Topic: PianoTeq 5 high frequency detail
Hi - I bought PianoCentric, a Waves plug-in by Greg Wells, sometime before I bought Pianoteq 5, when I was using Cubase's Halion Sonic S90ES VST patch. As it was a piano bundled in a DAW, I assumed it might be less than great-sounding (it's the only one I'd ever known for years), so I asked Mr. Wells if he thought his PianoCentric would be helpful on the S90ES, and he replied as below:
"The better sounding the original source is, the better result you'll get from additional processing. Some sampled pianos don't have a lot of detail way up top, a bit flat and rolled off sounding, so turning the pianocentric knob to the right won't be as effective ... If it's a great sounding sample, the pianocentric should perform beautifully with it."
I did a quick test of the S90ES, playing rhythmic chords mainly in the mid to lower octaves (120 Hz to 500 Hz, approximately, two octaves around middle C), and noted that there wasn't much harmonic signal above 4-5 kHz.
Soon thereafter I bought Pianoteq 5, and am very happy with the sound (I have Stage at the moment). I decided to run the same comparison (D4 Blues, I believe is the patch name), and was very surprised. I expected to see a lot more harmonic signal higher than the 4-5kHz I saw in the S90ES patch, but actually the upper limit of signal was about the same!
I'm interested whether the S90ES is punching above its weight in terms of "detail up top" as Greg Wells puts it, compared to the Pianoteq 5, vs. whether the Pianoteq 5's strength not necessarily in top end detail? A comparison of the Pianoteq 5 with one of the large sampled library pianos may help answer that, but I don't have access to any of those.
I do understand that Greg Well's comments didn't address modelled pianos. But all this got me thinking a bit about the "detail up top" of Pianoteq 5 ... is it as good as the best of any pianos out there, including large sampled libraries? Is it as good as a well-recorded live piano?
If any of you experienced folks have any thoughts along these lines, this rookie would be grateful to hear them!
Thanks -