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I am not a musician, but my kids are learning piano; one of them is a complete novice and the other one intermediate, after a couple of years learning acoustic piano. I am shopping for a digital piano for them to practice with the aim that they learn specifically piano rather than keyboard. That is, the key touch and response and sound should closely resemble acoustic pianos.

I've heard good things about Yamaha YDP-164 and YDP-184 and also about their Roland counterparts. These brands have different approaches to sound: Yamaha samples acoustic piano and Roland models piano sound. Which, in your opinion, is better?

Or maybe I'm looking at wrong things; please advise what should I look for in a DP.

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    "Which, in your opinion, is better" is off-topic here. But there are several posts that address your larger questions, such as this one, or this one, or the proposed duplicate.
    – user39614
    Commented Sep 5, 2019 at 23:04
  • Note that some pianos - the high-end Yamahas particularly, use both sampling and modelling to achieve the end result.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 6:41
  • The technological sound generation principle is probably outside the top 100 most important things to think about when buying a digital piano. ;)
    – piiperi Reinstate Monica
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 8:27

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IMO both approaches have benefits.

Sampling can more closely represent the instrument as it was recorded, at a specific point of time, a realistic snapshot as it were.

Modelling can smore broadly represent the instrument as it is being played, (nuances, resonances etc), essentially more about the dynamic representations of the sound over time.

Personally I prefer sampled methods, but neither are close enough to piano to replace it, so all in all both are substitues for the real thing.

But neither of these though would be my top priority in regards to learning, more like:

  1. As many keys as you can get, up to 88
  2. At least semi-weighted or preferably fully weighted
  3. Foot pedals, damper, sustain etc
  4. Sample or Modelling
  5. Proper stool, Headphones

There's a thread here that might help, with babu bearing source of some of the references

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