Internal Sample rate

Won't happen for the Stage.

Also there's no real difference in the sound. Piano doesn't get much spectral info above 10k anyways, so calculating it at 48k vs 96k doesn't really generate any extra harmonics. You've been placeboed.

Because it's a Pro feature and that's what Modartt has decided. It won't happen in Stage.

They will not do it, the feature comparison chart is definitive. It's been this way ever since Pianoteq 4.

https://www.pianoteq.com/pianoteq6

There's only difference in CPU usage when using 192k internal computation. It is there to avoid resampling to host sample rate, I would assume. Even the manual says "All versions offer the same sound, instruments and playability".

Well to answer your question - there's no technical obstruction to implementing that feature in Stage. But it was Modartt's decision not to do it for Stage and Standard versions ever since these three versions of Pianoteq were introduced in Pianoteq 4. BTW I have beta tested all these versions all the way back to Pianoteq 3, so I have insight.

That said, I am not sure how you even heard the difference, when this option for setting internal sample rate above 48k is not included in the Pianoteq demo (because there's only Stage and Standard demos, there's no demo for Pro)?

I use an audio spectrum analyzer program called Smaart6  (yes, it has two a's)  There is nothing to reproduce above about 15kHz … there is almost a brick wall there.

Lanny

...which is easily written off as cognitive bias.

Maybe this could convince you:

A zoomed to the sample level portion of the blues demo at 192 kHz, 96 kHz and 48 kHz. The exact same waveform (left, right). Notice that there is visible repeated copies of the same value at 192 kHz and 96 kHz...

... as in the McGurk Effect. Weird but true!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

btw, a while ago I too was convinced that I 'needed' a higher sample rate than 48k, but it became clear to me that the quality of the DA conversion was the crucial factor. If it seems to work better running your audio interface at 96k (I think that's possible even in Stage) and your computer can handle it, then nobody's going to stop you...

For my orangepi pc I reduced the internal sample rate to 22kHz. Well, it still sounds excellent. I don't hear much difference compared to my desktop with 48kHz.

These claims come up frequently.  The only way to really prove you are hearing what you think you are hearing is with a double-blind ABX test.

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?ti....9/foo_abx

I'm sure someone (who owns Pro) could create a high-sample-rate and 48k-sample-rate version of some MIDI file.  If you want help, please ask, that's what the forum is here for.

This is not to be dismissive.  My own experience is that I believed I heard all sorts of things until I subjected myself to this sort of test.  The results were humbling, but very instructive (and better for my wallet).

Might wanna ask that question Modartt themselves via their support system.

I do not want to sound unfriendly, but in the privative software world, the software creator decides what to put in each version. For instance, if you use Windows, the Home version will lack some encryption and network features which Pro has. 
There is a base version for a price, and if you want more features, they cost money, but you have the freedom to decide if you want to pay for them or not. By the way I have the Pro version and I believe that buying it was a act of excess of enthusiasm, since I only start the program and play on the home presets (Only used pro features during a month or something like that). About 192KHz as many said here, the sound difference is unnoticeable, but CPU load is quite bigger.

Probably because professional sound engineers want to use the highest possible sample rate as a margin of safety when doing a lot of numerical post-processing that could impact the final result (before downsampling to 44.1 or 48 kHz for release) I think 96 kHz is normal for post-processing, probably 192 kHz is overkill but may be a demand from professionals. There are even higher sample rates available, but then if you want to take into account the processing involved if used internally, it could be too much for currently available computers.

Pianoteq is also linked to the limits of the audio system in your computer. For example I use Pianoteq Pro on a Mac Pro that has a 192 kHz capable DAC, but OSX's Core Audio is limited to 96 kHz, so I don't see 192 kHz offered in the Device panel...

So to be clear, I agree that it is a fair question.  However, I believe the answer you got, "the designers decided they would have a base version, and then a higher-priced version that had extra features they thought the marketplace would pay for, and chose higher internal sample rate as one of those up-sell features", is probably the best answer you are going to get.  I get that this is unsatisfying for you; you want to know why they made this decision.  I think this was likely a marketing decision.  The sellers thought, "Higher internal sampling is something some people would want," evidently true due to your original post.  They also thought "Some of those that want it will be willing to pay for it."  Even if you aren't willing to pay, others might.

Then the thread somewhat devolved into a separate, but related question, "Why do you want it?  You should not be able to hear the difference."  You have decided not to go there, which is totally your right. 

I don't think you will get a better answer to your first question.  If you want to address the 2nd, let us know and we can try to help on that.

Supposedly, the highest frequency a piano can produce is 15kHz. On the other hand, supposedly people of middle ages can't hear anything above 15kHz. For the sound card to produce 15kHz, the sample rate must at least be 30kHz, because you need one point for the peak and one point for the trough in order to construct the 15kHz waveform. 30kHz is FINE provided the sound of 15kHz is always in phase with the sample rate, meaning that the peaks and troughs of the waveform occurs right at the middle of every sample. However, if the peaks and troughs occur right at the points in between the samples, the result is NO SOUND, because every sample will register 0 level. In actual music, the phase of the 15kHz will be random, so consequently the loudness of the 15kHz output will be softer than what it should be and and varied according to the phase it happen to be at. On top of that, the phase of the output is shifted to be in line with the middle of the samples. In a nutshell, a 30kHz sample rate can't reproduce 15kHz at the correct loudness. The average loudness is only 50% of what it should be.

Furthermore, in actual music, you don't just reproduce 15kHz. Any frequency which is not a factor of 30kHz will produce beats, on top of the phase shifts. You will hear serious degradation of the high frequencies.

To reproduce 15kHz, with 30kHz sample rate, you are using only two dots to represent a waveform. with 60kHz, you are using only four dots to represent a waveform. With 120kHz, you are using only 8 dots, not bad, but not great. 240kHz, you are using only 16 dots, so that's pretty fine. You need high sample rates, say 192kHz, not because a human ear can hear 96kHz, but because we need to hear frequencies like 15kHz at the correct loudness, without phase distortion, and other artifacts.

So, with 192kHz, to me, it's the bare minimum to be considered HiFi. OF COURSE I can hear the difference, because i also own a real piano. Please, the difference is huge. I also tune the piano by ear. With 48kHz sample rate, I can barely hear the beat frequencies when i press F3 and A3, pretending that i'm trying to set the first octave (if you're an aural tuner you'll know what i mean). With 48kHz sample rate, i can't tune the piano at all. So, Modart, please include 192kHz sample rate for Pianoteq Stage. Thank you. Otherwise, please don't claim to be the Fourth Generation Piano Instrument if you can't even provide the bare minimum fidelity a piano player requires. Your Stage version is supposed to be adequate for one who only plays, no? I suggest providing 192kHz across the board so at least it's playable, because the Stage version is marketed to be meant for players. Reserve the higher price for Pro with all the tweakings for music producers. thank you again.

I am comfortable with the way things stand. If Pianoteq changed their mind - I'd be fine with that - but I see why it is the way it is. I thought this thread was kind of nailed shut.

Since it's back I feel it's worth some words from my perspective.

@yeyonghe - this is how I evaluate this topic:

192kHz is a false 'mirage' for entry level purposes, in my view.

For 'normal' or 'entry level' listening, it's completely unnecessary - all too many things which make it a spurious choice and a nonsense (fool's gold) to want without professional reason.

Mostly, for playing I use 48kHz (native to the hardware) and it's better than CD, runs fast, no glitches - can't be happier, and I'm practically never using 192kHz, except for rare, professional type reasons (not always but sometimes).

To put it in "Stage" version, would likely just cause glitches when people try to use it. Then there would be 'support issues' like "Help me, I can't get sound - why is 192kHz there, if I can't use it and it crashes my sound driver - how silly".

In life, there are often no true 'best' decisions - but this one by Pianoteq is good as far as I'm concerned - but the topic is certainly on a cusp of bizarre where it collides with reality, so therefore rife with variant ideas.

If you're professional enough to need 192kHz for tuning (assuming your audio gear works technically to spec) then, IMO that's a professional level need, NOT an entry level bonus. Stage is fine for live performing - more important to have adequate FOH etc.. again, professional needs dictate in this area also. For example, if touring with a national ballet company, you might consider Pro.

@yeyonghe, I understand having wonderful hearing is a great thing but entry level tier is not appropriate for that, given 192kHz is almost 100% confined to studio use (destructive editing - depending on choice of dither etc.. complications arise again only for professional grade reasons). You don't 'need' that - unless you're doing something more "Pro". I doubt your audio system would handle it, unless you paid for quite a professional system Aha! I think a pattern emerges, no? It's not meant to be better for most people, it's meant for studio equipment primarily. If you're lucky enough to have great equipment at home, then you should still get Pro because, this further equips you for professional work.

You need to pay for such things, if the software company includes it for those purposes.

Most purchasers of Stage won't have DAC etc. to hear it anyway - and it's not inevitable that most will A/B it successfully anyway (or even have entry level speakers for playback). But, it IS good to have in a studio/multi-track situation and other professional settings. That really should be enough said (including all the good advice above).

There's no conspiracy of "Pro" audio users trying to keep 192kHz out of the hands of Stage users - it's just "IF you need 192kHz, you're probably well within Pro territory". Sorry if some of this is repetitive - I'm typing without editing too much - trying to post it as time runs away..

Today, for a personal project I tweaked then selectively bounced some 50 tracks down for a final mix, then master - for that, I'm glad of higher res. but even so, I didn't use 192kHz. It's a choice, not a requirement - and for that song, a nice analog component to it meant that I preferred to work closer to CD spec - just a little dither meant a wonderful result. Also, working lower means some chains load/run quicker, less worry about CPU and chunks of huge files in the pool.. so 'better' is always dependent upon personal choices relating to a project. If you're balancing stuff like that, then you probably should sleep better at night after purchasing Pro IMO.

Let's say I put multiple tracks of Pianoteq at 192, each with their own chain of plugins. I could make a mix (basic) and export it at whatever res. I want. But, more likely, if many instances of VST and chains upon chains of them are involved, I'm going to want to freeze or bounce these tracks to audio tracks rather than 'instrument' tracks with all the extra overhead (I prefer to bounce, and remove instruments in my own workflow, make decisions and stick it etc.). So 192 might be good for that.

I just can't see any good reason for it other than such as the above.

If you have 'professional level' use for the software, buying the professional version is the expected, or correct path, no matter what software or task it fulfils - and I recommend Pro (Studio actually, with all instruments, is where the best value is, as long as you intend to collect all instruments of course).

Surely if your ears are so attuned to the very smallest details, you would prefer Pro in any case?

Lastly, I think of the 3 tiers like this:

Stage - play at home - play live - playback MIDI files
Standard - as above with extras.
Pro - everything the software can do.
Studio - as above plus all instruments too.

Great selection for all uses - that's with a long time buying and using software of all kinds since late 80s or so. Pianoteq is still on top of my list of that enormous pile of software, seriously.

It's a reasonable choice - and 192kHz isn't needed (unless you're bouncing dozens of tracks down and so on - not to get into dither choices etc.. too too much you don't need in entry-level software).

Most sincerely.

[edit: grammar]

If you play any note/chord on my piano, al sort of beatings will show up since it is out of tune...
I don't believe any audience can hear that subtleties of sound, and no virtual / digital instrument is near of producing any sound similar to the real thing, in the best of cases, they sound similar to a recording.

The sample rate/cutoff frequency does not have any bearing on the production of low frequency beats from partials in the audio spectrum. If the 48KHz sample rate in Pianoteq was causing this harm to the piano sound, then the 44.1KHz sample rate of CDs would be doing worse things to the excellent piano recordings released on them.

This can be easily illustrated by the fact that in a YouTube video demonstrating the effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPvj-Ux7f-g

the beats are clearly audible despite the sample rate. To analyze, I recorded it into a 44.1KHz file, and the frequency analysis confirms there is a very steep roll-off above 17KHz and no data above 20KHz, in the domain that 96KHz or 192KHz sample rates cover.

That's what you would expect of course, as, for example, a piano tuner can help someone who is having trouble with contiguous thirds by listening and mentoring the process over a webcam or the like, no 192KHz sampling there.

I'm between computers at the moment, so I don't have PT running to listen to, but if there is no subharmonic audible in the output, then I'd suspect it's not modeled in. Remember that in physical modelling, nothing appears in the output except what the algorithms generate.

And as far as using 48KHz sample rate for PT Stage goes, for live performance you want lowest latency, lowest CPU utilization and highest voice count. You don't want a fat buffer full of 192KHz samples most of which will be doing nothing...

Wow, I just tested that, have the Pro version, switched from 44,1 kHz to 192 kHz and back a number of times,
tested some thirds and other chords, there really is a huge difference in this resonating effects during decay of the sound.
Much, much more at 192 kHz, barely audible at 44.1 kHz.

I think, from now on, I only play at 192 kHz, (but have still to test, if my system has enough cpu power for it on the long run)

I agree to some extent with @yeyonghe in the fact that let's suppose a note had an harmonic of 60 kHz and another one of 62 kHz we would hear a 2 KHz beating, but anyway in Pianoteq I see very difficult this to happen since harmonics above around 22 kHz are cut off. For instance C7 has only 4 frequencies, the fundamental and three overtones.

By the other side, in a recording that 2 kHz beating would not be filtered since it is below the band limit of 22 kHz or 24 kHz

I own Pianoteq Pro and I'm seeing that for A3 the highest overtone is the 36th at 22078 Hz for Steinway D prelude, for F3 we get 45th at 22392 Hz, this does not change even if you set another sample rate (tested at 11025 Hz and 192 kHz).
The Nyquist limit for 44.1 / 48 kHz are 22.05 / 24 kHz, so not improvement should be perceived by changing the sample rate. I can't perform the F3-A3 test here because I'm not at home and I only have my laptop at hand.

If you don't believe Nyquist, please take an oscilloscope, create a 21 kHz sine in audacity with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, you will see on screen an horrible collection of points, nothing similar to a sine, and play back that sound to a channel of the oscilloscope, it is like magic when a perfect sine shows up!

Pianoteq's internal modelling at 192kHz will sound fantastic on a system which is capable of natively processing and reproducing that.

Still, the problem is, hearing whatever awesome 192kHz engine processed out through a 48kHz system, we're subject to whatever that DAC will do to re-jig the signal. Some better than others.

I would say my past experimentation with using 192kHz when my system is only capable of 48kHz, is long over. For me, it's:

48kHz<-->48kHz or < 192kHz<-->192kHz etc.

How to explain it better, I really don't know - I could write a wall.. but say basically the same thing in different ways.

yeyonghe said that using 192kHz, you can clearly hear beating better.. then later says:

I will recommend to yeyonghe and others to consider reflecting upon that. It answers a lot - and shows the circular reasoning at fault quite clearly IMO.

If playback was also matched at 192kHz capable equipment, I think you'd certainly hear a lot more clearly - but I think the clue that some are tripping over here, is that just because something might sound better with 192kHz on a 48kHz system, you're probably hearing some heightened elements but at the expense of other elements.

So, the internal Pianoteq setting, Perf tab, you can see that you can only set 192kHz if you also set 192kHz sample rate in the Devices tab.

Once you do that, you see on the Perf tab that it says: Host sample rate is now 192kHz.

But, that's a lie - actually, if your hardware can only process natively 48kHz.

In effect, you're saying "System, do as I command, play this back like this" - and the system says "OK, you're the boss".. then it opens that DAC can of worms. You are no longer hearing Pianoteq, as much as you're hearing the DAC engineers' hand in the whole thing - compression, refactoring, etc.. all on the fly.

Running incorrect settings like that can also horribly interfere with MIDI playback which is a kill switch for me - it's just not adequately "good" for most consumers who will blame Pianoteq.. "Aww, I thought Pianoteq was real piano - and it can't even play back MIDI" (nothing could be further from the truth).

So, the only logical thing to do, is supply the entry level product with consumer ranges of encoding - otherwise, you ask for more forum posts saying "What's wrong with this picture".

Anyway, that's really just the tip of a larger iceberg - interesting topic always - but it is all too easy to hear the DAC roundtrip as 'nice' on the face of it, only to crash on the rocks once you've spent some maybe weeks or months doing plenty A/B tests.

For me, the most horrible MIDI problem generated by running 192kHz on a 48kHz system, is notes cut off short, abruptly. It's like someone is fully damping some strings with their hands randomly (as if polyphony is affected).. somehow, a mis-translation is occurring which makes it impossible to recommend.

I just think with all that can go wrong, and all I find wrong after time, it's just best for most to stick with matched numbers - there be too many dragons!

[edit to add:]

Oh, worth a thought..

in terms of why 192kHz would be mainly for professional use.. like others say above it's partly for less destructive editing in music production.

To add something not often mentioned in these kinds of topics, consider this:

When you mix down from a higher resolution to a lower one for consumer release for instance, you can do it with no "dither" (giving an effect like say, having no anti-aliasing - but audio of course).. so the effect might suit electronica or very clean sounding snappy audio.. but, you might not want 'super clean' but instead something more 'analog' - but not as noisy. You might choose a dither routine which shifts 'noise' from where human hearing occurs, up to where no human can hear. Or another type of dither which variants of this - and each would suit different music for different reasons.

So, a 192kHz resolution 'allows for' those mixdown techniques without damaging the file (like you might remember from low grade MP3 type glitchy sounds). The resolution is not about "Hearing" more - it's more about being able to do multiple editing routines without harming the human hearing zone per se.

Hope some of that helps - and glad to be found wrong about anything.