REVIEW – Roland DP90e & DP90Se Digital Pianos – Recommended

UPDATED REVIEW – September 1, 2016 – Roland DP90e & DP90Se compact home Digital Pianos – Recommended – The Roland Corporation started making digital pianos many years ago and is well known throughout the world for building higher quality, advanced digital music products that piano students, players, teachers, professional musicians, churches, and studios use. I have played and used many of the Roland music products including digital drum kits, MIDI guitars, home organs, pro keyboards, digital pianos, pro audio systems, keyboard & guitar amps, headphones, special effects systems, MIDI products, and other music gear. *UPDATE: The DP90e & DP90Se are now discontinued and replaced by the new DP603 ($1999US & $2799US internet price depending on cabinet finish). Please read my review of the new DP603 at the following link: Roland DP603 Review

DP90Se polished ebony

Prior DP90e & DP90Se review: When it comes to digital pianos, the most important things to look for are accurate piano key action and key touch, authentic piano sound & dynamics with full expression capability, realistic pedaling response, and durability, especially in the higher priced models such as these new Roland DP series pianos. The DP series of pianos has been out for a number of years and no other major brand in the higher price range over $2000 has a digital piano quite like the Roland DP series with regard to a unique combination of upgraded looks & design in a special compact form, realistic acoustic style key action & acoustic type sound, authentic pedaling response, and useful digital features.
differences between the two models is that the DP90e has the middle grade key action called “Premium Keyboard” and the cabinet comes in a satin black finish only, while the DP90Se has the best “Concert Keyboard” action and the cabinet is available in the upgraded high polish ebony and high polish white finishes. The price difference is about $1000 between the DP90e vs DP90Se, but the upgraded finish and key action in the DP90Se is significant and worth the difference in my opinion if it’s within your budget and fits your home decor. Both pianos are available on the internet and discount selling price for the DP90e available in satin black with matching bench is $2599US and the DP90Se in polished ebony with matching bench is $3499US and polished white (a very beautiful finish) is $3599.

What makes these models unique in their price range as far as appearance goes is the cabinet design. They are smaller and less deep than the average home piano in this price range and the special built-in folding lid of the pianos quietly and slowly (with built-in slow close key cover) folds down over the entire piano top creating a completely flat surface like a small table or desk. The music rest on the inside of the lid supports sheet music and books and it folds up as well. For apartment dwellers or people living in small condos or just have limited space, this cabinet design is definitely good at saving space and looking elegant at the same time…especially in the high polish finishes. I was also happy to see that Roland had improved
these new models in a big way with regard to the fundamentals of piano playing including key action, sound & dynamic response, and pedaling. The best product change analogy I can use is when Apple computer company upgraded their iPad2 to the iPad 3 with Retina display screen. The iPad Retina display was a huge upgrade in terms of the screen display quality and realism for images. The processing power was greater too and buyers were very impressed and bought them in huge numbers.

The new DP series are much the same way with its new upgrades of noticeably superior piano performance over previous models. The new key actions are much quieter and move better, the piano sound and dynamic range is much more realistic & pure, and pedaling is improved. For those people who play digital pianos or have played good acoustic grand pianos, they would be able to tell how nice these new Roland pianos really are as compared to anything that Roland and other piano companies have had before. The subtleties in tonality, nuance, dynamic range, and expressiveness are evident when playing complex music in ways not possible on Roland pianos in the past. It is important to note that I am not saying these digital pianos will replace a top name grand piano anytime soon!What I am saying is that for the money and its size, the playing experience on the DP pianos is very satisfying even for a skilled pianist and advanced student.

As I mentioned earlier, Roland has the two new upgraded piano hammer weighted graded key actions called Concert Keyboard (an appropriate name actually) and Premium Keyboard. The difference between the two is that the Concert Keyboard feels more like a real grand piano (upgraded design and construction) over the Premium keyboard found in the DP90e, which is not quite as realistic as the Concert Keyboard but still very enjoyable to play, and much better than most other brands in its price range. This is the first major key action upgrade in many years for the Roland company in terms of feel, key sensor ability and sensitivity, reaction

time, and overall quietness of key movement and keybed. For the first time ever in any major brand of digital piano that I know of, Roland now has 3 electronic key sensors per key along with an additional key scanning processor dedicated to processing key velocity information This new 4-part electronics
system is in all of the new DP, HP, & LX models and in my opinion makes a huge difference in overall touch sensitivity, expressiveness, dynamic range, and piano tone subtitles and is especially noticeable if you are a more advanced player. It’s that natural organic experience which piano players look for when playing any good piano and I believe the Roland DP series rises to the occasion in that way. If you are a beginner player then I don’t think you won’t be impacted by these types of upgrades, but it’s good to know they are there if you progress in your piano playing skills.

Roland DP90Se ebony

Unless you have previously played good quality digital or acoustic pianos or have a very musically trained ear for listening to well made acoustic pianos, you may not be able to recognize how good these new models really are as compared to some lower priced digital pianos or other brands and models in this price range. This is because sound and feel are, at the end of the day, subjective & personal and objectivity for the untrained ear and fingers can be difficult to obtain. Having said that, the piano sound realism, key sensitivity, and dynamic range along with a much quieter key action than ever before is really quite amazing in both of these compact models, and it does give you the impression that you are playing a top quality acoustic piano. The key weight and static touch weight (amount of finger pressure required to press keys when keys are at resting position) are very good and well balanced from bass through treble range and from black keys to white keys. Unless you get a chance to play one of these pianos locally you’ll just have to take my word for it:).

New synthetic ivory keys

Both new Roland key actions also incorporate a grand piano simulation
movement with a “let-off/escapement mechanism.” This key movement feature
simulates the key action feel of a grand piano as opposed to an upright
piano because when you press the keys down
slowly on a real grand piano, you can feel a slight hesitation or notch
about half way down when the key action is moving and this is called the
escapement or let-off effect. Generally speaking, upright acoustic
pianos do not have this feature but grand pianos do. Is this
let-off/escapement feature a necessity for playing a piano?…not
really…but it’s cool to have because it does offer a playing accuracy and feel that is subtle but yet noticeable, especially for trained players. The white piano key tops
are coated in a proprietary synthetic ivory material which (tries to) duplicates the feel
of the older acoustic pianos which had real ivory keys and has a slight textured feeling to them. Roland has added new synthetic ebony for the black keys on the DP90Se Concert Keyboard which completes the total realism of playing a real organic piano keyboard on all keys. This synthetic substance on both black & white keys
has a slight texture and helps absorb sweat from the fingers and offers a smoother playing
experience. It also looks a bit classier than the all
shiny white and black keys and I personally like this “feel” very much on the Roland pianos.

The acoustic piano sound itself (taken from Steinway acoustic grand pianos) on both Roland DP pianos are identical and they both have 128-note polyphony
piano memory (how many notes can be played and sustained at one time) which is more than enough for even the most complex piano pieces because of Roland’s advanced polyphony voice allocation. It’s a fancy way to say you won’t run out of notes even when layering two sounds together or playing complex MIDI files. Roland calls its acoustic piano sound SuperNATURAL Piano
meaning that Roland has attempted to reproduce a much  more “natural & beautiful” acoustic
stereo sound in their digital pianos and I feel they have done this
quite well on these new models. In fact, if you plug in a good pair of stereo headphones to either piano they would both sound identical. 

All in all, I personally like the Roland SuperNATURAL piano
sound as it offers a beautiful acoustic playing experience more closely associated with the Steinway grand piano sound because Roland takes its piano sounds directly from Steinway acoustic grand pianos, although Kawai & Yamaha have very nice piano tones in
their higher priced digital pianos too which come from their acoustic pianos (Kawai & Yamaha grands). It’s about apples &
oranges…some people like one better than another because everyone has
different ears and reacts to sound differently. I personally enjoy
playing and listening to the (Steinway sampled) SuperNATURAL acoustic piano sound in these new pianos as I have and do play Steinway concert acoustic grand pianos professionally for many years and I am familiar with their sound and dynamic nuances.

With regard to the piano pedals on the DP pianos, they operate very smoothly and feel realistic to press down and incorporate the three traditional pedal functions
(damper/sustain, sostenuto, and soft) of regular acoustic pianos. They
do work better than other digital pianos I have played and also simulate a
good note sustaining experience using a damper continuous detection pedaling feature. This function gives the player incremental note sustain amounts rather than just on & off or half pedal. It is definitely a much more realistic acoustic piano playing experience than other brands as well as
physically feeling like the pedal is changing resistance when being
pressed down. Roland calls this feature Progressive Damper Action. Having good piano pedals and operation is very important, especially to more advanced players, so Roland does a very good job in this way.

DP90e satin black

The DP models offer many high quality instrument sounds divided into 4
control panel buttons above the keyboard. These sounds include 14
variations of acoustic grand pianos, 5 upright pianos (uprights are generally not found on other brands), 10 electric pianos, and
321 additional instrument tones (just about anything you can think of
including strings, organs, banjo, synth, sax, trumpet, sitar, guitars, individual
drum sounds, etc:) for a total of 350 tones which is a lot! You can see
all of the instrument names and other function descriptions in the LCD
user display screen which is very nice for displaying relevant info. On the panel button with the 321 extra instrument sounds, it can be a bit tedious in getting to the sound you want by scrolling to it
with the value +/- button, but this is true of other brands as well. However, Roland has created a special iPad/iOS app (left pic) that allows you to select
all of the instrument sounds on the piano from
an iPad connected wirelessly to the piano. This iPad Roland app called Piano Partner, displays all 350 tones from within the piano which are easy to find and select right from an iPad. You may need to dedicate an iPad or other iOS device to the piano which not everyone can do as it does add extra cost, but it is very cool to do it that way. On the piano buttons in the piano you can
change the “tonality” of the sounds by increasing or decreasing the
brilliance or mellowness of the piano & instrument sounds and you
can take any two sounds and layer them together or split them separately
on either side of the keyboard. The pianos also have the duet twin
piano feature which lets you electronically divide the 88-keys into two
identical 44-key keyboards playing the same notes in the same octaves so
that two people can play the same music at the same time. It’s a great
feature for teacher-student, parent-child, etc, and many of the top
brands are including that feature in their pianos too.

A digital MIDI recorder is built into both models featuring 3 tracks of
recording and playback (for up to 3 separate instruments) and being able
to save the songs on a USB flashdrive which is very cool. There is also
an audio wav file recorder which allows actual CD recording and
playback giving a precise rendition of your song which you can then play
along with or save on a USB flashdrive for loading onto your computer
to use in notation programs or attach to emails to send to family &
friends so they can hear you on their computers…lots of fun with that.
You can also plug in another instrument or microphone into the pianos
and record that sound along with the piano and combine them. You can
also use a key transpose feature on the pianos to transpose your
recording (including the external audio source) to another key for
singing or modulating the song up or down in semi-tones one step at a
time. Even playback speed of MIDI and audio song files can
be adjusted up or down which is very cool for audio and most digital
pianos cannot do this on audio wav/CD files. So that means you can play
along with your favorite CD song direct in your piano and slow it down
to 75% of original speed to learn how to play it at a better (slower)
speed while learning…and it still sounds good! I have not seen
audio/CD song tempo control before on any other brand that has audio
record or playback.

General MIDI sound

Both Roland piano DP models play back General MIDI song files
from a USB flashdrive which is a great feature and one I use all the
time in my studio. The General MIDI song format allows you to play your
piano parts along “with the band or orchestra” and to interact with
multiple instruments at one time using well known piano lesson books
including thousands of popular songs which can be found on the Internet.
For more info on the General MIDI format go here: General MIDI and Playing Piano.
Roland has a number of other ways its pianos can record music and
playback songs for music education & learning that are quite useful
and can be important when trying to learn music whether you are a
beginner or professional. But this comes as no surprise because for
years Roland has built professional recording & music learning
devices for musicians, teachers, and students who use them in their home
or studio for more effective practice sessions. If you want to know
more about this you are welcome to contact me.

The DP90e and DP90Se can connect directly to an iPad for another
interactive way of learning about music and playing the piano, and I use
iPad piano learning/teaching apps in my studio which
provide a cutting edge visual way of interactive piano practice and
learning. A unique feature of the Roland HP pianos is that they
can do a wireless USB connection to an iPad using an optional Roland wireless USB
adapter going through a specially created Roland iPad app called Piano Partner. Also on the new DP models there is wireless audio to play music from iTunes (with tempo & transpose control) and hear it through the Roland piano speakers by way of the new Roland Air Performer app without need of connecting audio cables from the piano to the iPad. This is quite helpful and unique and I have not seen this featured offered on other brands before. The audio sound from other non-Roland iPad music apps still need connecting cables but that’s true of the other brands too. 

The speaker/audio systems are identical in both models with 24 watts of total stereo audio power going into 2
amplifiers and 2 speakers. I was surprised by the large full piano sound coming out of these compact  models, especially the audio power in the DP90Se which is probably due to the cabinet and the higher decibel sound pressure levels. The cabinet itself helps resonate the piano sound quite well and there is enough volume for a good size room. However you can connect external powered speakers or a home stereo to these pianos to give them even more bass and fullness if that’s what you desire (I have done that because I like big sound and the DP90Se sounds like a big grand piano when connecting a good set of smaller powered speakers). But overall the sound coming through the internal piano speakers will be good for most home applications. So you can’t judge a “book by its cover” when looking at these models in terms of sound output because they do a very good job all by themselves.Copyright AZPianoNews.com 2014

The best way I can sum up and identify the major changes from the previous models to these new models are as follows:

1. PHA-4 Concert Keyboard with Escapement and Ebony/Ivory Feel features
Roland’s latest high-resolution touch-detection technology 
2. Fortissimo (dynamically very loud) playing styles are fully expressed with the new Dynamic
Harmonic feature, which provides both a unique tonal character and
powerful sound
3. New Individual Note Voicing to customize the sound to your taste by
adjusting the pitch (tuning), volume, and character of each note independently including Stretched Tuning: -50.0 – +50.0 cent, Note Volume: -50 – 0, Note Character: -5 – +5
4. Headphones 3D Ambience effect sound experience while using headphones for private practice
5. Display music scores and songs with Piano Partner app for iPad
6. Independent volume control for
headphones and volume limit function
7. Better connectivity with mini stereo input and output jacks as opposed to just standard 1/4 jacks

I do need to point out that while all of the upgrades on these new pianos are pretty impressive, the most interesting new feature to me is that for the first time that I know of on a top name home digital (upright style) piano, you can actually electronically adjust each of the 88 notes one at a time for tuning, volume, and character (voicing). On all other top name digital pianos you can only do this for all 88 keys at one time, but not for each note individually. This may not be useful or ever necessary for beginner thru early intermediate players, but for more advanced players you may have reason to want specific notes individually altered because of the way you hear your music and the notes that are playing. It’s all about the “ear” and about your piano playing experience & skill level, thus you may find this new and impressive feature useful to be able to play your music exactly in the way you want it to sound over 88 individual notes.

Another new feature I found intriguing was the “3D effect” through
stereo headphones. It’s
supposed to give you the impression the piano sound is all around you
coming from different directions as opposed to directly into your ears.
Roland calls it “an immersive sound
experience” which gives you the feeling you’re not actually wearing
headphones at all…and that’s really the point of this feature. I tried
it out and found that overall, it had a more natural effect than
listening through stereo headphones without this feature. It actually
did sound like I wasn’t wearing headphones…although I was:). This is
new technology in digital pianos and it’s a nice feature to have
especially if you be using headphones often. This headphone sound effect
only works when the ambiance button on the piano control panel is
selected and it can be turned on or off. Also, it’s important to
have/own excellent sounding stereo headphones for private playing
because you want to capture all the nuances and quality of the new
enhanced Roland piano sound dynamics and tonal qualities. I can give you
some good
recommendations if you don’t already have headphones.

Kawai ES8

If you want a realistic and satisfying acoustic piano style playing experience without an over abundance
of digital features (no drum rhythm
patterns, no automatic chord styles, etc), I believe the Roland DP90e and DP90Se would be an excellent choice depending on your budget, and I do recommend them. They are a big upgrade from the prior models in key action & piano dynamics and play great. As compared to the other popular name brands such as Yamaha & Kawai, etc, the new Roland pianos have some of the latest piano technology out there right now, and in a number of important ways they surpass what other brands do in similar price ranges, although Kawai does have a new model that I like very much called an ES8. But the ES8 does not have an upgraded furniture cabinet like the DP90Se. Although these DP pianos do a lot more than I have mentioned in this review in terms of digital features they have, those things are just “frosting on the cake” as far as I am concerned. Once you get up into this price range it’s mostly all about piano playing in my opinion, and that’s definitely where the Roland DP models excel. Regardless of what you decide to purchase, do your homework before making a buying decision and you can’t go wrong with either of the new Roland DP digital pianos, but especially the DP90Se because of its good looks and significantly upgraded key action and that is the one I would choose over the DP90e.

If you want more info on new digital pianos and LOWER PRICES than all internet discounts, please email me at tim@azpianowholesale.com or call direct at 602-571-1864.