Speakers for High-End Digital Piano

Maybe the active pro monitors just needed to be bigger? Those brands are popular for your application.

Is considering a refurbished acoustic piano out of the question?

With a $4K budget (plus the $600-$800 you could add by selling the Kawai) you should be able to obtain a nice instrument.

I would not purchase hifi speakers to amplify a sampled piano. Check out Barbetta keyboard amps. They sound like high-end studio monitors and reproduce keyboard sounds incredibly well. The secret is to use two amps, which will give the piano a spacious, realistic sound. Trust me on this one.

Hello,

Thanks for your responses.

The digital keyboard is my second keyboard (i think it's a keeper; no plan to sell it). I actually own a fabulous Mason & Hamlin 7' BB, too. So, i don't need another acoutic piano. I'd like to give the Kawai keyboard an upgraded speaker (primarily because I wish to enjoy the full potential of the Ivory II sampled Steinway and Kawai EX Pro that I got. I was able to test out 3 brands (not remembering the exact model name) that my friends loaned me -- a Mackie, a JBL Eon, and a Yamaha XDR. I think they're appropriate for a 'different' space (not my living room) and for pop/rock music genre, in my opinion. I am looking for speakers that would give me a rich, elegant, room-filling sound (but not harsh or heavy loud or sterile/canned piano sound especially when i play in the high registers). I am aware that it's impossible to fool the ears completely when listening to sampled piano sounds, but i'm curious to know which brands/speakers could actually come close to what I'm looking for.

I have received some suggestions from other forums -- Genelec, Event Opal, Legacy Studio HD/Expressions, Aperion audio, Dynaudio and Focus. Any thoughts on them? I'm not familiar with them, but I suppose i have to actually hear them first (when i find local dealers).

Thanks.

Adam powered monitors are very high quality and much less than your price range. I dont think a warm hi fi system to power the kawai will sound the way you want - they arent made for the type of dynamics you will likely produce playing live and the texture of the sound may be off - as much as we talk dynamics in the forum, the audio engineer who mixes or masters the recordings we hear on hi fi systems does level out the sound quite a bit. Give some good powered monitors a try and you may be surprised.