What is a Silent Piano?
10th May 2023
Categories: Acoustic
Silent Pianos are brilliant for pianists who have a lot of practice to do! If you have a silent system fitted to your piano, you will be able to play whenever you feel like it! Once your silent system is turned on and your headphones are plugged in, a mute rail will stop the hammers just before they hit the strings and sensors beneath the keys will convert each key movement into data that will travel to your headphones.
At Broughton Pianos we stock a range of silent systems from a variety of brands, some of which do even more than just silence your piano! Each system has been built using the best sampling technologies to make the sound coming through your headphones as realistic as possible.
Yamaha Silent Pianos
With Yamaha Silent pianos, you can play with the sound of Yamaha’s CFX concert grand, the Bosendorfer grand piano and many other sounds when silent mode is active! There are also 20 different automatic bass and percussion accompaniments to play along to! If you want to listen back to your pieces you can create up to 10 recordings and playback your performances. You will also have the option to connect to the Smart Pianist app via bluetooth where you can adjust volume and tone and also play built-in songs. The more advanced silent pianos from Yamaha reproduce your playing even more perfectly, as they use non-contact hammer sensors and pedal sensors to detect every detail throughout your playing.
Yamaha's silent systems use special sampling methods to help produce the best sounds through your headphones. Binaural Sampling has been used to record from where you would normally be sitting at the piano. Virtual resonance modelling reproduces the reverberation of sound within the body of a grand piano. Grand expression modelling helps reproduce the variety of tonal responses from strings and hammers depending on how release the keys.
C.Bechstein Vario Silent Pianos
The Vario Duet Silent System is one system that can be fitted to any Grand or Upright C. Bechstein and W.Hoffman piano. Sensor strips installed beneath the keys and pedal sensors record and reproduce realistic playing. You can control the system through the control unit or via the Free Vario App. You can plug in up to two sets of headphones, play using 19 different sounds (including the main sound of the C.Bechstein Concert D282 Grand), record and play back your own performances, connect via bluetooth MDI or USB-C to music editing software and use the piano as a MIDI controller. If you fancy sharing your recordings with other people, you can easily share and transfer MIDI and audio recordings. You can also save sounds and make adjustments such as reverb, key sensitivity through the Vario App.
Kawai Silent Pianos
With Kawai Silent pianos you can use preset effects and make adjustments using the virtual technician. You can also plug in up to two sets of headphones and still enjoy playing a traditional upright or grand piano. With more advanced Kawai Pianos you can connect to external devices via USB connection and use the piano as MIDI keyboard. You can even connect to external speakers and other instruments and also have access to control functions through the PianoRemote app! Kawai silent systems have been created by using harmonic imaging technology to capture the individual character and tone of each one of the 88 keys to produce the best sound samples. The more advanced silent systems are created using Multi-channel sampling to capture sound from different angles of the piano. Integrated hammer sensors also help to more accurately capture and reproduce your playing.
TransAcoustic Pianos
Just like other silent pianos, a TransAcosutic piano can be played as a normal acoustic piano as well as in silent mode with headphones! However, when it is set up to be used in TransAcoustic mode, digital sounds are mixed with the resonances of the soundboard and allow you to control the volume. Playing silently with headphones is a great feature, but there is so much more you can do with a TransAcoustic piano other than playing silently.
Click to read more about how TransAcoustic Pianos work!
The TA3 TransAcoustic silent system is optionally available as an in-built system within any Upright Piano from the YUS and U-series as well as the C3X, C1X and GC1 Grand Piano.
adsilent Pianos
adsilent is a silent system can be fitted to any upright or grand piano and comes with 127 different sounds as well as high precision key and pedal sensors to reproduce realistic performances. You can plug in two sets of headphones which is great for piano teaching. You can save recordings with Bluetooth MIDI accessible via the Ad-Silent App (10 memory banks available). If you want to come back to your favourite sounds, you can by saving any single sound you like as well as sound combinations! You can record in audio format by connecting the system via a cable to your computer or stereo system. If you are a composer you can connect via USB MIDID and use music editing software. Finally, you can also adjust tuning, reverb, tone, individual key volume, the metronome and transposition via the Ad-silent app.
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