I seem to recall suggested somewhere, whether in your manual or at this forum, is whenever anybody live plays PIANOTEQ through studio monitors, as opposed to headphones, no reverb rather than some or as little as possible is the pianist’s preferred target.  That’s especially if he or she wants to simulate the sound of a real piano inside a real room, where specifically you’ve located the speakers or monitors. 

Following this scenario, you get naturally the benefit of the room’s acoustics to provide ample reverberate surfaces…

(Just need to make this one thing clear.  You make of course your own decision whatever personally you prefer.)

If your now goal is however to avoid latency as much as possible, and, expressly whenever you apply audio effects or processes to your signal, what’s already been mentioned by Stephen_Doonan appears timely not only because imported impulse files, loaded into PIANOTEQ, might introduce little or no additional latency to software performance but also no new slew of silly puns nor iterations added by me.  (Smile.)

My impulse response software of choice today is Fog Convolver 2 from AudioThing

...

As you’ve already read, I previously suggested sonible learn:bundle since even as an accomplished musician but only novice engineer you inexpensively can still learn a thing or two from some observation of A.I., that is, any machine learning inside a plugin offered by sonible.

Now one such is newly released smart:comp 3

...

Thanks for posting this. The Fog Convolver 2 and Smart:comp 3 (and the learn:bundle) sound very interesting. Going to check them out--

https://www.audiothing.net/

https://www.sonible.com

Following this scenario, you get naturally the benefit of the room’s acoustics to provide ample reverberate surfaces…

(Just need to make this one thing clear.  You make of course your own decision whatever personally you prefer.)

If your now goal is however to avoid latency as much as possible, and, expressly whenever you apply audio effects or processes to your signal, what’s already been mentioned by Stephen_Doonan appears timely not only because imported impulse files, loaded into PIANOTEQ, might introduce little or no additional latency to software performance but also no new slew of silly puns nor iterations added by me.  (Smile.)

My impulse response software of choice today is Fog Convolver 2 from AudioThing as it along with its nine (9) factory banks of more than 740 impulse responses taken from spaces, analog and digital gear, and handmade devices, comes also with an impulse response production unit that’s its own Impulse Generator  —but to boot comes even an acoustic space simulation section, Space Simulator.  From which the two, Impulse Generator and Space Simulator, I may create also a variety of impulse responses to load later into PIANOTEQ.  Easily some could eventually come themselves throughout the settings dialed in Impulse Generator that might make new convolution reverbs just like what’s already in PIANOTEQ or either through numerous other possible settings where you’d like to design impulses inside Space Simulator since it can make virtual rooms made up of various dimensions, source and listener positions, and both irregular and the usual combinations of many materials; possibly on each of your virtual walls to simulate specific architectural acoustics.

Impulse Generator

Space Simulator

Get the demo for free or purchase Fog Convolver 2 from AudioThing at the current sale price $39 (US).

As you’ve already read, I previously suggested sonible learn:bundle since even as an accomplished musician but only novice engineer you inexpensively can still learn a thing or two from some observation of A.I., that is, any machine learning inside a plugin offered by sonible.

Now one such is newly released smart:comp 3 and just coincidentally released to the public about the day after my previous post.  But, what about it now most might interest you is what incredible low latency you get from this particular plugin compressor, anytime actually you play at your keyboard but direct your signal to it.

Just check this one out, as it can be really worth your while!

the BEST COMPRESSION PLUGIN of 2025!

Small update: I found an external algorithmic reverb plugin that won me over: Melda's MTurboReverb produces very clean, natural sounding chamber reverbs.

It has insane customisation options, down to a programming-language like chaining syntax, which scratches that tweakability itch that also brought me to pianoteq. The two go quite well together.

It does a decent job at long ambient reverbs and harmonic reverbs too. More playful reverbs like grain reverbs aren't its strengths but that suits me fine as I like to keep things naturalistic.

Just sharing as it's currently on several black friday sales at a deep discount, and it has a 15 day trial, in case you want to make use of that

I love the Melda Production MTurboReverb (https://www.meldaproduction.com/MTurboReverb

In addition to what you mentioned, it can export a reverb you create within MTurboReverb as a convolution reverb .wav audio file that can be imported into and used in Pianoteq (Effects-->Reverb-->Use WAV impulse)

Small update: I found an external algorithmic reverb plugin that won me over: Melda's MTurboReverb produces very clean, natural sounding chamber reverbs.

I myself got a few plugins from MeldaProductions including MAutoStereoFix, MAutoAlign, MCenter, and MMultiAnalyzer among others.

It's a company started by a drummer, for any that's ever entertained only a stereotypical view of drummers!  (Smile.)

Seriously, if you're as a musician just getting into audio engineering I suggest learn:bundle from sonible.

You get five (5) in the bundle that includes learn:EQ, learn:comp, learn:limit, learn:reverb, and learn:unmask.

All of which incorporate the company's forms of A.I. that is its machine learning within each of the plugins.

Whether or not as a human being you've seriously enough humility to take in something from any machine learning, people get all five (5) in the bundle at really a near steal of just $49 (US).

Just some personal note; when I cannot afford all the high costs of audio engineering courses, any machine learning might just have to do.  (I'll learn irregardless...)

Small update: I found an external algorithmic reverb plugin that won me over: Melda's MTurboReverb produces very clean, natural sounding chamber reverbs.

It has insane customisation options, down to a programming-language like chaining syntax, which scratches that tweakability itch that also brought me to pianoteq. The two go quite well together.

It does a decent job at long ambient reverbs and harmonic reverbs too. More playful reverbs like grain reverbs aren't its strengths but that suits me fine as I like to keep things naturalistic.

Just sharing as it's currently on several black friday sales at a deep discount, and it has a 15 day trial, in case you want to make use of that

Try the free Acon verberate and the zynaptiq one as well.

If there are still discounts, liquidsonics tai chi is phenomenal. Or cinematic rooms pro (but way spendier).

The last one is Hans Zimmer’s reverb.

It has insane customisation options, down to a programming-language like chaining syntax, which scratches that tweakability itch that also brought me to pianoteq. The two go quite well together.

It does a decent job at long ambient reverbs and harmonic reverbs too. More playful reverbs like grain reverbs aren't its strengths but that suits me fine as I like to keep things naturalistic.

Just sharing as it's currently on several black friday sales at a deep discount, and it has a 15 day trial, in case you want to make use of that

still on reverbs, liquidsonics ... oh man, Cinematic Rooms is an absolute stunner, but isn´t cheap even with Black Friday. Tai Chi lite, otoh, is also crazy good (more vibey) and only $29 right now - That would probably be my 1st recommendation. if you're after convolution Reverberate 3 will get you covered.

as for compression, I don´t use much on piano anyway and my stock compressor is enough if needed. likewise with eq, any clean digital parametric does the trick. notice I´m no pro audio guy by any stretch, just a devoted amateur with the mild dose of audio snobbery we all ove to cultivate.

- I found that disabling the Pianoteq Limiter was crucial to get the right level of responsiveness.

+1  I always disable the limiter.

This is a very interesting concept and makes sense to me - not only in that the reverb is reinforcing the natural acoustics, but that it more closely matches your mind's expectation of what the space you're in should sound like. I suspect this is why I've settled on the small studio reverb sound of the impulse file I posted; it's bigger and more lively than my actual room, but not massively, and I mix it in at fairly low level.

- Inspired by the EQing of PianoCentric, I added the "Grand Piano Enhanced" EQ preset to my Pianoteq Effects chain, but dialled the gains way back to ~3dB. This keeps the sound natural to my ear but adds presence.

- I found that disabling the Pianoteq Limiter was crucial to get the right level of responsiveness. Surprisingly, the limiter had a greater impact on my subjective perception of dynamic expression during play than the dynamics setting itself

- I found some treasures in AirWindows: with the Point plugin, I could subtly sharpen the transients which compensate for my somewhat sluggish speakers (though in fairness they are new, maybe they'll break in over time). The TubeDesk plugin is a simple but effective instant-engoodener, adding convincing analogue warmth that offsets the speaker-ness of my speakers (I added a wet/dry mix of TubeDesk - the full effect was too muddy). Nb. neither of these were necessary for headphone use, which illustrates that these tweaks depend on your audio set-up.

- The combination of the Pianoteq EQ + the AirWindows plugins obviated Pianocentric for my purposes, which is good because I found their combined CPU footprint to be significantly lower than Pianocentric. Win!

- I kept investigating reverbs and found that, on speakers, the best effect came from a convolution reverb of my actual room, dialled back to the point where I can't consciously hear it: this just blends the instrument convincingly with my audio surroundings, and hence places it in the room for me. I could also get 90% there with a short algorithmic reverb if I aligned it with my natural room acoustics. Other reverbs sounded artificial from the speakers (because they contradicted the natural acoustics), but are fine (or even great) with headphone use.

It paid off to get my head into DSP a little bit, as it helped me understand exactly what was missing in the audio. The way I figured out to keep the sound natural: experiment to find an effect that makes the sound "better", at the cost of being more artificial; then dial it back until you can just about no longer hear the difference. This lets you end up with a sound that sounds "better" in a way you can't quite put your finger on.

snurrfint wrote:

IFX Rack from Gospel Musicians have everything you need basically. I recommend it for iPad at least where its only like 6$.

It has compression, reverbs, lofi-stuff, EQs, filters, the typical electric piano effects, such as pan and chorus etc. 100 Presets. Amazing value in 1 plugin.

Not sure how it stacks up to the competition on windows or macOS. But for iPad I would buy this, pianoteq, and AUM and never look back.

Its on black fiday sale right now. https://gospelmusicians.com/products/if...rOy9_KiKZb

+1
That's what I use for the Pianoteq Rhodes as well and I can say it is on top of the competition simply because there is not anything like it. Basically Jamal has put together everything from his own custom IRs of tubes/amps, to the Scarbee suite for vintage Keyboard FX which was already a jewel + his own fx plugins he has developed over the years at GM. You basically have so much stuff you probably don't even know where to start and it complements Pianoteq very well because it looks at exactly everything that is currently missing from the EPs starting from preamps and amps.

Thanks for chiming in, good to hear it stacks up even on other platforms.

With that said, I can also say that you need perhaps to spend a bit more on in-app purchases. I remember buying an add-on pack too which contains the amazing master limiter compression among other things. Its only a 5$ or similar for the ipad. Might be even cheeper now on sale who knows. Its worth it in my opinion. Its amazing together with AUM too where its so easy to add a few effects that you like, chain them together and toggle them on and off at will and control them with whatever midi input you want. Im sure you can achieve the same in other DAWs and such but its just so easy with AUM.

IFX Rack from Gospel Musicians have everything you need basically. I recommend it for iPad at least where its only like 6$.

It has compression, reverbs, lofi-stuff, EQs, filters, the typical electric piano effects, such as pan and chorus etc. 100 Presets. Amazing value in 1 plugin.

Not sure how it stacks up to the competition on windows or macOS. But for iPad I would buy this, pianoteq, and AUM and never look back.

Its on black fiday sale right now. https://gospelmusicians.com/products/if...rOy9_KiKZb

+1
That's what I use for the Pianoteq Rhodes as well and I can say it is on top of the competition simply because there is not anything like it. Basically Jamal has put together everything from his own custom IRs of tubes/amps, to the Scarbee suite for vintage Keyboard FX which was already a jewel + his own fx plugins he has developed over the years at GM. You basically have so much stuff you probably don't even know where to start and it complements Pianoteq very well because it looks at exactly everything that is currently missing from the EPs starting from preamps and amps.

It has compression, reverbs, lofi-stuff, EQs, filters, the typical electric piano effects, such as pan and chorus etc. 100 Presets. Amazing value in 1 plugin.

Not sure how it stacks up to the competition on windows or macOS. But for iPad I would buy this, pianoteq, and AUM and never look back.

Its on black fiday sale right now. https://gospelmusicians.com/products/if...rOy9_KiKZb

The one thing that does really make a difference in my experience is a good external reverb. LiquidSonics Cinematic Rooms Pro is not cheap but fantastic (and you can sometimes buy it at a discount). The new Valhalla FutureVerb is also seriously good, very Bricasti-like, and very affordable. I prefer these significantly to convolution plugins.

In addition to this, a flexible, clean compressor, like the ToneBoosters Compressor 4, can work well for at the mixdown stage, though you can achieve a similar, and very clean effect by reducing the dynamic range in Pianoteq itself.

If you really want to go down the enhancer plugin road, I would recommend the Louder than Liftoff Silver Bullet Mk2. If used with caution, I find it can add some warmth. But it's easy to overdo and it can muddy things up.

Hey all,

We've seen that the sound output from Pianoteq can be augmented with more sophisticated reverb, saturation, Octaving, spacialisation etc etc.

I wanted to see if we can pool our insights to collect options for an effect chain which, by collective consensus, enriches the pianoteq sound meaningfully. For starters, let's focus on plugins that can work real-time (without introducing latency or performance issues) and aid the impression of playing a real acoustic instrument (as opposed to listening to a well-mastered recording).

Since I don't have much of an audio engineering background, I was hoping you might have some good ideas and recommendations of what one could consider adding to their playing setup. Any ideas?

Right, a total consensus seems highly unlikely!  (Laugh.)

If you are talking about changes to the psychoacoustics which can help to create an illusion of you seated at an acoustic piano, instead of virtual piano software, I like to suggest just a few for starters:

1. Morphit (Toneboosters)

2. MAutoStereoFix (MeldaProduction)

3. NUGEN Stereoplacer (NUGEN Audio)

4. FIEDLER AUDIO stage (Plugin Alliance)

5. Gullfoss Live (Soundtheory)

• Morphit from Toneboosters is basically a headphones correction plugin you can use in PIANOTEQ binaural mode specifically; but in even your DAW mix. You choose between Harman and your own target curves.  It best removes undesirable coloration from headphones via frequency response calibration while it supports over six hundred sixty-six (666) different headphones models.  So you have plenty for yourself to try out various cans (virtually) and anytime you just need studio reference headphones.  Additionally it also permits loudspeaker virtualization inside the headphones themselves.

• MAutoStereoFix from MeldaProduction is a fix to often used stereo mic placements, even if you didn’t even know you’ve a problematic preset.  It’s an alternative to PIANOTEQ Compensation and that maybe you’ll prefer in a mix or possibly your practice.  From it you get mics matched in volume, time, spectrum, and phase of right to left channel (or vice versa) output to monitors.  And if you like, it matches the volume envelope of one microphone to the other inside a stereo pair.

• NUGEN Stereoplacer from NUGEN Audio is useful whenever as a digital keyboardist you would like to reposition bass sounds further left of center from your key bed and as though you truly were seated in a player position at an actual acoustic; but irregardless of the stereo mic placement in your virtual piano preset.  (You do this while you leave intact the rest of the stereo image.)  Mainly it redistributes stereo information even hard-panned frequencies —from one side to the other— without any affect to the overall level balance of material.

• FIEDLER AUDIO stage from Plugin Alliance is one a lot at this forum might miss, sorely.  Now though it —considered— might become helpful (still) among forum members who were at a gig and would've liked to had taken PIANOTEQ along but believed previously that they cannot ever get it to sound convincingly over the speakers already set up anywhere and at any venue, especially.  Inconspicuously at a home studio where to perhaps small monitors placed alongside a cluttered bookshelf, as you could get only an unrealistic stereo image, you may now manipulate that into whatever panorama, honestly, you’d prefer.  Whether it’s the sound of the virtual piano moved in audibly closer to the keyboard from monitors or the body and bass of it sounding as though it were an acoustic grand really right in front of you and simultaneously spreading sound in fact out from the speakers directly into the audience somewhere, it’s definitely obtainable of all the limitless possibilities easily available on the one stage plugin.

• Gullfoss Live from Soundtheory is immediately available for any to have realtime analysis applied in a computational auditory perception model that can simultaneously unmask and tame whichever audible elements compete for your attention. Offered is quick and precise fixes to problems which appear otherwise unsolvable or might require significant time and expertise to resolve.  It is basically an equalizer capable of changes to frequency response, however, more than three hundred (300) times per second without audible artifacts or any degradation in signal quality.  Also it’s a ready fix to balance issues between different sound elements; with no need to access the individual tracks.  (Just use it live, whenever you practice or improvise at a keyboard connected to PIANOTEQ.)

Get three plugins currently on sale!

Sale price of MAutoStereoFix is $61.00 (US).  FIEDLER AUDIO stage is available at a current $19.99 (US) only sale price.  Gullfoss Live comes within a promotional package of three (3) distinct versions all of the one plugin on sale now; to get all three (3) in the pack it's $99.50 (US).

Go over numbered links (above) if you need to buy any of the plugins or you'd just like to demo!

I've definitely found that convolution reverbs sound more "acoustic", but the emulations of hardware reverbs sound "better". I don't know, convolution reverbs coloured the sound a bit too heavily for me, as a rule.

Thought you might be interested in trying an IR I created from an algorithmic reverb I use regularly. It represents a relatively small studio-sized space, and I typically mix it in at a fairly low level - maybe 15dB below the source. I've verified by null-testing that this IR pretty accurately reproduces what the plugin does.

Modartt doesn't support uploading flac files so I'm sharing from OneDrive. As this is being shared in the furtherence of a discussion about music technology, I think this qualifies as fair use:

https://1drv.ms/u/c/6c8d622bbbc3eef1/Ec...w?e=9ahRGO