One thing left out of this review was the matter of velocity, which completely changes the sound you get from striking a key with variable force. I've been using Yamaha and Korg keyboards since the early 1980s, because playing in bands you obviously need something portable so you make do with what there is, even if it means lugging around a 60 pound weighted monster from show to show. But while they've gotten better at replicating the sound of a piano -- good enough for rock and roll, anyway -- I've yet to experience one that reacts to the force with which you strike a key in the same way a real piano does. What tends to happen is that there are certain velocity thresholds in the instrument file that trigger slightly different versions of the same sound, say, one version when the key is struck with between 10% and 20% of full force, another when it's struck with 20%-30%, and so on. So as a keyboard player you get used to that and are able to trigger the sound you want; but it's never going to have the range of sound that an analog instrument has, because everything has to be quantized at some level to interpret it digitally.

For my money, and if I didn't have to take it places with me, I think my $1200 upright at home sounds a hell of a lot better than most baby grands -- and just try reproducing that warmth and emotion from a digital instrument -- it's completely impossible. I *never* record with digital piano, it's far too "perfect" and robotic.

Oh, and an electric guitar is a really different instrument than an acoustic; it's not a fancy gizmo trying to imitate one.

Quite right! Another thing that I hate is that those variations in note strength that you get from hitting the same key at different velocities is almost always merely a variation in volume, not in timbre or other qualities that would change in a real piano. Some of the more expensive electrics may actually re-sample the notes to at different velocities... Even if the variations in volume were on some kind of realistic curve, but usually they are not. They give some major difference between two close velocities when there shouldn't be, etc. I am an amateur player at best, so I give up and turn off touch sensitivity usually.