RL (Real Life)

Real Life is, that often velocity-response is far behind the quality, that sound-engineering has reached.

Just watch short performances on TV and how often young musicians are sitting behind their shiny Nord or something and the velocity-dynamic is so lousy, that only zapping helps

Pianoteq has so many great piano sounds, but they suffer, when a velocity-response just fits (at best) to one special Grand, but not to the vintage Electric-Pianos or the Grand Piano of the last year. Often people are not even aware, that it is just the velocity-response and not the modelled sound, that is flimsy.

I agree we have to reach the simplicity of acoustic pianos in this regard. A resort could be some kind of "Autocalibration", which recognizes the weaknesses of a MIDI-controller/Instrument/Human combination on a statistical basis.

Because factory-instruments can vary, one or more curves (when played with different MIDI-controllers) should be saveable with each preset.

Okay, that's Dream Life

I do understand the concern and the performance ideas behind it but in RL don't you get accustomed to the piano you are playing instead of fiddling each time with their action to adjust it to your own taste?

to a point...
though when i had my real-world 1790s fortepiano i found myself doing quite a bit of fiddling on a regular basis... 'one of the intimate joys of working with an instrument vs a typewriter i suppose...

Bluethner Mono (green) matches the L-channel of Bluethner soundrecording.
Steingraeber Mono (yellow) dito with L-channel of Steingraeber soundrecording.

So it seems in Monophonic mode just the left mic is used and has the same room position as in soundrecording.

Because L of Steingraeber has ~ 5 dB lower level than L of Bluethner, the same drop results when switching from Bluethner Mono to Steingraeber Mono.

I see no evidence for different velocity-responses of the output-level of Bluethner and Steingraeber.

Hence in the moment I have no explanation, why both instruments respond differently to a given velocity-curve (the "linear" for example).

Maybe the sound-"coloration" is more velocity-responsive in one of the instruments.

Or the asymmetric and reverse level in both stereo-channels has an influence. For example, sometimes hearing is degraded more on one ear and differently balanced channels are having more effect then.

The result of this is a bit worrying. I'm used to a frozen velocity-curve in my PTQ-setup.

A better solution seems to be to save individual velocity-curves to each preset separately. And not just the velocity maps, but also the other maps, like Sustain pedal map (I'm using continuous sustain controller). But this more complicated and effort than it should be.

Velocity induced hassles remain the Nr.1-problem in virtual-piano technology in my opinion.

Cheers

Good idea to use the single microphone of Monophonic mode, thanks. But it is not clear, which position it has in each Grand preset.

"Mono output mode"

What's that?

Maybe I need your help in interpretation.

Scenario was:
I created a MIDI-file with increasing/crescendo velocities of middle-C (note C3) from 7 to 126 in sixteen steps.

I loaded this MIDI in Pianoteq v6.2.2 and rendered it to a stereo-wav. One for Bluethner and one for Steingraeber.

In stereo-recordings L und R are different, so I splitted the tracks and measured the average-level of the first 0.5 s of each tone (Analyze-tool "Contrast" in Audacity).

One thing is special. With Bluethner channel L is much louder than R. With Steingraeber it is vice versa, right channel is much louder. Just a result of the mic-positions in PTQ?

Another observation: starting from around velocity 70 Bluethner diverges from Steingraeber. The stereo-sum of Bluethner (dark- and light-blue) gets louder than Steingraeber (dark- and light-red).

Just my imagination?

Same impression for me: with the last version the factory velocity curve seems more bright than before. I also used a little brighter setting before but now, the linear one from 0,0 to 127.127 is ok. I even tend to soften it a little bit

No, indeed there were some adjustments to all other models as well. It's in the changelog.

I'm a bit surprised.

In another thread I worked with *default* settings of PTQ to have standardized conditions for measurements. This implies *default* linear velocity mapping.

By this accident I noticed, that the linear velocity has become much mor playable with my Kawai-Controller, than in the past. Especially with the new Steingraeber.

The velocity-response seems to have changed in newer versions of PTQ so that my hard taylored curve is not the best fit any longer (too responsive/bright).

Is it just my impression??

All I find is changelog 6.2.0 (2018/06/13)
...
    Minor revoicing of all grand pianos.
    Pianissimo behaviour improved for all grand pianos.
...

and some statements from others in this thread, that could go in this direction:

"BUT I can attest that I've adjusted back the velocity curve to almost linear"

"I'm playing Pianoteq through my CA97 and have all of a sudden found it to work wondefully well"

Just my imagination?

Thanks

A just recorded rendition of Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.1 with the Steingraeber

https://youtu.be/XWcaXe0PKwo

Enjoy!

I just purchased the Studio Pro Bundle on Friday 6/22/18, which is supposed to come with "all instruments" and all that come out for a year. I find the Steingraeber under Demos, rather than with the acoustic pianos.

I took Evil Dragon's advice from earlier in the thread "In this case, go to Pianoteq's Options->About->Update licence." However, though I did that several times, it didn't unlock the Steingraeber.

Has anyone had a similar problem and gotten a resolution? I've written to Modartt but no answer (to be fair, I wrote them late on a Friday, their time, and I might well get a response on Monday).

So Monday arrived, and now doing Evil Dragon's trick works. The difference is that the Steingraeber is listed on this page now: https://www.pianoteq.com/user_area?s=products. I guess a tech support person went in and added it to my list of owned products. Hope this helps anyone else in a similar situation.

So, if anyone knows “which” controller keyboard Pianoteq used, I’d be really interested .... Part of that interest is because the action itself on a Steingraeber is so uniquely tuned to the instrument.

The classical demos aren't made with a conventional controller keyboard. They used a Yamaha (concert?) grand with Disklavier to record performance data. I don't know about other demos.