I'm a semi-serious amateur pianist. My home piano since 1974 has been a Steinway O. A year ago I went shopping for an electronic "piano" for my daughter. It had to be electronic because she is a graduate student destined to live for the next few years at last in close range to others on whom she would never inflict the sound of her playing--so not only electronic by earphones. My testing method involved playing a page each from about ten pieces of classical music of widely varying character, having first worked on them at home on the real thing. After trying all the models I could find in a number of stores, as it happens I chose a Yamaha. With a decent pair of headphones on (for example Grado SR-125 or ATH-M50) I could actually lose myself in the music, and almost imagine there was a real piano out there if only I tore the headphones off. Unlike some other brands, I could do this using the same settings for all ten pieces, not needing to fiddle. However, played through the included speakers, none of them sounded anything like a real piano. As it happens I routinely compare headphone to speaker output as another of my hobbies is serious recording of good amateur singing groups. I do the editing on a PC, listening to headphones, and do final check over my home stereo system. They don't sound the same, but the differences are nothing like this stark. I was amazed that instruments selling for thousands of dollars had such poor audio output chains. I doubt that a far more capable speaker system would have made me completely happy, but the ones included were much worse than could be done at this price point. As the designers of these things are not idiots, I conclude that they have learned that the actual piano sound of these things it not high on the purchase criteria list of real customers. Contrary to the guess of an earlier post, even in the price range I was shopping (roughly $1500 to $7000) it was clear that the implementation tried to handle the timbre shifts with louder playing. I especially noticed this because one quite expensive Roland keyboard made the shift far more rapidly than any real piano I've played (and I've played a few of the Steinway D's from which it had been sampled). The Yamahas in general handled this well enough that it was not a distraction. To those doubting these things utterly--I'll claim that you can do useful practice on many of them using decent headphones. To those claiming these are in all ways better than actual pianos--I can't fathom how you could think that what comes out of the speakers either sounds like a real piano or sounds good.