The Roland DP603 digital piano is an unassuming powerhouse, built for the discerning player in need of a compact instrument with a contemporary design. This instrument is in a category unto itself within the Roland line. It uses one of their top actions, the top sound processor, and the top speaker quality available from ANY product within the Roland lineup. And yet, available for a surprisingly affordable rate, with a stylish cabinet design that keeps embellishments to a minimum.
Product Overview
Roland has been one of the lead innovators in electronic and digital pianos from the 1980’s onward. Many of the approaches to manufacturing and synthesis technology that Roland developed in their early years have become industry-wide practices. They were one of the first companies to bring MIDI recording to people’s homes, and also one of the first to develop a truly life-like piano tone. Roland’s embrace of the entire range of instruments led to the development of the V-Series of instruments, encompassing everything from Accordions to Drums, to Pianos.
Undoubtedly one of Roland’s best value offerings is the sleek, contemporary, and powerhouse DP603 digital piano. The DP series have been around since 2003, and have been highly regarded since their release. It makes use of their latest SuperNATURAL piano modeling engine for detailed grand piano sounds as well as their Progressive Hammer Action Keyboard (PHA-50) for authentic grand piano touch. There's a ton of onboard tech including hundreds of sounds as well as pre-loaded classical scores for playback as well as play-along, and Bluetooth MIDI wireless technology for popular integrations of popular DAW software and apps. Basically, the DP603 boasts the exact same core features as the more expensive HP models, and many of the same features as Roland's flagship LX series, but with a much more minimalist look.
For any modern piano player in need of the conveniences of a new digital piano housed in modern cabinet design for modern living spaces, the DP603 is a perfect match from any angle.
This stylish piano is also available in three stunning finishes sure to complement any modern home – Contemporary Black (matte, dp603-cb), Classic Polished Ebony (dp603-ep), and Polished White (dp603-pw). The Polishes are of extremely high quality – entirely in line with acoustic piano finishes and sure to stand up very well over time.
Action
The Roland DP603, like the FP-90 and RD2000 Roland pianos amongst others, uses Roland’s new PHA-50 keyboard action with a blend of wood components, escapement and a slightly slower, heavier stroke and return to simulate a grand action more closely than the PHA-4. There is significant debate in the industry over which action is more ‘satisfying’… a wholly subjective discussion with no agreement – so our advice is to ensure you’ve tried both so that you find out which action’s mechanical nuances are better suited for your fingers and preferences.
One thing that seems certain is that the accuracy of the MIDI output is excellent and well-suited for studio work should that be relevant. The feel of wood also adds an extra level of authenticity.
Sound Engine
The DP603’s crowning feature, certainly in terms of tonal generation, is its SuperNATURAL piano modeling engine and limitless polyphony when in “Piano Mode”, or essentially it’s top-level piano patch options. This is top-notch technology that few digital pianos offer and provides players with highly realistic sound, and an insane level of detail and editing options that may be intimidating to some, while highly engaging to others. Roland has done a nice job of giving two distinct levels of control, one very basic and obvious with physical controls on the front of the instrument, while the next level of control requires deep menu editing and/or tablet connectivity.
Beyond the piano sounds, the classic sounds such as EP's and synths are also very high quality and deliver over 300 polyphony and in complex detail – all great for either personal playing or professional use as well. The DP603 also features the Headphones 3D Ambience technology, which enhances the experience when playing with headphones.
The DP603 speaker system features a robust 60 watts of power. Where Roland’s like the F140r or RP501 have traditional downward-facing speakers, the DP603 uses a speaker box that is mounted on the lower stand, where the speakers face directly forward towards the player, rather than down and away. We’ve found that this helps to create a sense of fullness around the instrument and improves the efficiency of the speakers.
The DP603 uses Bluetooth Midi connectivity, and through it, the Piano Designer app can be used to manipulate, customize, and save all of your personal piano settings. Tons of fun!
Connectivity
Roland really made sure to outfit the DP603 with a ton of connectivity options. First of all, both Bluetooth MIDI and Bluetooth Audio are present here so your convenient wireless connectivity options are covered. It's super easy to connect to a smartphone and access Roland's Piano Partner 2 app, among others. The Bluetooth Audio means you can stream your favorite songs right from your iPad or Android device.
A ton of other bases are covered here too; DC In jack, Input jacks: Stereo miniature phone type, Output (L/Mono, R) jacks: 1/4-inch phone type, USB Computer port: USB B type, USB Memory port: USB A type,
Phones jack x 2: Stereo miniature phone type and Stereo 1/4-inch phone type.
Notable Features
SuperNATURAL Piano Modeling
Limitless Polyphony solo playing using ‘Piano’ category tones, 384 note polyphony when playing using other tones
307 Tones
PHA-50 Keyboard: Wood and Plastic Hybrid Structure, with Escapement and Ebony/Ivory Feel (88 keys)
Integrated 3 pedal system with soft, sostenuto and damper
Safety-Conscious Soft-Fall Motion Lid
Conclusions
If you’re a student, hobbyist player, or educator looking for a robust stand-alone instrument without the associated maintenance of an acoustic piano, the Roland DP-603 is going to deliver more bang-for-your-buck than nearly any other instrument on the market. It boasts acclaimed durability, its easy to operate, flexible with Bluetooth MIDI, has a minimalist design, and offers a wide array of high-quality studio-grade sounds. A true heavyweight of the digital piano market.
In this article, we're going to be taking a look at Yamaha's P515, the flagship of Yamaha's P series. We'll be looking at the action, the sound engine and obviously talking about the rest of its features and what other instruments you could be looking at in parallel to the Yamaha if you are on a search for a portable instrument in that $1,500 to $2,000 price range.
Yamaha P515 Digital Piano Review Video Transcription
Sound Engine:
We'll start by discussing the sound. The P515 happens to be equipped with a pretty advanced tone engine, with 256 maximum note polyphony. For people out there who aren't too sure what polyphony is or why it's potentially important, a given digital piano's polyphony count represents the maximum number of individual tones that this can sort of simultaneously play at one time. We have detailed video on our YouTube channel explaining polyphony in more depth if you're interested. 256 note polyphony means you could technically hold the damper pedal down, sweep all the way up and down the piano voices three times before the processor starts dropping notes. Under any normal playing circumstance, 256 notes polyphony is plenty and has become the standard for higher quality instruments, starting around the $2,000 price point and going and up from there.
In terms of the sound engine itself, the main acoustic piano samples Yamaha has used here is their Yamaha CFX concert grand piano as well as the Bosendorfer Imperial concert, both 9 ft concert grands. Yamaha refers to their sampling process as Binaural Sampling, which is then enhanced by Stereophonic Optimizer technology for headphone use. These samples sound quite distinct from one another with the CFX sample bring quite colorful, bright and very dynamic, whereas the Bosendorfer Imperial piano sample is a darker natural sound with a more compressed dynamic experience. There's of course some other acoustic piano samples as well making up a pretty good variety of tones to choose from. Overall, the acoustic piano sample here offers an all around authentic piano playing experience, especially with the CFX and Bosendorfer Imperial piano samples.
There's this function called Piano Room, which operates very similar to what like the Roland's Piano Designer, Kawai's Virtual Technician apps. The piano room app allows for intelligent acoustic control of some of the finer nuances of piano tone. For example, some of the parameters you can edit are lid position height, the brightness of the hammer, touch response curve, reverb depth, metronome, master tuning, damper resonance, string resonance, virtual resonance modeling(VRM), and aliquot resonance. As you can guess, that allows the user a lot of control to customize the piano tone, which is something that's essentially becoming a standard feature on most digial pianos at this price point. It's nice to see that Yamaha is also doing a really nice job with this here. I enjoy the graphic nature of the user interface here, as some instruments leave it up to shortcut command and you can't really visualize what's happening, so having the display makes the whole process more intuitive.
The onboard speakers are rated at 40 watts in total. There's 15 watts per side for the main and then it also lists two 5-watt tweeters. The main speaker is basically a two-way speaker system with a main speaker inside the cone. Embedded on top is an additional tweeter and they rate those separately. 40 watts is enough to fill a small room, and certainly enough that you don't need an amplifier to enjoy private playing. It's probably not enough to gig with, but likely fine for lighter rehearsals.
Other sound categories here include the standard E piano stuff, including a nice Phaser EP. There's also a patch that sounds like a Wurlitzer, as well as a "Disney" patch, labeled DX. Once you get into the clav, the vibes and the strings patches there's a little bit of hit and miss in how well these sound come across, but the acoustic piano and E. piano tones are definitely very well executed. The Yamaha tone is quite specific - a totally different experience than playing, for example, a Kawai which tends to be a little thicker in terms of the tone and maybe a little warmer. Roland's generally have wide selection of sounds and once you get to the FP-90, there's sound modeling which is a totally different experience. Some people really like that, and others don't. For people who are a fan of the Yamaha style of tone, I think they've done a really great job and the piano should work in a variety musical genres.
That's basically a wrap up of the discussion of the tone engine, and a quick review of the types of sounds that are included on-board, and a few other thoughts as well.
Piano Action:
Let's talk about the action on this P515. There are things about the action that I like, and then there are things about the action that I would say is important that you be aware of it. I'm not going to necessarily categorize these aspects as positive or negative, but rather a buyer beware. We'll go through these observations one by one.
The action Yamaha has put into the P515 is what they call the NWX(Natural Wood X) action. This action is a wooden key/plastic key hybrid and both visually as well as in a tactile sense gives you a smooth release and greater feel of an acoustic grand piano. Many digital pianos in this price range offer a featured referred to as escapement or let-off. Escapement is the sensation on a key that is caused by the jack slipping off the knuckle on a grand piano. Basically, you've set the hammer in motion, it swings up, hits the string, without being physically connected to anything so it can bounce back freely, and reset the action. On a real piano this sensation is readily apparent, and within the last 5 to 10 years, digital piano manufacturers have started including that sensation in the portable design of their keyboards to make it feel a little bit more like an acoustic grand piano. I was always puzzled by this because I always thought that this sensation was an unintended sensation on an acoustic piano, to begin with. In any case, it does make you feel more familiar when you're in front of digital technology if you've got some experience playing an acoustic piano.
While Yamaha advertises that the P515 has escapement, I actually double-check that with the specs because after I first played one, I didn't really feel the escapement sensation at all. For people who are looking for a keyboard where that escapement is a little more prominent in terms of the sensation it gives you, this action may fall short of the mark. For people who don't like the feel anyway, just ignore the specs and carry on.
The key surface on the white keys is basically a polished white plastic. This is a very different approach than what most high-end digital pianos have taken within the last few years, which is to go with with a pretty porous white surface to give a greater sense of texture. In the case of Roland or Casio, they've actually gone with a full ivory keytops texture, so Yamaha's choice here is a little bit unusual. The drawback with a polished key surface is that they tend to be quite grippy anytime you're in a more humid environment which can make it a bit more difficult to play intricate music that requires precision of finger position. Otherwise, it's just a personal choice that's neither good nor bad, just something to be aware of.
The black keys on the other hand have a very grooved, deep texture. The feeling is similar to that of a new Mason & Hamlin acoustic piano from the last 10 years or so, for anyone whose had a chance to play one. It sort of feels like an unfinished ebony wood type of texture. Again, this quite a bit different than what you get on most digital pianos, and it's something that some folks will love, and others will not. The NWX uses a triple sensor which means you're going to have very accurate MIDI output, which is great.
Coming to the last subject and probably the one that needs to be addressed most directly is the weight of the keys. Before I'd played the P515, I'd been on a number of forums to read about other people's impressions, and the weight of the keys is a topic of discussion quite often, as several people had made the comment that the keys were heavy. I come from an acoustic piano world originally, and an acoustic piano should have a key weight (meaning the amount of weight that it takes to put the key in motion) anywhere from about mid-40s at the very lowest up to about 60 grams at the very heaviest. Most concert technicians usually try and weigh the key depending on whether it's at the bottom of the piano or the top of the piano, anywhere from the low to high 50 grams. These keys on the P515 are considerably heavier than that. In that respect, it's consistent with some of the larger Yamaha stage pianos of the past like the CP300. I played one of those for years in a pit band and it had really heavy keys as well. This is something that Yamaha's user community may be used to and appreciate, but for somebody who's not used to it, playing on this instrument for an extended period of time is somewhat fatiguing. I'm someone who's used to playing multiple gigs per week and having those gigs be three to four hours long, so my playing muscles are well conditioned and I find this action tiring.
I hope this isn't coming across as necessarily a negative, as some may love it and It may be exactly what you're looking for. For people who are looking for a strong sense sense of depth to the key, perhaps this action exactly what you're looking for. But it's something to be aware of that the keys are in the 70-gram range, heavier than a grand piano action.
Features/Accessories/Connectivity:
The Yamaha P515 is comes standard with a few extra accessories, and offers some optional add-on's as well. With wooden accents and polished details, the P-515 looks as good as it sounds. This is consistent with what you generally find in the market from your major manufacturers. Good comparisons to the P515 would be the Roland FP-60 or FP-90, as well the Kawai ES8. The first thing that's included with the P515 is a very solid sustain pedal unit (FC4A). I really like the inclusion of a robust sustain pedal, and it's really frusterating when digital pianos come with those little plastic square pedals that just skid all over the place. This pedal is much more stable and it offers the ability to perform half-pedaling.
The P515 also comes with an integrated music rest, as well as a standard PA-300C power supply. In terms of optional add-on's, you've got available a matching keyboard stand for the keyboard itself, which compliments the furniture and makes the instrument look a little bit more like a stationary piano. There's a triple pedal system that you can be added on as well, and the inclusion of both the stand and triple pedal essentially turns the P515 into a home digital piano.
In terms of connectivity on the back of the instrument, the P515 features an independent 1/4-inch aux outs and aux in, a mini-jack audio input and a Bluetooth radio for quick connection to an iPad or other device. I have to give kudos to Yamaha in terms of how easy it is to turn on and off the Bluetooth audio function. On many digital pianos this feature can be somewhat hidden and require a look at the manual to switch on, so the ease of use of the feature here is most welcome.
Last but not least, there's USB connection that heads out to the computer that also acts as a USB audio connector. This mean the Yamaha P515 is going to work really well if you've got some external software instruments that you're using, such as Ableton, with the P515 functioning as a MIDI controller. There's no need for any of this external mixing as it all goes in and out through the USB connector, so this is super handy. On the front of the P515, we've got a USB device port. This is for things like audio recording, so you can plug that in and you can record WAV straight to here - another super useful feature.
When it comes to features, the P515 has all the standard kinds of digital piano features that you would expect. There's transpose, split, dual mode, sound boost, and EQ. Navigating all of the features is very easy via the user interface. One last function I'm going to highlight here is the rhythm function with onboard accompaniment. There's a lot of control here, and this function would work great for fun at home or light professional applications.
Yamaha has also made available the Smart Pianist app for iOS, which creates a remote control touch screen interface, super cool. The Smart Pianist app also has the ability to access the songs in your iOS device's music library and create chord charts to make for easy play along with your favorite songs.
Conclusions:
This pretty much wraps up our review of the Yamaha 515 - an instrument that is definitely focused on delivering a high quality, authentic piano experience. I'm very impressed with the acoustic piano sounds, the E piano sounds and how easy it is to use the piano editing module. Be aware that this is a heavier action featured here, and somebody who isn't accustomed to that or isn't expecting that this might feel a bit of buyer's remorse if they purchase the instrument before trying it. Otherwise, this is a capable instrument and certainly anyone who is in the market for a high-end all-in-one portable digital piano, should have this instrument on your wish list to check out, along with the Roland FP60, FP90 and Kawai ES8. Thanks for reading!
