I have been looking for a DP for some time now and have been sampling the available lot. I have been looking at the Yamaha and Casio.

I had not played a PX-575 until a few days ago. I was very impressed with the sound quality and action of the piano. I was able to directly compare it to the PX-320/120 which were in the in close proximity. To my ears, the 575 sounds much richer and fuller in the sound it produces. The action is also a bit different. I noticed when I played forcefully on the 575 I could hear the bite in the sound. The PX-320/120 was barely noticeable. The 320/120 to my ears do not sound as good. I am thinking it is the different chip ZPI vs AIF because the speakers and internal amp is the same. I know the polophony is only 32 in the 575, but was wondering when layering, spliting and playing a rhythm if the polophony gets eaten up quickly. Can anyone comment who has a 575?

The polyphony number is only one aspect of
the total design of a digital piano. I don't
consider it important. For example, my
first digital piano, a Korg C-800 console
that I bought new in 1989 for $1700,
had only 16 note polyphony. It's still
in perfect condition after all these years
and you can play anything on it and it
performs similarly to today's digital pianos.

Look at cars. If you went only by the
number of cylinders, an 8-cyl. American
station wagon would be better than a
4-cyl. BMW, but the BMW is a better driving
machine because of the total design
package.

I see no problem with a new dp today having
32 note polyphony. You can save a lot
of money by getting a piano with 32 poly
and a non-half-pedal (I consider the
half pedal feature on dp's to be
unnecessary). It will have sound and
action modeled after a concert grand
and will perform similarly to dp's
costing thousands.

I've owned 3 dp's since 1989: the Korg
C-800, bought for $1700, had 16 poly and
no half pedal; a Casio AP-24 console,
bought for $700 in 2005, had 32 poly
and an optional 64 poly voice (I couldn't
tell the difference and always used the
default 32 poly grand piano because it
was most convenient) and no half pedal;
and my current piano, a Korg SP-250,
bought in 2006 for $900, has 60 poly
and a half pedal feature. I've played
the same music on all of them and don't
notice much difference in practical
performance between them. In fact, my
overall favorite of the three was the Casio,
the least expensive one.

You can try reading this previous thread as well:

Casio PX-575

Yes it uses up polyphony...and if you use a rhythm + layered tones and play chords with sustain pedal...you'd either hear notes dropping out or some of the notes in the chords or long passages you play would no longer produce a sound (which means you just used up the 32-note polyphony).

If you can live with 32-note polyphony and seem to like the key-action of the PX-575R (despite the fact that this is an older model in the Casio Privia digital piano series), then who's to stop you from buying one anyway?...the important thing is that you have to be contented or happy with your purchase.

Good luck.

Take a look at Casio's web site and download the manuals for the 320/120. There is a key combination that changes the action sensitivity, so setting it to a lighter or heaver action might make a difference to the strike force required for that "bite". Then try it out again in the store.

I'm still waiting for my px-200 to come in (apparently it is fairly close to the px-320), so I'm not 100% sure if this will make a difference.

My Privia PX700 has 32 polyphony - and don't forget that it's only 16 when you are using Grand Piano sound (because of stereo sound - you are using 2 'units' per note).

It really is little, especially if you like your sustain pedal. The only way around it is using Software Piano - your polyphony then is only limited by the amount of RAM.

I had a PX575 for a couple weeks, but decided I couldn't live with the limited polyphony on it. Several times I'd have a few sounds layered, with the sustain pedal, and barely play 2 full chords (including ones where I'd be hitting 2 keys with 1 finger), and it'd drop out like almost half the notes! What the posters are saying about layered & stereo sounds eating the poly is very true.
I was also planning to invest in a software piano package, but the 32-note polyphony would still have been limiting for me, because I would often be taking the piano places where everything had to be self-contained.
Also, I tried recording a few MIDI songs using the piano, and I don't know if I didn't have it set up properly, but the polyphony limited me there, too, and if I remember correctly it didn't capture the pedal up/down signals.

I played the 575 again this past week and this time put it through the paces and maxed out the poly layering a couple tones. It was actually quite easy to max it out which made it sound ugly. I was reading that certain tones only have 10 units of polyphony. The price is $599 which is too steep considering the PX-320 is only $100 more, and a PX-200 is 100 less at $499. I still like it but it's not as appealing.