Olivier W wrote:look at this :
Original :
The PPP to FFF are better on this original : (perhaps it was a problem with Pianoteq Velocity curve with extracted MIDI Piano ROLL)
Hi all!
This is interesting! How is this MIDI constructed and is it somewhere available for download?
Am I right saying that only way to make true Horowitz MIDI performance would be to ask him to MIDI record one? And that’s not possible unfortunately…
Answers on this link https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8999
]]>look at this :
Original :
The PPP to FFF are better on this original : (perhaps it was a problem with Pianoteq Velocity curve with extracted MIDI Piano ROLL)
Hi all!
This is interesting! How is this MIDI constructed and is it somewhere available for download?
Am I right saying that only way to make true Horowitz MIDI performance would be to ask him to MIDI record one? And that’s not possible unfortunately…
]]>”We not only have stereoscopic ears; our ears actually transform the sound due to their shape, which our brains know how to decode into spatial information”.
Bravo!
Interesting this with the shape of our ears due to their shapes.(and ear canals and earflaps and the size of the head and the shape of the head too)
I have been thinking about this in a thread 2018…..I said that the sound is different in different ear canals, and earflaps, and the size and shape of the head have effect on how one feel it sounds…and room acustics and so on…..
Even if two people are standing beside a real piano where the sound come to both ears, maybe not at the same time, and with that rooms acustics, not at same time to both ears - it sounds different for both. We hear different.
With speaker listening I have the speakers positioned so that their angle to me is 60 degrees. An equilateral triangle is formed. And In order for me to get the right sound image, I try to sit in a fairly well-defined area, symmetrical to the speakers. But I I’m not satisfied.
But with my headphones I’m satisfied with Pianoteq sound (but my ears are old and have tinnitus, noises in both of my ears).
Maybe binaural in future can reproduce the live experience of sitting at a real grand piano and playing it as seated on the bench so everyone is happy with the sound, regardless of how the ears and the shape of the heads are
Well, that’s what I’m thinking
Best wishes,
Stig
btw, It’s sometimes easy to say in blind test which one is Ptq and which sampled, not because of what Ptq is missing but because of what sampled don’t have
]]>I also have the sampled "Bechstein Digital Grand" on Kontakt. As far as I'm aware, Pianoteq's Bechstein is based on those samples, and it can sound very similar, but the two are still easy to differentiate. Maybe I can upload some audio comparisons if people are interested.
]]>Original :
The PPP to FFF are better on this original : (perhaps it was a problem with Pianoteq Velocity curve with extracted MIDI Piano ROLL)
]]>it simulates the reverberation of sound as it hits the outer ear, which creates a far more realistic sense of depth. We not only have stereoscopic ears; our ears actually transform the sound due to their shape, which our brains know how to decode into spatial information.
If I can go a bit on a OT ear, I'd notice that I am always astonished by binaural recordings made with those mics shaped like ears, or even by cheap lavalier mics stuffed inside anatomy ear models. You can find plenty of examples of both in youtube, and they sound incredibly real (often time I have to take the headphones off to "check" that the sound is really coming from them).
On the other hand, PTQ binaural mode sounds just "normal stereo" to me, and by no means is astonishing like those other examples. Perhaps because PTQ just puts two normal microphones in the place where the ears would be, but does not model a ear-shaped environment around them?
Going back in topic, I agree with you (Opus32) that they have done quite a good job so far, but that they could do plenty more from the pure acoustic piano modeling. I hope they do, rather than just migrate all their efforts to the interesting but "unreal" of layering and morphing.
]]>Opus32 wrote:I can still hear what I am talking about in that recording. It's a digital/metallic ring, and it honestly kind of hurts my ears. ... It's a metallic sound, like the piano string was hit with a metal hammer rather than a felt one. I can listen to the real recording at a much higher volume without discomfort to my ears.
This is not a challenge but merely a question. Do you hear a metallic harshness in the following recording?
This is an E-piano Competition MIDI file, originally performed and recorded (to MIDI) by Konstantin Krasnitsky, of Rachmaninov's famous C-sharp minor Prelude, which includes a wide dynamic range including fortississimo, rendered and exported to audio by Pianoteq 7.5.2 using the NY Steinway D Classical preset. The only adjustment I made in Pianoteq was to move the right control point of the default linear velocity-response from 127 to 117.
When I'm playing I often move the right control point down to 115 or 110 for some Pianoteq presets, because my MIDI keyboard is a little "hot," registering forte velocities at only mezzo finger pressure.
https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...nitsky.mp3
Do you hear anything objectionable in the sound of the virtual piano in that recording? Would you make any suggestions regarding altering that sound?
--
Yes, I do still hear the metallic overtones, digital "narrowness" of sound, as well as a bit of the same sort of harshness. It's not just a matter of forte, it also affects the mellower tones, since those brighter tones are still present but not at a state that makes them totally believable yet.
So, I want to make sure I'm clear that the presence of high overtones isn't what I'm criticizing; it's the way that they happen. High, inharmonic overtones are a significant part of how a high-end piano sounds, which is part of what gives the notes a crisp sound.
Perhaps it would be helpful to come up with some subjective metrics to judge pianos by, and then from there, work to figure out what physical characteristics are contributing most to the quality of those metrics.
Judgement metrics:
Crispness
Clarity
Resonance
Responsiveness
Sustain
Tonal Balance
Realism
Physical parameters:
Resonance
Hammer impact characteristics
String characteristics (i.e. density, and sometimes piano strings have a core of one material, and then are wound by another material, so the complexity can go way up).
This is one of those issues where it's most likely the case that there's still a lot of unknowns. Like, you can write scientific and engineering papers on the acoustics of pianos, and as such, there's a lot more room for improvement than people probably realize, without adding computational intensiveness.
It's highly unlikely that the engineers at Modartt have some physically perfect simulation; this is an engineered product that has benefits and trade-offs like anything else. And, perhaps the most difficult part of this is that you're actually dealing with a highly integrated combination of engineering and artistic characteristics in the same product.
]]>When we said non real time computing, we don't refer about the same algorithms, but about an Idea to create new algorithm with more precision to the point real time would not be enough, as the algoritms would be too heavy.
Pianoteq Creation was based in a reasearch about mathematic equation reduction/summarize, of physical model. It try to get all redundant elements to find a shortcut in the computation. Without it a 100% pure calculation of everthing would take a week.
I can hear some of what called harshness in the link to V6 of Op 23 NO5, but it's reduced in pianoteq 7.5, and some real brands also have a similar of it. The video shows velocity curves reaching FFF many times, when in reality FFF it's not so easy to reach.
I wonder if would be a good idea to have a 4th adjust for hammer hardness for pianoteq, or just to work limit a bit it for FF and FFF.
I'm saying that you can likely create more efficient, more realistic algorithms, and that refinement of the existing algorithms should focus on a deeper, more robust sympathetic resonance and a more careful voicing of inharmonicity as it relates to having a metallic vs. woody sound, as well as inharmonicity/harmonicity as it relates to hammer hardness. A more robust treatment of hammer shaping/hardness probably should also be available. I.e. it seems to me that there's more to hammer characteristics that could be added to and refined. I.e. a particular felt and a particular leather might have the same "hardness," but the leather may sound a little bit differently, and perhaps felt would further reduce imparting higher tones than leather.
There's still room for improvement within the current level of computing power. I'll give you an example of something that utilizes clever algorithms to bypass computational limitation: Unreal Engine 5's Nanite system, which basically allows relatively modest GPUs to do real-time rendering of assets with trillions of polygons by efficiently computing what to render. Interestingly, UE5 does something really cool with sound too: it simulates the reverberation of sound as it hits the outer ear, which creates a far more realistic sense of depth. We not only have stereoscopic ears; our ears actually transform the sound due to their shape, which our brains know how to decode into spatial information.
Like, you might think about how since the piano is a continuous shape, you'll have somewhat complicated wavefront as it comes to your ear, especially from the resonating of the wood. But, you could compute a lot of this sort of thing analytically first; that is, on pencil and paper, write out the solutions to differential equations that would give you a transformation to create this effect so that the program itself doesn't have to do so much work.
]]>Key Fumbler wrote:I think what stands between Pianoteq and absolute realism is the fact that it has to be rendered in real time, and notably on a multitude of different budget CPUs and platforms.
I don't think that this is the issue, not entirely. I mean, it is and it isn't, but what you do is you push it to what you can do within your current capability and tweak the spots where you can't make it perfect.
Like, you're not going to simulate the sound waves in a piano, simulating all of the overtones in the cabinetry.
I think that a lot of what makes a piano sound good is actually relatively physically simple. You need inharmonicity to say "this is a piano," but the brunt of the tones that make a piano sound nice are harmonic tones, and the phase shifting of those tones, which means that there are relatively few of those.
And, in principle, I'd assume that pianoteq takes physical parameters, puts them through solved equations (rather than brute-force numerical ones) that give you outputs that match a piano.
I actually covered that tweaking/refinement point myself in the very next line of my reply when I said:
"As the CPU base line gets better so the Pianoteq engine will benefit from continuous simultaneous tweaking for further refinement (within a given version of the physical model) and the greater complexity of the latest model."
I'm sure the art of physical modelling for this real time simulation does indeed involve a lot of precalculated data as you describe. I'm sure as the model is further refined over the years the laws of diminishing returns get steeper and steeper. After all would it make sense commercially if they could make it sound say subjectively 1-5% more realistic (that many or even most user would not notice) for say triple the CPU hit?
I guess Phil Best is using the latest version here, but who knows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G372PK7uIVQ
Pianoteq Creation was based in a reasearch about mathematic equation reduction/summarize, of physical model. It try to get all redundant elements to find a shortcut in the computation. Without it a 100% pure calculation of everthing would take a week.
I can hear some of what called harshness in the link to V6 of Op 23 NO5, but it's reduced in pianoteq 7.5, and some real brands also have a similar of it. The video shows velocity curves reaching FFF many times, when in reality FFF it's not so easy to reach.
I wonder if would be a good idea to have a 4th adjust for hammer hardness for pianoteq, or just to work limit a bit it for FF and FFF.
]]>This isn't a simple "here's a quick fix" type of post; I've spent hundreds of hours 60-70% of my days since march last year adjusting this, tuning every parameter, adjusting every parameter, sometimes editing the individual overtones of notes, and before that I spent hundreds of hours tweaking the default Steinway in Logic Pro to try to make that sound better, as well as the harpsichord. And before that, I was always very nitpicky about the characteristics of pianos, including nice Steinways, and payed attention to which recordings had the pianos I liked the most, and that's something that has persisted for the better part of 15 years now.
Very interesting. Where you able to produce improvements? I spent much less time (still too much) and I didn't.
What I'm doing in this post is trying to offer that experience and perspective as feedback to the engineers so that they have an idea of what to focus on. I'm not trying to say that I'm some master at it, especially since I've never done piano maintenance or building.
I think for this purpose you'd better contact them via the support: they might or might not closely read messages here, especially this time of the year.
Edit: also majored in physics.
Interestingly I did too. Perhaps for such a reason everything you say resonates (pun intended ) so much with me, from the "problem" with the sound not being "perfect" to the determination to fix it, and always in the context of "generally I like it, but I want it better"
]]>The increasing the impedance tends to carry the more pleasant metallic overtones; I should have been more specific. It's the initial bell tone right off the impact - but not the "warm bell tone" of a Steinway, but rather a harsh, ringy bell-tone that is present in all the revamped presets.
Decrease the Impedance. Increase Q Factor. Just enough to lose the high end of the sound.
I like the simplicity of this suggestion! It reminds me of an idea that somebody proposed a while ago: how about a simple 'tone control' slider in addition to the 'condition' slider? I think it would be appreciated by a lot of users.
]]>The increasing the impedance tends to carry the more pleasant metallic overtones; I should have been more specific. It's the initial bell tone right off the impact - but not the "warm bell tone" of a Steinway, but rather a harsh, ringy bell-tone that is present in all the revamped presets.
Decrease the Impedance. Increase Q Factor. Just enough to lose the high end of the sound.
]]>I can still hear what I am talking about in that recording. It's a digital/metallic ring, and it honestly kind of hurts my ears. ... It's a metallic sound, like the piano string was hit with a metal hammer rather than a felt one. I can listen to the real recording at a much higher volume without discomfort to my ears.
This is not a challenge but merely a question. Do you hear a metallic harshness in the following recording?
This is an E-piano Competition MIDI file, originally performed and recorded (to MIDI) by Konstantin Krasnitsky, of Rachmaninov's famous C-sharp minor Prelude, which includes a wide dynamic range including fortississimo, rendered and exported to audio by Pianoteq 7.5.2 using the NY Steinway D Classical preset. The only adjustment I made in Pianoteq was to move the right control point of the default linear velocity-response from 127 to 117.
When I'm playing I often move the right control point down to 115 or 110 for some Pianoteq presets, because my MIDI keyboard is a little "hot," registering forte velocities at only mezzo finger pressure.
https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...nitsky.mp3
Do you hear anything objectionable in the sound of the virtual piano in that recording? Would you make any suggestions regarding altering that sound?
--
