One of Yamaha’s fantastic innovations in acoustic pianos is their Silent System. This system allows the player to plug headphones into a real acoustic piano. When activated, the hammers stop hitting the strings and instead hit highly developed sensors which pick up the players movements and recreate them in a digital sound. This means that you are able to have an acoustic and digital piano in one instrument! Yamaha have recently released their new SC2 Silent System which has a number of improvements compared to the previous system. The most notable of these is the addition of the CFX Grand and the Bösendorfer Imperial. These sounds are included on all of Yamaha’s Clavinova range but now for the first time they are featured on the Silent System. Another new feature which was introduced on the Clavinovas is Yamaha’s fantastic binaural sampling. This uses samples from the CFX grand recorded using specialised mics which take into account the location of the sound, meaning that the sound is so realistic that you will forget you are even wearing headphones! The SC2 System also features Virtual Resonance Modelling (VRM) for the first time. This technology reproduces the resonances that you would hear when playing a grand piano, making the experience even more enveloping and engaging. Another notable development of the SC2 system is its compatibility with the Smart Pianist App. When the Silent System is enabled, the app allows you to select your voices using an easy-to-use intuitive display along with a huge number of other functions such as the ability to choose the room that you are playing in to change the acoustics, changing the lid position of the piano in addition to being able to display the score on the screen for you to play along with. With these additions to the new Silent System, you can essentially own both an acoustic piano and a Clavinova in one instrument! For more information on the SC2 Silent System, please give our Edinburgh store a call on 0131 556 0805.