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2] Okay, now that I know the difference between acoustic and digital pianos, tell me more about digital pianos.




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This article is from the Digital Pianos FAQ, by Isako Hoshino rmmpfaq@yahoo.com with numerous contributions by others.

2] Okay, now that I know the difference between acoustic and digital pianos, tell me more about digital pianos.

A complete digital piano system consists of the following: a keyboard
with a weighted key action, optical or other electronic sensors which
detect the velocity with which you strike the keys, a digitized sound
bank or some other method to generate piano-like sound, an amplifier
or two, and speakers/headphone jacks. Usually the sound for each note
has been sampled off a high-quality acoustic piano. When a key is
pressed, the sensors detect the key's velocity, and a microchip
produces the note with corresponding loudness (the faster, or harder
you hit the keys, the louder), just like a piano. Keys are usually
weighted to approximate the feel of a piano's keyboard rather than
that of an organ (soft, very little resistance, light).

Most digital pianos also offer other than piano sounds (such as pipe
organ, harpsichord, etc.), plus miscellaneous digital technology
"gadgets". Since all the sounds are stored in electronic form, you
can listen to the piano through headphones instead of speakers,
thereby allowing you to play the piano without anyone else hearing it.

[Q2.5] What is this "virtual" or "physical modeled" digital piano I hear about?

In the past few years (since ~2006 or so) there has been a development
in the method of how the piano sounds are created/generated. The
traditional digital pianos use sampled sounds--which means the
manufacturer record piano sounds from an actual piano, each key played
and recorded at different loudness and conditions (damper off, damper
on, etc), store each record within the piano and use those recording
to reproduce the piano when one or more keys are struck. This method
works well, but has its limitation in that the authenticity of the
sound produced will highly depend on how many times each note was
recorded using different loudness, and how the computer within the
piano determines which recording it should use. It also has some
limitation in that it doesn't truly generate how the piano resonates
as a whole when multiple keys are struck, etc. Sampled sounds are
basically a "snapshot" of what the acoustic piano can really do.

Some manufacturers have come up with a different way to generate the
piano sound that does not depend on recording (sampling) the notes--by
allowing the computer calculate how all the strings and the wood
resonates with each other, based on how each component behaves under a
certain condition or a "mathematical model", and generate the sound
based on such models. The common terminology used to describe this
method of generating piano sound is "virtual" or "physical modeled"
sound synthesis. As of 2010, Pianoteq and Roland V-Pianos are two of
such digital pianos (Roland V-Piano is a physical instrument, while
Pianoteq is a software you run on your computer) that use physical
modeled sound generation technique.

Analogy to this physical modeling synthesized sound is using computers
to generate movie special visual effects, instead of using stop-motion
animation, robotics, drawings, etc. to generate the effects. So
instead of taking a series of snap shots of a flag flapping in the
wind and using it to create a motion picture of a flag moving in a
specific way, you tell the computer what the flag looks like and let
the computer calculates and generates the motion of the flag flapping in
the wind based on series of rules you tell the computer how the flag
behaves when a wind hits it in a certain way. If your model is very
accurate, you can get a video of a very realistic flag flapping in the
wind in a very realistic manner. Physical modeled sound generation
is a similar concept, except you are using a computer to generate sound
based on how the wood resonates with the strings, and how the strings
resonates with each other.

This technique is inherently much more difficult to do than simply
recording each note and replaying it. But the computer/computational
technology has reached to a point where such things are now possible.

If you want to know more about this, do a search on Wikipedia (or your
other favorite encyclopedia) on "physical modeling synthesis".

 

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page up: Digital Pianos FAQ
  
next page: 3] What are the advantages of buying a digital piano as opposed to an acoustic one?