From Monoprice ( a convenient source for low-cost cabling, I bought a USB Type A to B cable and a ⅛” stereo to dual ¼” mono cable for a total of less than $5 plus shipping.
And, in addition to the all-important aspect of piano sound quality, other significant considerations in this comparison were ease of installation and use.īesides a computer that meets the minimum specs for running a software piano, you need a digital piano or MIDI controller (I used my last-generation Blüthner PRO-88 digital piano), and a couple of connection cables between the digital piano, computer, and whatever speakers and amplifier you’re going to use. For this comparison, I used my MacBook Air laptop, mid-2012 revision with 4GB of RAM, a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 processor, and a 128GB solid-state drive: nothing special nowadays. Furthermore, I wanted to focus on pianos that weren’t resource hogs, but can run acceptably well on a consumer-spec, not-new computer. I limited the budget to products with a list price of $150 or less.
I thought that there must be others out there like me: players bored or dissatisfied with the sounds of their no-longer-new digital pianos, but without the money to invest in a completely new hardware-based digital that would be appreciably better. Budget, Scope, and EquipmentĪs I began this journey, I wanted the result to be a little different from the typical articles primarily intended for power users of software pianos. The growing prevalence and diversity of software pianos in the global market, combined with the relative slowness with which hardware-based digital piano makers tend to improve their instruments’ core sounds-a predictable cycle of offering the newest, most premium piano sounds in their flagship models, to be trickled down to midrange models a few years later, and to the entry-level stuff a year or two after that-requires Piano Buyer to take a more detailed, more frequent look at this growing sector of the piano industry. It gets worse: Outside of trade-show booths, I’ve never really tried them, even though I occasionally reread Alden Skinner’s Piano Buyer article “ My Other Piano is a Computer.” In the complex hierarchy of the piano universe, I’d always relegated users of software pianos to a tiny niche of self-described tweakheads, gearslutz, and a set of vocal outliers on Internet forums devoted to music and recording. A confession: Your humble Piano Review Editor has never owned a software piano.