My dad used to joke that a piano is an 88-element speaker - it's far more, as most unisons are three strings, except for the single bass and the dual low midrange.  Even more complicated, each string's vibration causes the soundboard to resonate as well.

Complicated.  REALLY complicated!

amen!
i'm still thinking on building some sort of custom spruce soundboard-of-sorts in which to embed the up-pointing monitors to (perhaps? ideally?) aid in that "huge" area of sound radiation...

Yes, practicing with heavy reverb should generally be avoided -- you need clarity to judge your articulations. This makes sense when you think about it, as classical recordings are generally made from a healthy distance in a reverberant hall.

+1 

of course, one has to as well accommodate one's articulations to the given instrument & acoustic space...
when playing Bach, say, on a modern piano in a very wet & open space, my articulations will be shaped entirely differently (though still retaining their relative motivic/metric placement) than were i playing the same on a harpsichord in a small dry room.  less extreme perhaps, though of the same principle, playing Chopin on the 19th century Pleyel (or Schubert on the Graf, etc) vs any of the modern pianos comes as a revelation precisely in the way in which the instrument's demands for shaping of the articulations informs the musical content itself (and vice versa ).

Complicated.  REALLY complicated!

dklein: What you're describing is interesting too since it sounds like you are trying to recreate a bit of how a piano naturally radiates sound. Much of the stereo effect you hear from an actual piano has a lot to do with how the sound bounces around the room it's in before entering your right vs. left ear. It seems that Pianoteq (and certainly reverb software) is working to model this too... but it's got to be incredibly complex, piano modeling aside.

I have Stage only - so can't load the Samplicity free IR responses. I will upgrade to Standard/Pro when the next 'good opportunity' arrives . I tried to load one of the Samplicity IR wav files using ReaVerb in Reaper DAW - but the delay was crazy - so stopped using that.

I am demoing Valhalla Room now. I am using the following right now - following the article mentioned above.

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.5.1" presetName="Default" mix="0.1940000057220459" predelay="0.061599999666213989" decay="0.019019018858671188" HighCut="0.32281878590583801" earlyLateMix="0.5" lateSize="0.60000002384185791" lateCross="0.5" lateModRate="0.090909093618392944" lateModDepth="0.5" RTBassMultiply="0.3333333432674408" RTXover="0.090909093618392944" RTHighMultiply="0.44444447755813599" RTHighXover="0.19395972788333893" earlySize="0.029029028490185738" earlyCross="0.10000000149011612" earlyModRate="0.090909093618392944" earlyModDepth="0" earlySend="1" diffusion="1" type="0.083333335816860199"/>

I really love the sound of this. I think this is significantly better than built-in reverb - which I am turning off now.

One thing I have noticed is that after practicing for couple of hours with 'Valhalla Room reverbed sound' induces a 'listener fatique' in me - is this expected/common? I am thinking to dial down the mix from 19.4 to <10 and only increase it for when recording etc.

Osho

(but I can't remember where I downloaded knock.wav from - I think it's in the files list somewhere)

For Valhalla Room I highly recommend following the advice given by its creator in this article:

https://valhalladsp.com/2011/05/25/valh...ert-halls/

Why neither of these are included as presets is beyond me... to my ears they sound far more realistic than what's included. I use these as a baseline, tweaking slightly to taste. I'm quite happy with the results.

My first choice likely would have been PhoenixVerb, but I couldn't stomach their terms or iLok requirement.

For casual playing, using Pianoteq alone, Craig Richards pointed me to "Samplicity Bricasti M7 Impulse Response." I'm using the "IR reverb Gold Hall M-to-S.wav" file loaded directly into Pianoteq. You have to adjust its settings within Pianoteq a bit, but it can sound quite good, not quite as natural as Valhalla though. I like: Mix=-20, Envelope=0, Resampling=100%, Pre-delay=0.016 -- it's free, but I believe it can't be utilized for commercial purposes. http://www.samplicity.com/bricasti-m7-i...responses/

This. I tried tons of different reverbs and in the end I always return to Valhalla room. As Nathan point here, use concert hall preset from tips and tricks (Boston and Vienna concert hall), import them in Valhalla (save in text editor and change to Valhalla preset extension) and for piano this is the among the best for my ears. This concert halls from Valhalla room will make any piano vst sounds much better (at least x2) then any piano alone with their reverb. If you want change some parameters to your needs.

If you want a reverb plugin which is very simple (and free) but high quality, try this: https://reverb.com/software/effects/aco...everb-solo - you have to sign up to reverb.com to download it, but they do have a load of other free plugins which may be of interest.

https://valhalladsp.com/2011/05/25/valh...ert-halls/

Why neither of these are included as presets is beyond me... to my ears they sound far more realistic than what's included. I use these as a baseline, tweaking slightly to taste. I'm quite happy with the results.

My first choice likely would have been PhoenixVerb, but I couldn't stomach their terms or iLok requirement.

For casual playing, using Pianoteq alone, Craig Richards pointed me to "Samplicity Bricasti M7 Impulse Response." I'm using the "IR reverb Gold Hall M-to-S.wav" file loaded directly into Pianoteq. You have to adjust its settings within Pianoteq a bit, but it can sound quite good, not quite as natural as Valhalla though. I like: Mix=-20, Envelope=0, Resampling=100%, Pre-delay=0.016 -- it's free, but I believe it can't be utilized for commercial purposes. http://www.samplicity.com/bricasti-m7-i...responses/

Of course, the quest continues.  Upon re-reading my post, I may have sounded too harsh in my assessment.  Besides, Pianoteq's own reverb is still good and can sound quite satisfactory.

Cheers,

Joe

Sometimes I think I have the right sound (Pianoteq + Reverb), then weeks later what I thought sounded
good sounds like rubbish.

I have ValhallaRoom and ValhallaVintageVerb.  Ok, that's great, but you also need the right preset.
I don't have the right preset, at least not yet.  And I would rather spend my time practicing than tweaking reverb.

So now I am using the native Pianoteq reverb ... and it's fine.  But the quest continues.

Even within each reverb product, my opinion of what sounds best or most appropriate ... often changes over time.  For example, within Altiverb (very, very good, btw), some days I might prefer Pianoteq's sound with the impulse response of a sampled plate reverb; other days I might select a particular studio; on still other days, I might prefer the impulse response of a small club or a hall, and "almost" never a church or cathedral for a piano.  The one exception for using a wet cathedral sound was several years ago, when I recorded Debussy's "The Engulfed Cathedral."

I have also found it extremely useful to set up more than one auxiliary bus for more than one type of reverb, such that I can use DAW faders in Logic Pro X (pronounced 'ten', not the letter 'X') to capture the early reflections of one space and blend it with longer reverb tails of a different space.

Throughout all of this playing around, I can state confidently that I find NO SINGLE external reverb vendor, nor ANY SINGLE setup or modified preset within any given brand of external reverb -- to which I can define as "best".  Restated, I have never found a reverb that fools my ears (or will fool your ears) into believing I am in the real acoustic space of a piano in a definable room.  At best, every reverb -- regardless of price -- is an approximation of how much we are willing to suspend reality and believe we are hearing the real thing.

I can tell you that from listening to decades of well-recorded commercial piano recordings of all musical genres, some of the nicest sounding recordings of the past seem to have plate reverbs applied to them, even if the use of plate reverbs was not specified in a given album's liner notes.

Cheers,

Joe