REVIEW - Roland RP401R & Roland F130R Digital Pianos - Recommended - Impressive for their lower prices

REVIEW - Roland RP401R & Roland F130R digital pianos - RECOMMENDED - New 2014/2015 models. The Roland Corporation is a well known music products company which has been producing home and pro keyboards, digital pianos, and many other music products for decades. They are famous for all kinds of digital musical instruments and pro music devices including digital drums, digital organs, digital audio, digital accordions, digital guitar products, and the list goes on. I have personally played Roland digital pianos and keyboards throughout my pro music career as a teacher and pro musician and know them very well. Some of their products I like very much, and some products in the past I have not liked as much...you can't win them all:)

RP401R

The new RP401R furniture cabinet model ($1599US internet discount price including matching bench) & the F130R compact model ($1299US internet discount price, bench not included) are the latest in a series of RP & F model pianos that Roland has produced over the years. I have played all the Roland RP & F series pianos since they came out and I must say that these two models are noticeably & substantially better than the previous RP301 & F120 models that are just discontinued, and the 401R is even less money than the previous 301/301R model...which is always a good thing for the consumer. The new models look better, sound better, play better, have more useful features, and are just overall much more satisfying to play. In fact, I did not particularly like the previous models with regard to their (not so good) key action and sound, so these new improvements and upgrades are not only surprising to me, but really make these two new models very competitive with the other major brands in this price range, especially when comparing them to what Yamaha has to offer right now.

The actual differences between the RP401R and the F130R is the cabinet design & construction, control panel layout, and bench. The 401R has the more traditional sturdier furniture cabinet design with a 3/4 high back privacy panel,  available in an attractive satin black or satin rosewood. The F130 has the smaller compact cabinet design, no privacy panel, available in satin black and satin white. The RP401R has a larger, more traditional music rack which is at the correct piano music height, along with built-in music rack holders that flip up from the piano to hold open music book and sheet music pages...a very cool feature. The 401R also has a metal sliding key cover which works well and fits all the way back inside the piano when the key cover is opened. The F130R has an integrated fold down key cover that also acts as a music rest for the music when the fold down top is opened , which I do not like nearly as  
much as the 401R music rack. The control panel buttons on the RP401R are directly in front of you above the center of the keys which make it much easier to see and use, which I like very much. The F130R has the control buttons all the way to the left side above the left keys which is an inconvenient place to access them as far as I am concerned, and not near as user friendly in that way.  But this was necessary to accommodate the different F130R cabinet style with the small fold-down cover. Also the RP401R comes with a Roland matching bench and the F130R does not come with any Roland bench. So for the money, I think the RP301R is the much better buy over the F130R, unless you need or want the F130R cabinet design.

So what is it that makes these two new models worth considering? First of all, Roland finally got it right in this price range and has produced a very good hammer weighted graded piano key action, acoustic piano sound, and pedaling realism that far surpasses what I expected from them. Their new key RP401R/F130R key action is completely redesigned from the previous model RP301/301R/F120 and is called Standard Keyboard action, which is far better than the previous Ivory feel-G action. The fluid key movement, proper weighting on all keys including very nice touch weight (how much finger pressure needs to be exerted on a key in resting position), graded weighting from low to high keys with nice smooth synthetic ivory feel material on the keytops, is all a big improvement. The new Standard Keyboard action also has an escapement/letoff feature which is impressive, and this time you can actually feel the escapement/let-off which you could not do on the previous model. Although this escapement key movement function is somewhat subtle...at least it's a more noticeable than in the past. Escapement/letoff feature is what grand pianos do when you're pressing the keys softly and feeling a slight hesitation bump or notch from the key movement. This is not something which absolutely necessary to have but it's nice to know it's there when you want it. 

The previous ivory-G key action in the RP301/F120 was very noisy/thumpy when the keys struck the bottom when playing a bit harder, and that was quite irritating to me. Roland has  improved this new key action by decreasing the key noise to a very acceptable level and I was happy to see that, so no more complaints from me on that issue. I would not have said that on the previous Roland key action, but on this new one there is no question that the new Standard Action has really risen to a new level. It is important to note that the new Standard action is not as good/realistic as the key actions in the new higher priced Roland HP digital pianos over $2000 such as the HP504 & HP506, but that is certainly to be expected. So if you want an even higher level of key action authenticity, look at the the Roland HP series pianos. 
 
When it comes to actual acoustic type piano sound, Roland has a 128-note polyphony sound chip which they call SuperNATURAL Piano. The Super natural piano sound in Roland digital pianos has been around in previous models but is different depending on the models. There are three different qualities or levels of this SuperNATURAL piano sound in the various models of Roland pianos which I call "good, better, and best." The RP/F series piano sound is good, the more expensive HP504/506/DP90e piano sound is better, and the top of the line HP508/LX15e/DP90Se piano sound is best. Roland really should have specific names for these 3 levels of SuperNATURAL sound, but they don't...possibly just to confuse everyone...which I believe they do:). However, an experienced piano player like myself can hear the difference and I am happy to report that the 401R/F130R sound realism has been greatly improved over the previous RP301/F120 sound chip, and it's quite noticeable. It is more balanced and sonically smooth with more organic changes in tone color across the entire 88 keys, and it doesn't have the drawbacks of the previous models, so that piano sound upgrade really impresses me.

The dynamic tonal and volume range of expression of the piano sound has also been noticeably improved over the previous models (which I just mentioned) when playing very soft gentile music to a more aggressive loud piece of music. The dynamic expression is really good on both ends of the volume spectrum and even advanced players will find this to be a big benefit. This is partly because of the new PHAIV4-sensor key electronics under each key, and this is also true of the higher priced Roland models over $2000US. With this new upgraded 4 key-sensor range, the sensing of key repetition has also been improved so that more advanced players can play complex music which requires faster note repetition. The 128-note polyphony power remains the same as in previous models, which is how many notes can be played and sustained at one time in mono. The SuperNATURAL piano sound is recorded in stereo, but even when layering a second stereo sound or adding other digital effects, I didn't not find any note drop-out at all due to Roland's advanced proprietary digital chip technology, so needing more than 128-note polyphony is not an issue at all in these new models, especially in this price range. 

Piano pedals and pedaling ability on digital pianos is also quite important and should not be overlooked whether you are a beginner or advanced player. The most important pedal is the right damper pedal because that's where 95% of the pedaling happens for most beginners through recreational players. The other two pedals (soft & sostenuto) are used in much less degrees depending on the type of music being played and your pedaling skill level. Roland offers what it calls continuous detection electronics for the damper and soft pedal which means that it will allow for more incremental damper sustain time 
and soft tonal changes when pressing the pedals down or letting them up instead of just on or off changes the way other digital pianos work. Some piano companies have the half-damper sustain pedal electronics which give a middle range of sustain for the right pedal which is good, but Roland takes it a step further with the ability to continually detecting changes in sustain time not only with the right damper pedal but also with soft tonal changes when using the left soft pedal. This is a very cool feature and one that I especially like for more advanced players or students who are progressing in their playing skills. When I was trying out the damper sustain pedal I noticed two things which made the sustain sound more realistic. One of these things was a damper resonance feature giving the piano tone a natural organic sound such as what you would hear in acoustic pianos, along with a longer sustain/decay time allowing for longer natural decay instead of shorter pedal decay times found in cheaper brands. 

The middle sostenuto pedal is so seldom used that Roland has given a person the ability to control various functions of the piano by triggering them with the middle pedal such as on/off drum rhythm function, into/endings, fill-ins, and other things which give a more professional ability to using these extra features. The middle pedal can still trigger the traditional sostenuto function, but it also does these other things too. The bottom line is that full size pedals are important in the way they move, feel, their height position on the piano, and their ability to recreate the actual acoustic piano pedaling experience, and to me that's something I look for in a digital piano. If the student is a beginner or very small where their feet cannot reach the pedals yet (little kids), then the more advanced pedaling of these new Roland pianos is irrelevant, but later on you will likely be glad you have it:).

If the new more advanced key action, piano sound, and pedaling functions was all that were in these new pianos, they would still be very competitive with other brands...but there is so much more that it's pretty amazing. Let's start with the instrument sounds and related features. First of all there is a total of 316 tones including 6 primary acoustic piano sounds and a few others in one access button called "piano" (the acoustic piano sound was originally recorded from a 9' Steinway concert grand), along with a large selection of impressive strings, choirs, electric pianos, mallets, church/pop/jazz organs, voices, harps, guitars & banjos, accordions, bass, synthesizers, horns, reeds, woodwinds, special effects environmental sounds, and more in another access button called "other." These sounds are not your average quality found in other brands, but they are at a much higher quality rendition of the actual instrument tone.

On the control panel, a bright LED display screen reads out info on these various sounds and other features which helps you know what sound or function is being used. Many of the instrument sounds are in stereo and you can combine two sounds together to create a layered sound. You can also split the keyboard into a left and right section wherever you choose, and then assign one sound to the left hand and another sound to the right hand (such as piano on the left hand and harpsichord on the right hand for some interesting classical music), or an upright bass and cymbal on the left hand and a grand piano on the right hand for a bit of jazz, all of which is fun to do. There are also preset sound layers already built-in (such as grand piano and string symphony) which is quite nice, so that you can combine a preset layer like that one with another individual instrument sound and get 3 sounds at one time! That's a very cool thing because it gives such fullness to the overall sound to have three instruments playing at one time with every key that you touch. You may not use that type of feature often, but I personally like it and no other pianos I know of under $2000 can do that, and it can make anyone sound good without trying too hard:)

One of the more fun things these pianos offer is the Roland intelligent interactive chord ensemble styles. This kind of function goes way beyond just having drum rhythms or simple accompaniment sounds. The Roland interactive rhythm & chord accompaniments actually sound like CD quality band arrangements including drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, horns, etc that you would hear a live band play. They sound like the real thing instead of toy-like sounds that you would find on other brands. With this interactive chord accompaniment system, you control the band with the chords you play on the left hand. This is not a new feature since all the major brands have a system like this including Yamaha, Kawai, and Casio. What makes this one unique is how realistic it sounds compared with a real band (as I mentioned) and also the flexibility you have with adding or subtracting parts of the band playback chords as well as controlling relative volume with your right hand melody line so one does not overpower the other.  There are 72 intelligent rhythm chord accompaniments with an additional more complex arrangement for each one, offering a total of 144 accompaniment patterns, and they all sound great. The band arrangements include a variety of light, medium, and heavy rock bands, jazz bands, 40's big band, swing, disco, hip-hop, boogie, country, 50's, Latin, gospel, polka, march, waltz, and ballads from all eras and music styles. 

The way the intelligent accompaniments work is that you electronically split the 88 keys into two parts wherever you choose, and the you play a 3 finger (or more) chord on your left hand and play a melody with your right hand to go along with the left-hand chord, and the result is that you sound like you are playing in a band, only you are controlling and determining the song you're playing. You can also use 1-finger to play the left hand intelligent chords if you don't know anything about playing piano at all. This chord feature is great for beginners (it makes you sound better than you are:) and its great for accomplished players like me because it adds an entire live band to whatever music I want to play with both hands using as many fingers as I want. I've  got to say that I was very impressed with the musicality and complexity of these accompaniment chord patterns and the fact you could take out or mute the instruments, bass, or drums, or a combination of two or more while you're playing. It's like you have total control of the band. You can even use the drum beat patterns by themselves to help you with your rhythm and timing and to add a beat to your music without using the interactive chord arrangements. There are super cool intro's and endings for the arrangements that make the music sound so good, and it offers professional band play-along realism at the touch of a button.

When playing chords in the split mode, the chord recognizes the proper bass line no matter what inversion of the chord you are playing (root, 1st inversion, 2nd inversion), and that makes the song you're playing sound musically correct. Prior Roland piano models could not do this so this is a nice improvement. If you want to play your music manually and have the interactive chord style play wherever your hands are without you splitting the keyboard and having to keep your left hand on the left side all the time, then the bass line will follow the outline of the chord inversion and play those notes rather than root position notes. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, don't
worry about it because it really won't matter to you in using this interactive chord feature. You'll have fun no matter how you choose to use it. You can also transpose the right hand instrument sounds (with the transpose feature) and also the interactive chord accompaniments so that you can play in any key and at any tempo/speed and even singalong by plugging in a microphone directly into an audio input of piano. There may be some people who may not use the interactive auto chord ensemble features, and that's fine because you don't have to use it. But for other people (like me:), it's nice to have it there and be able to have more musical enjoyment because you feel like you are part of a real band...and to me that's always fun.

F130R control panel buttons

When it comes to recording and playback of songs on the RP401R/F130R, these 2 models do a very good job and offer both audio wav file recording (which is CD quality recording) as well as MIDI recording and these recording functions can be very good to have for educational and practice purposes. The  two different recording features allows for 1-track recording and playback to occur in either format. Audio wav recording is like recording on a CD, but you save your recording onto a USB flashdrive inserted under the left side bottom of the piano keyboard. You can then load that recording onto your computer hard-drive and use it in a number of ways to playback your songs, insert into notation
or recording software, or simply email your audio recorded songs to family and friends so they can hear you play...or maybe not:). The MIDI recorder does essentially the same thing only MIDI does not actually record sound but only the notes played. The MIDI sound comes directly from the instrument, computer, or MIDI device it is played through. However, MIDI song playback tempo can be easily changed from fast to slow as well as the transposed key it's playing back in. So there is a difference between the two types of recording functions and format and both are good to have.

On the negative side of the recording features, I would liked to have seen at least a 2-track MIDI recorder built in to these new models instead of just the one track so that you could record left & right hand independently and play them back independently or at the same time. With a few exceptions, most of the other pianos and brands in this price range have at least 2-track MIDI recording, but many of those pianos do not have the high quality sound CD audio recording feature which also allows you to mute the melody track as well as slow down tempo or change key, but in a limited fashion. So there are always trade-offs and having the CD quality audio wav file recording feature is pretty cool and something you don't usually see in this price range in a cabinet digital piano. You can even convert audio wav file recordings to MP3 recordings with computer software and then play them on Apple devices like iPods, iphones, etc.  Each type of recording format has many controls and editing functions so you can do a lot with them and you can also play live piano along with the recordings so that can be fun and useful for practice.

There are a couple of nice caveats to the 1-track MIDI recorder on these pianos; the control panel will allow you to actually record 2 separate tracks provided you use the split keyboard function with one instrument sound on the left hand and a different instrument sound on the right hand, like piano on left and electric piano on right, or whatever two sounds you choose. In this way the 2 parts can be played back one at a time or together and you can play live on top of that. The same is true when you layer two sounds together as they will be recorded independently on right and left channels played back together or independently. You can even rewind & fast forward digitally. Yikes!...these new models really do a lot if you want to get into it all! It just depends on what you need out of a recorder (and the other features) and what you don't need. Leave it to Roland to stuff in a ton of technology into their pianos.

The Roland RP401R/F130R models can playback General MIDI/GM song files from a USB flashdrive which is a great feature and one I use all the time in my studio for teaching and playing professionally. The General MIDI song format allows you to play your live piano parts along "with the band or orchestra" using well known songs or lesson book songs in the General MIDI format and to interact with up to 16 instruments playing at one time (stored on a USB flashdrive inserted in the piano) using thousands of popular songs which can be found on the Internet such as movie theme songs, Christmas, famous pop, country, Latin, or Jazz music, and so on. The two largest publishers of piano lesson books in the US have produced General MIDI (GM) files for their lesson books for student playalong and the RP401R and F130R are the only cabinet pianos found on the internet between $1000-$2000 that can play full General MIDI format 16 track songs. For more info on the General MIDI format go to the following link: General MIDI and Playing Piano. 

Another useful educational feature offered on these pianos is the ability to electronically split the 88 keys into two equal 44-note keyboards which Roland calls twin piano. This feature digitally sets up the two 44-note keyboards to have the identical piano sound in the identical octave while having the right pedal be used for sustain for the right 44 notes, and the left pedal becomes sustain for the left 44-notes. This allows for two people to play the music at the same time playing the same notes in the same key with the same sound. It's useful when a teacher and student are playing at the same time in a lesson, or when two family 
members are playing the same song at the same time. Although I have seen similar duet type functions on other digital piano brands and models, it's definitely a specialized function and not everyone needs or wants it because they'll just never use it. But for others, it could come in handy depending on what you are doing musically. Finally, as far as fun educational features go, there are nearly two hundred famous and useful piano practice songs in the memory of the RP401R/F130R to be accessed by the touch of a couple buttons. The actual notation and control of these songs can be visually accessed by a Roland iPad app using an iPad connected wirelessly to the piano. This kind of thing makes practicing not only fun, but it's motivational and helps with learning music. I talk more about the Roland iPad apps and connectivity below.

As with most other digital pianos, there are many editing features in the RP401R/F130R which include being able to incrementally adjust the brightness level of the sound coming through the piano or headphones which allows you to customeize the overall sound from mellow to very bright., You can also adjust the high quality ambience/reverb amount from minimum up to maximum, change volumes of many functions & features, select and change metronome beat and tempo, adjust 5 separate levels of key touch sensitivity, change relative volumes between left and right hand parts and accompaniments, digitally limit the maximum volume of the piano so that you can limit the total loudness through speakers or headphones even if a child should turn the volume all the way up, saving editing changes you make in the piano to a user memory so that they will come back up again upon powering the piano up at another time, and other editing functions.

A brand new feature I found very interesting was the 3Deffect 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'll 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 and the amount of effect is also adjustable. 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.

Both models 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 RP/F pianos is that they can do a wireless USB connection to an iPad using an optional Roland wireless USB adapter and specially created Roland iPad apps such as Piano Partner. Also on these new pianos, there is
wireless audio to play music through iTunes (with tempo & transpose control) and hear it through the Roland piano speakers by way of a 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 some connecting cables but that's true of the other brands too.  As far as other connectivity, both pianos have USB output to computer, USB 
flash drive input to load and  save songs, 2 headphone jacks, and stereo audio input and stereo audio output jacks, so there is plenty of external devices that can be connected which is very nice to have, especially because some pianos in this price range such as Kawai & Yamaha don't have this variety of useful connectivity. I use technology to teach piano students in my studio, so the more a digital piano has, the better I like it. For me personally there can never be too much connectivity to external devices.

The internal speaker system in the RP401R and F130R is the same with two speakers playing through two 12 watt amplifiers for a total of 24 watts of power. The stereo sound volume coming out of these pianos is sufficient for most homes and studios and has been improved over previous models, but in this price range there are more powerful name brand digital pianos that have up to 40 watts of power so they provide an even bigger, fuller sound. However, it is seldom that you would turn up the volume to maximum on those 40 watt models because it would normally be too loud for most homes, so the Roland RP401R/F130R volume would be enough in most cases. However, I personally like to hear a bigger, fuller sound coming out of the speakers because of my experience with playing big, loud acoustic grand pianos:). To achieve this louder, fuller sound in the Roland pianos, you could plug in a set of good external stereo speaker monitors using the stereo audio output jack in the Roland pianos. In this way you could achieve a much greater instrument volume and tone if you choose to do that. I have done it and it works really works good. Sometimes even an additional sub-woofer may be helpful (but not always) and I have seen some poor quality speakers out there that are not worth getting and don't help much at all. Before you go wasting your money and purchasing any additional speakers for these pianos, please contact me for some helpful advice because you want to stay away from the off-brands and other accessories that may not be good.

In the final analysis, there are many good digital pianos between $1000-$2000US available on the market today. However, if you like most of the things these pianos have to offer, then there are no other name brand digital pianos available on the internet that can match the new Roland RP401R/F130R for what they do at their low internet prices. For me personally, there are always a few things that I wish a manufacturer would have included in a new model and in this case it would be a more powerful internal speaker system with more speakers, an LCD display screen instead of a simple LED screen so you could get more useful information to know what's going on when you select various functions, a regular 2-track piano recorder instead of 1-track,
and a few other things. All of these extras would no doubt have added to the cost of the pianos and a manufacturer eventually has to make a decision about what they need to include or leave out to be at a certain selling price. Overall I think Roland did a great job this time in the $1000-$2000 price range (finally!), so both of these new models should be seriously considered when shopping for a new digital piano. Between the two models, for another $300 more, the RP401R is definitely the better buy of the two in terms of looks, construction, elegant design, music stand usability with correct height and built-in sheet music holders, access and view to controls/buttons, and the inclusion of a Roland bench with the RP401R....and I do highly recommend it. Do your research and your homework before making any buying decision because there are many digital pianos in this price range to consider, and contact me first before doing anything and I will be happy to help.

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

- Although Roland has had its wireless iPad apps out a couple years for their higher priced digital pianos, they have not had them be compatible in this lower price range until now. Check out the video demo below to see how they work...it's pretty cool:)
  


* I recommend eMedia educational software. If you decide to make a purchase after clicking on link below, I have arranged a big discount for you direct with eMedia for their educational software and that discount price is displayed through this link only! I want to see everyone learn to play and enjoy piano!