Electronic piano mimics real piano to the extreme

[Chaszz]

http://www.slate.com/id/2233839/pagenum/all/

[Chris]

That's great. I love digital pianos. I use one myself for convenience. But...$20,000? It's one thing to spend maybe $2000 and get something that sounds like a real accoustic piano and plays well and is portable and has the recording and tuning options and all that. But If I were going to spend $20,000 on a piano, I would buy a very nice real accoustic piano. Unless you can't because of space or volume, why wouldn't you? No matter how good the reproduction, it's never going to be better than the thing it's trying to reproduce.

[Preston]

Vienna Symphonic Library recently came out with a sampled Bosendorfer, called Vienna Imperial. It to my mind is as close that anyone has gotten to a real piano. What they did was sample each key 1,200 times. They used somekind of technology, instead of a pianist, to play the piano. The machine would play each key at a different level and microphones and a computer would record it. Well something like that.

Here is the link to the Vienna Imperial, http://vsl.co.at/en/211/442/478/1701/1305.htm . The link provides you with much more information.