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some DP's have more, some have less, what difference does it make?

One use is for fun. Some keyboards let you layer the voices on top of each other, so you could have your own band or orchestra, or trio. Some players compose and perform or record with these extra voices.

My piano (CLP-230) have 14 voices:

Voice Descriptions (from the manual):

GRANDPIANO 1
Recorded samples from a full concert grand piano. Perfect for classical compositions as well as any other style that requires acoustic piano.

GRANDPIANO 2
Spacious and clear piano with bright reverb. Good for popular music.

E.PIANO 1
An electronic piano sound created by FM synthesis. Good for standard popular music.

E.PIANO 2
The sound of an electric piano using hammer-struck metallic “tines”. Soft tone when played lightly, and an aggressive tone when played hard.

HARPSICHORD 1
The definitive instrument for baroque music. Since harpsichord uses plucked strings, there is no touch response. There is, however, a characteristic additional sound when the keys are released.

HARPSICHORD 2
Mixes the same voice an octave higher for a more brilliant tone.

VIBRAPHONE
Vibraphone played with relatively soft mallets. The tone becomes more metallic the harder you play.

CHURCH ORGAN 1
This is a typical pipe organ sound (8 feet + 4 feet + 2 feet). Good for sacred music from the Baroque period.

CHURCH ORGAN 2
This is the organ’s full coupler sound often associated with Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue”.

JAZZ ORGAN
The sound of a “tonewheel” type electric organ. Often heard in jazz and rock idioms.

STRINGS 1
Stereo-sampled, large-scale strings ensemble with realistic reverb. Try combining this voice with piano in the DUAL mode.

STRINGS 2
Spacious strings ensemble with a slow attack. Try combining this voice with a piano or electric piano in the DUAL mode.

CHOIR
A big, spacious choir voice. Perfect for creating rich harmonies in slow pieces.

GUITAR


Peace.

/Richard

Voices could mean sounds that imitate human voices, or it could mean sounds different than the basic piano sound on a DP (these could be various horns, strings, synth sounds, etc).

In either case, I'll try to answer what use they are to me; for other people, these voices will have different uses or maybe none at all.

I've recorded a number of easy listening standards, and find that some of my arrangements stand by themselves (piano solo), whereas others just don't, and need "something else".

With the "others", I often score in orchestration using violins, various brass instruments (these don't usually sound too realistic), or even imitation human voices.

I add these secondary tracks using midi (note that the piano track is recorded as midi, so it can be combined in a sequencer program with the other instruments.

[As an aside, I'll add that my sequencer will play these tracks together (with the sounds generated by my DP) so I can judge what the "orchestra" sounds like before it gets rendered to a wave file.]

Mostly though, I will add percussion and bass tracks. I would also consider these as "voices" in the broad sense.

With 900 plus "voices" that are grouped as Piano, Organ, Guitar/Bass, Strings, Sax/Brass, and Voice, I have a confusing array of choices of voices.

Essentially what I'm doing is trying to pretend that I am an arranger.

It's fun. With 950 voices I've had a lot of fun.

And you'd be surprised how good some of these "voices" sound with piano. One is Warm Pad (which likely comes from the synth background), and is quite useful. I've even used "Rich Choir".

Hope this helps a bit.

Glenn