I'm trying to decide on a digital home piano and can't find any forums that discuss these much. I'm considering Kurzweil's
Mark 12, Yamaha's CVP 103, or Roland's KR 375. Anyone have advice on which of these have the least repairs, and the best piano sound and feel? Does anyone understand why Kurzweil's has 32 polyphony instead of 64 like Roland's and Yamaha's?

Well...I'll try to help. I don't really know the particular keyboards that you mention. Polyphony gets important if you're going to do multi-layered MIDI work on your computer with lots of different instrument voices. If you are limited to 32 note polyphony you can only have 32 notes sounding simultaneously from that keyboard. (It's NOT the same as "multi-timbral" which essentially determines how many different kinds of instruments you can use at once.) And it gets tricky because some instruments (like piano) use up two or even four "voices" to play a note, as far as your computer is concerned - to produce a dense, realistic piano note sound. Having said all that - 32 note polyphony is PLENTY for solo piano playing and recording. There might be a few THICK Rachmaninoff piano pieces where you would hear notes "dropping out" as you hold down the pedal to sustain complex groups of chords. But for MOST piano music youve only got ten fingers and holding that pedal too long turns to mush pretty fast anyways - unless youre Barry Manilow and youre just trying to make the young girls cry or something. I had a Yamaha CLP-250 for years that only had polyphony of 16 and it WAS an occasional nuisance at that level but actually pretty rare at 16. Bottom line, in my humble opinion, get the keyboard that feels and sounds best to you (and your budget). 32 voice polyphony is fine unless youre planning to get into recording New York Philharmonic sized orchestral scores for George Lucas's next installment of Star Wars.

Hate to disagree, but 32 voices is NOT near enough if you use the sustain pedal alot. Remember - that increases every key press! Play a ten finger chord and hold the pedal down for three or four chord presses and tell me that 32 voices is enough. Even with dynamic allocation, you'll get dropoffs. There will never be enough polyphony until there is NO restriction on the number - just like on a real instrument. The Roland VK7 organ was the first modern synth I know of to introduce FULL polyphony - 91 notes I think. That's how many notes it was capable of producing.

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Uncle Dave

Thanks for your input. It seems that polyphony is something that even the sales reps of these digital pianos don't even understand. Most can't explain it, but I've been told by some that Kurzweil has a patented technology on how the sounds of their piano keys were recorded and that most, if not all, keys struck use only 1 note of polyphony per key. Whereas with Yamaha's sounds most keys take up 2 to 3 notes of polyphony with each strike. I've also been told that Kurzweil's orchestral sounds are supposed to be the most realistic in what the real instruments are capable of doing. In other words, if it's impossible to play an arpeggio on a flute for example, then you can't play it on the Mark 12 with the flute sounds. Anyway, I've had to depend on info I get from various sales reps since I haven't found any forums on the web that discuss digital piano "home products", which is what I want. I understand that most people on this forum are into portables, which I considered at first until I realized I'd have to add a speaker system, bench, stand, and pedals. Plus I like the auto accompaniment for personal enjoyment. Thanks again for your help.