Also, I'm quite sure you can do separate free trials of both Stage and Standard to do any side-by-side testing of specific presets.

There is no difference in sound between Stage and Standard or Pro as long as they use the same presets.
But I noticed that years ago.
btw, thanks tmyoung for your knowledge you share, you are important and needed in this forum. I leave this topic now, everything has been explained.

All the best, everyone

Stig

Best wishes,

Stig

I've been thinking about buying pianoteq during the summer sale, and noticed that I could technically just buy stage version, then upgrade to standard during the sale, for an extra £24, so not too bad if I get it ~2 months earlier.

I was looking at the comparisons between versions, and saw this quote:

"In PIANOTEQ Stage, preset loading is limited to parameters that are present in the interface. Presets built with PIANOTEQ PRO can be loaded in PIANOTEQ Standard without limitation."

What does this mean? It makes it seem like the mic positions won't actually load since Stage doesn't let you tweak mic positions, those params aren't present in the interface of Stage, so they will be ignored when loading the preset. Is this true? I thought that maybe it meant that you just had limited access to the mic settings, but it would still load them, but after reading the second sentence, it makes it seem like you don't even get the preset mic positions, and just get a default one.

Late to the party but also, in my experience, the audio results may differ at higher sample rates. The highest sample rates are restricted in lower cost PT editions

So this only applies to non-factory preset loading? If so, I feel like they should clarify that, because it isn't obvious from the quote I posted.

Correct.

Stage (or Play as it was years ago) is essentially all factory presets hard baked using the same engine that the entire PTQ lineup uses.  I bought Play version 3 (which should tell you how long ago I did that), and then within a year or two upgraded to Standard and after another few years upgraded to Pro.  I got value out of all three.  Stage/Play worked excellently as I got started, and all of their presets were great: it just worked/works.  Standard was a great value upgrade as I needed it for sharing recordings as Stage was too limited for anything other than my practice needs.  Pro became needed when I wanted to recreate a lot of rare, antique pianos that I'd liked and the specificity of the sound control quality was necessary, and I wanted to tweak presets downloaded from the FXP corner as well in ways that Standard doesn't allow.  Essentially Pro gives you the note edit for nearly everything, while Standard only allows you to change the average value or baseline of a given note edit curve.

So, yes, I agree that wording is ambiguous in the documentation, but from my own experience, your upgrade plan sounds very solid.  I'm quite sure you'll be pleased, and of course, the trial/demo versions were extremely helpful on so many fronts for me.

All the factory presets will be sonically the same across all three versions. You just have reduced access to change the sounds. 

With Stage you are highly limited in terms of how much of the user presets you can hear in the fxp section of these forums.

In Stage you won't even hear certain Pro users adjustments to the elements that aren't within Stage.

The Pro users can alter certain sound parameters that Standard users do not have access to, however Standard users can at least listen to/play with the efforts of the users with the Pro version, even if they just cannot adjust those settings for themselves.

So this only applies to non-factory preset loading? If so, I feel like they should clarify that, because it isn't obvious from the quote I posted.

With Stage you are highly limited in terms of how much of the user presets you can hear in the fxp section of these forums.

In Stage you won't even hear certain Pro users adjustments to the elements that aren't within Stage.

The Pro users can alter certain sound parameters that Standard users do not have access to, however Standard users can at least listen to/play with the efforts of the users with the Pro version, even if they just cannot adjust those settings for themselves.

I was looking at the comparisons between versions, and saw this quote:

"In PIANOTEQ Stage, preset loading is limited to parameters that are present in the interface. Presets built with PIANOTEQ PRO can be loaded in PIANOTEQ Standard without limitation."

What does this mean? It makes it seem like the mic positions won't actually load since Stage doesn't let you tweak mic positions, those params aren't present in the interface of Stage, so they will be ignored when loading the preset. Is this true? I thought that maybe it meant that you just had limited access to the mic settings, but it would still load them, but after reading the second sentence, it makes it seem like you don't even get the preset mic positions, and just get a default one.