In general, all negative critique may be summarized like this: "Pianoteq is unchallenged when it comes to playability and feel/response, but in terms of tone and authenticity it still leaves a lot to be desired, often sounding synthetic, though he definitely gets better and closer, with each release"

I grossly agree with this summary (except ...a lot to be desired.. which I would replace with ... room for improvement...), but less with some comments on the Pianoworld forum.

Reading comments on Pianoworld reminds me of these two grumpy old men in the Muppet Show.

I guess that there are those who will never like Pianoteq, even if PTQ was perfect. Well, they better spend their time to touch the piano keys and start enjoying music! If they can't, go fishing and enjoy quietness. Speaking is silver, silence is golden...

Yes, there are always aspects to improve and I am certain that the PTQ team are working hard on that. I started with PTQ3, experienced all the improvements and can only say that for me, PTQ6 is near perfect. Version 5 (and before) was sometimes frustrating because of a sort of 'worn felt with grooves' attack noise in the mid range. 6 is so much better.

What many do realise less, is that the sound depends on many variables, with the sound system as being one of the prominent ones. Just play a bit with the equaliser for example, to realise how much influence it has on the sound. I have different settings for my KEF 104/2's (aren't they nice, are they?) and AKG headset, for example.

It is also very important to realise that when one plays, you adjust to the feedback from the instrument. For me, this has gone unnoticed until I started playing digital instruments about 25 years ago. Playing a MIDI file without adjusting velocity curves, for example, can produce results that are far from what the original player heard. Not to talk about the instrument chosen, which has its own character.

In my opinion, many comparisons and reviews are flawed by these aspects.   

In the past, I had upright pianos (did not have the money and room for grands). Yes, they were okay, but far from what PTQ6 offers. Not only was the sound of the uprights much worse, but they had their habits too. Noisy hammers, detuned after a morning of fortissimo playing, just to name a few. Luckily, I learned myself to tune and repair, but the "player to technician ratio" was pretty miserable.

When I am playing PTQ (using a Yamaha digital piano as master keyboard), it does not take long for me to start getting this warm feeling inside and there are moments when I sort of wake up and suddenly realise that I am not playing a grand. I thought music is about something like this...

I would also like to thank PTQ for the Grotrian (added not too long ago) which has become my favourite.

Finally let us be honest. PTQ is a giveway in terms of money. I have PTQ Pro and for that investment, the reward is tremendous. I can definitely recommend Pro, because it adds to realism when you carefully adjust the instrument. And no, I will not trade it for a grand. Even if I had the money and room. Why? You cannot replace it with a different one in a second... and I ENJOY playing PTQ, so why change?

Musical regards, Henk

AKM wrote:

Unfortunately to emulate the dampers behavior on/off velocity is not enough (to my understanding).

Yep, which is why a continuous damper pedal should be used, naturally.

Sure, but damper pedal is not the only one thing that controls dampers. Keys do it continuously in a real one. Midi On/Off velocity data is quite enough to describe the hammer behavior, it is more or less how it actually works in a real one, but dampers control is continuous from all the keys individually.

The Instrument
The Mic
(The Room(?))

...why not just go all the way and get all twee right?

Thanks for the info, I'll attempt turning off the proximity effect compensation.  And thanks for your perspective - perhaps that is what they're going for, but I'm not so sure.  Source signal is everything, I wish they were going for just getting it right.  With their "you can drive it but also tinker with it under the hood" perspective it seems more fitting to me to get it as accurate as possible as an "un-doctored" source signal and go from there.

It would be a real shame if the only company making a product like this wasn't intending on going all the way with it.

Did you turn off the Proximity effect compensation? (Right-click on the name of the mic at the top of the grid on the Mics page and then deselect the feature.) That may help. But I agree that it might not help as much as you want. The sounds of the hammers, to me, too, should get more noticeably louder with a mic right on them. I think that the goal was to create a useable sound that eliminated many of the sounds that a producer might want to eliminate.

I don't anticipate this will concern everyone or even most people.  It WILL concern people interested in close, dry mic-ing and that type of articulation.  I'm intending on making a studio recording with this, not playing it with my Casio PX-150 in the local mall, so any sounds of articulation would need to come from PT or a third party, because the keys hitting the key-bed would be AMPLIFIED by that style of mic-ing, but that doesn't happen in PT.

Here, watch this - I will dangle a U87 right on top of the middle of the keyboard and play three middle notes forte, and then upload the audio.  Here's an image of the setup:

A single U87 kissing the keys, that's it.  And the audio of me playing a note on my Casio as loudly as I basically can without fearing I would break it:

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

Does that make any sense to you?  That mic should be thumping, why does it basically sound the same there as when I hang that same mic from the ceiling?  There IS a thumpy articulation there, but the mic is ON THE KEYS, and the key presses are basically no more pronounced than if I place the mic 5 feet away.

I'd be glad to be wrong again, maybe modern pianos ARE that felt-lined, but it doesn't make sense to me.

if I position a microphone directly over the keyboard, I should be hearing the wood of the keys hitting the body of the case...and this oversight is so basic, IMO, that it is un-befitting a "mature software"   I tested 6 last night for this and it's still a NO GO, unless I'm missing something.  To me this is a design bug, and I don't get why it doesn't seem to be recognized as such.

There is so much noise coming out of my Casio PX-150, it's certainly not something that concerns me. I liked Pianoteq 5 and I like Pianoteq 6.

On the behavior of dampers ..
I tried to increase the volume and duration of the dampers and play with the pedal.
Pleasant but funny effect) But how true is this behavior, when the damper sound reappears when the pedal is released after it is pressed?

I love this sound you've uncovered. It really gives a glimpse of a major potential I see in Pianoteq -- to twist an instrument model towards an extreme that produces an otherworldly new instrument... not necessarily completely realistic, but still very organic and expressive.

You can get some very bizarre overtones on a real piano by half pedaling, or better yet by just barely letting the dampers rest on the strings and varying the pressure slightly. The sounds are nearly impossible to predict or control, plus most piano's dampers (even very well maintained pianos) are not regulated anything close to perfectly, so the effect can vary greatly note to note. This generally makes them too unreliable to use in a practical way, plus they are fairly quiet. But with Pianoteq you can produce a wide variety of otherworldly sounds, which can be very predictable, and can work at any dynamic. Fantastic.

My Steinway is in need of new hammers, very deeply grooved with not much felt left to work with. I've found these deep grooves can produce an almost shocking effect if you depress the soft pedal ever so slightly, just enough to cause the very edge of the grooves to strike the strings. It sounds extremely nasal, not unlike some early pianos. I've played a few pianos that needed their hammers to be reshaped which could produce a similar sound, to a lesser degree. If you ever hear a pianist who rides the soft pedal (kind of like riding a clutch), you might subtly hear this effect from time to time if the hammers are deeply grooved. Then there's cracked soundboards that can vibrate, strings that can buzz against their pins, etc. All of that just to say you can get some really wild sounds out of an actual piano, even without reaching your hands into the strings... almost an infinite variety. Still a lot that could be modeled, but certainly no sample collection touches the variety and subtlety of what Pianoteq currently emulates.

midi

Steinway D

Erard

Pleasant but funny effect) But how true is this behavior, when the damper sound reappears when the pedal is released after it is pressed? It seems to me that the sound of parking damper can be improved. Add more "body" to it. While he often looks like the sound of a vibrating piece of paper on a string. And the vertical piano often has a very pronounced sound of parking dampers. (continuous pedal kawai vpc1 and the presence of events midi note-off) (although the example uses a flat curve to remove notes)

Philippe Guillaume wrote:

jconl, you will find this type of woosh in the Pianoteq historical instruments (Kremsegg and KIViR) which have much noisier wooshs than the modern grands.

I could be wrong but I think a lot of modern grands also have additional felt strips on the bridge and around the pin block to dampen this "uncontrolled" resonance.

You are right indeed. But I think it was here more about the initial "thump" that you get when you smash the sustain pedal down than about the sympathetic resonances themselves. The latter are present in all pianos since the beginning, more or less depending on the choice of the manufacturer (technical, aesthetical...), not to mention the duplex scales.

jconl, you will find this type of woosh in the Pianoteq historical instruments (Kremsegg and KIViR) which have much noisier wooshs than the modern grands.

I could be wrong but I think a lot of modern grands also have additional felt strips on the bridge and around the pin block to dampen this "uncontrolled" resonance.

How does PT account for the case?  I feel like whenever I'm playing around with creating a studio recording with PT, I always feel the need to add a "case reverb" before the room reverb.  This was in PT5, haven't played around with it in 6 yet.

Stephen_Doonan, can you replicate his example in PT?

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

Again, sustain-pedal noise much louder than for any normal use except special effects.