REVIEW - Yamaha NU1 Digital Piano - Recommended, but not perfect

REVIEW - Yamaha NU1 digital piano - Recommended - Very good but not perfect. The 2013 compact (approx 40" tall and 18" deep) upright contemporary style Yamaha NU1 in polished ebony ($5499 approx store retail price) is what they call a "hybrid" model digital piano. This is because it has a real wood key action with wood keys, wood action parts, and other organic key action parts from a real acoustic vertical piano coupled with the piano sound being produced digitally through speakers. Since the #1 thing piano teachers, piano players, and shoppers generically look for first in a digital piano is key action realism as compared to a good acoustic piano, and the Yamaha NU1 in my opinion is a winner in that regard. I have played the NU1 and I personally like the upright key action very much and it is noticeably more realistic and enjoyable to play than the popular Yamaha Clavinova series of digital pianos. I would consider the action movement to be medium in key weight & resistance and moves up & down quite nicely. The closest Yamaha Clavinova digital piano models to the NU1 as far as store discount selling price goes would be either the CVP601 in polished ebony or the CLP470 in polished ebony. I have found that the Yamaha store discount price in the US on the NU1 is approx $4700 (plus or minus) depending on your local dealer and product availability, so it is not inexpensive. With that price in mind you could instead purchase a new or very good late model used acoustic upright piano (in a variety of brands) for that price or less and get a 100% real acoustic piano playing experience if that's what you wanted. But there are obvious advantages to good name brand digital pianos and that's why people buy them.

NU1 key action

So why would someone want a Yamaha NU1 digital piano instead of an acoustic upright piano anyway? Here are some reasons: it won't go out of tune and that can save $100's and even $1000's of dollars over a lifetime of piano playing assuming you keep it for a long time...and as far as  not going out of tune, it really is a pleasure to play a piano that is NOT out of tune especially if your ear is sensitive to "out of tune" pianos, like my ear is:). Eventually all acoustic pianos go out of tune and some more quickly than others depending on the local climate and particular piano, and then you've got to put out the money to get a good tuner (don't want a bad one) over to tune it. So always being in perfect tune is a very good thing! Another advantage to digital pianos (regular & hybrid) is you can use stereo headphones for private practice which is a great feature when not wanting to disturb other people in the family while you're playing your favorite loud song:) The NU1 piano has other notable functions like instantly recording yourself (1 track recording only) so you can hear what you sound like and then saving that recording to a USB flashdrive as an audio wav or MIDI song file. It also has four other very nice instrument sounds so you can play a sound other than the main piano tone. You can electronically transpose the key of your song up or down in half steps so you can hear the song in a different key than what your playing in. This is especially useful if singing along and your voice needs to be in a more singing key range. This transpose function can be found on nearly every digital piano out there in all price ranges but it is something I use from time to time especially when I want to modulate up 1/2 step on a song.

When it comes to the piano sound itself, Yamaha has a new sampled acoustic sound not found in their other digital pianos which they call CFX sampling using 256-note polyphony, and in my opinion this new piano sound sample is better than what's in their Clavinova series as well as what's in the higher priced AvantGrand series. It's really a very pleasing tone and well done utilizing some advanced sampling technology and taken from Yamaha's best acoustic grand pianos. However, even though the piano sampled sound itself may be inherently good and realistic, the piano needs an excellent & well positioned speaker system for the sound to be heard correctly and unfortunately that's the weak point of the NU1 in my opinion. The audio power in this model is super big and loud (if you want it to be loud) at 160 watts total (four 40-watt amps) into 4 speakers, but when your sitting at the piano it seems like most of the sound comes out under the piano keyboard where your legs & feet are and then goes out into the room without the player getting the full effect of what a good upright should sound like. If you think about it, an acoustic upright style piano such as the one pictured above left (which this NU1 is trying to replace) has hammers which strike the strings nearer to the middle (or above) of the piano (and resonating/amplified through the soundboard behind the

Acoustic piano with open top

piano) above your waste & hands so that you hear a great amount of the sound resonating and coming out towards your ears and not at your legs. The same would be true on a regular acoustic grand piano where the hammers strike the strings and you hear much of that sound above your waste & hands as opposed to coming out at your legs or feet. Although the NU1 actually does have hammers moving and striking above the waste and hands and located where it should be (upper left pic NU1 see-through demo model), you need to remember there are NO strings in this NU1 piano...the piano sound comes out of the cabinet electronically by optical key sensors in the action with the sound coming out through a built-in speaker system projecting the sound mostly out through the bottom of the cabinet instead of somewhere behind the moving hammers resonating through a soundboard...and that is the the one main issue that I have with this piano...the sound should mostly be coming at you and around you from approximately where the key action is moving, and it wasn't happening in that way for me. In fact, on many models of acoustic vertical pianos you can open/prop up the top slightly (above left pic) to let out even more piano sound which does make a greater difference in hearing and feeling the overall tone. That's why grand piano lids mostly stay open, so the sound is not stuck inside the piano...make sense?:). The NU1 lid does not open and therefore sound cannot come out in that way.

acoustic piano back soundboard

Because of all this, I felt somewhat of a "disconnect" when playing the NU1 through its own speakers (as opposed to through headphones) because I wasn't feeling & experiencing the piano sound and the way it came out like I do on a regular upright or console piano. Also as I just mentioned, on an acoustic console or upright piano, there is a full size wood sound board on the back of the piano (left pic) which allows the organic piano sound to naturally vibrate and travel through the grains of the wood (usually solid spruce wood) up to near the top of the piano, but this cannot happen on the NU1 because it has no wood soundboard, only speakers. But that would be true of most digital pianos so the NU1 is no exception. For someone who is listening to the NU1 in another part of the room while another person plays the piano, then the piano does sound full and resonate because of how sound travels out into the room. But up close & personal, in my opinion the NU1 needs help reaching the players ears in a more natural way. Fortunately you can connect a powered speaker system or power monitors to the piano and place the speaker system above or beside the piano so that the sound also comes out towards your ears where it should be heard. Once you do this then everything is great (well at least great for me). But...that setup requires extra expense, space, and you need to connect the speakers up with cables connected to the lower right front panel of the piano which can take away from the clean compact lines of the cabinet. It's interesting that when using a good pair of stereo headphones, the piano sound fullness and quality is really enjoyable and is inside your ears (obviously) and there are many people who will be playing the NU1 through headphones, so the headphone listening experience does take care of the internal speaker issue...at least it does for me. The overall piano tone, the pedal sustain time, the natural damper resonance, dynamic tonal range, pedaling movement & functions, and other sound elements are very good & quite enjoyable, but not perfect...but good enough for most people and for most playing styles. I just happen to know what a real good acoustic piano sounds like when playing it and how the sound comes out and how it makes you feel, so I am a bit more critical in this way.

With only 5 instrument sounds (1 full stereo grand piano, one brighter basic piano, 2 nice electric pianos, a very nice pluck harpsichord), and basic digital functions (such as reverb, touch sensitivity levels, & a metronome) mounted in the side block to the left of the keyboard, the NU1 is not very advanced technologically in that way, but it obviously wasn't designed to compete with all the extra digital piano technology out there in other models and brands with lots of sounds, drum rhythms, multi-track recording and playback, General MIDI, MP3 audio, etc. The user display is just a small, simple LED with numbers instead of having a more understandable and user friendly multi character LCD display such as what is on the Yamaha Clavinova CLP480. Yamaha obviously did that to make this piano as minimalistic as possible and they did a very good job of it, and some people will like that quite a bit, but it just depends on what you want. There is a USB flashdrive input under the front of the piano so that you can
connect a flashdrive to it and save your recordings and play them back (very nice). The piano volume knob is also underneath the front of the piano so that it is hidden to provide that minimalistic look (a nice touch). There is also 1/4" audio inputs, 1/4" audio outputs, MIDI connectors, and a USB to computer or iPad connection. I happen to use an iPad quite a bit in my studio and connect to my digital pianos for educational and song practice apps. If you put an iPad in front of you on the NU1 you must connect it with a USB cable going over the side or over the top of the piano and then into the connectors under the front of the piano. Unfortunately the position of the USB input jack on the front bottom panel of the piano instead of putting it on the back of the piano does not allow you to hide the cable and may likely make it a bit messy looking to connect the iPad. Even putting on the back still requires a cable connection to go over the top to the back. If Yamaha had instead included a wireless capability in the NU1, then that cable connecting issues would have been unnecessary. Roland has wireless capability in all of there HP/LX home digital pianos so Yamaha should have been able to do that too. It's a small issue but would gave been good to do.

When it comes down to what you are getting for the money, for most people, the new NU1 does deliver an elegant look with a slow close key cover and chrome pedals with half-pedaling function, very good piano tone (especially through headphones), minimalistic sophistication, and above all, an excellent wood key action movement in a small compact contemporary cabinet size. Speaking of compact size, the NU1 does not have the height of a real upright piano since it is only 40" tall. A real upright acoustic piano like the popular Yamaha U1 is 48" tall so the NU1 digital piano is much shorter and more like a small console piano in height. However, the sound is not generated by the bigger hammers, bigger upright piano strings, or large soundboard of a taller acoustic upright piano because the NU1 sound is produced 100% digitally so it does not need to be bigger and/or taller than what it is...except maybe to have extra room for an internal speaker system that would produce a more realistic acoustic sound experience, as I mentioned earlier. The NU1 does not have the new synthetic ivory keytops (it uses Acrylic resin white keytops like regular acoustic pianos), nor does it have the duet 4-hand function which splits the piano keyboard in two equal 44-key keyboards and lets two people play the piano at the same time in the same octaves (teacher student, etc). It also does not allow for layering of two instrument sounds together which is a disappointment for me because I love to layer sounds, especially grand piano and strings. The NU1 does not have a string sound (a favorite for many people)...and that is a big disappointment to me for sure. With no strings and no layering I cannot utilize the big 256-note polyphony in the NU1 and enjoy my favorite sound layer (grand piano and string symphony)...but hey, this piano is minimalistic in its approach to functions and features so if you want more than what the NU1 can do and you can be happy with another key action in the same price range, you should then look at the Yamaha Clavinova series of digital pianos. Or, you can buy an external instrument MIDI sound module or get additional instrument tones from ipad apps which would also work. But you would have to connect your sound module or iPad audio and MIDI outputs to the NU1 which will create that exposed cable issue I was talking about. So it's probably best not to worry about getting extra external sounds and functions if you want your piano to look unencumbered by cables and just keep it simple.

Yamaha NU1 w/closed key cover

Is the NU1 something that can make most people happy who want nothing more than what I described?...the answer would likely be YES. However, in my opinion the Yamaha company should have added some more height to this model and installed an additional "knock-out" speaker system towards the top of the piano and also allow the lid to be opened/propped up manually if needed which would address the sound issue I talked about...sound placement and lack of "in your face" fullness. As another reviewer-writer in a known piano publication said in her NU1 review as compared to a Yamaha acoustic upright piano: "whereas the U1 (a popular Yamaha regular acoustic upright piano) wrapped me in a blanket of sound, the NU1 produced what was more like a column of sound that came at me as if through an open door to a loud room — very focused, and a little canned." "Next I tested the instrument using Yamaha HPE-170 headphones. This time I found the sound to be rich and realistic, and very close to the sound of the acoustic U1(acoustic piano)." The reviewer also said: "using only the built-in speakers, the decay of the NU1's sound was unlike that of the acoustic U1. I played a C octave on both instruments at similar volumes, then timed their decays. The NU1's sound lasted half as long as the U1's, and, rather than tapering off slowly, as an acoustic instrument's sound usually does, after several seconds it just stopped."** I would agree with this reviewer on the points that she made which is that the Yamaha NU1 does have some piano sound deficiencies, but as far as I'm concerned they are noticeable only if you know what to listen for and have had experience playing and listening to good regular acoustic pianos which many people do not....and even if you did, you may not be bothered by these deficiencies because they may not be critical to you at all in the way you play & hear pianos.

Roland LX15

When it comes to buying and playing a digital piano, we all have different piano listening & playing experiences, different ears & frequency listening ranges, different finger muscle strength, different acoustic environments in our homes/rooms, and different playing skill levels. I do recommend the NU1 because it is really an impressive piano overall, and as I mentioned earlier, for most people I believe this new piano will be a nice addition to any home for many years and can make owning a digital piano very enjoyable. If you want a digital piano that in my opinion offers a better internal sound system, an attractive sleek polished ebony cabinet, and a much greater array of usable and enjoyable digital features, then I would recommend you also consider the new Kawai polished ebony CS10 and the Roland polished ebony HP507 & LX15 which you can find on their respective web sites. Here is a review I did on the Roland HP507 & LX15: Roland HP507/LX15 review

** quoted text in my review is from Rhonda Ringering in the Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer publication Spring 2013
 

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.