I've been following the discussions regarding "software pianos vs dp". Until I joined this forum, I'd never heard of a software piano. Do I understand that software piano is a digital sound source that is downloaded into one's computer and needs a real dp keyboard to play the sounds?? I have a Yamaha Tyros and it has a hard drive on which one could download styles, sounds etc. I have a new CP300 waiting for me when I go to California for the winter early in November. Can piano software sounds be downloaded into the CP300 hard drive (or does such a thing exist?) if I want more piano sounds? Or does the sound have to be fed directly from the computer into the keyboard?

I'm a 77 year old piano hobbyist and have some technical knowledge but I've found no place that explains software pianos in layman's language.
Thanks in advance for any explanations given.
Bob

Software piano might not be what you think.

Software piano is used to make your computer system (a PC or a Mac) a sound source.

Instead of using the sound generators of your keyboard (DP or any keyboard), you connect the keyboard (through Midi or USB) to your computer so your keyboard can transmit Midi messages to your computer.

A Midi driver will be able to catch the messages and send them to a Midi output, player, able to play sounds from the Midi messages. The player can be the Windows Midi mapper using your internal sound card, another keyboard or sound module connected to your computer or ... a Software able to play samples. These samples can be Piano samples.
So a software piano will run on your computer only, will use your computer hard drive to store the Piano samples, your computer CPU and sound card (dedicated or not) to transform the Midi messages to waves that can be transformed to sounds that speakers will emit.
The best configuration (good CPU, fast memory and Hard Drive, dedicated sound card ...) will help the system to perform better (better sound, higher "polyphony", lower lag between the keyboard action and sound emission ...).
You can probably use the speakers of your DP, but the computer will process the data and you will not cut this component out of the setup.

I hope this is high level enough and that it helps - I am sure specialists will add to it or correct my potential mistakes.

To put it shortly software piano sits on your computer, and you control (play) it through your digital piano.

You won't be able to put software piano onto your CP300, but you will be able to use your CP300 to control (play) a computer that has software piano on it.

The connection between CP300 and your computer will be done using MIDI cables.

Yes, you need a computer for these software instruments because 1)these instruments are designed and formatted to be run on computers (PC or Mac) and 2) in most cases we're talking about many gigabytes of digital samples, far more than the Tyros or any other keyboard hardrive (the vast majority of keyboards don't even have a hard drive)


I'll try my best...
Basically, what we're talking about here are virtual instruments. They make all types of virtual instruments (strings/orchestra, drums, guitars, etc.) not just pianos. You install these on a computer (a fast computer with a big hardrive and lots of RAM) and, in a nutshell, it acts just like a digital piano, except on a much bigger scale. On a digital piano, you press a key, the midi velocity with which you pressed the key is read, and it triggers an appropiate digital recording of a real piano. Now, on a good digital piano, one piano patch may be made of let's say about 33 such recordings. They record an actual grand piano playing a soft velocity at (for this example...) 11 different notes spread across the keyboard, and pitch stretch each of these samples across 8 adjacent keys (equalling all 88). They then repeat this same process at a medium velocity, and at a hard velocity. To compensate for a case in which you might sustain a note on a digital piano, the digital samples are simply "looped" over and over. Now, with a software instrument, the same type of thing happens: you play a note on your midi keyboard or digital piano, the midi velocity triggers a digital recording, the midi "note off" signal ends the sound, etc. (I'll get into the "how" in the next paragraph). But the big difference is that rather that using 11 samples at 3 different velocities, a high quality virtual instrument may sample all 88 notes of the real piano, at about 20 different velocities. So now we're talking over 1,700 samples instead of 33 samples of a digital piano. Also, a good virtual doesn't use looping at all; if you hold down a note for 30 seconds, you are actually hearing a recording of a real grand piano note that was actually held down for 30 seconds. Other benefits may include, "note off" samples, damper pedal noise samples (yes, they actually record these things), etc. Now onto the tech side of things...

All of these long, high quality digital samples require a powerful host. This is why you need a fast CPU, with a large, fast hardrive, and gigabytes of RAM. Whereas a keyboard/digital piano might need to be powerful enough to process 10mb of samples, a virtual needs to be pwerful enough to process perhaps 20GIGabytes of samples for one piano sound. In addition to the computer, you also need a way for the midi data such as velocity to transfer from your digital piano to the computer to be interpreted. Many modern keyboards have onboard USB/MIDI ports that plug right into the computer. If not, you will need a MIDI interface that takes in data from a standard midi port and outputs it to USB cable. Now you need a way to get all of that beautiful sound out of the computer and into some speakers. You could try to use the computer's onboard souncard, but the results will likely be inferior. Most high-quality virtual instruments are recorded in 24-bit depth with sampling frequencies up to 96kHz or higher. Most soundcards operate at 16-bit and are just too slow to keep up with the amount of audio data we're talking about moving here. So the solution is to either get a high quality soundcard and install it, or get an audio interace, which is essentially an external box which acts as a soundcard and plugs into the computer via USB or firewire. Note that many audio interfaces include MIDI, thus eliminating the need of a seperate MIDI interface. You plug some 1/4" cables from the soundcard/audio interface to your favorite speakers (if the CP300 has audio inputs on it, you could plug right into there) and you're all set.

Here's some examples of some of the products involved:

Virtual instruments:
http://www.sweetwater.com/c716--Virtual_Instruments__Synths__Keyboards__and__Organs
Audio interfaces:
http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-audio/audio_interfaces/

seanakaforty talks about prerecorded or "sample" pianos, but there are also modeled pianos that are basically complex physico-mathematical equations that describe wave behavior of vibrating strings. (Pianoteq, True Pianos)

I actually argue that they (models) achieve a far more "complex" sound with a far more believable resonance and greater responsiveness to key touche and pedaling. Modeled software pianos are very easy to try (actually play i mean) too - just download a 20-50Mb demo from their site.

Then you connect the computer and the digital piano with a cable, plug your speaker/headphones into the computer (not the digital piano) and ... voila

to get more info just type Ivory, Garritan or Pianoteq into search. (the first two are two of the best examples of "prerecorded software pianos", the later is a "modeled software piano")

Thanks everybody...now I'll try to digest what you've written.

Bob