Roland FP-30X In Depth Review (What They FIXED, and What They DIDN'T!)

welcome to milan recording studios my name is james pavel shotgrass and in today's video i'm going to tackle something i've never done before. It will be a kind of two-in-one video. I'm going to

review

the

roland

fp30x for the first time, but I'll also compare it to its big brother, the original

roland

fp30, in the same video. Normally I would split them into two videos which have a video dedicated to just the fp30x and then I would also have a video about the comparison, but today I thought I would try something a little different.

You guys will have to tell me if you like this concept or not, of combining those two videos into one. So yes, that's right, today we will

review

the Roland fp30x. I decided to buy it in white because to separate it from the fp30,

they

look exactly the same and the video can be confusing, but just to make things clear, the old fp30 is the one above in black and the white one is the roland fp30 down here, so ,

what

is the roland fp30x and where did it come from clearly as you can see from the name it comes from the roland fp30 which was Roland's entry into the six hundred to seven hundred dollar price range about a year ago and I think it came out ago a little more than that, but about a year ago was when I first reviewed the original Roland fp30.

I had some complaints and quibbles with the design of the fp30s and some of them have been

fixed

in the fp30x and some have not. The fp30x technically came out about two or three months ago but you couldn't buy it at the time, however Roland was actually sending out specific versions of the fp30x to special reviewers, mostly distributors and of course these distributors were just saying nice things and wonderful things about the fp30x and the fp30x

didn

't actually hit the market and the public could buy it until two or three months later, so my video is up against videos of dealers who only say wonderful, positive things about every keyboard

they

review and, as such, the algorithm won't really favor mine and probably won't get me to the top either, so if you enjoy this video and if you want to see this video, like this video, go to the comments and just say something nice, even if you are just a smiley face emoji that will definitely help me.

You can also join my Patreon page if you want. I am so willing to help me have the funds to buy keyboards like this. Companies like Roland and others. Roland isn't the only one who wants to do this kind of thing, but they usually send versions of the product in advance to people they know. I'll only say favorable things about the product, but since I don't just say favorable things about the products and I'm more than willing to do that, I guess the technical term you could say is bash, but that's not really the way I see it.

Tell the honest truth about a product, if there is something bad about it I will say it, but if there is something good I will definitely say it too, so with the original fp30, the main problem I found was that it does not have a line output direct, the only option I had, the only way to send sound from the fp30 to external speakers or a recording device was through the headphone jack and there are a few reasons why it's not good, firstly it doesn't sound. So nice and second, you can also turn off the internal speakers and as far as I know there is no way to keep them on, and you don't have that much freedom with the direct line output either, there is only one version so you can't like that the right signal goes to one speaker and the left signal goes to the left speaker specifically; it's not as free and you don't have as much freedom with it and it just doesn't sound as good.

That's the number one thing they added in the fp30x, but interestingly when I did my video on the fp30 about a year ago and I mentioned that and I really hammered home the fact that it wasn't ideal because the other two competitors in the same price range, The kawai es110 and yamaha p125 had proper direct line outputs, while this one did not. I got a lot of flack in the comments for that, just an incredible amount and in fact it was such a crazy amount that it was almost a little suspicious and I have no proof of this, but it was almost like Roland was submitting bot accounts again.

I have no proof of that. I'm not actually saying that's

what

happened because they ended up fixing the problem. that makes that probability a little less possible, but there were hundreds of comments saying that using the headphone jack as a direct line out is not a bad idea at all and is totally acceptable and is totally perfect and why. Are you being that hard on the Roland fb30? Well, Roland

fixed

it in the fp30x so clearly that it was a big enough problem for Roland to redesign the instrument and add it to the new line and it was also a big enough problem that now in every video of any digital piano that it doesn't have proper direct line outputs, other reviewers will usually say that, whereas before they really

didn

't and just overlooked it, now it seems like people are making a big deal out of it, for example the new Casio tone. uh, cts-1 again, another product that I can't actually buy.

Maybe you can buy it now, but it was actually sent to reviewers a little before it could be purchased, at least here in the United States. um and that doesn't have direct line outputs, so people mention, hey, it doesn't have direct line outputs, that's not cool, whereas a year ago, before I did my fp30 review, it might not they had um, so that's kind of interesting. So that's the big solution about the fp30x, but it's not the only big solution that's new. Another thing that is new is that it has a new sound engine so it has some different sounds, it also has additional sounds and many of the sounds on the fp30x are new and improved.

I think the speakers are a little bigger on the fp30x2, which is wonderful and that's another flaw of the fp30 and fp30x. The speakers face downwards, as you can see, there are no speaker grills, there are no upward facing speakers. a small vent to allow sound to go directly from the speaker cone to the performer's ears. Everything is underneath and looking down towards the ground. I have to be honest. These are not bad sounding speakers. The speakers themselves sound good, but they would sound much better if they were facing up and towards the musician.

Now I can see why Roland didn't want to do that. It's because they want to keep this smooth top aesthetic that isn't interrupted by ugly speaker grills, but you can make the speaker grills look really good. I think part of the reason they did it too is because their entire UI is on the side. You can see that better here on the fp30, all the buttons are here where a speaker would be. Normally, a lot of times with digital pianos, the buttons, the screen, the user interface will be in the middle with the speakers on the side, but because Roland put all the buttons on the side, it didn't leave room for the speakers, so that could be one too.

The reason is that they have the speakers facing down, but that definitely affects the sound and doesn't make it sound as good as it would if the speakers were directly up and as a result the fp30x and fp30 don't sound. as bright, full and lively as the competition, the es110 and the yamaha p125, and I will do a comparison between those two and the new fp30x to see if it is more competitive than the previous fp30, but let's listen to the fp30x here like I said, we will use those outputs direct line outputs that are right here to record the sound so when you listen to the fp30x you will hear the sound from the direct line outputs and when you listen to the role in fp30 I will hear it through the headphone jack because that is the only option possible, so let's briefly listen to some scarlotti on the fp30x and then once that's done I'll talk a little more about the line outputs and the action and the build quality of the fp30x and see if I can remember to do everything that I might forget a couple of things to do this is a little sample of the default piano sound I think I want to talk about the action first because That's one of the biggest things that's affecting my playing with that piece.

If you're familiar with that piece, Scarletty's keyboard is not a k1 in D minor. You know, there's supposed to be a lot of trills in there and I wasn't really doing those. Trills super good, let me try again real quick. The action of the fp30x and the fp30 is something that did not completely convince me from the beginning. Many people love this action. They say nothing but wonderful things. and I can see why, because there are elements about it that I like, a lot of people like to make a big deal out of textured keys.

I don't really notice much difference between the textured and non-textured ones. For me it's almost the same, but what I do notice is that the downward attack when you press the down key is actually quite pleasant, it has a nice feel, it has a substantial feeling of heaviness, but the key to good action in My personal opinion and differences may differ, but for me a good action, whether on a digital or acoustic piano, my favorite types of actions are those that are substantial, that in my terms are a little heavy, not very heavy, but not light either. light somewhere in the middle where it has this substantial feel, I like that feel, but the key to a good action is one that is substantial and responsive when the keys return to the top of the key and allow you to play fast passages and feel like if you were a sports car going through the curves very fast and without slipping at all and this is more like driving a very heavy truck in those curves.

It feels like a good deed. It feels like you are running barefoot on the beach. down the beach with the wind in your hair and you feel light and free and amazing, whereas the action on the fp30x feels more like you're trying to run not on the beach but in knee-deep water and you're struggling to get through it . and it just doesn't work, it's a lot of fun if you've ever tried to do that, but it's not fun to do on the fp30x um and the reason for that I think is because if I had to guess it's because the keys take a little bit.

Too long to reach the top. In general, the action has a sort of muddy feel to it that makes playing fast passages quite difficult at times, and especially trills and things that require repeated notes are much more difficult on the fp30x than others. digital pianos and certainly an acoustic piano. So what I think people like when they sit down to play this action is the way the initial touch when you put your hands on the keys and play a note, the way it responds with the internal sounds. It's actually quite nice, but it's when you're going to play faster passages, repeated notes, trills, it just doesn't feel stable, it doesn't feel solid.

I was able to do it that time because I was concentrating a lot more on just the feed than on everything else leading up to this, so it's possible to make these trills, but it's much harder for me on the fp30x than on other digital pianos and certainly on an acoustic piano, and that's just one of the things that A lot of people would like to say that, oh, the action of a digital piano is the same as an acoustic piano, and it's not, there are very, very few pianos digital pianos that have an action that rivals that of an acoustic piano and, although certain elements of it are somewhat pianistic, it also has the escape function, which is a small hit that is felt towards the bottom of the key and that could also be part of the reason why the keys feel a little heavy because that adds resistance to the key as you move. down, that's something else like the ivory touch keys.

I feel like the escapement is kind of a gimmick in the digital piano world because it doesn't really do anything or it's just a little rubber bump that simulates that escapement feeling, um, and when you actually play the notes on a real acoustic piano , you won't feel that hit when you're playing because the escapement moves out of the way and allows the hammer to fall down away from the string so it doesn't pinch the hammer against the string, that's what the escapement does, it allows the hammer to escape from the string. the string, um, and when you play the note silently, that hit that you feel is the escapement mechanism slipping and letting the hammer fall, but when you play the fastest note on a real piano, that escape hit is not there. really present, but on these digital pianos, because it works differently and it's just a rubber bump that an action mechanism goes through, it will always be there and it will always continue. to add resistance and for example if you take a look at the Kawai action the rh3 which also has a simulated shutdown and recently about a year or a few months ago Nord used that same action with a modification on their flagship piano the nord grand what was that modification?

The only thing they did that anyone can say on the internet is that they removed the false let off um, so if Nord doesn't like big company, it seems like they know what they're doing. Pretty successful, you know, maybe there's some merit to my suggestion, plus, leaving it maybe a bit of a gimmick, um, so that may also be why this action feels a bit more substantial, like a gummy, um. gummy than it should be,but it makes playing certain passages like trills and quickly repeated notes a little different, difficult, let's play some more scarletti, we'll play its keyboard slot on k380 and then explore some of the other tones this keyboard can produce for me the roland fp30 and the pha for action just isn't a fun action to play the fp30 has been the fp3x has been improved over the fp30 uh i think the tones here are overall better and in that sense the playing experience is better, but when i sit down to play the fp30 it's not an experience i look forward to.

I'm not going, yes, I can play the fp30 with many other digital pianos that I have here in the studio, even those that I don't play often like the yamaha p515, every time I take it out of the box and go to play, I say: yes, I can play it, it's fun, but act on the fp30 here for this video. It's just not fun. I can't relax because I'm constantly worried. Oh, is this trill going to ruin me? Am I not going to play this right? Because the stock just doesn't seem responsive enough. the touch control and dynamic response are there so people again like this action because everything on the way down is fine but then everything on the way up is not ideal in my opinion and I think Might need some improvements now.

The tricky thing is that you don't want it to be too springy, you don't want the action to feel like it's resisting you on the way down so it can come back up and respond that way, which is why digital piano actions are tricky, The reason the acoustic piano action is so good is because it has evolved, it was invented in 1720, you know, and it has progressively evolved over the centuries to where it is today. Digital piano stocks have only ever existed. for a few decades, 300 years from now, they will probably be phenomenal, but they are still somewhat experimental.

People are still trying to figure out how to replicate the feel of a real piano in a compact, cramped space with digital sensors and everything. these things and to be fair I imagine it's very difficult to get it right but unfortunately I don't think it's done here on the roland fp30x so now that I've talked at length about the action it's now time to move on to the quality of construction and the other things I said, I would mention what the other shades would be. So what is the build quality of the fp30x? Well, I don't really have any problem with it for the price. class is pretty run-of-the-mill and that expression that says run-of-the-mill or inferior sounds a little bad, it's not mediocre, but you know, the power for the course is average, but it's the build quality of the fv30x is nothing to write home about. it wasn't the build quality of the fp30 either, it's just standard right, you have all this plastic, plastic, top, plastic, bottom, plastic, with that, actually, that's nice and solid, it's the same as saying solid here, yes, it is.

You have, you know, just plastic everywhere, but it doesn't really give me a cheap feeling. I think it looks a lot better and the white, the black tends to collect dust that you probably can't see, but there's something about it. weird dust spots that don't really want to go away, while the white one is newer, but doesn't have it yet, which is pretty good, so the build quality of the fp30x is okay, nothing wrong, nothing amazing, It just is. One thing I like and don't like is the damper pedal situation, so what I like is the length of the pedal cable.

I'm going to keep pulling it and keep pulling it and there's still more room, so it's very, very long. um and I've said before in the past that I really liked this damper pedal so it was the little square dp-10 um from Roland and that was because I was using it on the floor um in the main studio here in the ice room. We're using an oriental rug, which is the standard oriental rug that a lot of people would have in their homes and these damper pedals don't really play well with it. I think they are too light and when you press them. your foot on them leans back, it's leaning back right now mainly because of my hand, but the idea is the same, um, so when you put your foot on it, it leans back and slowly just moves forward a few centimeters across the floor, um, when you're on carpet, other surfaces seem to work better for these, which is why I initially said they were pretty decent for what they were, but I think maybe if they were made of metal, they'd actually work quite a bit ok o If Roland would just include the actual high end sustain pedal like Kawhi does with the es110, that would be great too.

Another thing I wanted to talk about with the fp30x that isn't fun is the owner's manual, although this is a simple instrument to use. Roland somehow managed to make the owner's manual and again, this is true for the fp30 as well. um, they managed to make the owner's manual really complicated. Now this text is too small, which is also why it's hard to read, but you don't really need to look at the text to be able to see that this is really complicated, see how messy it is, and again design a user manual. owner and make it look good.

I'm sure there's a whole science to that, um, but it's just something about the way Roland explains everything seems too complex to me and these are all simple things, you know, like selecting pitches and using the metronome. They have these complicated blown up diagrams of the little buttons and the keys and they zoomed in on different scales and it's like a little visual overload here and then on the second page here's more stuff you know, more old diagrams and big stuff and this is something really elementary on this page configure the fp30x on a stand, place it on the Ready, do you know why it has to be here?

Do you know how to connect the equipment with headphones? Plug in headphones. Ready, you know, I mean plug in the music stand, it's in the slot. Fact, that should be in an owner's manual, I mean, and the funny thing is that a bit about the musical dress was not in the fp30s manual, it's only on the fp30x. Did you decide between doing the fp30 and doing the fp3? Roland got calls from customers saying, "Hey, I don't know how to do this." They put the music desk in and decided to put that in, like why does it have to be here?

I don't know, it's things like that that I feel like can be removed completely and make it more, you know, a little complicated and if Go further here, look at all these walls of tiny text to troubleshoot, it applies out of focus. , but look how small it is, look how tiny, right, I feel like the user manual for these instruments could really use an overhaul and part of the reason the user manual for this instrument is so complicated is because of the interface. user interface, which is something that hasn't been improved since the fp30 and I think maybe it should be included now that there is an app you can use with the role and if there's enough interest in the comments, maybe I'll do a full video diving into the app and talking about it, because I heard some people say that some of these apps that come with digital pianos are buggy and crash.

At the time I don't know if that's true with Roland's, but I've heard people say that about apps in the past that I can't remember what they are, so if there's enough information or enough interest, maybe I'll do a review. the app that goes with this but in that app and there's actually two of them um, but in one of the apps you can go in here and customize the way it sounds so you can change just things with the sound, you can change the the brightness you can change, you know the environment, all that and the other one is one that allows you, it may be the same one, I'm not exactly sure, but one of them allows you to go in and just see all the sounds in a big long list and choose them by name instead of the complicated system Roland has chosen to use here.

I guess apparently it's cheaper to create a full app and host it in the app store than to simply add buttons and circuits to a digital piano, I find this interesting because for example to change sounds instead of pressing a button or scrolling through a menu on a screen on the fp30x, what we have here is a row of buttons for categories, so you have the acoustic piano category. electric piano category and the other category, those are your only three categories and in these categories you have a lot of different sounds and to access these sounds you hold down on that category and then press any of these unlabeled and unnamed keys here at the base I know that the electric piano category goes up to this e starting here and ends at this e it has increased from the fp30 um the electric piano category goes up to this e and I think the others are quite large and could go up even more, but they're not labeled, you don't know what they are, there aren't even numbers on the back of the keys so you know, oh yeah, that particular sound is the number six, so let's go to the number six, you have to remember it, and again there are an app. for that, but if there is an app for that, I don't know, let me know in the comments section below, but the electrical panel section is another section where the fp30x has been improved.

Listen here to the sound of the road very quickly and then. Later in the video I will do a real comparison between the fp30 and the f30x where I will show you back to back samples of the sound, but this section is mainly about the fp30x so it is by no means the best road sound for you. I've ever heard, but it's also by no means the worst road sound you've ever heard. I think it definitely has some nice elements. You get some barking when you dig deep. You have that auto pan that attacks you.

You've got the growly lows, you've got the bright highs, it's got all the right elements of the Rhodes type of sound, you've got that jangly midrange and overall, like I said, they're definitely not the worst road sounds I've ever heard. and as we will see later in the video, a huge improvement over what used to be on the fp30. If we look at the electric piano sound, we'll see that there are a few different versions of roads and whirlys and stuff. I think this next one is a whirlwind and I'm not going to go through every sound or maybe I will.

I don't know, we'll see, we'll see what I feel like doing. We'll go over some of these here. electric piano sound um this bass um b here is whatever this is I don't even know what it is, let's discover more together again it's not so simple and easy to play that piece which is one of Schubert's improvisations on this as on other pianos digitals, but it worked and I got it done and I think it sounded really good with that particular kind of Rhodes sound um, let's move on to the low C key here and we'll see what this is, yeah, look what I do.

It's great? I have two pedals, one for the fp30 and one for the fp30x, in case you were wondering. Here's Cleveland's high C. Very good. Here is a vibraphone sound without tremolo. Ah, what a wonderful world we live in. that was a vibraphone sound and as we can see here the electric piano sound doesn't just encompass electric pianos, in fact I think there are actually very few, we've had one, we've had two road sounds, one rotary, one Yamaha DX and then the Clavinet Sound which is not really an electric piano but I'll let that slide.

We'll continue here, but I'm pretty sure those are the only electric piano sounds we could have here, but that was a vibraphone sound without a tremolo. like I said um, I think we're at d Sharp, let's press d Sharp again and see what that was. D Sharp is a chalesta, let's keep moving forward here so far, cool thing Roland did in the first place, not sure why that is. The super gritty organ is the first organ we encounter here, but what I think is cool that Roland has done here with these organs is that if you touch the button on the electric piano, it actually turns the Leslie effect on and off, which again is not So. best leslie effect ever, but it's better than nothing and gives some life to these organs.

Let's look at the next organ sound that reaches my ears through the speakers and it sounded extremely loud compared to what we've already been hearing. um what is the nature of these digital pianos, often the organ sounds are much louder than everything else, so if that was clipped, I apologize if it wasn't wonderful, um, but you could hear it even if it was clipped , which I apologize for what could. I heard that the electric piano button turned the Leslie simulation on and off and I like that the only problem is that the electric piano button is quite close to the other buttons and as a result you can accidentally hit the piano. category or the other category that I'm pretty sure turns off all the Leslie effects, it doesn't turn them off, I'm wrong, but it changes the pitch, so let's move on to the F sharp here and see what organ this is. here is g here is g sharp here is a here is a sharp or b flat whatever you prefer to call it here is b and here is c there are some various pipe organ tones here I think csharp is one and maybe my final uh maybe my favorite sound and the last one in the electric piano category is this one, which is an accordion.

It sounds a little thinner through the direct signal than through the speakers. They're adding a little bit of bass and fullness to it, so it really sounds through the speakers. nice and full um the direct signal, I think it's a little bit raspier, but it's still very nice and I like the slow attack that it has, which gives it that authentic slow response feel that accordions tend to have, um, so if we hold down the button on the electric piano. down and press f we should still be on the accordion sound because I think it's the last one and in fact we are so now let's move on to the others category which has quite a few different sounds now if you're wondering why I've left out the piano category is because to me they all sound basically the same.

I'll go over it just for all of you. I only play a couple of chords on each one, but to me they are all the same and the default one is the best. which one I would use, so here's the default one for reminders, here's the blueprint, yeah, that's pretty good, I like it, I think I forgot what note it was, that's why I don't like this note system. remember what note it was on, I don't remember what the next pitch is, uh, let's try G sharp. Scarlett wrote for harpsichord and was one of the best harpsichordists in Italy at the time, so it's appropriate to go back to that and give it another shot uh, let's go to here and see what we have in a that may have been the last pitch on the instrument, let's try B flat here yeah, which houses a chord tone, it's the last one in the electric piano category and as it can, I hear that most acoustic pianos sound more or less the same and you have some outliers like the harpsichord and that cool and dreamy, but most of them sound more or less the same, I think this time we move on to the others category, which has some interesting tones, so let's look at it, since the name could describe the other categories, it features other types of sound, you have some string sounds, you have some synth sounds and then other things, um, so we'll take a quick look.

Look here, it's not really the main focal point of the roland fp30x, but some of these sounds here are fun, so we'll take a quick look here. First, there is the sound of the string pad and you can actually play it. very quietly, um b flat gives us something that sounds almost exactly like the same string sample or patch or whatever you want to call it next, it's b again sounds like the same thing, maybe with the mid boost a little bit to give it more detail. there, but the same basic idea here is c.

Am I doing this right? Are these changing? Here is the C sharp. Okay, it's definitely different. Here is the d. It's like a basic cello type of sound. It's actually quite nice. Maybe it could use a little more vibrato, but the tone is nice. cool, um, I think that was d, let's try it, d, that was d, let's try d sharp or E flat, so E flat is a harp sound, and natural is a sound like strings and trumpets, although I think which is not the best. we have to go to f natural now look, that's why I don't like that method so much, it's just because okay, let's do it f is like a synth string pad here is f sharp I think I played it right here is g here is G sharp make that's an old sound rollins and recycling for years and I honestly can't say I care what this is I think it's making noise it's distorting it's making the speakers vibrate it almost sounds like a very distorted gritty bass it could be making the speakers vibrate Although I'm not sure that not many of the sounds on this instrument actually distort the speakers, which is good, and I think a couple of other bass sounds might, but none of the acoustic pianos, electric pianos, none of the others will actually vibrate or make the frame of the instrument vibrate or make the speakers spook, which is good.

You have a couple that do it, but not many. Which key are you worried about? I have no idea. I have to stop by and find her now. I'm pretty sure the bass with the ride cymbal sound is the last tone in the other category. If I press, it appears. I'm not actually on the base symbol with the ride cymbal, but there it is. We go further and there are no other sounds, so. I'm pretty sure that's the last sound built into the instrument. As I understand it, the app also allows you to access other sounds that you can't access through this annoying menu here, but I would personally prefer to have the sounds laid out in some kind of menu, either through a screen or even a color change button, and you just toggling might even be better than this, which I find quite annoying, I mean, that wouldn't be the perfect setup either.

It has its own annoyances, if you go past the sound you want you'd have to backtrack or something, but it's not really the best. One thing I can say that it is enjoyable for the most part, except for the organ sounds. I think if you hold down the pitch and change the pitch the sound stays the same so I switched from the acoustic piano to just a random key that wasn't the honky tonk sound and you could hear the first note on the piano was Lo that I played didn't change at all even after I started playing notes with the honky tonk sound, so it's good that you have a perfect sound change, but I can't really imagine it unless you have memorized and known the pattern or even them. you have put labels.

I don't know how to memorize the pattern of which keys give you what it sounds like unless you knew that like the palm of your hand, I couldn't really imagine someone making changes like that in a live situation, but maybe someone could use this as a live midi controller and that would be nice, but again, in my personal opinion, the action isn't really the best on this, so even if you wanted something like that and were going to play trigger-triggered acoustic piano samples, you might want A better. action, but again, if you're doing midi, you're probably using other sounds besides piano, like synths and sound effects, so who knows, the decision is up to you.

There are other features that the Roland mp30x has and there are some other features that are hidden. On the keys, for example, you can change the vibe of the instrument by holding down the function button, which also doubles as your Bluetooth button, and that Bluetooth functionality is how your app connects to the keyboard, in addition to being able to use the fp30x as a bluetooth speaker which I did and I just clicked on the random YouTube video and started watching it and it was actually a lot of fun, not only was the video good but it also sounded good through the speakers and I actually forgot about that I was using it.

The keyboard as a bluetooth speaker actually worked quite well. I've had other digital pianos that sounded a bit weird as bluetooth speakers and this is obviously not the highest fidelity bluetooth speaker you can get, I'm sure some things wouldn't. It sounds amazing with those speakers facing down towards the ground, the music may not sound ideal but the video I was listening to was basically a guy talking and it had music in the background that sounded great, it had trails and I thought wow, that one path! It sounds great coming out of the fp30x um, so it works pretty well, um, but the ambient function, for example, is accessed by holding the function button and pressing this key, which increases it, so now we have some kind of reverb effect and i.

I think you can go up to 10 and then back down, if you press the middle button, this button goes up, this key goes down and then this one in the middle will reset you to the default value, which is cool, I like that functionality. It's so we can turn up the vibe a little more here and play something that's a little more ambient and enjoy the vibe. Definitely not the best reverb sound. I just had to leave that piece there because I've listened. enough of that reverb, it's definitely not the best reverb, but it adds some life to it.

I think something else that the acoustic piano tone is missing on this instrument is kind of like nice sounds, uh, on a real acoustic piano, if you were to play it. that exact same piece or anything that has the pedal down for most of it, you'll hear the strings, even the ones you're not hitting with the hammers and playing with the keys, the other strings with the dampers up will resonate. sympathy with the notes you're playing and that gives an acoustic piano almost like a built-in reverb, it sounds really great and that's an effect that a lot of digital piano companies strive to have in their samples when you hold down the pedal.

You'll hear the sounds of even the pedals lifting up, we don't have that here with the fp30x um and you'll also hear the sympathetic resonance of the strings in the higher treble and in really good samples you'll even hear it lower down. on the keys I hear very little of that too, I think there's something in the high treble, you don't really hear much of it, it starts to come up here, as you can hear, although when you first press the key, you get the surge of sound that happens, I guess it's kind of an emulation of the noise of the hammer strike and what's the word emanating into the rest of the piano, um, but it sounds exactly the same for every key press, even down here on a real acoustic piano .

It starts to sound pretty much the same in the last few notes with the key strike noise, um, but generally it will sound different for each note down here and it sounds the same for each note on the fp30x. You will also notice that you are not listening. the sounds of each tone that I'm playing resonates with the rest of the instrument, you just hear that key noise, um, and you hear the notes that I've played, and this is using Roland's supernatural sound engine or something I don't know. If you use all the capabilities of the supernatural sound engine, a lot of people praise it a lot and say it sounds amazing, but what I'm hearing, the fp30x is definitely not terrible, it actually sounds good, if you put it in a mix.

I played it in a live setting it would sound great and no one noticed, but on its own as a solo instrument it's not the best sounding acoustic piano I've ever heard, but it's a 7-800 acoustic piano, it's not a silent mp11se, so there's that like Well, you can also change the brightness of the keys so we can make it brighter, make it darker. You can change the touch of the keys, which I imagine will be the sensitivity of the keys. You can change the master tuning here again. By holding down the function button and pressing the keys over and over again, you can also access some USB song functionality by playing um, so play pause will be oops, play pause will be this key and then I guess which will increase the volume or maybe the next track, the previous track would be these two keys and you can also turn off the speaker, put it in stand mode or put it in desktop mode because this instrument has a feature where, because the speakers trigger down, especially um, it's really going to sound weird if you put it on a desk or a table, I haven't actually done that so I don't know how it would affect the sound, but it would certainly make it more muffled, it might amplify the bass, but it has stand and desktop mode so if you are putting it on a desk you can put it on desktop mode if you have it on a stand like i do here you can put it on stand mode or you can just turn off the speakers and now there is no tone of speaker, but that came. through the uh that came through the direct line signal we can turn the speakers back on.

I'll put them in stand mode. I just want to see that they should sound the same. It should come out of the box in stand mode. That's what it sounds like. As I remember it ringing, we can press the ambient button and turn it off. You can also transpose here. You also have a transpose icon labeled here. There are also some numbers here for some midi stuff and then you can also change the input volume. around here and I think there may be other hidden features in the app as well, but those are all the things available on the keyboard.

You also have a metronome here. Great, for some reason it's on waltz time 3 4. You can also make your own recordings and play a demo track too. I think making a recording overrides the demo track, so if you really love that demo track, you'll have to overwrite it, which is a little unfortunate I guess, but it's not the end of the world. um, what else here? You can also split sounds because you can have like bass, I guess by default down here and probably in the app you can customize and change which sound is in the base and which sound is in the treble. um you can also overlay sounds by pressing two buttons down and now we have everything I had on the electric piano sound overlaid with the acoustic piano and I don't remember what sound I had last on the electric panel so this may be a nightmare . or it can be beautiful, an interesting combination, uh, accordion and acoustic piano, um, sothose are all the features and those are all my opinions on the fp30x, while throughout this video I've been making little comparisons between the fp30x and the fp30 because I really can't help it at this point.

This video has really been a review of the fp30x on its own. You'll notice that I haven't been playing the fp30 or even touching it much up to this point, but now that's where it's at. changes, so this is technically now the real comparison section of the video where I compare the fp30x sounds, the fp30x gesture with the wrong keyboard, let's compare this one to this one, here we go, so a few things. One of them I wanted to talk about is I'm not going to go through every sound and compare every sound, I really only want to talk about two, which are the acoustic panel default sound and the electric piano default sound.

I could take a quick look at a couple of other sounds, but does it really matter if I compare all the string pads? Firstly, there is more to the fp30x and secondly, I don't think most people will buy this because it has a specific string patch that they want, so let's really go. I wanted to talk about the two main things that I think people might be using on the fp30x at least with the built in koozie piano electric piano sounds, but first of all I wanted to talk about a funny little discrepancy that I thought was funny in the owner's manual, do you?

Does it matter? No, not really, but I thought it was funny, so I was looking at the owner's manual for the fp30 and one thing I noticed is that it specifically says to long press the power button to turn it on, and that's it. It's true to turn on the fp30, which is something that bothered me a little. You can't just press the button and turn it on. The light will turn on as if it is going to turn on and tells you that it is going to turn on, but in reality. You won't actually have to press and hold the button for a couple of seconds and then it will turn on.

The fp30x owner's manual also says you have to long press the power button to turn it on, but it's not necessary. Hold down the power button and look at this, voila, now it's playing, which is wonderful, so thank you Roland for addressing that little thing that no one would really notice, but I noticed it, so it's wonderful, and now that both instruments are turned on again. turned on again, now it's time to check the tone of the acoustic piano. Now keep in mind that the fp30 will be recorded and you'll hear it through the headphone jack right up here and the fp30x will be recorded and you'll hear it through the stereo line outputs here on the back and something about those that I don't remember if I already said this in the video, it's kind of funny because it's almost like Roland just nailed them on the back, normally with digital panels you'll have your entire row of i's or on the back your inputs and outputs and they'll usually be all together you'll have your power your damper pedal input maybe a second damper pedal input sometimes an expression pedal input you'll have your stereo line outputs sometimes you'll have a headphone jack on the back you'll have your headphone inputs line, you'll have your USB, you'll have your midi, everything will be on one line and sometimes it will be additional things as well. the fv30 some of that is true you have your usb and your power which are at the top here and then normally i would expect the line outs to be there too but they aren't they are down here as long as if you look at the back from the keyboard, you can actually see that the line outputs are quite separate from the rest of the instrument, so although this could be taken to say that Roland literally just drilled a couple of holes in the fp30x and glued the line in. inputs and they called it a day or line outputs really um actually maybe there's a really good reason why they did that and that's because if you have all your i's or all in a row, it can be especially if you have your sustain pedal inputs direct.

The line outputs of your direct line inputs are all next to each other, they're all quarter-inch jack holes, so you can't just feel behind the keyboard and say ah, that's the one I need and place your connector on the correct input or output, um, but with the line outputs so far away from your pedal input and your midi inputs, not that you'd confuse those two, um, but with a line input connector, a line out jack, sorry being so far away from everything else, no confusion, which is actually kind. cool, I like that, so, with all that out of the way, let's listen to the sound of the acoustic piano.

I think what I'm going to do is play scarletti's sonic k380 keyboard again and play little bits here and bounce back and forth between the two pianos and we'll see how it goes, it'll be a fun challenge, there may not be a perfect performance, but still You will understand the different tonal differences between the fp30 and the quality differences in sound. between the fp30 and its headphone jack and the fb30x and its stereo line outputs, set it up right then, let me set up my pedals there. I have two of them next to each other, so we have to set everything up here. let's do it so you can definitely hear the difference there, I think between the fp30x and the roland fp30 um, the fp30 has a thinner kind of sound and I'm not entirely sure how different the actual tone of the piano is.

It's between the fp30 and the fp30x um but I think the piano tone on the fp30 is less warm, it sounds like the fp30x um it's a little warmer a little fuller a little more detailed and although it's missing a lot of that really realistic detail of realism that I mentioned above still sound much better and much more pleasant to listen to on the fp30x than the fp30, so there is definitely some improvement there, but where we hear a big difference is with the electric piano tones on the fp30x versus the fp30 So one of my other massive complaints with the fp30 originally was the default road sound.

I really thought it was terrible and I really still do. There are a few problems with it, one of them is that when you play the note harder you don't hear that barking sound and that barking sound if you don't remember it and if you're not familiar with real Rhodes, these types of sounds are when you play note it gently as I will. here and at first it will be soft and bell-like, then if you hit the note harder it will be a little loud, forceful and stinging, so that is the bark, which defender Rhodes is so known for: he is able of doing. that and having those strong punchy dynamic bits, if we play the same kind of stuff here on the fp30, there's nothing, but not only is there no barking, but there's also these really super weird tonal shifts throughout the record of the old fp30 um as you go up the scale, you'll hear the roads change timbre, like this set of notes and then this set of notes and this set of notes and then the rest of the keyboard will have a slightly different attack, a slightly different sustain. slightly different tone and although yes on real roads the tone changed throughout the instrument, it did so gradually and you didn't have it, at least not on well refined roads you wouldn't have little patches here and there that would sound different maybe one note, um, but not a whole section, so in the original, the old fp30, if we go over here, I'll point at the camera, oh, so rudely, like this, um, and every time I do it, there's a tonal shift, like this Let's start here.

I wish you could understand that and I wish you could hear it too every time I was pointing in your general direction, that's when there was a tonal shift, um, and which is not really good and all the road noise on the fp30 didn't play. Well the fp30x is a different story, you already heard it in the video, but I'll play it again and do some comparisons now, although I said it's not the best road show I've ever had, it's leagues. better than the fp30 app is much better, much better you have that bark you have that value there is a slight change in timbre somewhere in the middle of the keyboard here again I will point you out when I think I hear it, that's right Somewhere I think it is right up there like c or c sharp in the center of the keyboard here maybe e but it's incredibly subtle and no one noticed that overall the tone of the electric piano here on the roads is much better.

It also has that auto pan, which is great, so we'll do some back-to-back comparisons between these two just to give you some ideas of how much better the road sound is now on the fp30x than when I heard it. I first saw those early release videos from people who knew music distributors and stuff before the fp30x was released. I was watching them closely to hear the sound of the fender and as soon as I heard it I thought, oh, thank God, thank God, they made it better. I was really happy to see that, so I think that's a big difference, a big difference and a big improvement on the fp30x in that regard over the fp30.

One more little thing I wanted to add before I end the video is another little improvement. I have made it for the fp30x and that is the music stand, so this was the old music stand for the fp3. First of all, it has this weird curve. I'm not sure why Roland thought it would be a good idea, but they did, but most importantly. is that the little shelf here is very flat and the music can slide in easily and as a whole it has a cheap and flexible feel, they have decided to update that, which is something I really didn't expect, this is the music table for the fp30x in Firstly, it's white obviously to match the keyboard, but more importantly the build quality is still a bit flexible, but it feels much more durable.

You've got texture here now, these little ridges that I haven't really tried. but I imagine it will be a lot, it will definitely capture your music a lot better and keep it from slipping with those textures. Also, there's this weird little line here that I assume they added for aesthetic reasons. I wish you could see that, but there's really just a ridge on the back of the thing, it's almost like they went out of their way to use extra plastic, just a little bit, uh to do it, instead of just cutting a little line, actually they molded it and used it.

I've done this kind of thing to create that line instead of just making it thick and trimming it, so it's an interesting aesthetic, but hey, it looks nice and the music desk is a lot more solid and looks pretty good too. Oddly enough, it doesn't actually fit the old fp30 slot, uh, it just looks like, oh wait, that's right, I was doing it the other day yesterday and it didn't fit now, how interesting, so I take it back, um, but there. you got it, it's the fb30 music desk and now I think it's time to wrap up the video with a sort of conclusion so I hope everyone enjoyed this video between the fp30x and the roland fp30.

I've been looking forward to fp30x for quite some time, when I first heard about its launch and announcement I was excited for it, then I was discouraged that people received it three four months before its launch and now I have it which is good , so I'm definitely glad to have it, like I said earlier in the video, if you want to help me, definitely like this video and leave a comment below. Even something as simple as the smiling emoji will help me, but the real differences between the fp30x and fp30 are definitely going in the right direction.

I was not satisfied with the fp30 and although the fp30x is not perfect, there are some improvements. The direct line emits the fender road sound. Music desktop added. But the things that I still think could be improved, the most important thing now would be the action, as I said in detail earlier in the video, it needs to be more responsive, which makes it more responsive, more agile, sharper and more piano-like. It'll make it feel really awesome, maybe Roland could experiment with removing the permission and just see how it feels to do some internal testing and see if that detracts too much from the experience.

I think he could contribute to the experience of not having a permit. off but maybe I'm wrong maybe rolling I put it there for a reason. um, I'm just under the impression currently that having escaped meant or letting go, it's used in both terms, um, on the digital piano, it's not really all of it. That's helpful, and Nord also believes the same, so fp30x is definitely on the right track, but like I said, the things I think should be improved would be the UI, speaker setup, and action, so I We have reduced. we have less major flaws in the fp30x um so if you're one of those kind of people who really loves the pha for action and you sit back and say oh this is lovely, this is my baby, then go. go ahead and get the fp30x, but for me personally I think for a lot of others, if you sit down, try to play something fast, if you try to play some trills, try to just do repeat notes, you'll notice that the action of the fp30x doesn't repeat as well as could and I think if it was repeated better we would have a much better digital piano on our hands and with the speakers again, they are not bad speakers, it sounded really great when I was listening to thatYouTube video via The bluetooth speakers and the fp30x don't sound horrible and there is no distortion either.

I think the speakers have been updated. They are larger than on the old fp30, so there is no distortion on almost any of the sounds except low volume ones. bass tones um in some of the sounds um, so if we had a different design here where the speakers were facing upwards and directing the sound directly at the performer, if Roland insisted on this UI being the way it is, maybe just take it and just move it to the middle and then put speaker grills on either side which would be fantastic. I think it would probably help a lot to improve the tone.

What a lot of manufacturers do is they have downward facing speakers but they also have upward facing speakers so you get this as a surround sound experience and I have noticed that it works well on some digital pianos others just have upward facing speakers which They can also work very well. I think Roland is using good speakers here. I think maybe they need them. optimize them to actually direct the sound directly to the performer and have them facing up I think it would create a better sound and again the user interface is not my favorite thing if there is enough interest I will do a review of that app but personally I would prefer to have a user interface where you can interact directly with the instrument and have all the sounds available without having to press buttons and keys and combine things like that that drive me crazy, you can probably See I was getting frustrated in this video and if you go back and watch the old fp30 video I made , I did a couple of them, you'll see that frustrated me too, so I hope you enjoyed this video of the fp30x probably wasn't everything Roland wanted to hear, it wasn't all positive, but that's why I do it.

My channel is to create honest and instrument reviews, not always positive, not always negative, always a combination of both, and that's it. which is the goal of my channel, but it's also why companies like Roland and others are afraid to send me products or even I guess let me get my hands on them at the same time other people do, so with that out of the way . I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did you can check out my channel. I've made a lot of cool videos on digital pianos, acoustic pianos, roland pianos, yamaha kawaii, casio korg, all kinds of other things, so if any of those brands interest you, if any.

If those things interest you, you can go check out my channel, like I said, leave a like, leave a comment below if you enjoyed this video and also if you want you can join my Patreon page, see you in the next video, bye bye. keep in mind that the fb dingus