Are digital piano polyphony and VSTs are related or Independent?

[Indrajeet Raval]

Yamaha P125a (192-Polyphony, GHS), Korg D1 (120, RH3) & Roland FP-30x (256, PHA-4 with Esc). Each model has different Polyphony, will it affect the sound of VSTs (PianoTeq or Zenology Pro, & it's setting allows from 64 to Unlimited Polyphony) or not?

[msmcleod]

No it won't.  Certainly with pianos, MIDI should be sent out regardless of the polyphony of any in-built sounds of the keyboard you're playing it on. 

[John Vere]

Just be aware of the limitations of Midi 1.0. It is a serial data stream so  the larger the data chunk the more latency. Depending on the  midi set up a giant chord might take 20-100 ms to make it through.

 Midi 2.0 using USB C will fix that issue as it will transmit in parallel data chunks.  

[JnTuneTech]

4 hours ago, John Vere said:

Just be aware of the limitations of Midi 1.0.

Not to be a bummer, but that is not the question of the original post. To be clear, and to repeat what @msmcleod answered, the internal polyphony of a given external keyboard has nothing to do with the polyphony of a VSTi in Cakewalk. They are indeed independent.  -When you use an external keyboard to control a software instrument in a DAW, you are only using the keyboard MIDI output of the hardware device, not its internal synth software, in most cases.

As to MIDI 2.0, it won't be likely to matter for this question. Not only does properly formed & connected MIDI 1.0 data work quite well with typical polyphonic keyboard connectivity, and has for years, it is so trivial to modern processing & chipsets to manage, that only poorly designed systems, or ones with other problems present, will encounter such limitations when performing with the keyboards mentioned above.

And yes, MIDI 2.0 is a wonderful step up, which I am certainly looking forward to. However, it is highly unlikely any of the keyboards mentioned above, or most any we own now in fact, will be by able to upgrade to the newer hardware interface requirements in order to use it, let alone also implement the software changes that the manufacturers would also then have to somehow add to legacy devices & provide us with.   I doubt the OP here will need that info to start properly using polyphony in a VSTi in Cakewalk right now. Regardless of bandwidth limitations, a properly connected MIDI keyboard will easily be able to take advantage of polyphony in most common situations with a polyphonic capable virtual instrument. Independently of the keyboard's own internal instrument implementation.

[Byron Dickens]

2 hours ago, JnTuneTech said:

To be clear, and to repeat what @msmcleod answered, the internal polyphony of a given external keyboard has nothing to do with the polyphony of a VSTi in Cakewalk. They are indeed independent. 

Yep. Using it as a controller, I have played polyphonic parts with a Korg Monologue.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

14 hours ago, Indrajeet Raval said:

Yamaha P125a (192-Polyphony, GHS), Korg D1 (120, RH3) & Roland FP-30x (256, PHA-4 with Esc). Each model has different Polyphony, will it affect the sound of VSTs (PianoTeq or Zenology Pro, & it's setting allows from 64 to Unlimited Polyphony) or not?

The figures you quoted are polyphony for the internal sounds of each keyboard. MIDI is just a data protocol and only sends events such as "note on", "note off" and such and those are interpreted by your VSTi of choice as they see fit, usually following the General MIDI standard. Yamaha and Roland also have super sets of the GM Standard called XG and GS, but those are only relevant if you're sending MIDI data to a device of those brands or plugin which supports it.