Kawai K-300 AURES 2 Hybrid Upright Piano

Model Overview

The formula seemed simple enough. Take your best-selling upright piano worldwide and combine it with the best piano sound engine technology available. Not only would you have the finest hybrid upright anyone has ever heard – but add functionality in a way that would make the playing of an acoustic piano unlike anything ever experienced.

Enter the Kawai K-300 – Kawai’s flagship 48″ high upright piano – one of the best if not the best-selling upright piano in the market today. With its world-famous Millennium III carbon fiber action, longer key length and larger scale design, this is truly a piano that is deserving of the Aures technology.

Typical acoustic hybrid pianos use an acoustic piano, then add a sound engine where you either have to push the digital sound through on-board speakers, placed somewhere in the piano, or by externally adding external speakers.

But Kawai wanted something different…they wanted to develop a new and innovative sound technology.

Realizing that it’s a known fact that spruce resonates sound better than any other wood, Kawai did not want to put just speakers in the piano like the other manufacturers, in fact they decided not to use speakers at all! They wanted a way to keep the acoustic resonance of the soundboard and marry it with state-of-the-art technology, to produce a completely different method of combining the two.

The result was staggering. The Kawai K300 AURES 2 features their new “Hybrid Sound Board” amplification system featuring 4 high-end performance transducers designed by Onkyo. These 4 transducers are strategically placed directly on the soundboard. This means the sounds from the Kawai tone engine are being produced entirely by the soundboard, and the result was unbelievable. It creates a fuller, more immersive tone quality. It actually “blurs the line” between acoustic and digital sound because both are emanating from the same soundboard.

So even when you play a simple combination of acoustic piano and the symphony strings together, you hear both sounds blend together as they are both coming from the large soundboard area. It truly feels like you are in a concert hall with a full orchestra. It’s then that you realize this is not just putting a digital piano in an acoustic piano – this is so much more.

The Kawai K300 Aures 2 hybrid upright piano has 88 exceptional sounds to experiment with, including the amazing Shigeru Kawai EX concert grand tone which has been stereo sampled and adds an additional resonance modelling to give the tone you would expect to hear from a Kawai concert grand piano.

With an easy to navigate LCD touchscreen interface and numerous additional functions like Bluetooth Midi, recording capabilities, almost 600 built-in lessons songs, 100 drum patterns, metronome, virtual technician and so much more, this is a piano that will bring decades of musical enjoyment to any and all musicians.

The K-300 Aures 2 hybrid instrument also has the ability for Audio Bluetooth. This means you can stream music from services like Amazon and Spotify directly to the piano. And remember, the sound of the song will be generated strictly through the soundboard! The result is so impressive – it’s like you are sitting and playing with the live performance in your own home!

Finally, you can experience all of this with headphones. Similar to the Kawai Anytime series and the Yamaha Silent series, you can mute the acoustic piano for late-night practicing in a condo or when others need your music to be quiet. You will hear all the richness of the tone from the onboard processor, directly through the headphones including the tone engine and any music that you are streaming. There are also 2 headphone jacks which allow for four-hand practice or teacher-student!

Notable Features

• 48″ K-300 Professional Upright Piano with NEOTEX™ Key Surfaces
• New Kawai HybridSound Board featuring 4 High-end Performance Transducers powered by Onkyo
• SK-EX RenderingPiano Sound Engine with Multi-Channel Sampling
• Modern 5” LCD Touchscreen Display
• Integrated Bluetooth MIDI and Audio wireless technology
• Flexible Virtual Technician Function with 19 Adjustable Parameters
• MP3/WAV/SMF Playback, record, and Overdub to USB
• Polyphony (max.)

Action

The Kawai K300 Aures 2 uses the award-winning Millennium III action, which was developed by Kawai over decades of research and development. Realizing that wood is susceptible to humidity which impacts the integrity of the action. Over 40 years ago Kawai implemented ABS Stryan in the moving action parts, as this material is much more stable than wood. These parts have nothing to do with the tone of the piano, it is strictly the mechanical motion of moving the hammer to hit the string. Then, in 2004, Kawai introduced the Millennium III action which now uses carbon fiber.

The biggest advantages of carbon fiber is the fact this material is not affected by humidity or heat and is super light and strong. It is used in Boeing 777 planes, sports equipment, formula one cars, bridges, world-class racing bicycles. This means that the Millennium III action is built to last and will give you years and years of trouble-free performance, strength, and quickness.

Tone

Tone is generated by 5 key elements – hammers, strings, bridges, soundboard, and cabinet, working in synergy to create musical vibrations that are deep, rich, clear, and pleasing to the musician. A deviation in any of these 4 elements can affect the tone greatly.

This is why Kawai uses only the best double-felt, t-fastened onto a mahogany hammerhead on the Kawai K200 AtX3 to make sure the shape of the hammer and the point at which it strikes the hammer can be maintained for years and years to come.

The finest steel and properly wound bass strings ensure the vibrating strings transfer the frequency down through the bridge and onto the soundboard where the soundwaves now race back and forth along the grains on the tapered solid spruce soundboard.

While we may not always know how a high-performance engine works – we certainly appreciate the response when we accelerate and feel a tremendous power. This is like the Kawai piano, where we know the best of craftsmanship, materials, and technology work together to produce the tone that Kawi so well known for – very deep and rich tone, that blends an array of pleasing tones across the full spectrum of sound.

Hammers

Using only premium double-felted hammers which are t-fastened to a mahogany core – the Kawai hammer’s in conjunction with the Millennium III action gives the player complete control to bring out the resplendent tone as all parts work in synergy to create the ultimate musical experience.

Soundboard

We know the soundboard is the heart of the piano and tone is produced by the vibrating strings transmitting frequencies to the soundboard to project these vibrations. We also know that spruce is the best wood to use for the soundboard as it resonates better than any other wood which is why we see spruce in other musical instruments like guitars, cellos, and violins.

The Kawai K300 uses only the finest spruce, having a very tight and straight grain count. The tighter and straighter the grains, the better the sound as the vibrations of tone move back and forth across the grains of the soundboard. Think of grain count like DPI to your TV – the more dots per inch – the clearer and richer the picture and the more you will enjoy.

The soundboard is also tapered, which means it is thicker in the middle getting progressively thinner as it reaches the outside edge of the piano frame. This ensures more elasticity in the soundboard which allows it to vibrate – producing a richer tone.

Cabinet

The K300 Aures 2 is housed in a highly aesthetic, robust case with 5 solid back posts and a powerful iron plate. Every plate is calibrated to match the specific design of each individual K series model, resulting in a cabinet that will help maintain proper string tension for decades.

Using a combination of different hardwoods, the finish is then produced by multi-layer sprays of polyester which gives the piano that beautiful mirror-like shine and one that will last for years and years.