How does solo piano help you evaluate audio gear?

IMO, too much is made of the idea that piano is the most difficult instrument to record. EVERY instrument, including the human voice, has unique tonal and other characteristics that make it uniquely difficult to record/reproduce. The more familiar one is to the full range of sounds and tonal nuances that any given instrument is capable of, the more that one is able to identify tonal deviations and so we deem that instrument “the most difficult”. If one must be picked as most difficult and useful I would agree that it is the human voice.

It is true that the piano’s very wide frequency range makes it uniquely difficult to record, but the piano does not have nearly the wide variability of possible tonal colors and effects that other instruments are capable of. Even the often mentioned dynamic range of the piano is still narrower than that of other instruments. The human voice, trumpet and even the clarinet are capable of wider dynamic range than the piano. A clarinet can play much more softly than the piano and maxes out at around 114 db, while the piano’s volume maxes out at around 100 db. The human voice ups the ante by maxing out at around an astounding 125 db and is also capable of sounding in a faint whisper; all with incredibly varied possible tonal colors and textures.

For me, recorded piano is most valuable for assessing pitch stability of turntables. The decay of recorded piano notes are a great test.

But @Frogman- you have an advantage in that you know the range and color of the full orchestra at "full frequency bandwidth" for real, so you don’t need easy cues to assess home reproduction. You are also exposed to the real thing more than most people, I would guess.

The most convincing piano recording I have is on an obscure label, Leo, and contains a blues/piano/voice thing. The piano sound is deranged. The rest is a matter of taste. This.

I use piano as a reference because I know the instrument, but think the variations among individual instruments, as well as how the recording is made, may be variables that are obstacles to the piano sounding "real enough." I needed more gravitas in the bass including upper bass, and got it through a change of cartridge.

The system is not perfect, each of our ways of judging things is dependent on a host of factors that go beyond sophistication in the hi-fi marketplace.

You mentioned decay. That ambient space, if well captured through mic set up and acoustics, is what I’m about. I know what a real piano sounds like (recognizing the variables). I am now able to hear bass with dimension in space, as well as some pretty convincing "down low" sounds which do not lack for volume.

How real compared to a recording is an almost impossible subject. If the recording captures the energy of the performance, I’m often happy.

A. you - an ordinary person will not get anything at all - you need a professional piano tuner ...
B. since you practically do not have the ability to change the system (equalizers are rarely used by manufacturers - it is not profitable for manufacturers to give the layman a key with which most systems can be configured and DO NOT NEED TO BUY other amplifiers, players, speakers, wires) ... just listen to what you like best) ))

Brodman - plays the piano perfectly ... but it's expensive and usually plays other music in the middle ...

Yes, when they sing those low notes, they run 3’ to the left….. , capturing the spatial cues while keeping EVRYTHing else in balance…is the difficult part….

carry on, i got a microphone preamp to tweak…..

Jim

@serjio 've had my pianos voiced at some expenditure of time (and some money). They sounded fabulous for the moment, and maybe two weeks out before souring. Bernstein's guy told me to get rid of the old Bosendorfer and buy a Steinway. 

You are right about EQ. It is frowned upon in high end circles, even the top end stuff (eg. Cello) is regarded as a curiosity, not a "solution." 

I'm not sure I fully understood your discussion of manufacturer offered configuration variables, I think there are simply too many variables for a single manufacture to  be responsible for some non-existent standard.