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Nice tip on the Meguiars wax. My NU1X is getting a lot of smudges on it. I may try that out this weekend. Did you do anything before you applied the wax?

Edited to add nice pics!

I was under the impression that the back grills (left/right) were covering speakers, but looking at the nekid pictures it seems like these are just escapement ports.
My question is where are the other (2) speakers? I know there’s the backfiring subwoofer and obviously the three top speakers for a total of four, but I can’t see the other two; are these hidden tweeters?

Excellent post, David! Thanks for sharing the pictures. And, the wax idea. That will come in handy to know for the future.

I think I might have answered that to you previously in this thread There are three top speakers and in the bottom body (the speaker cabinet) there's one central rear-facing speaker, one right front facing speaker and a floor facing subwoofer in the left.

P.S. Edited it, there's no left front speaker.

Talking of rear facing subwoofers what is the experience of the placement of the N1X especially in reference to the rear wall?

I see the manual says no closer than 15cm but that could make positioning tricky in a small room - not to mention it looking a little odd.

I guess it won't make much difference if listening through headphones

No, it's floor facing, in the left. There's only one central rear-facing speaker.

So where is the last speaker? The specs say 2 x 13cm and 1x16cm (plus the 3 mounted on the top)

I guess it is all to do with the "spacial acoustic" modelling

I think the subwoofer is the 16cm one.

Thanks, CyberGene. I was confused about the rear-facing speaker. For some reason I took it to be the subwoofer. I had no idea that the subwoofer was a separate (down-facing) speaker, nor was I aware of the one front-facing right speaker.
I mistakenly thought: three top speakers + rear-facing subwoofer, and two (right/left) back rear-facing speakers. I thought that those ‘grills’ on the back were for the ‘back’ speakers.
Perhaps what seems to me like an odd speaker placement is due to the multi-channel system.
You see, I still think in stereo left/right (I’m old).

According to the manual the CFX and the Bosendorfer sounds utilize four-channel sampling. It's interesting how they reproduce that through 6 speakers though. I would imagine you need 4 speakers for 4 channels. But maybe they double some of them.

The three speakers at the top would suggest that they are using 3 channel sound (at least spacially)

I purchased a couple of piano cleaning products and one that I like is Cory Cleaner.

It's a non-abrasive, water-based cleaner that will remove natural/synthetic wax and surface contaminants. I tested a small portion of the piano with the Meguiars wax after applying the Cory cleaner and it came out really well. I then applied the Cory cleaner to see if it would remove the wax and it did. I then cleaned the entire piano with the Cory cleaner before I applied the Meguiars wax.

I don't know if the Cory Cleaner is a necessary step if you have never put anything else on the piano, but it's nice to start with a clean surface. I always clay bar my cars before I wax them and the result is a fantastically smooth and shiny finish.



Again, I want to emphasize that it's not like applying wax to a car. The wax wipes off very easy on a car, but not as easy on the N1X. The microscopic porosity on a car surface is greater and the wax doesn't seem to lay on the surface as much. With the high polish N1X, even after you thoroughly wipe the wax off, the residual bonding layer is more discernible if you touch the piano. However, I like it because it really does leave an ultra slick and shiny protective coat on the piano.

You can easily scratch the N1X finish just by lightly dusting it with a microfiber cloth when the piano finish is bare. I know because I've done it. They are not deep scratches that you can feel with your nail, but they are enough to "cloud" the high polish finish. I guess that is the trade-off with a high polish finish. The wax not only covered up those fine blemishes, but it also provides a protective coating. It's so super slick that the dust glides off easier.

The reason I went with wax is that I'm leery of all-in-one products. I purchased one piano product that cleans, polishes, and protects. It had carnauba wax as an ingredient (I would assume that is the protectant). Since they don't include all the ingredients on the bottle, I contacted the company and asked if there were any abrasives in it since it "polishes" as well. Sure enough, there were abrasives in it.

I would rather have one product for each purpose. A cleaner for cleaning, a polish for polishing (if I were going to polish), and wax for protecting and final appearance. So I used the Cory Cleaner which only cleans, and the Meguiars wax which only protects and shines.

I suspect I won't have to clean again or apply wax for quite some time since the piano is not exposed to the elements. It's usually just dust on the top surfaces and fingerprints on the fallboard. Now that it is cleaned and waxed, maintenance will be a light dusting of the surface with a microfiber cloth and occasionally I'll wipe the fingerprints off the fallboard by applying some Meguirars quick detailer to a microfiber cloth. Time will tell if this is a good method or not.

God Bless,
David

At the same time, the hammer heads look to be nylon, which is really tough and stable. It is a bit harder to see, but the repetition levers may be nylon also.

Layman walking: is it possible that a multi-channel system for reproducing the sound of a piano is overkill?

I once owned a relic called the CLP380 and it used 8 speakers spread throughout the entire instrument, and I can tell you that I truly felt surrounded by the sound despite its old fashioned stereo system. There was plenty of clarity, separation, imaging, and all the goodies related to proper propagation.

Would you prefer the N1X fashioned 8 speakers (stereo) instead of 6 (multichannel)?
But one more thing, the 8 speakers in stereo would be of a much higher quality, and the overall size (at least for the subwoofer) would be larger.

P.S.

Yes, I know that the AvantGrand samples are recorded from 4 different points; however, the Novus also uses samples recorded from multiple sources, yet Kawai managed to cram them samples down to good ol’ stereo for the speaker system used on the Novus.

Yeah, it's very difficult to get the camera in there because everything is so compact. It's not like examining the action on an acoustic grand (which I've done) because the keyframe on the N1X is fixed to the keybed.

God Bless,
David

Interesting, but puzzling... the speakers are : 8 cm x 3 + 13 cm x 2 + 16 cm x 1

One solution is each 8cm speaker has a channel, each 13cm are mixed from the two 8cm neighbours, and the 4th channel used for the middle 16cm.

But there are other settings. With a 8cm x 4, the allocation of channel would be more obvious.

There was a request for a picture of the fiber optic sensor wires. Here are some pictures of the sensors that I did not post originally and another picture of the shine.





I also noticed that there is much less dust collecting on the piano. I didn't cover it last night and there was virtually no dust on it this morning. I might have removed a static charge by cleaning and waxing. Either way, I'm surprised by the unusually sparse amount of dust on it so far.

God Bless,
David

P.S. Some of the jacks are engaged because my hand was resting on the keys when I took the picture.

Thanks David!

She has arrived! The way it sounds in my home is SO much better than it sounded in store - the tone has warmed up a lot, no more of that buzziness I heard when playing at Cunningham. I turned the brilliance down to 1 and have kept it there, and turned down the reverb quite a bit. The action on this piano BLOWS ME AWAY. Seriously. It just feels so authentic under the hand.

This is a potato quality recording (recorded on my Android with no mic, I made a few mistakes, and the sun keeps running in and out of the clouds so the lighting is wacky) but you can get a sense for how lovely the sound is.