did someone heard something about physis piano ??? (Page 1 of 2)

Yeah, very interesting, but they seem to be only interested in selling the physical V-Piano-esque device. Pianoteq still has the advantage in this respect because it gives you the option of using it with a cheap intro digital piano, but if you combine it with a top quality digital piano (to me that means something like Avantgrand) it might be comparable in price to something like this.

I'm glad they're doing this, though. Eventually I'd like to see modeling become normal and sampling become specialized.

There is now a new presentation and demo of the physis piano on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GCzvwFbWxk

i agree for the rhodes, but don't you think it is "very similar" as Pianoteq, so when he say it does not exist yet... ???

maybe someone can explain me where are the differences between physis and Pianoteq

i do not understand everything, but all he show Pianoteq do it...

As I understand it (poorly ?) the "basics" are hardly new or revolutionary, unless you consider the 1980s to be "recent" - well, I guess in musical history terms they are :-D
Karplus-Strong et al...

Faster and cheaper processors(plural), the ability to package and COOL them, etc. have made much of this more practical than it was 10 or even 5 years ago.

From what I have been able to "see" (very, very little) of pianotek and physis they appear to be founded on very similar principles.  They use different terms for the adjustable parameters, some of which may be very similar (in their effect and/or in their code implementation).

The MOST obvious difference is in the physis being a physical package; keyboard, processors, memory, amp, etc.  vs pianotek being just the software.

How much physis relies on the 6 processor performance (@4 GHz if I heard things right) for its success isn't disclosed - it could just be a show boast....

One could speculate that they have a parallel development for a software only product, in fact given the trend and now almost dominance of virtual instruments, I think it would be foolish for them to NOT also be developing a VSTi product.

I am without knowledge in this subject, ergo the above is speculation and should be regarded as such :-D

... it's a explanation thank you

Is just me or anybody else did not like a lot the timbre of physis piano ?

The youtube demo, the Over The Rainbow, sounded a little bit ordinary to my ears in terms of living feeling.

Does the guy who play the demonstration have a obsessive compulsive disorder?  He count the time with the left foot all the time...   

First physical modeling piano ??????
Pianoteq and Roland V-piano ignored by a lie.

as many things; truth came from numbers... 0.1.1.0.0.1.1.0.1.1.0.0.0.1

I agree, they all sound great :-D

Many, probably most, of the current sampled instruments also sound great.
Just as increased available processing power at lower cost enables one technology, so increased and lower cost storage enables better sample based instruments.  Solid state drives, bigger caches etc may make very large sampled instruments practical through terabyte sizes and beyond - speculation.

I wouldn't predict the end of sample based instruments just yet.
It at least appears that physical modeling has "been and gone" before, but now it is back :-D
Sondius ?

Yamaha seems to have bought (OK, developed an intellectual property agreement on) a whole pack of Stanford patents that included much of the base work in '97
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/97/970709sondiusxg.html
There is still a physical model Yamaha software synth available
http://www.sonicspot.com/sondiusxg/sondiusxg.html

I am only commenting that the base work is not new, to me the physis claims therefore appear somewhat exaggerated.

PS
Viscount has other significant physis based products installed - at/near the high end of a different market.
http://www.goldengatepianoandorgan.com/...emier.html
They have been doing this for quite some time.

6 processor to get only 4ghz ????

It's just 650mhz for processor.

What is the processing power of Roland V-Piano ?

I refer to the piano brand too, like too modern piano. The timbre as trying reproduce a real thing it's not bad, despite not perfect, but it's the kind of modern piano I don not like much, cause remamber some sort stage piano preference.

No Steinway modelled anywere ???

EvilDragon knows so much things ...

I saw the ideo again... He talks about 24 bilion calculations per second, and not 4 bilion... 
4 bilion per core it's the righ .

Dragon, are you telling me the processing power of physis piano is very higher than a top i-7 ???

it would be quite unfair to wait pianoteq to beat physis-piano using 1/6 of computer power ...

Anyway, is Physis piano  limited to only one grand piano model ??? In this case, it would be a bad deal pay a lot for only one grand piano.

24 billion calculations per second is a LOT when application-specific DSPs are concerned. Remember, Intel and AMD CPUs are general-purpose, not application-specific. That makes a world of difference!

Application-specific CPUs do things they were made for a LOT faster than even two or four or eight times faster general-purpose CPUs. It's just how it is. So, yes, when Fourier and differential equation solving is concerned, I think that 6 DSP CPUs in Physis can definitely beat a top-range i7.

Besides, I don't think Pianoteq is beating Physis on absolutely all accounts as it is. So far from what I've heard Physis has a much better Rhodes model, to me a very firm bass that I like, solid mid-range, and definitely better attack. And it also does your regular rompler sounds, and the demonstrator also said you could layer sounds (something Pianoteq doesn't do at all). And it comes with a keyboard, so it's an integrated package. Let's see the price they will announce, but I think it will definitely be cheaper than computer+weighted MIDI controller+Pianoteq Pro.

Dragon, you bring up very good points, but my point is that unless you define what the "calculation" is in the calculations per second claim, it doesn't matter if it's a DSP, a CPU, a GPU, or an abacus; the measurement is the same. Yes, DSP's are more specifically tuned for an application, but they don't magically solve DFT's or dif. eq.'s in one step. They still have to break things down into multiple arithmetic steps. Example: GPU's are faster than CPU's, not because they do more sophisticated mathematics for each instruction, but because they are massively parallel and are effectively using hundreds of "cores" vs 4-8 cores of a CPU.

So, yes, "24 billion calculations per second" may actually be an impressive claim to some people, but until I know more, I say it's market-speak and gives no real indication about the abilities of the Physis system.

That is true, but still, less steps than an Intel or AMD.

I don't know, but I hope less than 3000€. The competition is stiff. If they sell it between 2000-2500€, they have a winner.

Phillipe once said about V-piano processor power and pianoteq cpu power:

"Concerning cpu power: throwing more cpu does not automatically improve the sound, you need to know what to do with that extra cpu power! Besides, current cpus are way more powerful than any DSP, even for pure DSP tasks. Each core of a 2GHz "Core 2" can achieve 16 GFlops (single precision) at its peak, now if you look at the DSP specs from TI, Analog Devices etc, the most powerful (and very expensive) ones are all in the 1-4 GFlops league. Also, a bare Windows (or MacOS, or Linux) does not steal so much cpu power. No more than a few percents, as long as you don't have a virus scanner crawling your hard drive, or a browser opened with tons of flash applets running in the background, etc."

There is another instrument, the Physis Organ, which is based on multiple Analog Devices Sharc DSPs. I guess it's probable that the Physis Piano uses the same technology. As has been discussed, a DSP based solution may not necessarily outperform a high end Intel CPU doing the same job. However, the DSP solution may also be cheaper or may have lower power consumption.

Analog Devices appear to have a future roadmap to 10 GFlops per DSP, but of course if you could buy a Physis Piano today you would not be able to benefit from future developments unless the developers have made the hardware module upgradeable. That's a significant benefit of the Pianoteq approach, because upgrading the computer is much cheaper than buying a new digital piano.

This link states that they use SHARC DSPs in the electronic organs.

Another thing that may be of interest;
Despite the fact that Viscount has been modelling pipe organs for quite some time now and doing it with the help of a fair amount of silicon, they are not proclaimed as a premium instrument provider.
They are just not being used for large church or small cathedral pipe organ replacements.

The preference is very much for sampled instruments, Hauptwerk for the hosting software plus MANY sample suppliers.
A few Gigabytes of samples is NO problem and they CAN get it all to stay in memory at once.
With SSDs even the load time is also quite acceptable.

This raises the obvious question; If modelling doesn't compete with sampling for pipe organs, why would one suppose it would be superior for the more complex problem of modelling struck strings ?

Puzzled.
:-D

Exactly. Pipe organs, by their very design, are a set of independent pipes. The notes do not interact much, except through the air and into your ears, which is relatively simple to figure out. Stops only determine which banks of pipes are being used, and there's not a lot of variation in the air movement through the pipes, apart from the volume pedal, right? (Is that what it's called? I'm not an organist.)

It just seems like the acoustic variables are far less with a pipe organ than with a piano. It doesn't surprise me that sampling is superior to modeling for pipe organs.

Physis organ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VpSfwlgsVY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2q02q5R...re=related

I just keep thinking...   until when they will keep adding processors (cores) instead of create faster processor.

If a new material for faster processors do not appear we will have a problem.
What we will use in 10 years?   A 40core computer ???

About modelled technology, I think woodness it's what is missing in all three pianos, pianoteq, Roland V-Piano and physis piano.

In fact Intel already has prototypes of a 100+ core CPU, and they are likely to be sold way sooner than 10 years time.

Current semiconductor technology has reached its maximum when frequency is concerned, and it tops at about 5 GHz cca. Going higher is not really recommended or viable. That's why we're now witnessing CPUs having more cores rather than higher frequencies. It's a lot more economical, generates less heat and consumes less current than having a 20 GHz CPU.