There’s a great story about this special piano at Keyboard Mag: “Although all acoustic pianos are technically one-of-a-kind instruments, in the end Embertone’s Walker 1955 Steinway D virtual piano flagship owes its name and, indeed, its very existence to a truly one-of-a-kind 9’ Steinway Model D dating back to 1955. The instrument in question ultimately made its way to a beautiful rural private concert hall in Raleigh (in Embertone’s ‘native’ North Carolina), designed and owned by John Q. Walker, a brilliant software engineer who pioneered the concept of ‘re-performance’ with a company called Zenph, Inc. As the company’s founder, Walker worked with a team of specialists who, helped by Sony recording engineers, developed a way of analysing old recordings in order to create live re-performances — converting piano tracks into precise keystrokes and pedal motions for playback on computer-controlled grand pianos, in other words. This proprietary technology enabled them to capture and reproduce every nuance of performances by some of the greatest pianists in the world, including Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, and Rachmaninoff.”