Topic: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

I've been hugely impressed with Pianoteq, and currently have it hooked up to my Casio PX-3 and M-Audio BX8a studio monitors, positioned as specified, in a room with acceptable acoustic behaviour.

I'm half-way comfortable with the sound (way better than your average sample-based MIDI setup), but I'm having real trouble getting it to sound anything like the piano is *right there in front of me*. It sounds electronic/"midi" in a way that I can't put my finger on.

Some observations/questions:

1. My first guess would be the frequency curve of my speakers is suspect. However, my BX8a speakers are reasonably high-end studio monitors, and should have quite a flat response. So, I should leave the EQ setting in Pianoteq untouched for the most realistic results, right? If the precision-engineering of Pianoteq is anything to go by, the designers would have designed it to sound most realistic on a set of flat-response monitors with no EQ adjustment, right?

2. For comparison, I previously used a set of *much lower-end* 4-inch M-Audio AV40s, and they actually sounded better (more like a real piano in the same room), except they couldn't produce the volume of a real piano without distorting. So, given Pianoteq must be designed for the best (=flattest) monitors, why would lower-end monitors with a more limited response sound more real?

3. In theory, my room should be out of the equation -- while it's not a perfect room, it's reasonably good, and I know what a physical piano sounds like in that room. So I should at least be able to get it sounding like a physical piano in the same room, right?

4. With the recent Pianoteq 5 upgrade, there was a bit of concern from some quarters about the new D4 sounding *worse* than the old D4v4. I had this same experience -- the new version sounds more tinny, more electronic, more like an old-school midi piano than a real piano sitting in front of me. This is not just my taste -- I *know* the difference between a piano I do & don't like, and it's a completely different thing than the electronic-y sound I absolutely loathe. But the new D4 is supposed to better-modelled, more like the real thing. It has me worried that what should sound worse actually sounds better on my system. What am I missing?

5. In order to create the best feeling of a piano that's right in front of me, I have turned off all effects, particularly reverb -- I like reverb, but I want my practice piano to sound like a piano in the room with me, not in some other acoustic environment. Am I on the right track with this?

6. Is there a set of recommended studio monitors (or other speaker style) to use with Pianoteq? Anybody else with experience/suggestions regarding BX8a, AV40, or other?

7. I use Pianoteq Stage, so I don't have access to the microphone etc controls. I set my Pianoteq Stage to "Stereophonic" output. Is this the best for my desired setup? Have the Pianoteq designers set Stage to sensible defaults for a real-piano-in-front-of-me studio monitor scenario, or would I get significantly more realistic results from tweaking the microphone setup? How?

8. All the pianos apart from the D4v4 sound unacceptably tinny and "midi"-like on my setup. The uprights are by far the worst -- they sound synthesized (gasp!). I grew up playing & loving a number of different uprights, so I know what they should sound like, and it's not this. Why?

In short, what's the recommended path to getting Pianoteq to sound exactly like I'm playing a real, quality, piano in the same room as me? How should I focus my efforts in these areas:
- Speakers? (Monitor recommendations, anyone?)
- Speaker positioning?
- EQ adjustments?
- Dynamic range adjustments?
- Volume?
- Keyboard touch? (I'm happy with what I've got, but is it possible my ears are being fooled by an unrealistic feel?)
- Microphone adjustments?

Recommendations would be super helpful. Even more helpful would be anyone who can provide me with a broader understanding of this area. Can the Pianoteq designers help me?

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Hi,

quick question: uprights? Plural? Have I missed something? To my knowledge Pianoteq featues precisely one upright, the U4. And that one actually sounds quite nice, IMHO. So I am confused.

Apart from that, some thoughts.

  • To decide whether Pianoteq is at fault or your setup, try headphones first. Seriously. And a pair of rather good ones, too, I would recommend. Room acoustics matter a lot, and sometimes things are not as straight forward as you might think. So eliminate variables: listen to Pianoteq through a good pair of headphones with a medium amount of reverb. If that already fails, you cannot expect things to become magically better by using speakers.

  • 'stereophonic' is an older sound configuration; nowadays the recommended way is indeed to set up the virtual sound stage with virtual microphones and stuff, at least in the 'Standard' and 'Pro' editions. In fact, stereophonic is (as far as I know) identical to two microphones positioned in a specific way.

  • You might also try the 'player' presets which are available for most instruments. They definitely sound different from stereophonic (but only in Standard/Pro, as they use sound recording instead of stereophonic), and many sound a lot better from the get-go (depending on the instrument).

  • Not too much reverb is correct, no reverb at all however is usually not. Even when using speakers, a moderate amount of reverb often helps realism. For a speaker setup in a small-ish room, I would try the dry room or studio presets.

  • Microphone position matters a lot, really. Especially a simple two microphone setup (like stereophonic) might sound a bit 'tinny' or thin. I would recommend you download the demo of the standard edition and experiment with the sound recording settings there. Change mike positions. Change mike types. Maybe add a third or even 4th mike and mix its output with the main ones. I would not be surprised when the results are noticeably better.

  • A 'flat' frequency response in theory is nice, but depending on the positioning of the speakers (close to the wall etc.), room acoustics modify the effective frequency response of speakers considerably. The BX8a are near-field monitors, that is you are supposed to listen to them positioned about 1m from you, positioned in the same height as your head and pointed in a certain angle towards you and without any obstacles whatsoever. This is usually not true when you use near-fields for a piano setup: trust me, I know what I am talking about there.

  • To accomodate imperfect room acoustics, many monitors actually have primitive low- and sometimes even high-pass filters that can be configured to change frequency response at both ends of the spectrum. If the BX8a don't have that, you will almost certainly have to modify your equalizer settings.

  • You cannot simply equate an acoustic instrument with a pair of speakers. You cannot, end of story. I.e., "I know how a piano sounds in this room, so it has to sound the same with a pair of speakers" is a false assumption. A piano produces sound that has a significant spatial distribution; high-end electronic instruments simulate that with lots of speakers and some even with wooden transducers. There is a reason that e.g. Kawai uses a wooden transducer and IIRC 6 treble speakers on the CS-10 to give it a more natural sound.

  • The last point does not mean you cannot get good results with speakers... but you will probably have to experiment quite a bit with reverb and equalizer settings.

  • The dynamics settings in Pianoteq quite often are opimised for recording and/or headphones, so you rarely find settings larger than 40dB. A real grand piano is closer to 50, however, so if you really want to have a realistic dynamics behaviour, increase the volume and increase the dynamics at the same time. This keeps quiet notes at the same level and increases headroom for fortissimo play.

  • As a last suggestion, although this might sound a bit odd: try to set the 'condition' setting to maybe 0.1-0.2 and see if that changes your perception. A pristine electronic instrument can sound 'too perfect' and thus unnatural. Personally I especially like to 'age' the U4 slightly for certain pieces.

Last edited by kalessin (06-07-2014 14:40)
Pianoteq 6 Standard (Steinway D&B, Grotrian, Petrof, Steingraeber, Bechstein, Blüthner, K2, YC5, U4, Kremsegg 1&2, Karsten, Electric, Hohner)

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Hi, what an excellent topic, we can all learn from that quest, as surely, there are methods you can try to make it sound more like an acoustic, not in tone, but on sound delivering.

There have been many ideas, there is a nice topic about using something to make the piano vibrate -I sitll have to find it as I'm interested in getting that-, Philbest likes to put the mics in the very direction that his speakers, are. It works!. And I've found that, putting the speakers inside the wood of my digital piano greatly gives more wood to the sound, and some more expensive digital pianos are coming with speakers inside the body of it so they have a real resonance, etc.

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Kalessin gives all the info you could possibly need.

I will add, though, that I have played around A LOT with PT5, and what you might be disliking in the sound is not what I'd describe as a synthesized, electronic sound. I think PianoTeq 5 is almost too good at modeling the piano's behavior. When I first heard it, I thought, that's not what a piano sounds like! But then when I listened to traditional recordings much more critically, I realized that the sounds I heard were indeed part of the spectrum produced by a real piano. It's amazing how though I've played the piano for 35 years, and Steinway grands for 25 years, my brain plays crazy tricks on me. Playing around with PianoTeq has made me much more aware of all the components of a piano's sound. You would think that with my experience I would just *know* what a piano sounds like, but it is a very complex thing!

The other thing is that PianoTeq models a perfect, brand-new instrument. Most of us are used to playing instruments that are aged and imperfect. I don't really like the condition slider, because that does introduce some odd artifacts as far as I'm concerned. What I've had success with, though, is playing around with the spectrum profile and string length parameters. I also make the piano ever so slightly out of tune. These changes result in a lessening of the most prominent, metallic overtones, and leave you with a piano sound that is closer to real-world experience, in my opinion.

You might check out these presets and see if they sound better to your ears. But note that they will *not* sound the way I intended them in your Stage version. You have to have at least Standard to get all the modifications.

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.php?id=2014

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.php?id=1982

As for making it sound like a live instrument, Kalessin covered that admirably.

Rachel Jimenez
Classical pianist and teacher
http://fundamentalkeys.com

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

I would recommend installing the trial version of pianoteq standard and trying rjpianist's 7-4-2014 preset.....if that doesn't blow your mind, then it's the speakers

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

I would second trying the pianos with headphones. I have pretty decent studio monitors, Rokit KRK 6 3G, but I get a little more realism through nice headphones.

Try listening to some other kinds of music on your monitors. If all the pianos sound synthesized and tinny, there might be something wrong with them.

Pianoteq 6 Std, Bluthner, Model B, Grotian, YC5, Hohner, Kremsegg #1, Electric Pianos. Roland FP-90, Windows 10 quad core, Xenyx Q802USB, Yamaha HS8 monitors, Audio Technica
ATH-M50x headphones.

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Thanks everyone for your helpful thoughts, especially kalessin's excellent explanations.

You're right, kalessin, there's only one upright in Pianoteq. I was mistakenly thinking K2 was an upright, but on double-checking, it's not. Either way, both K2 and U4 sound pretty awful (on my setup).

To answer rjpianist and others who say that what I might be disliking is not the "electronic" sound at all, but rather Pianoteq's all-too-realistic sound: no, I think I've eliminated that possibility (though I could still be wrong). I do understand what you're getting at, though.

Perhaps I should try and explain what I'm hearing more clearly: no, it's not exactly like a typical midi piano. It has far greater realism and subtlety and dynamic range, and I love all that. I've certainly tinkered with the "imperfections" such as the condition slider, and (using the trial version) unison width etc. They all add a different element which can help, but they don't take away the fundamental electronicness of a speaker sound. Now, perhaps that can't be eliminated, but I'd like to think that I'd be able to get pretty darn close with Pianoteq and a professional studio monitor setup.

The fact that I had a more realistic experience with my AV40s lends credibility to that hope, I think.

In actual fact, my D4v4 (perhaps even the others) sounds like a great piano *CD recording*. So if I wasn't at the keys, I'd find it amazing to listen to. But when I'm at the keys, and can feel a huge gap in the experience, and I'm fairly certain (after lots of experimenting) that it's the sound I'm missing, not the touch.

But I've got some food for thought now, anyway.

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Good thoughts on speakers and headphones, too, thanks. I will invest in a good pair of monitor headphones.

Kalessin, regarding your comments about wooden transducers etc.: That makes sense in theory. But doesn't Pianoteq model all the piano sounding-board and other physical aspects of the piano with such realism that that side of things is more than adequately covered?

I was also thinking that a *good* studio monitor setup, positioned correctly (~1m equilateral triangle, somewhat away from the wall, in my case), so long as I'm in the "sweet spot", should be able to reproduce identical sound to any number of speakers, so long as I don't move my head (which I avoid doing, in my experimenting). And since I still get the "electronic" sound, I've deduced that the problem is not with having too few speakers or extra physical "crutches". I guess the room acoustics possibly put the lie to that idea, but am I roughly correct here?

I don't believe in black-magic "some people just like the 'natural' sound of wood better" or similar objections: sound is sound, and all of this can be measured and reproduced -- I believe our technology is capable of doing so. It's just a case of knowing what the sound is that I'm missing or looking for, and being able to know what I need to do to achieve it.

I guess that's part of my difficulty: how do I go about analysing and describing what I'm missing, and what I'm looking for, so I can explain it usefully in a forum like this? Words like "metallic", "woody", or "electronic" are so vague they're almost useless. But I'm obviously unable to compare the sound with the precision I'd need to be able to say "there's a -3db, 50Hz wide dip centered at 440Hz" or I'd be able to fix it myself!

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

rjpianist and njaremko, thanks for the FXPs. Do you know if it's possible to try them in the Demo version to hear the effect of your adjustments?

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

bryhoyt wrote:

rjpianist and njaremko, thanks for the FXPs. Do you know if it's possible to try them in the Demo version to hear the effect of your adjustments?

I think so? Anyone know for sure?

Rachel Jimenez
Classical pianist and teacher
http://fundamentalkeys.com

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

rjpianist wrote:

I think so? Anyone know for sure?

Yes, you can. Demo version only has two limitations, 1) 20 minute time limit, 2) numerous silent black keys.

Pianoteq 6 Std, Bluthner, Model B, Grotian, YC5, Hohner, Kremsegg #1, Electric Pianos. Roland FP-90, Windows 10 quad core, Xenyx Q802USB, Yamaha HS8 monitors, Audio Technica
ATH-M50x headphones.

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

bryhoyt wrote:

Kalessin, regarding your comments about wooden transducers etc.: That makes sense in theory. But doesn't Pianoteq model all the piano sounding-board and other physical aspects of the piano with such realism that that side of things is more than adequately covered?

Yes, and no. It's two different things.

Pianoteq models a piano more or less completely. That is you can think of it as e.g. a virtual Steinway Model D sitting in a perfect studio with absolutely neutral acoustics and no noise floor, and an arbritrary number of 1-5 microphones that can be freely positioned. On this side of course the resonator behaviour of the piano is modelled quite well, so well in fact that you can get all the problems 'real' sound technicians face when they position the microphones (e.g., sound wave minima and maxima at different positions).

This does not, however, change the fact that the only device creating sound waves in your room is a pair of speakers, which are (from a physics point of view) much closer to point sources than the actually rather huge active area of a piano. A concert grand has a resonator surface of 30-40 (or even more) square feet; your two speakers have about 2 between them.

So what Pianoteq actually does is simulate a recording situation. Recording a piano with carefully chosen microphone positions and playback over speakers can result in a somewhat realistic 'illusion', but I fear it can never be quite complete, much like a console game will never be real life, regardless how detailed the graphics are and whether you even use a 3D monitor. You will always need a certain amount of acoustic 'suspension of disbelief'.

I was also thinking that a *good* studio monitor setup, positioned correctly (~1m equilateral triangle, somewhat away from the wall, in my case), so long as I'm in the "sweet spot", should be able to reproduce identical sound to any number of speakers, so long as I don't move my head (which I avoid doing, in my experimenting). And since I still get the "electronic" sound, I've deduced that the problem is not with having too few speakers or extra physical "crutches". I guess the room acoustics possibly put the lie to that idea, but am I roughly correct here?

The problem with room acoustics is that they are never absent, at least if you don't actively insulate the walls. Sound waves propagate in all directions, and some will be reflected from the walls and travel back to you from there. That is, your ears will always hear a mixture of 'direct' speaker output and 'indirect' speaker output. The near-field speaker approximation is more or less the (actually rather unrealistic) hope that if you sit in front of the speakers 'just so', you will mainly hear the direct speaker output and don't have to worry about room acoustics.

And yet, this is most often still untrue. For example, longer wave lengths tend to be reflected more efficiently. This means that a wall behind the speakers will often seemingly amplify the lower frequency response. Hard surfaces in the room can mean that high frequencies are bouncing around, meaning you might also have an unwanted peak there.

Apart from that, no-one does ever 'not move' their head. We always move our head ever so slightly, it is how directional hearing works to a large degree: we register small phase differences when moving our head (which is not really even a conscious thing), and our brain calculates probable sound source positions from that. A complete illusion would require using headphones and tracking all head movements, permanently calculating the correct sound input. This is theoretically and even technically possible of course, but very, very difficult to get right.

I don't believe in black-magic "some people just like the 'natural' sound of wood better" or similar objections: sound is sound, and all of this can be measured and reproduced -- I believe our technology is capable of doing so. It's just a case of knowing what the sound is that I'm missing or looking for, and being able to know what I need to do to achieve it.

In your case, I still believe that the problem is either too much or too little room acoustics. As I mentioned above, virtually no room is acoustically neutral. This also means that most humans find acoustically insulated rooms highly unnatural and often even uncomfortable. This is why music recordings on occasion implement deliberate frequency distortions: they are pleasant to the listener because they appear more natural. Usually this means that lower frequencies (below 500Hz) and moderately high frequencies (above 2kHz) are a bit amplified; many hifi speakers and headphones do this as well.

So, in your case the near-field approximation might also actually hold 'too well': you might just hear sound that is 'too dry'. Which means that it is missing all those subtle distortions that make it appear more natural. You will never be able to make it appear like a 3m grand piano behemoth is sitting in front of you, but increasing reverb, maybe adding a delay filter and possibly even pushing low and/or high frequencies in the equalizer might 'help'. I'm sorry that I cannot give you a more concrete answer than that.

Last edited by kalessin (07-07-2014 10:39)
Pianoteq 6 Standard (Steinway D&B, Grotrian, Petrof, Steingraeber, Bechstein, Blüthner, K2, YC5, U4, Kremsegg 1&2, Karsten, Electric, Hohner)

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

regarding multi-channel:  The Pianoteq presets will show parameter values for five microphones and if they are all five turned on,  their relative locations will also be shown.  The values are in the horizontal rows for output 1 and output 2 of the matrix diagram.  I have an aging M-Audio firewire 410.  The parameter values for the microphones can also be entered into the horizontal rows for outputs 3, 4, and 5.  I use five inexpensive class D amplifiers and average quality speakers to keep the signals totally separate from microphones right thru to the speakers.  This improves the sense of presence.  The number of microphones is not so important as is keeping the audio signals separated. Of course listening with headphones is a different matter and with that in mind, the Pianoteq team have done an outstanding job of placing microphones and mixing them into two channels - outputs 1 and 2 respectively.

Lanny

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Put your monitor speakers below you, and point them upwards at the ceiling. 

I have done that with one to either side of my keyboard (an 1885 Steinway F upright piano with a QRS Sensor Rail) and have now added an additional one behind the piano, splitting the right channel (I would have added both right and left behind the piano, but one of my two smaller speakers is not working currently). 

With that setup, and a little playing with volumes, microphone placement, and  setting the stereo width at 0.35, I can hardly tell real vs. pianoteq+mute rail.  Ok, so I can, but Pianoteq+mute rail is REALLY good with this set-up.

David

Sarasota, FL

- David

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

dklein wrote:

Put your monitor speakers below you, and point them upwards at the ceiling. 

I have done that with one to either side of my keyboard (an 1885 Steinway F upright piano with a QRS Sensor Rail) and have now added an additional one behind the piano, splitting the right channel (I would have added both right and left behind the piano, but one of my two smaller speakers is not working currently). 

With that setup, and a little playing with volumes, microphone placement, and  setting the stereo width at 0.35, I can hardly tell real vs. pianoteq+mute rail.  Ok, so I can, but Pianoteq+mute rail is REALLY good with this set-up.

David

Sarasota, FL

I like the IDEA of this, at least in theory.
With what I have and where I have it - I can't do it.
(and in any case my priority is more toward improving my playing than improving the illusion that I have a physical piano).

I think it gives the room the opportunity to respond as it would respond to a (physical) grand piano, which project MOSTLY vertically (and somewhat horizontally via the lid).

Most of the sound we get when playing comes to us VERY indirectly, this probably imitates that indirectness quite well.

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

I recently purchased the Bluthner and out-of-the-box to my ears it sounds a lot more like an acoustic instrument than any of the D4 or K2 presets. They all sound pretty good one note at a time, but when playing big chords or pedalling a lot, the Bluthner seems to have a clarity the D4 an K2 lack. (My room acoustics is very poor, so that will have a lot to do with it. It's a near-perfect 3m x 3m x 3m cube. Moving soon, so I'm putting up with it till then. Perhaps the Bluthner is more forgiving of bad acoustics for some reason.)

The only thing I dislike about the Bluthner presets is the excessive key-off noise. For single notes it's okay but for chords (e.g., Chopin Prelude Op.28 No.4 left hand) it's way too much. Not an issue in Pianoteq Std or Pro, because you can just turn it down; I'm not sure about the Stage version but I think it's adjustable there too under Action. In any case I recommend you try the Bluthner presets in demo mode.

However, if you find the D4 sounding great when listening to it on a recording away from the keyboard, then keyboard and speaker placement will be the main issue. For example, if you have your keyboard and speakers set up against a wall, it's going to be very difficult to get a good sound. Ideally you need some space between the speakers and the walls of the room, and even more space between your keyboard (i.e., your ears) and both the speakers and the walls. If that is not feasible, then well placed acoustic insulation on the walls could help (acoustically absorbent material that reduces reflections).

3/2 = 5

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

I'm working on this for only the moments on I want to sit and made a composition, so this is not intend to use on record

https://www.dropbox.com/s/guuxf68fnrb4h...4.fxp?dl=0

+ I use an app (BOOM 3D) that expand the audio in 3D, so de FX is better on the sense of et the impression you are sitting on the front of the piano

Last edited by microbians (29-09-2017 15:13)

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

One thing that I have not understood about stereo imaging is why some tones or collections of tones image better than others.  Our outer ears help place sounds vertically in space, as well as in front or behind us (the discriminations that left-right timing differences don't allow).  Pure tones don't image, but even some of the instruments in Pianoteq, such as the Grotrian, even with the real speakers and the virtual microphones in front of the plane of the pianist, do not image realistically.    Instead, it's as if some of the the sound is from all around you, as if you are bathing in sound (and this is on the Player preaet).  Other Pianoteq  pianos don't do this, while some do.

Does anyone understand why this is?

- David

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Usually, the default settings are fine for me. but here are some additional things to try:

1. Experiment by trying different presets, of course. You may find a given preset that works better than others. A preset intended to sound like a relatively distant classical piano, after all, just won't sound close to you as you sit at the keyboard.

2. If you have the pro version, find a preset that comes closest to what you want, and then move the mics around, imagining that each mic is one of your monitors\speakers. Do try swapping out those mics.

3. Again, if you have the pro version, on the Mics page, try right-clicking on the image of the mic above the grid and turn OFF the Proximity Effect Compensation. But be aware that each mic will of course then will up more bass freqs.

4. Experiment with the reverb. Note that you can change the pre-delay and the degree to which late or early reflections are emphasized. You can do a lot with these two settings. (And try out the two Piano Room presets, which are listed near the botton of the presets list for the Reverb.)

5. Try using a wave file for a convolved reverb instead of the default reverb. There is much that can be done here. Many wave files for rooms and some for piano soundboards can be found. Be prepared to have some fun, here, as well as to get both good and bad results. 

6. Something I've only recently found: In the VST version, turn off the internal PT reverb and try a third-party reverb that allows you to set separate pre-delays on each channel. The free MuVerb may be of interest. This may (MAY) help to create a sound that you like. Setting separate predelays, if done with some care and by ear, can imply to the ear that the one wall is slightly closer to the piano or at least the player, than another. If the predelays are set too differently, the effect is too noticeable, and if the predelays are set too close, you won't hear any change in the sound at all. But there's a sweet range, to my ears, in which the freqs overlap as they arrive at different times. This can occur with a small predelay on one channel and with the other predelay set to about double the time or less. Again, this is only valid if the initial predelay is set so that the predelay is not noticeable as a pause. (One of the effects of these settings, to me, is that there is a slight "thickening" of each note, since the freqs are arriving at the ears at very slightly different times, but still overlap and mingle. This may be what we are accustomed to when sitting at a piano in a real room, where the piano is not centered. and often we are not sitting dead center at the piano. I, at least, find that these separate delays creates a variation in the impression of the piano. I don't know if I can accurately say that it is better or more realistic than the default reverb. Thre's always subjectivity at play.)

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Thanks.  Great ideas.  I have done much of this, but not done much with reverb (though I love the convolution reverb file that sounds like a piano's wood case reverb.  Here on my cellphone, I forgot the name - and I wish we could add two reverbs: one for the case, and one for the room).

- David

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

dklein wrote:

Thanks.  Great ideas.  I have done much of this, but not done much with reverb (though I love the convolution reverb file that sounds like a piano's wood case reverb.  Here on my cellphone, I forgot the name - and I wish we could add two reverbs: one for the case, and one for the room).

Do try out the free MuVerb. The interface looks stripped down, but it's a serious vst effect from the people who make Mulab.

I would imagine that the last thing you want to hear about right now is still more software to add to the effects chain, but there are some vst reverbs that allow you to use two wave files and control the way that they intermingle. I have not tried them, but this one looks interesting, since it offers so much control over files and how they intermingle:  https://www.liquidsonics.com/software/reverberate-2/

I'm not sure that two wave files are needed, but it's hard to avoid being curious about this new, to me, kind of reverb. (I'm going to post a general question about it as a new thread. Perhaps we can learn more.)

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Thanks.  Something to try your, especially when I get my hardware MIDI Solutions velocity convertor installed, which will give me an external hardware based keyboard velocity curve editor, which will eliminate two software utilities running behind Pianoteq, while still allowing me to use the creative velocity curve given to presets, applying them on top of my keyboard correction.  Then I can add external reverb software anf not feel as guilty.

- David

Re: How to make Pianoteq sound just like playing a physical piano?

Interesting what dklein said about the Grotrian Player preset. I have always found this one uncomfortably close. Looking at the mic settings, I can see why - does anyone actually play the piano with their chin resting on the music stand??? So I moved the mics back a little bit, to simulate a more realistic playing position. To my ears and with my equipment at least, it sounds more natural. (Jake - you can move the mics and alter their settings in Standard as well as Pro).