Having a good grand piano is great. I personally rebuilt my 1950's era Kanabe 5'8 grand and it sits in my living room. I never record with it because it's just too much hassle. My whole computer setup is in my bedroom for one thing but like you I also have a dedicated hard disc recorder so I could go that route if I really wanted to. I would have to set up the recorder by creating a new project, recording in the Biab mix, set the parameters, schlep a couple of mic stands with mics and cables running all over the place, set up a headphone monitoring system and try to record something. By that time it's time for dinner and the lady is saying what's all this stuff doing in the living room?

Since I do a lot of gigging I also have a Kurzweil PC3 and it has some great piano sounds in it. Don't be confused by how your real piano sounds compared to how your Kawai digital sounds when you're just sitting in the room listening to them. Once you've recorded your grand and put it into a mix using Biab everything changes. You no longer have that "in your face" ambience you get from sitting in front of a real grand, you're just listening to another piano recording through your speaker system at that point. I can't tell you how many times educated, good players are fooled by a good digital piano after it's been put into a mix. Now having said that I have no idea where your Kawai digital rates as a piano. It may be crap for all I know or it could be really good. Try it and see how it fits in a Biab generated Real Track mix. I suspect you'll be surprised.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.