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Roland’s 50th Anniversary Concept Piano
- dragonsky 4y ago>>> As of now, the drones’ propellers are still somewhat noisy. But as quiet drone technology becomes available, they’ll be able to add it to the existing framework. So really everything you would expect from hanging a speaker from a drone, noisy and power hungry.
- jojobas 4y agoMy immediate thoughts. If only pianos were typically positioned in the same spot for a long time, allowing to do those measurements once and hang the speakers appropriately from the ceiling. Or make a speaker array in the base and do all sorts of spacial Fourier/phased array madness. I guess if you want a gimmick piano you can have it.
- jdlshore 4y agoIt’s a concept piece. Gimmicks (or, more charitably, exploring out-there ideas) are the whole point.
- kbos87 4y agoDJI has made a shocking amount of progress at making its drones quieter over the past few years. What used to sound like a loud swarm of bees 20 feet overhead is now almost imperceptible.
- xattt 4y agoThe volume of air moved remains a limitation of physics. One thing the news release didn’t cover was whether there were attempts to integrate sound production into the coils of the motors.
- skykooler 4y agoIt’s not just the volume of air but also the speed that it’s moved at. Large slow propellers are quieter and more efficient than small fast propellers. (But less maneuverable.) In the limit, I could see this being done by big, spidery drones with huge props relative to their weight, like a scale model of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVelo_Atlas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVelo_Atlas.
- klyrs 4y agoEven better with servo-controlled booms so the speakers are stationary when in use...
- jojobas 4y agoMaybe a prop-stabilized blimp. You can hear flies and moths, no way a presumably 100+g speaker and a battery could be silent.
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- brudgers 4y agoMic up the prop, phase shift 180 degrees and cancel the prop noise…kinda like noise canceling headphones?
- dTal 4y agoIf you cancel the noise for one listening spot, you double it for another listening spot. Conservation of energy!
- brudgers 4y agoUnlike Newtonian theory, in audio engineering all points in space are not equivalent. Some points are between a pair of ears, some are not. A common audio engineering strategy these days is to direct phase shift effects of multiple point sources vertically, e.g. linear speaker arrays. For audience members, reinforced and canceled frequencies fifteen feet off the ground don't effect musical experience.
- mouse_ 4y ago[flagged]
- cheeselip420 4y agoWhat a lousy comment.
- klyrs 4y agoTruly, lice have better taste than whoever came up with this
- utkugenc 4y agoIt's PR and it's obviously serving its purpose :)
- georgeoliver 4y agoI've been thinking about building a planar wave speaker, but now the idea of an integrated planar wave speaker music desk sounds fun!
- tshaddox 4y agoOver the last several weeks I have been deep in research for a new digital piano, spending a lot of time looking at Roland, Kawai, and Yamaha models, and seeing this made me giggle. I doubt I would ever buy even one of the less traditional-looking production models (like the Kiyola), but I am glad they have fun with creating wild concepts like this.
- bob1029 4y agoSame. I'm about to just buy that P515... I can't stand the indecision any longer.
- nkozyra 4y agoA good percentage of the producer digital pianos are just the flat keyboard and controls housed in a structure meant to look like a traditional piano. The new Casio, for example, looks relatively modern and fits like furniture, but you could remove the body and put it into any crazy design you like. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PXS7000BK--casio-px-s7000-digital-piano-black https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PXS7000BK--casio-px-...
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- whalesalad 4y agouhh, have y'all ever heard a drone hovering? not exactly the kind of thing you want anywhere near a musical instrument LOL
- xattt 4y ago> As of now, the drones’ propellers are still somewhat noisy. But as quiet drone technology becomes available, they’ll be able to add it to the existing framework.
- ilyt 4y agoYes the law of physics will clearly just decide to bend to Roland's whims /s
- Gigachad 4y agoI don't believe the limitations of physics are anywhere near what current drones sound like. They are loud because zero effort goes in to making them quiet. It's not so much the moving air that makes them loud, its the whining motors and bearings that are loud. If you were able to encase those motors inside and perhaps put some effort in to making the air stream less turbulent, they could be a lot quieter. Although I still can't see drones being good for this even with good designs.
- dTal 4y agoIt is certainly not "whining motors and bearings" that makes them loud - it is the fact that you are creating massive periodic pressure differences with the blades. It is the same reason helicopters go thump-thump-thump, but scaled up in frequency. Have you ever heard a quiet propeller? About the best you can do is increase the size and decrease the speed (more efficient = less power dumped into the air), add more blades (minimizes circumferential pressure variation), and add a duct (eliminates tip vortices). But eventually you hit weight limits on all of that. At drone sizes, unless the drone is impossibly feather-light, you're always going to have some sort of whine. Even in the absolute theoretical best case scenario of an idealized disk-shaped actuator inside a duct with proper lip shaping and 0 turbulence around the actuator, the shear boundary of the high velocity output plume is unavoidably going to cause turbulence. The best you can do is "woosh".
- footlose_3815 4y agoIt's odd there's no audio footage of it happening. Only a 6 second muted video.
- selectodude 4y agoQuadcopters sound like an enormous swarm of bees. I doubt the sound quality coming out of them is very good.
- tgv 4y agoIt's even a render, I think. Just add 6 seconds of one of Rachmaninov's recordings under it (https://youtu.be/L3Xp2Djqh3s?t=30 https://youtu.be/L3Xp2Djqh3s?t=30), and you'll have a good impression.
- henearkr 4y agoWouldn't latency be horrible, if e.g. the drones are connected through wifi or bluetooth? My understanding is that that's why until now no serious electric piano has ever proposed bluetooth audio connectivity for the player. [Edit]: they use an other tech with zero latency, as described in the article. Thanks for the replying comments.
- balfirevic 4y ago> Wouldn't latency be horrible, if e.g. the drones are connected through wifi or bluetooth? It would, but they are not - it's in the article.
- daniel_reetz 4y agoThe article addresses latency. They used a proprietary system repurposed from headphones.
- callalex 4y agoIt is almost certainly using FM as it’s cheap and zero latency.
- brudgers 4y agoReverb is the result of latency, and in large spaces the audio signal to distant speakers is delayed to minimize dead spots due to wave interference. Which is to say musical experience is complicated and hence live sound design is also complex in ways that aren’t casually obvious. The rule of thumb is sound travels one foot per millisecond (30cm per millisecond). So at 30m, ten milliseconds latency wouldn’t change the spatial perception very much even without correction. Of course 90ms is plenty of time to correct for latency if you want to be spot on. My wild ass guess is a microphone on the drone could be used to sync the remote speakers with the piano speakers to phase align the sources. Basically ordinary audio signal processing succumbed to compute about twenty years ago.
- kimburgess 4y agoHaas would like to disagree. If you experience a second wavefront within ~2-50ms you'll still localise to the first, even if the second is up to 10dB louder.
- jdalgetty 4y agoI wonder if you could do some sort of noise cancelling of the prop noise?
- LeoPanthera 4y agoCompose a piece that actually uses the prop noise, and have them vary the speed of the motors during the piece in order to alter the noise.
- verdverm 4y agoThey don't look to uses props, but bladeless air flow tech, based on the renders anyhow
- klyrs 4y agoNever trust a render.
- shever73 4y agoThe article states: > As of now, the drones’ propellers are still somewhat noisy. But as quiet drone technology becomes available, they’ll be able to add it to the existing framework.
- lostlogin 4y agoThey have found a completely non-reassuring way of dismissing the issue.
- peterkelly 4y agoFinally, an internet connected piano. I can't wait until I get prompted to install updates while playing, have to pay a subscription fee to use the sustain pedal, and have the instrument become non-functional 15 years after purchase once the manufacturer finds the service is no longer profitable and decommissions its server.
- aae42 4y agoi know this is tongue-in-cheek, but roland is not that kind of company
- sneak 4y agoThe IAP cloud subscriptions and in-app surveillance spyware in the Roland iOS app seem to suggest otherwise: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/roland-piano-app/id1610462043 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/roland-piano-app/id1610462043
- peterkelly 4y agoDamn, I was joking in my original comment, but yep there it is. In-App Purchases Roland Cloud Core Year $29.99 Roland Cloud Core Month $2.99 https://www.roland.com/global/categories/roland_cloud/ https://www.roland.com/global/categories/roland_cloud/ "Roland Cloud is an evolving cloud-based suite of software synthesizers, drum machines, and sampled instruments for modern creators." It's not hard to predict how that's likely to pan out in the coming years. I recently saw a second hand Roland AT-900 organ for sale near me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfm_AYqI1No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfm_AYqI1No). I'm tempted. The fact that comes with all it's sound and functionality built-in and doesn't have any internet connectivity which can be used to disable said features after my subscription expires makes it more compelling.
- pbronez 4y agoYeahhh Roland kinda sucks lately. This concept has some cool stuff, but in synth land they kinda missed the boat. Everyone else is doing this awesome pure analog renaissance and Roland is just doing emulation. They’re not even leading digital - that’s Hydrasynth.
- BuildTheRobots 4y agoThe drones seem entirely impractical, but also in keeping for a 21st century concept piece. Also in keeping, and something I truly despise, is the ubiquitous and obtrusive thick-bezzeled touchscreen just slapped in the middle. I don't think it looks good in the render and looks even worse in the photo. Instead of spending money developing ways to introduce noise into the speakers, I'd have rather seen the screen match the curve of the panel; though I'm not sure if shaped screens are even possible yet. At the very least they could have done a nicer job of blending the screen in for this art piece.
- GenerocUsername 4y agoYou can shape a screen by hiding or removing elements of a square screen and solve the rest in software which confirms to the visible shape. Square screen in this is as lazy as the rest of it.
- anigbrowl 4y agoThis is a fine example of why Roland isn't really relevant in the electronic music gear market any more. They have a great legacy and great marketing department, but I can't remember the last time they released a product that really excited people.
- pdntspa 4y agoI've always thought of them as a maker of reliable workhorse stuff. The MIDI keyboard I have from them has been rock solid and it's outlasted at least two others.
- anigbrowl 4y agoMy point isn't a dig at their quality (which is excellent) but at their lack of technological innovation for the last ~20 years. Their products are very good, they're just extremely risk averse and resting on a reputation they earned in the 1980s.
- pdntspa 4y agoOk, but why do they need to be exciting and innovative? I would almost rather they didn't, lest the company pivot into something of the sort and eventually abandon their existing product line. Besides, a lot of "innovation" in the music space seems to be about how many different ways we can bolt on cloud functionality
- anigbrowl 4y agoRoland says that they're exciting and innovate in their marketing materials, but most of their potential buyers don't find them to be so in recent years. This PR exercise is not about how Roland is sticking to its proud tradition of timeless, handmade craftsmanship, but about how they are so cool and pushing the technological envelope. The market reaction might be summed up as 'amused skepticism' eg https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2023/01/06/roland-creates-futuristic-drone-piano-to-celebrate-its-50th-anniversary/ https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2023/01/06/roland-creates...
- rkagerer 4y agoWait, drones as in bzzzzzzzzzzz? Like, what are they performing, a cover of Buzzsaw by The Turtles?
- blub 4y agoThe Piano seems to be Android-powered and is connected to the internet. Wouldn’t use this even if Roland paid me to. It’s startling how much things have changed from when I first started using computers, when it seemed that nearly anything could be improved through electronics. Nowadays adding a computer means malware, spyware and losing support after two years.
- lostlogin 4y agoFor a small monthly payment you can gave access to g.
- dTal 4y agoLet's be clear: this is not real. It doesn't "make use of" drone speakers because it's fictional. This is someone saying "wouldn't it be cool if we had drone speakers" and paying a digital artist to knock together some renders. The piano might exist, but those drones don't. They aren't even a viable design - broad, flat supports and a wide flat gondola right in the air stream? Single hub? What stops it from spinning, are we meant to think it has counterrotating blades (cuz they are hella noisy even by drone standards)? Where are the blades anyway? Nonsense. Fiction. Not even plausible fiction. Might as well have them hover by magic. HN, move on.
- xrd 4y agoWell, I wish I could see it at CES (as they state it will be) to confirm or disprove your assertions. Can't you just have an extra noise cancelling drone that creates an equivalent cancellation sound wave? Even if it is "fiction," it fits into the "science fiction" category and I love it as such. The rendition is such a beautiful idea that I'm happy they created the web page to showcase the idea.
- danielnoiz 4y agoI get that this is a concept, but why not use lighter-than-air drones? Either hot air (I'd see about an electric heater, no idea how feasible that is), or little helium blimps. Then just little fans to keep them in place, which could be quieter. I think I mostly want to see little blimp/airship swarms be a thing that I could buy, given a lottery win or two.
- jameshart 4y agoThat is not what ‘drone’ means in a musical instrument context. Unless the function of these drones is to emit a constant underlying tone to add to the musicality, allowing you to mimic bagpipes, a banjo or a tambura. Which has clearly always been the ambition of any serious pianist.
- hibbelig 4y ago> That is not what ‘drone’ means in a musical instrument context. Which other word should they have used?
- erichmond 4y agoI know I'm reiterating what others have said, but a STRONG +1 to the folks who are advocating for a Yamaha P-515. I bought one a year or two ago, and it sounds amazing, has great feel, is sturdy, but light enough to move. Get the hardware as others are saying.
- steponlego 4y agoCan somebody give me a quick rundown on the Roland boutique modules? I'm shopping for an 808 and I'm not sure if I want to go with Roland's solution or the Behringer.
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