cannot comment on these.
The sounds are most convincing when used in stereo. The manual makes it seem simply a matter of an extra cable to your amp, but when that amp is monaural, the amp does the somewhat destructive summing up of the left and right signal that the unit itself would do when you use only one output. So, my mono PA is suddenly only half the equipment I need.
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