Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Roland LX708 vs FP-90X

I went to a piano shop that had both these instruments on display. Knowing that both of them share the same Pure Acoustic Modeling system, I expected that the piano sounds of both these instruments would be the same. However, I quickly realise that they weren't. Not only that, the LX708 has 4 Pure Acoustic piano tones whilst the FP-90X has 8, and I suspect they might even be disjoint (though my hearing could be deceiving me here, and the extra speakers of the LX708 might be all that makes them sound differently). So I was wondering if it is possible to get the FP-90X tones on the LX708 (possibly via changing settings) and vice-versa. And if not, which ones do you prefer?

That is interesting. I know on the fp90x you can’t just change settings to get the other pianos.

Not sure if your question regarding “tones” is clear to everyone. Roland refers to “tones” to all the different instrument sounds their onboard engine generates. As far as I know, these onboard tones are inherent to each model from Roland and are not interchangeable. I have not seen anywhere on their website or app a store to buy or to download additional tones. Although some of these tones may use the same name and modeled engine in their various models, they will sound completely different to one’s ear simply because of the number and quality of speakers and type of cabinet, as you indicate. The keybed actions are not the same either, although both the PHA-50 and the Hybrid Grand Keyboard are considered to be among the best actions on the market right now. The LX-708 is their big flagship piano in an upright cabinet costing almost three times as much as the portable slab FX-90X. The sound system of the LX-708 is able to produce a rich bass and very pleasant mids and treble. Its cabinet generates a resonance that a portable piano slab is not capable of reproducing. But all this comes at a much higher price and weight penalty to the point of making the LX-708 not being portable anymore.

It is important to mention that if you seek different piano sounds (tones) than what comes standard on each of these pianos, both can be connected to your laptop or tablet via USB cable. This will allow you to buy/download VST pianos from third party vendors that produce incredible acoustic (or electric) piano sounds considered to be much more interesting and complex than what comes standard from Roland. Among these popular vendors, you will find Garritan CFX, Pianoteq, VSL, Ravenscroft, Lounge Lizard but there are several more.

If you would like to improve the overall acoustic experience (especially on the FP-90X), you can connect external studio monitors and even a subwoofer. Some actually prefer to go this route for an enhanced sound system while still maintaining the portable element. It is essentially a cost effective way to get an immersive sound out of a portable piano slab with a top tier action.

Having quickly looked at the marketing specs then closely looking at the owners manual for both these roland dps, i think i understand the reason for your question. For that reason, sometimes its better to ignore the marketing literature and simply study/compare info in owner’s manuals.... and if/when that fails, resort to the marketing info to see if it is any help.

In the case of your question, the tone list for fp90x lists uses asterisks to specifically note the piano column has 8 PA piano tones plus several additional piano tones such as uprights, rock, ragtime, and forte that are probably APs for which roland did not care to label as PAs or SNs or even clarify are APs ..... plus the piano tones list continues with additional non-piano tones IE. non-APs that despite being listed under piano are not ap piano but are electrified EPs, Harpsis, Magics, SA, JD etc. What is not specifically noted but likely implied by roland is that this “piano” column list means AP tones, not to be confused with non-modeled non-AP sounds such as EPs, Harpsis, Strings, Pads, etc, which roland does confuse by listing some of these under the piano column (shrug).

Meanwhile, the LX708 manual’s tone list, which lists nearly 300 total tones “voices” which other people call other names including “patches”, “sounds”, etc, lists a total of 4 tones under the piano column BUT has no asterisks or other notes indicating these are PA pianos or SN pianos ..... maybe the marketing specs clarifies some of this but i usually ignore that presale info when looking for answers pertinent to post sale questions. The “other” column lists many more piano sounds ..... uprights .... mellows ..... brights .... rocks ..... fortes, but again, none of these are clarified as being of the PA, SN or other piano sound variants one might expect to be noted in a column named “other” 🤔

Whether or not there are config tricks you might do to make given FP90X PA piano sounds sound the same on an LX708? .... the safe answer is probably “no” but if you can find these two side by side in a shop, you could try numerous tweaks to see what happens.

Good luck.

the LX series uses pure acoustic (PA) modeling for the pianos, at least according to Roland.

I agree it is clearer in the FP-90X manual which tones use pure acoustic modeling.

the FP-90x has two pianos, concert and stage and variations of these for 8 PA pianos, 5 concerts (default, ballad, mellow, bright, brilliance) and 3 stage (default mellow bright).

The LX708 has American and european and a variation of each for 4 PA pianos.

It is not clear if these are the same or correlate in anyway but I doubt it.

I can only speak for the FP-90X.

Each PA piano can have its separate parameters, lid, cabinet resonance, tuning, per key volume, velocity curve etc.

By default all concert pianos are tuned the same and all the stage pianos are tuned the same.

But no amount of tweaking parameters in piano designer including tuning will make the concert the same as the stage or even the concert the same as the concert ballad.

So my gut feeling is that the LX series the FP-90X pianos will never sound exactly the same.

(side note, if you are not careful you can actually end up setting all of your pianos on the FP-90x to the default concert piano by using the piano designer app, because the library files contain the cabinet type (aka tone) and if you have a stage grand selected and apply the default piano library file and save it to the keyboard, the stage grand becomes a concert. You would have to do a factory reset to clear this.)

if i'm not completely wrong (don't have acess to my 90x right now) you can check if a piano is actually a real PA-piano or nor by switching the piano model while holding a note.
when it a PA-piano the sound will immediately die.
When it is a SN-piano (or any other sampled instrument) the sound will not die while switching the piano.

I played the LX708 last month and wanted to buy one, but we wanted a black one. I got a NV5 instead, as my second choice. I much prefer the grand-like action of the LX708 over the upright action of the NV5.

Also to OP and @Purdy, after 6 years i’m still somewhat confused ..... curious. The reason i have the 508 is because it became significantly discounted a week before i closed the deal on it ..... discounted because by coincidence Roland made its first release of “totally modeled” models. So, i have one of the last Roland SN sampled models that was superseded by the first wave of SN Modeled models.

Is it a matter that FP90X is one of the last Roland SN modeled models featuring both SN and PA sounds while the 708 is one of the first designs featuring totally PA modeled sounds .... in other words, is that the end of the road for SN sounds?

As far as I can tell the fp-90x does not have any supernatural pianos only pure acoustic.

The fp-60x has the supernatural piano, not 100% modeled I think as does the fp-30x

So the supernatural branding might be hanging around for awhile. It is apparently in their synths and drum kits too.

I wonder if supernatural modeled piano has simply evolved into pure acoustic perhaps in part to reduce confusion.

actually only the first 8 pianos are pure acoustic.
to be honest i never seriously thought about whether the other pianos are "supernatural" pianos (actually i never really grasped what Roland means with "supernatural modeling" exactly) or just regular sample based pianos.

I believe the main difference between these two is the speakers. The FP90X speakers aren't exactly crap-level, but don't expect good speakers in any slab. As suggested above, you might be able to compare better with quality external monitors. For engine sound comparison, you may try looking up audio samples on the web and comparing them with quality headphones (or bringing headphones with you to the store).

> Not only that, the LX708 has 4 Pure Acoustic piano tones whilst the FP-90X has 8

Don't be deceived by marketing mumbo jumbo and imagine how many pianos you are getting in one box. You will most likely play only one - the one you like most. Like with other voices - they're advertising hundreds of voices, but actually the main buttons get you quickly to the first fifty, while the others are buried somewhere at the bottom of "Others" where few ever delve.

Aside for the speakers, the main difference between the two is the key action. The LX708 has grand-long key pivot and reportedly a bit lighter keys. But still it is a "normal DP" action, not a hybrid very close to acoustic action like NV5/10 or N(U)1X.

It's worth bearing in mind that the LX has two variations of two piano models. I had the FP90X for a short while - I think it has four variations of two models (I'm pretty sure it is the same two European and American models from the LX but called different names).

So eight vs four implies more variety but really it isn't. All the tweaking in the world couldn't make any of them sound real to me (the American type sounds being downright unusable for me).

The point from poor @zef was there are at least four different pure acoustic tones on the fp-90x.

And while it is possible that European maps to concert, it is also possible it does not.

And there doesn’t appear to be anyway to share these tones from the Lx708 and the FP90x.

True, you often settle in on one tone, but the more tones you have, the better chance you will find that one tone.

So in the case of pure acoustic pianos, this is not just marketing.

And if that one tone, it is buried deep in the general midi tone list you can map it to a registration and make it easily accessible.

But yes, few, especially on piano forum, will use other tones, especially all the gm2 tones.

The nice things about registrations is you can map what the pedals do, so for instance the Rhodes 1976 suitcase is the first electric piano but I have a registration for it so the left and middle pedals map to affects.

The thing about registrations that keeps cropping up is that they store the volume settings.

My FP90 (SNM, not PA) experience is that different headphones and speakers influence the sound remarkably - more notably than changing piano voices.