aandrmusic wrote:

-Depends what limits one decides to place on the number system;
16, 24, 32, 64, 128 bit integers ?
floating point ?
at SOME point it becomes a trivial task to represent a dynamic range that exceeds ...whatever you chose (-:
Forearm width chords on 12 ft Grands, explosions, etc.
It wouldn't have to wait for wider processors, multi word width arithmetic is nothing new. The point ?  "digital" as a method of representing information need not be a limiting factor.
Processing power to handle it might be - for the time being.
Simplification and perhaps the population of some tables ahead of time might alleviate the processor power issue in the short term.  Just guessing (-:

I assume you are talking about using multiple 16 bit (or other length) words strung/tied together, end-to-end so to speak, to increase the bit depth and thus the dynamic range?  (I'm not a rocket scientist, but I play one on TV)  Doesn't this require a major change in hardware for playback and recording, not to mention playback on dedicated devices?  Seems music technology keeps giving us tons of cool gadgets and fun ways of making music but the quality of the final audio has been allowed to degenerate, ei, MP3 and even compact discs.  I think it's been decided that our lives are filled with so much ambient noise that we can't appreciate dynamic range anymore -we wouldn't hear the subtleties over the roar.  At least there's still live performance, if done right with corporal punishment for rude mobile devices...

The point I tried to make is that it isn't digital representation as a FORM that limits dynamic range, although I agree that defaulting to the lowest commonly available format might.
I am not current on A to D and D to A converters, in fact it has been a very long time since I endured transatlantic flights BECAUSE OF the then technology involved (-:
At a guess they probably work in 4 or 8 bit "slices" and an arbitrary number of those slices are "stacked" with each having an initial bias voltage to set them to the range in which they are to operate. 
Not "hard" to do, but probably expensive due to a limited market - the mass market being satisfied with MP3 noise, etc.
Just saying that "digital" may be a brick wall, but it can be moved so far out (beyond an horizon) that other obstacles will impede progress towards it.

I should probably mumble something about sample rate too ?
That could also be stepped up several fold, even with current sota parts, i.e. 4, 8 or n way interleaving.
Again, expensive due to a very limited market, but attainable with just a little imagination and enough MONEY !
(-:

Whether or not any of this matters, given the limitations of microphones, speaker systems, the human ear, etc. is a whole 'nother subject - IMAO.

-Depends what limits one decides to place on the number system;
16, 24, 32, 64, 128 bit integers ?
floating point ?
at SOME point it becomes a trivial task to represent a dynamic range that exceeds ...whatever you chose (-:
Forearm width chords on 12 ft Grands, explosions, etc.
It wouldn't have to wait for wider processors, multi word width arithmetic is nothing new. The point ?  "digital" as a method of representing information need not be a limiting factor.
Processing power to handle it might be - for the time being.
Simplification and perhaps the population of some tables ahead of time might alleviate the processor power issue in the short term.  Just guessing (-:

I assume you are talking about using multiple 16 bit (or other length) words strung/tied together, end-to-end so to speak, to increase the bit depth and thus the dynamic range?  (I'm not a rocket scientist, but I play one on TV)  Doesn't this require a major change in hardware for playback and recording, not to mention playback on dedicated devices?  Seems music technology keeps giving us tons of cool gadgets and fun ways of making music but the quality of the final audio has been allowed to degenerate, ei, MP3 and even compact discs.  I think it's been decided that our lives are filled with so much ambient noise that we can't appreciate dynamic range anymore -we wouldn't hear the subtleties over the roar.  At least there's still live performance, if done right with corporal punishment for rude mobile devices...

Just to reiterate what has been said a bit differently:  When piano strings are under high tension, there is a change in their properties of malleability, hardness, resonance -factors that effect the vibration/pitch, sustain, volume, etc., but the potential energy of the stretched string is not released unless its tuning post slips.  All the energy is kinetic and produced by the hammer -through our human metabolic process, of course.  For a digital sound system to reproduce a climatic pounding, ei, Jerry Lee dancing on the first couple of octaves (after nailing the damper down) would require compression/limiting or normal volume playing would have to be lower in volume in comparison and thus, have fewer bits to represent its data.  I'm fortunate not to be too concerned about exact accuracy to a real piano so long as I can be equally expressive.  Thus, the post processing can accomplish that for me.  But dynamics will always be a compromise when it comes to recording as headroom is a reality and a brick wall when it comes to digital.

Depends what limits one decides to place on the number system;
16, 24, 32, 64, 128 bit integers ?
floating point ?
at SOME point it becomes a trivial task to represent a dynamic range that exceeds ...whatever you chose (-:
Forearm width chords on 12 ft Grands, explosions, etc.
It wouldn't have to wait for wider processors, multi word width arithmetic is nothing new.

The point ?  "digital" as a method of representing information need not be a limiting factor.
Processing power to handle it might be - for the time being.
Simplification and perhaps the population of some tables ahead of time might alleviate the processor power issue in the short term.  Just guessing (-:

skip wrote:

I assume you have tried increasing "Sympathetic Resonance"?
Greg.

I think this suggestion from Greg is very appropriate.

I thought I had, but probably not enough....

but it's right, this increase the effect a lot! At the same time it makes the sound deeper in a way... I think I like this... It's more alive... (even if its not only positive...)

Thank You!

I assume you have tried increasing "Sympathetic Resonance"?
Greg.

I think this suggestion from Greg is very appropriate.

azrael4 wrote:

Did you mean this direction?:
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...ing_01.mp3
I still do miss something too- when you hit the keys of a real grand very hard the sound becomes very expressive and "edgy". This is what I still miss a little in PTQ...Heinke

Nice... but it does level out to an even tone rather than over modulating and distorting with that expressive edge we're talking about.  I've said this before, so forgive, but I just hope the Pianoteqnicians are not such "modeling purists" that they refuse to try post processing techniques to get that edginess as opposed to virtual modelling because for this type of sound, I think that would be a waste of programming effort and cpu horsepower.

yes, Azrael4, its quite good, but not really there yet...
Cellomangler, I still think that this "effect" is possible to modeling, maybe I'm wrong, I'm not a programmer.... And maybe, the possibility for the pianosound to grow in this way is one thing that should improve the sound (even if the speaker can't handle it...)? I don't know?

Did you mean this direction?:
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...ing_01.mp3
I still do miss something too- when you hit the keys of a real grand very hard the sound becomes very expressive and "edgy". This is what I still miss a little in PTQ...Heinke

Nice... but it does level out to an even tone rather than over modulating and distorting with that expressive edge we're talking about.  I've said this before, so forgive, but I just hope the Pianoteqnicians are not such "modeling purists" that they refuse to try post processing techniques to get that edginess as opposed to virtual modelling because for this type of sound, I think that would be a waste of programming effort and cpu horsepower.

Om a real Grand it is possible to build the sound to a really thick sound-carpet, a very big sound! For example if you octave to basnotes and "tremolo" them (I don't know if that is the way to say that you play those two notes again and again one after another quite rapidly) and at the same time play some low accord the sound will keep on enlarging and be really "big". I don't know if you know what I mean?
But this is one thing I really miss in the digital world, and unfortunately I still miss it in Pianoteq, even if it's better...

Is there someone else who have thought of this?

greetings

Did you mean this direction?:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...ing_01.mp3

I still do miss something too- when you hit the keys of a real grand very hard the sound becomes very expressive and "edgy". This is what I still miss a little in PTQ.
But after tweaking the parameters in PTQ-Pro and Version 3.6 I don't wanna play  other digital instruments anymore.
greetings,
Heinke

I believe the statements about the amount of stored energy in the strings in tension is misleading.
It is not energy available to be released and converted to sound.
Relatively small additions to it are made by the striking of the strings, some portion of that energy eventually dissipates as sound, some is lost to inefficiency.
When the note has finally died there is still the same amount of stored energy in that pair of strings, it is not consumed in the production of sound, it is merely a level of stored energy that remains in the piano.
It is an artifact of construction and that is about all it is.

Let's talk about this in a little more detail.  The tension imparted into a piano string is placed there in the manufacturer's scale design.  That tension takes the form of potential energy to cause the string to vibrate to and fro after it is struck by the hammer.  If there were no string tension, there would be no potential energy to convert to kinetic energy and back to potential energy -- basically the mechanics of a pendulum's oscillation in a gravitational field.

I agree with you that the total amount of potential energy remains constant, before and after the hammer has struck the string and after the string has come to rest.  The small amount of additional energy of the person's finger and resulting hammer impact sets the strings' oscillations into motion, and (after accounting for mechanical inefficiencies, etc. etc,) the desired by-product of this instrument is the acoustic energy heard by our ears.

If my original statement was found to misleading, then I apologize.  However, one cannot argue that modern instruments with their cast iron frames support many times the string tension of the wooden framed pianos of Mozart's time;  as a direct result, modern pianos are capable of emitting far more sound as a result of this increased string tension.

The point I was making was that a fixed number of speaker transducers whose only functions are to move the air ... cannot do so in the manner that a piano makes sounds.  The speakers are limited in their surface areas and their excursion levels.  When many piano notes are played loudly on even a good stereo system, the sound "comparatively" collapses.  In contrast, in a real piano, where more and more strings' overtones are called into play ... the sound "grows".

It would be foolish to believe that a stereo system (given large enough speakers and powerful enough amplifiers) cannot get "louder" than a piano.  However, it is not only loudness we are talking about, here.  I submit that, sitting blindfolded in the same room with a Steinway D and a mastering quality stereo system, in a double blind test, I could still identify the real Steinway a statistically significant percentage higher than by mere 50-50 chance.

I would agree with your statement quoted above.  The only item I question is "who" has the clear lack of understanding.  In effect, a digital recording is effectively a "high speed barometer", capable of measuring ambient atmospheric pressure some 44,100, 48000, 96000 or 192000 times per second, and displaying for each sample the magnitude of the ambient air pressure.  Sometimes the air pressure is greater than ambient (a pressure wave), and sometimes the instantaneous air pressure is a trifle below ambient.  A to D and D to A converters work to encode and decode this information.  The result is similar to the signal intended to be captured and amplified by the squiggles of a phonograph needle.

The number of bits available is what finely distinguishes the various magnitudes of air pressure measurement.  These various various magnitudes are represented in base 2, with ones and zeros.  The point I was alluding to in the original post, was when the sound level gets excessive, the capturing/reproducing system literally runs out of "ones" (and runs into digital clipping).

Upon reading Mr. aandrmusic's statement quoted above, I subsequently went to the internet and Google searched "24-bit 144dB".  Here is one reply from Wiki --- of course, one may choose to believe or disbelieve what is written in the Wiki article and is quoted from the following URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth

Digital audio

A set of digital audio samples contains data that, when converted into an analog signal, provides the necessary information to reproduce the sound wave. In pulse-code modulation (PCM) sampling, the bit depth will limit quantities such as dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio. The bit depth will not limit frequency range, which is limited by the sample rate.

By increasing the sampling bit depth, smaller fluctuations of the audio signal can be resolved (also referred to as an increase in dynamic range). The 'rule-of-thumb' relationship between bit depth and dynamic range is, for each 1-bit increase in bit depth, the dynamic range will increase by 6 dB (see Signal-to-noise ratio#Fixed point). 24-bit digital audio has a theoretical maximum dynamic range of 144 dB, compared to 96 dB for 16-bit; however, current digital audio converter technology is limited to dynamic ranges of ~120 dB because of 'real world' limitations in integrated circuit design.[1]

Technically speaking, bit depth is only meaningful when applied to pure PCM devices. Non-PCM formats, such as DSD or lossy compression systems like MP3, have bit depths that are not defined in the same sense as PCM. This is particularly true for lossy audio compression, where bits are allocated to other types of information, and the bits actually allocated to individual samples are allowed to fluctuate within the constraints imposed by the allocation algorithm.

I agree with your statement that if the alternate sound (to an electronic reproducing system) is a 9 foot soundboard, it won't happen.

So, let me ask you, please ... did there have to be this many words exchanged, when, in the end we each agree on the last colloquial statement?

Cheers,

Joe

EDIT:  Aha!  We had a troll in our midst.  The following quote is cited in one thread just before this entry.

I understand that there are some very good systems with several small speakers mounted on a relatively thin sound board, e.g. four 6 inch speakers arranged in a square on a large sheet of what is essentially 6 mm plywood supported at it's edges.

Anyway, yes the added and omitted elements of the reproducing equipment are as much a part of our experience as the taste of the wood in the wine.
We are also used to the "tinkley" sound of the high register of physical pianos and I often wonder what the direction of music might have been if builders could have eliminated that with different construction techniques/methods or design details.

Anyway, I think I'm about done with fussing over sound production and the emulation of physical instruments for a while.
I am going back to the music and happily tolerating the limitations of my current hardware sounds.
No Pianoteq for me, but it was fun looking and listening (-:

On the other hand, there are many bad monitors with 12" cones, so you have to be careful. In any case, don't give up on getting a great sound. You've been to concerts where the "piano" sounded good, yes?

That's the problem with large "music instrument" speakers, they move more air easily (in the bass region mainly) so they distort less but still color the sound too much for me.

I know first hand about them too because when I was much younger, I used to play lead guitar in a band, and the sound we tried to get from the guitar was mostly "created" by the speaker and the "specialized" amp, not hi-fi at all. I did at that time try a hi-fi amp, and was surprised that most of the sound I associated with my guitar disappeared and distortion set in pretty fast too!

Of course, now I only hear pianos live (unamplified) in concert halls, I can't stand any amplification for classical concerts such as is done sometimes for free outdoors concerts that we get here in the summer.

By the way my subwoofer is a self-powered Velodyne with a 15" cone, great for frequencies under maybe 80-100Hz but filtered out higher.

On the other hand, there are many bad monitors with 12" cones, so you have to be careful. In any case, don't give up on getting a great sound. You've been to concerts where the "piano" sounded good, yes?

I also sang in symphony orchestra choirs and with smaller ensembles, but the effect of being inside a group of musicians is quite different from listening to the same from a distance, even in the best halls. This is similar to the player's position near the piano versus the audience listening from afar. This local effect can be approximated with good binaural recordings listened through headphones but I think it is harder to attain with louspeakers.

The best result I can think of as a good audience experience is a well recorded SACD such as the lastest Suzuki Bach recordings that reproduce very well the acoustics of a particular location kept constant throughout the series. The hall sound itself is then so well reproduced in multi-channel that it can mask the real room acoustics in which the listening is done, and be very close to a you-are-there experience (with a very good sound system of course) and I don't need a very high volume to get this effect. My amplifiers provide me with a total of about 500 watts rms for five channels (4+subw) but this power is just needed for peaks.

So, I was a bit skeptical about Joe Felice's power demands for piano sound reproducing since I still find very convincing listening to a good piano recording through headphones where probably less than one watt is needed...And anybody that was in a club or near a car with a booming sound system, or to a show given outdoors with loud amplification, can understand that it is easy to produce more decibels than a full symphony orchestra. Raw sound output is not music! It is noise.

But, when trying to play pianoteq (or other electronic instruments) through my high quality sound system, I was never impressed compared to using a pair of 200$ headphones. I know it might be a bit better with monitors that are made expressly for this purpose, but usually these are much more colored and this coloring of sound is to me unbearable.

I also tried multi-channel output and ambiophonic simulations in the past, but these don't work out well with pianoteq to my ears. The source has to be tailored explicitely for these "illusions" to work. Headphones still win.

So until real advances are made in sound equipment that completely eliminate coloring of sound at high volume and also reproduce a three-dimensional sound field that is not limited to a single point (you can have many but they are still point-sources) I will consider pianoteq a sound-reproducing instrument that I can play and enjoy, just as much as I would a good recording, but it is enjoyable to me only through headphones, this is the price to pay I think.

That a sound reproducing system does not store comparable levels of energy does not mean that it cannot produce comparable sound.
================================
There is also a CLEAR lack of understanding as to what "all ones" and "all zeros" represent in binary data.
=================================
I agree that speaker systems have some limitations.
Those limitations and coloration have become so much a part of so much of what so many of us hear that they are included in our perceptions of what physical instruments, music, natural sound, even human voice "should" sound  like.
Good enough - and if the alternative is a 9 ft sound board let me state colloquially
"it ain't gonna happen HERE !"
(-: