Client just took delivery of a EdelWeiss Transparent Self Playing Grand Piano and called asking about connecting to the whole house audio system.

It apparently has electronics and a speaker under it, but I think it's a traditional "acoustic" piano with keys that are struck using solenoids so it probably won't really have an audio out.

Most likely will require a piano mic & preamp setup and then the issue will be transmitting the audio because there's no wiring in place at the piano's location.

The piano was manufactured in England so wondered if anyone here had experience with one before I try contacting them next week.

Interesting project SB!

Did a project probably 20 years ago with a Pianomation system. You put a CD in the player and it played the piano to the music on the CD and also played out to the house. It was really cool but whenever they had guests in the house we'd get a call that the piano wasn't playing. You had to use the Pianomation CD's. Not every CD would work. That might be what they have.

https://www.pianomationsocal.com/

I fed the music from a player piano back thru a whole house audio system once and have avoided it since.
The piano would also do vocals through the speaker under the piano and after spending a fair amount of time dialing in a song to get it decent the next artist sounded horrible.
I did use a volume limiter so that the piano didn’t cause damage to the house audio. I figured it would be similar to a dj plugging into the bar audio and turning it up to 11
I’ve got one right now will show the concert on tv as the piano plays. So working on that one now and just like SBS the piano has no wiring in place. Of course the piano needs a network connection as well.

The piano apparently has an app that allows you to purchase and download songs.  I have another client that purchased one about a year ago and needed help connecting to a hidden SSID for the wifi, but they didn't have any interest in connecting to the distributed audio so I never really paid much attention to it.

From what I remember, it's an actual grand piano that can be played normally, or it can play songs by itself and you can even play a duet along with the piano.  Some of the downloaded songs also had instrumental accompaniment and vocals that the piano played along with.

Home is about 12k sq ft along with extensive outdoor areas and I have speakers everywhere.  I didn't learn about the piano until after it was delivered so didn't have any way to plan for it during construction.

Homeowners had their first event at the house a few weeks ago and the piano was a big hit, but once you were away from the Living Room you couldn't hear it and they had different music playing in the other zones.

Would be great to add it to the DA system, but I think the challenges are:

1. Find how to get an analog audio output from the piano for the accompaniment/vocal tracks
2. Find a way to mic the piano.  I've done this before using a special piano mic that attaches directly to the sound board so it doesn't pick up much ambient sound
3. Find a way to mix these signals together
4. Find a way to transmit the piano audio to the rack mounted DA gear that's located in a mechanical room on another floor at the other end of the house (about 130ft away)
5. Make it easy to use and reliable.

Some initial thoughts:
1. If the piano has an audio output that I can use I can feed this along with the output from a piano mic into a small compact mixer mounted under the piano along with the rest of the electronics
2. Distributed audio is Sonos, so I could also place a Sonos Connect under the piano and run the output of the mixer into the line in on the Connect.  The Sonos Connect might be the easiest way to get the piano audio "wirelessly" into the audio system.
3. Set the Sonos Connect to "Autoplay" the line in source when it senses audio from the piano

The "Transparent" part of the piano description means that it's made out of clear acrylic so I'm not sure how much area I'll have to hide the equipment underneath.

Below is a link to what they have.  It was custom built in the UK to the designers spec (I think it's a special color under the acrylic to match the furnishings in the room) and then delivered to CA and a guy flew out to unpack and set it up:

[Link: edelweisspianos.com]

I ran into a similar situation a few years ago.
No line out.
I wired in a line level reducer at the speakers ($20!) and used it as a source on the whole house audio system.
It's still working fine.

I think there's a skeleton on Westworld who can play it.

Be sure to account for the 70ms latency of CONNECT. ThIs will not be an issue for distant rooms, but it might cause heartburn in an adjacent room.

I’ve integrated one player piano, but the mic, audio out, & mixer were provided by the piano store. All we had to do was connect the output of the mixer to our 27 zones of C4 distributed audio.

They have a 'Get in touch' tab at the side of their website- I'm sure they have had other inquiries about this kind of thing.

Jeez, guy, you quoted ALL of Post 5! Did you mean that this comment ^ ^ ^ applies equally to EVERY part of Post 5? If that's the case, then the thread is easier to read if you simply say

If you really only wanted to refer to a part of Post 5, you can delete when you're in the edit window. If you wanted to comment differently on different parts of Post 5, you can separate it into sections. To start a new section in a box, the first word of each section has to start with a pipe (the other symbol on the backslash [ \ ] key) followed by a space, like so

If you hit "Quote" you can see the characters I entered to make that happen.

Now I’m quoting ALL of post 11...I know how to use this forum, jackass. Maybe you have something useful to add to the thread? I doubt it.

Paul,

I did a similar job years ago, and was in the same boat as you.. not knowing anything about pianos, I thought there was no way that it could have an audio out..

sure enough, underneath the piano was a little module doo-hickey.  It not only had audio out, but it stored songs so the piano could play by itself.

We popped a hole through the floor, routed the wires and piped it through the house using a Nuvo system.

Was easy, and kinda cool all at the same time.

I don't think this solution will work for me.  Sounds like your client had an electric piano that produced all the audio out through a speaker?

This is a real piano that makes sound when the strings are struck by the hammers which are moved by solenoids controlled by a computer.  There is a speaker under the piano which plays accompaniment tracks for other instruments and vocals, but if I intercept this audio and send it to the DA system, all that will play over the house speakers in the accompaniment tracks because the actual piano sound is not played through the speakers.

This is a good point and there's no way to counter the delay because the audio stream will always be behind the live sound coming from the instrument (piano).