REVIEW - Kurzweil SPS4-8 Digital Piano - Recommended - A portable digital piano like no other in a lower price range

REVIEW - Kurzweil SPS4-8 Digital Piano Orchestra - Recommended - In the world of home cabinet style digital pianos with built-in speakers under $2000, they are generally designed to reproduce (or try to reproduce) an acoustic piano sound and piano key action along with some brands & models having extra instrument sounds, recording functions, and fun features. Roland, Casio, Kawai, and Yamaha (the mainstream digital piano brands) all have some great cabinet digital pianos under $2000 price range but they all are somewhat similar in that they don't usually have non-piano instrument sounds that are great as compared to real instruments such as concert strings, organs, guitars, brass, woodwinds, percussion, electric pianos, and other sounds including synths. However, the instrument sounds on this new Kurzweil SPS4-8 digital piano ($1199 internet price including furniture stand and larger music rack) are absolutely outstanding and blow away all of the other brands in this category. Add to that the outstanding acoustic piano samples of Steinway grand pianos on this instrument and you have an unbeatable combination in a portable digital piano called the Kurzweil SPS4-8 along with a powerful built-in speaker system and European built Fatar graded piano hammer key action.

I have been playing Kurzweil pianos and keyboards ever since the introduction of their famous K250 pro digital piano in 1984, which had the first Steinway acoustic grand piano sample (incredible sound at the time in a real musical instrument), and I still really enjoy the Kurzweil piano sound to this day. The Kurzweil digital piano sound technology has always been advanced over some other brands throughout the years and they still put out some great instrument sounds, although other brands have caught up to them in some areas. 

Kurzweil digital piano technology was created and introduced many years ago by the the well known American inventor Ray Kurzweil (pictured left in his younger years - the pianos are named after him). Kurzweil piano's big claim to fame in the beginning days of that company was the fact that Ray was able to reproduce the sound of the grand piano, concert strings, concert choir, and brass/horns in a much more realistic way than was ever done before in consumer digital keyboard instruments back in the '80's & '90's. The Kurzweil sounds have been used extensively in movie & TV music production and are used by popular bands and musicians around the world. In fact, when you hear grand pianos, full concert string symphonies, choir/voice sounds, and brass/horn sounds in various movies & shows, it's likely that they used a Kurzweil piano to do that. 

Stevie Wonder with Kurzweil piano

One of the reasons Ray Kurzweil created his new digital piano technology was at the request of Stevie Wonder many years ago. Stevie wanted a digital instrument that had the highest quality acoustic piano sound possible based on technology in those days along with a more realistic piano touch and a few other high quality instrument tones. Stevie already had an association with Ray Kurzweil because Ray invented and produced the acclaimed "reading machine" for the blind, which Stevie Wonder was using. Ray Kurzweil is known in music and scientific circles around the world and in fact, Ray even predicted the rise of the Internet back in 1988 before it was here. So there is certainly a celebrated history in the Kurzweil company. Kurzweil did go through some growing pains in the last 20 years and was sold a few times and had some company difficulties until the gigantic Hyundai company bought them some years ago. Kurzweil now produces a full array of pro and home digital pianos some of which are very good and I have reviewed other models on my blog.

In the case of the SP4-8 digital piano, it is simple in its concept by focusing directly and exclusively on producing high quality authentic stereo instrument sounds only. What I mean by that is there are no automatic drum rhythms, no auto-chords, no recording features, no flashdrive, no built-in lessons or educational features, no low quality mono instrument sounds, and no 3-pedal option as it only comes with one sustain pedal which generally enough for most players. What the SPS4-8 does have is 128 spectacular stereo piano & instrument sounds (most digital pianos in this price range have simple mono instrument sounds) along with another 64 spectacular stereo instrument sound combinations (2 or more preset tones at one time). This piano also allows the user to create their own sounds or combinations and save
those special set-ups into 64 user memories for recall at any time. So you get individual 128 factory sounds, 64 individual factory combo setups, and 64 of your own setup memories giving you access to 256 instruments or instrument combinations at any time you want...and that's a lot of incredible sounds and power in one instrument. In fact, you can even load in brand new stereo instrument sound samples from your computer to the piano using a huge library of new sounds provided by Kurzweil on a special website download page. Few other companies have anything like this available to the user which allows you to expand the sound banks on your piano in this way! Any and all of internal and external Kurzweil sounds aren't just run-of-the-mill instrument sounds, but they are intensely dramatic realistic sounds that will make you believe the actual violin, guitar, organ, piano, clarinet, synth, electric piano, etc, is right there playing live in your home, church, studio, school, or stage.

Kurzweil SPS4-8

The SPS4-8 looks cool as a portable piano and is fairly lightweight at just 41lbs not including the furniture stand which comes with the piano at no extra charge. The SPS4-8 has an easy to read LCD user digital display screen which allows the player to see what functions are being selected and what's going on in the piano where many digital pianos in this price range either have no digital display or have simple LED displays which can be hard to understand. The SPS4-8 can also be useful for more advanced digital piano owners or professionals for live performance because you can layer/combine up to 4 instrument sounds at a time, including grand piano. You can put 4 sounds of your choosing together in a layer and play them all at once like a complete orchestra. You can control the volume, transpose key, effects, and other aspects of each sound separately from the other sounds...just like in a real life orchestra or band. Most digital pianos in this price range cannot do this.

Or...you can select up to 4 different areas of the 88 keys on the piano and split up to 4 instrument sounds to be played in real time independently of the other sounds. In other words, you can have a set of keys play a piano, another set of keys play organ, another set play trumpet, and yet another final set of keys play a concert flute, and you can pick whatever instruments you want to have. It's like directing an orchestra where one instrument can be played after another in real time. So you could assign four sets of 22 keys each on the piano which equals a total of 88 keys. Each key area is referred to as a "zone" like the end zone of a football field. A zone of keys is generally considered to be a part of the 88 keys and you can have up to 4 zones as long as they add up to 88 keys. This is good for live performance or for recording up to 4 instruments played one at a time into an external audio recorder which is great for home studios.

For people who want to "tweak the sound just a bit" the SPS4-8 has editing buttons for changing brightness levels, key touch levels, reverb echo levels, and other aspects of the piano so you can customize your own sound if you wish. There is also a pitch bend control which gives an instrument slide movement for authentic reproduction of  clarinets, saxophones, and guitars as well as a modulation control to add vibrato in real time to an instrument (like a violin) whenever you want. Kurzweil has designed this piano to be your own personal piano orchestra whether you are a beginner or professional so you can be the conductor of a full orchestra:)

As I mentioned earlier, Kurzweil is known for it's realistic instrument sounds including its grand pianos. The Kurzweil grand piano sounds are very smooth and resonate  with a lot of organic detail and expression with very good dynamics. The key action is solid and comes from Italy designed by the Italian key action company called Fatar. This particular key action is a graded hammer action and is not too heavy and not too light, but light enough to move quickly. This is helpful when playing non-piano sounds like strings, horns, or woodwinds. The acoustic piano sounds include a number of exclusive offerings including the famous 9' Steinway concert grand piano which is pretty amazing.

As far as other useful & important features go, the SPS4-8 has some great connectivity including MIDI & USB connectors to connect your laptop, desktop, or iPad to the piano for use with software and apps. Also this piano has balanced audio input jacks and output jacks for connecting external sound systems or running the audio sound from a computer or iPad back through the piano speaker system so you can hear your computer sound or iPad/Android sound coming back through the piano internal sound system or through the piano headphone jacks. There are two stereo headphone jacks for private practice and the piano power is connected by an external power supply included with the piano.

Some of the more common functions of the SPS4-8 which are equally nice to have is the key transpose feature as well as easy layering and splitting of sounds. With regard to the key transpose function, this feature is nicely setup and accessed on the piano making it easy to transpose keys in half-steps while playing the song or in the beginning of a song before you start. This is great when wanting to sing in a different key than the actual key of the sheet music or when you want to change keys just so you're not always playing in the same key range. On other pianos the key transpose feature can be much harder to access and more difficult to use. Layering two sounds together is fun and there is a also relative volume control for those two sounds making it easy to control the volume of both instruments. Splitting the keyboard electronically into 2 different sides offers you the ability to have a different sound on the left hand and and a different sound on the right hand at your choosing.

The SPS4-8 has a surprisingly powerful speaker system for a portable piano with 38 watts of total power in stereo into 4 separate speakers with the main speakers housed in what is called "ported enclosures" which adds to the bass response and fullness of the piano sound. The piano and its control panel seem very durable and well made with easy to see buttons, and the size & weight of the piano seem quite reasonable for what it is. The weight is only 41lbs (without the included furniture stand) and the dimensions are 52" wide by 15" deep.

So what are the downsides to this new model? There really isn't anything major if you understand what this piano is supposed to do. The piano polyphony memory is 64-note polyphonic which is on the low side of polyphony these days as far as the number is concerned. However, Kurzweil has a proprietary system that takes care of that which they call Dynamic Voice Allocation. Simply put, the 64-notes of polyphony on this model is more than enough for most piano players unless you are doing extensive layering with complex sounds. This is true for many other digital pianos as well, so for me, it is not an issue...and the sounds on this piano are so realistic that the polyphony memory seems to handle it nicely. As for pedaling, a 3-pedal option is not available so if you plan to use 3 pedals for piano playing then you'd want to look at another piano. However, many people playing recreationally or even professionally typically only use the one sustain pedal (furthest right pedal on a piano) so one pedal is good enough unless you or your piano teacher think you need more than that. The cabinet and stand on this model is quite contemporary and "open" in its design and appearance so it may not be right for you if you need a digital piano that looks more traditional in a fuller cabinet with 3 built-in pedals. A bench does not come with this model so that would be an optional purchase but many benches are available on-line at a fairly low cost.

With a nice, well positioned user interface control panel with buttons, easy to read backlit LCD display screen, lots of useable functions and features, well designed connectivity, great piano and instrument sounds, all housed in an attractive cabinet with stand & music rack (incl single piano pedal) along with an unusually nice internal speaker system, this Kurzweil SPS4-8 is a winner in the lower price range near $1000. Also, this piano does a lot more than I mentioned in this review with regard to more professional applications and control, and in case you are interested in that info, you can let me know.

In my opinion the SP4-8 is unique piano because it does not have any MIDI or audio recording & playback features, no drum rhythms, no microphone inputs, no automatic accompaniment chording, and it is also not as lightweight as other portable digital pianos under $1500 or under $1000. For portable or standard cabinet model digital piano options that may be more traditional and have these other features, if that is what you may prefer I would recommend you look at my reviews for digital pianos under $1000 and also for digital pianos under $2000. But, if you want to focus on getting a reliable piano with beautiful grand piano sounds, orchestral, & band instrument sounds with advanced flexibility to use and control those sounds in a nice looking portable case and you don't care about all the other stuff including not needing a standard furniture cabinet with 3 pedals, then the new Kurzweil SPS4-8 might be the perfect piano for you, your school, your church, your kids, or to play professionally. It can also easily connect this piano to an iPad or computer through it's direct USB output so you can use some great educational apps that help with home piano education & practice. At the end of the day it's all about making beautiful music that moves your soul and in my opinion this piano can do that.

- The following link will take you to a Kurzweil webpage with audio recordings of the realistic stereo sounds from the SPS4-8 which you may enjoy...I certainly did:).  
*Make sure you listen to these sounds through a good set of stereo headphones of stereo monitors connected to your computer, iPad, cell phone, or any device that you are using to listen to these sounds

- Piano & orchestra, and synth sound demos

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.