Digital piano

A digital piano is a modern electric piano with standard keys and piano voices (often including voices other than the standard pianoforte, and often emulating MIDI voices), which are usually created by digital means, such as PCM (Pulse-code modulation).

Digital pianos are basically equivalent to standard pianos, for example, they carry the standard pedals a normal piano carries, but for economy some models do without a sostenuto pedal. Digital pianos however, aurally, have some limitations (such as implementing harmonic tones on a digital piano). Digital pianos generally cannot also implement the touch of a standard piano fully.

Some digital pianos, however, have the advantage of performing aural transposition by using the same finger positions - ie., the transposition is done transparently by the piano and not the player, as well as implementing multiple voices and timbres, mimicking different instrument with their resultant decay and sustain patterns. Digital pianos often have reverb features as well, which a standard piano cannot create on its own and exists as an effect of the room it is played in.

Typical manufacturers of digital pianos are Yamaha and Roland.