For some time I have been looking into getting an accoustic upright piano, but for various reasons it looks a non starter for the foreseeable future. With this in mind, digital pianos have been improving vastly in recent years. For the last few years I have had a mid-spec Roland HP, which has ben fine for getting from end of school exams to grade 7/8/dip level pieces , and teaching up to grade 2 (and no doubt further).

My main question is; has anyone come accross a digital piano that truly matches an accoustic instrument, in everything from feel, touch, tonal range, progressive hammer action, pedalling, everything we look for in pianos of choice. The Roland digital grand looks impressive, but a bit out of budget.

Perhaps one day accoustic pianos will become as 'modern' as the fortepiano or the harpsichord.

Unfortunately I haven't! and I don't think there ever will be a digital piano that has the same feel and sound as an acoustic piano.

I have a Yamaha YDP131

It's not top of the range but it seemed about the best for the budget I was on at the time (you did mention a budget!), and I was pretty impressed by the quality.

The touch is lighter than my acoustic piano, but then my acoustic would be on the heavy side anyway.

The best electronic pianos are excellent instruments in their own right and invaluable for practicing where an acoustic piano is impractical or impossible, but they are no match for an-in tune acoustic pianos for controllability or variation of tone, for pedal effects, or for the basic sound quality - and they never feel the same. I expect they will continnue to improve - especially with fully synthesized pianos now possible rather than sampled sound - but that there will always be a discernible difference, and at the highest levels different techniques will be needed to get the best out of each

They come pretty low down the pecking order being no better than an average upright, which in turn is no match for a good quality upright. Even a modest Grand piano can do things that no upright can, but a top quality grand in good condition (Steinway, Bluthnre, Bosendorfer) has to be played to be believed.

There have been a couple of other threads recently on this topic with lots of information, experiences and opinions.

My Yamaha CLP970 is really good, but does act differently to my U1.

Sorry, I don't understand. Surely the most effective way to imitate real acoustic sound is via samples of real acoustic sound, rather than synthesis? But you do need really good samples, and an awful lot of them; and that's where digital pianos tend to fall down.

i'm not really an expert, but maybe if its synthesised (well) then you could have it respond exactly to touch rather than to the nearest sample.

Sarah123 is spot on.

At present the best sounding electronic pianos use samples of the sound of real pianos. There are limits to how well these can be selected and/or altered to corresponf to our touch, pedalling etc.

Computers are now so powerful that a completely different approach is possible. The computer models, in real time, the motions of keys and pedals, vibrations of the strings, the action of the dampers, the effect of the soundboard - even the effect of the case and lid, and figures out exacrly the sound waves that a real piano would produce.

In theory this could emulate the exact sound of any piano, not by messing about with copies of the sound, but by digitally emulating the real thing. Couple this with a Grand piano action and it should both feel and sound very close to the real thing.

You can already get the software to do this, but you have to run it on a computer, and drive it with an external keyboard using MIDI, but it is only a matter of time before one of the big piano makers puts it in a "silent piano".

I got a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-220 last year. It has weighted keys & was the best I could afford at the time, but it will never replace the feel & tone of my upright piano. I use the Yamaha for practice when its inappropriate to play on my upright ie early morning, late in the evening etc. Also, its good for practising scales, arpeggios etc which I'm currently doing a lot of as aiming to sit Grade 8, hopefully in June. Means my neighbours don't have to listen to endless scales !

I see. Now you mention it, I think I read about some software that did this for stringed instruments a few years ago. What software do you have in mind for piano?

I think most people would find it difficult or impossible to tell the difference between a recording made with Ivory (which uses samples) and one made with a real Steinway.

Pianoteq are the market leaders at present.

1. Perhaps "most people" would not hear the difference, but the people on this forum are trained musicians

2. Comparing recordings is not a full test. Some of the subtlety of a genuine acoustic piano is lost in a recording (as are subtle differences in sound of diferent performers)

3. A synthesized sound that seems fine on first encounter, or on occasional listenings can come to sound very un-natural when you are hearing it for hours every day during practice. In some cases it can drive you to distraction and make the instrument effectively unusable.

Yesterday i went into a well known showroom which has practise rooms with grands. As it was in the a.m, i guessed there might be a room available. I guessed wrong. There's a lot to be said for booking in advance. However there was one room with a digital, and as well as that you had to wear headphones! well i had time to kill, and it was £4 an hour. The digital was a Kawai wooden key model, and i have to say it was the best action i've tried, and i've played many digitals. I bought a Yamaha for my daughter, and it also wooden key, looks really nice and sounds good, but the action feels a bit heavy and somewhat over-concise...although it's nice to play, I think Kawai have a more realistic action

Speak for yourself! Have you tried Ivory yet, by the way?
Indeed. I don't know how it feels to play a Steinway grand (I wish). But, having had an Yamaha U1 for a while, I would be very happy to have a digital that sounds like Ivory and feels like an acoustic. My problem is that nothing feels like an acoustic except an acoustic, and the best sound in the world isn't going to make a digital feel right.

Now here is an interesting thing, has anyone else noticed it:

What you experience as the "feel" of a piano is actually influenced by how it sounds.

Try this simple experiment. Turn the sound right down on your digital and play something. It feels completely weird doesn't it? Very springy, no proper feedback.

Now repeat with the best piano sound turned on. Notice how it now feels much more like an acoustic piano.

So that is how objective our senses are. Weird or what?


What this means for manufacturers and pianists is that the most perfect imitation of an acoustic action, by itself is not likely to be enough. You also need a convincing sound for the keys to "feel" right.

Hi I practice on a Yamaha GT2A Digital piano, it has a real grand piano keyboard with hammers and felts. There are no stings but the main piano voice is taken from the yamaha CF111S concert grand.
It is very responsive as the sensor system has an optical key position with hammer speed and pedal position.

I have owned several other digital pianos but found they made me play with a heavy touch as the keys have to be fully down to make a sound.