Disclaimer: I am extremely new to the world of digital pianos, and so if i'm asking stupid questions please forgive me.

The CLP8-- series was released in 98
The CLP9-- series in 2000
and the current CLP 1-- series in 2002

(from http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/english/info/chron.html)

It's now 2004, does that mean a new series of Clavinovas are going to be released shortly?

The sample size quoted for the piano sound, e.g. 36MB for the CLP170, is that 36MB per note or 36MB for all the notes? If it's the latter then what's going on?

- There are mini hard drives with 40 gigabytes of storage, and solid state memory with 2 gigabytes of storage, why isn't that technology being used?

On a related note (haha note) what is the limiting factor behind polyphony? memory? processing power? It just seems slightly weird that at a time where modern chips can perform upteen bazzillion operations per second many digital pianos are limited to producing 128 sounds at a time.

Next question:

Are the samples for a single note blended together so that there is no switch in sound when playing a note progressively harder, or are there simply 'n' samples per note that kick in at set volume threshhold?

Thanks.

All digital pianos of today are using samples with several velocities, so if you press vary hard, the sound will become sharper.

Why the pianos have such limited sample memory is a good question as prices of memory are dropping constantly. 36 MB sample memory means a total of 36 MB for all notes and velocities. Usually, only perhaps 1/3 of all notes are sampled and perhaps with 3 different velocities (my guess). Then they are using loops to avoid sudden silence for long notes.

As notes are sampled with several velocities, it requires lots of cpu and memory to be able to achieve a high polyphony.

Digital pianos with internal disk drives do exist but they are very expensive, the technique is not yet mature.

Good points...
Actually, technology do exist for more memory and polyphony. Seem like no manufacturer wants to go that top probably because of business reason. It would be expensive to develop a digital piano with extreme memory and processor power ; and after that development, how can they sell new digital piano based on features and specs?

Thanks for the info

In fact I have often wondered whether these so called leaders take us for a ride.An 'assembled' digital with a weighted hammer action controller 1GB sound sample and monitor speakers for example shouldn't cost you more than US$1250(cost of hardware included)while a Clp 170 costs more than that and has just 50Mb piano sample.Are we paying just for the brand value