Nice improvisation! Did you do anything to get the NY Steinway to sound like that, or did you use it as-is, "straight out of the box"?

I upgraded to version 8.2 recently (I have only Stage though), but find that the pianos, especially the two Steinway D's, are dull and lifeless, with a muffled sound that makes it sound like someone is playing the piano inside a thick felt cocoon and you're standing outside listening to it. Did Modartt perhaps tailor the sound to cater for the cinematic market?

Here I am testing out a section from a piece by Rachmaninov (Melodie, Op 3 No 3): Notice especially the ascending lh octaves as the piece moves to its climax. These are loud enough to start getting those nice metallic overtones. You can sort-of hear them here, but the overall quality remains muffled rather than rich and alive as it should be (at least at those dynamics), and would have been on a physical instrument. There is also quite a "wash" that I could not eliminate even with careful pedalling - not sure but I don't think you'd get this much of a wash on a physical instrument unless it was poorly maintained. It's as though the fundamental and first few harmonics don't die away quickly enough(?)
[I used the NY Steinway Classical Recording preset and only switched off the pedal noises and reverb. In the DAW, there was no processing of the sound at all]

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...Sample.mp3

At first I thought it might be me/my headphones/my PC speakers, but I listened to other recordings on YouTube, even the home-made ones, and those are not muffled like this at all. One can notice the muffled quality especially in the bass from about C2 downwards - it sounds like there is too much of the fundamental and not enough of the harmonics so the bass notes sound a bit more like a bass guitar than a piano.

Is this fixable at all? Maybe I'm just doing something silly? (Sincere apologies in advance if I've posted this in the wrong forum..)

lovely improvisation!

Thank you!

Alcaknight wrote:

Wanted to do a quick test of the 8.2 update so here's a little improv I recorded using the NY Steinway Classical preset. I used Pro R2 for the reverb and Waves C6/L1 for some light mastering.

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...sation.mp3

Hello Alcaknight and welcome to this sub-forum Recordings..

Nice playing and nice sound, like a real grand piano. Thanks for sharing.
Waiting for more.
Keep going!

Best wishes,

Stig

Thank you both! I appreciate it. I'm also really liking the update so far

Wanted to do a quick test of the 8.2 update so here's a little improv I recorded using the NY Steinway Classical preset. I used Pro R2 for the reverb and Waves C6/L1 for some light mastering.

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...sation.mp3

Hello Alcaknight and welcome to this sub-forum Recordings..

Nice playing and nice sound, like a real grand piano. Thanks for sharing.
Waiting for more.
Keep going!

Best wishes,

Stig

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...sation.mp3