Possible FXP Request?

What do you mean here by action response? And you can ID a piano solely by this alone!?!?

Basically, you can identify a piano from something as simple as that, but there will always be some degree of guesswork unless you know extremely precise details.

Most high-end Yamahas have very light actions.  Japanese pianos like Kawai and Yamaha have longer key sticks and lighter whippens which give them a different response/feel/sound.  Mendelssohn sounds really good on these kinds of pianos because the action helps you play the notes more quickly and clearly.  It's kind-of like the balance of point of different violin bows, which makes the exaction position for "bouncing" bow strokes vary slightly from one bow to another.  Different piano actions from different brands will have slightly different centers of gravity and interial/weight transfer properties, which you can definitely feel as a pianist, and sometimes you can hear it in a performance.

Kawai have even wilder action variations than Yamaha, like the Carbon Fiber Millennium III action which doesn't have a wooden whippen at all, it's a solid abs plastic/carbon fiber option which, theoretically, requires less maintenance and regulation since it won't change shape with temperature and humidity like a wooden action.  Because the carbon fiber is much lighter, they lengthen the key stick significantly to compensate, which in turn, results in a very, very different "touch" response that a good pianist will immediately "feel."  While my Bechstein has much shorter key sticks and a heavier whippen, which totally changes the response of the instrument and makes it feel much more like a turn of the century instrument.  The different actions contribute significantly to why Kawai (and to an extent Yamaha) instruments sound very different from any European and American instruments.  Though I should note that some lower-end Yamahas in recent years (both digital and acoustic) have actions that are way too heavy, which creates a totally different sound/feel.

While I can't guarantee that it's a 70s/80s Yamaha, it sounds a lot like a C7 1980 Yamaha (rebuilt) I tried a few years ago in a showroom.  If the piano were much older than that, it would sound somewhat different because of how the parts age does change the sound, and Yamahas weren't really available in North America before 1960 or even 1970, and it wasn't until the mid-70s that they started to be considered "concert" instruments.  Since the recording is 1992, the likelihood that it's a 90s piano is fairly low.  Sure...it could be a Steinway B that was carefully regulated by a technician to have a feel that resembles a Yamaha (that's very doable--a good technician is worth more than any brand distinction), but I agree with the OP's instinct that it's something along the lines of the Yamaha C7.  It could be something larger like the CFIII, but the bass--especially in the Cadenza at 23:45 doesn't sound like it does on a Steinway D or Boesendorfer Imperial which I've tested this piece on before.  On a D, F308, or Imperial, there's more of a "swelling" resonance--even without the sustain pedal, which this doesn't have, which tends towards a semi-concert instrument like the C7 of B instead of the CFIII or D.  The CFIII may actually have louder bass and more bass resonance than the D, but that's gleaned from recordings I've listened to not from a side-by-side comparison of several examples of each instrument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YXdfKK4J0

A good comparison is Jack's performance of the piece at Carnagie on Steinway D where you can see exactly what fingering and pedals are in use.  The sound is quite different.  In fairness, Jack's technique is different, there's no question of that.  Jack uses more hand weight in his playing, while--having seen Marc play this as well--Marc uses more finger weight.  So, during the Cadenza which requires you to play the repeated notes in alternating hands with the middle finger only (which is nothing but brutal), Jack brings his elbows out and gets motion from the wrists and palms while keeping his straight (a more Russian technique).  Marc, on the other hand (pun tragically intended), brings his elbows in, keeps the hands together--one above the other, and arcs his fingers almost vertically (a more German technique) to give the keystroke attack more of a "bite" to it.  I use Jack's technique when playing this passage, but a concert pianist friend of mine uses Marc's when playing this.  Both approaches are equally valid, but they will change the sound somewhat.  That said, it's still fair to try to draw conclusions about the instruments being used in a comparison like this.

Here is video of Marc playing but the quality is pretty terrible, but you can see his technique and make some sound observations from the fact it looks and sounds like he's at a Steinway D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOpHGApRwf0

I've met both of them, Marc when he played the Second Brahms in early 2014 (sadly he didn't do any Alkan but I got to see his technique very closely) and Jack when played for the Alkan Bicentennial (this piece, along with the Alkan Symphony, Allegro Barbaro, and some of his own compositions) in late 2013.  They're both excellent pianists, well-informed, and amiable.

The room, the microphones, the preamps, and any over-eager recording technicians will always change the sound significantly between the performance and the recording.  Though Classical recordings are usually as untouched and "clean" as possible.

Sorry for the chain of posts.  I remembered a recording I had of Jack playing the Concerto on a Steinway B, and it sounds much closer to the recording than the Steinway D.

So I can say with fair certainty that it's a 1980s Yamaha C7.  I will create an FXP based on my old Yamaha CFX emulation to try to match the recording and the scaling/size of the C7.

It could be a few days or weeks before it's finished and ready for upload.  AM20046, Is that alright?  Any other details about the recording that people can find will also continue to be useful.

Qexl, that's amazing!  Strong work.  The forum mechanics allowed me to simultaneously play your posted Chopin as well as the original Youtube posting - they sound extremely similar, and quite gentle, both.

Hi guys, sorry if I was late. So to @tmyoung: You said that the piano was a Yamaha C7 from the 1980's right? Well, this piano sounds familiar to the Alkan concerto Music & Arts recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP4a7xRpvls Also, the person who uploaded this video said to one of my comments: "He recorded his Music & Arts studio version in the same church the next day." One more thing, if you see the length of the piano, I could tell that it was a Yamaha CFIII because I do know this is a 9 ft Yamaha (CFX's didn't exist during the time of the recording). Also, to @Qexl: Really nice, I love your attempt at making that preset. Somebody also made a similar preset like the recording, but with Steinway D. I also like that preset too.

You're welcome AM20046, it was a lot of fun.

This link is a really good place to learn a bit about it, it's the "Pianoteq Workshops" page.

It shows 3 different piano sounds being emulated point by point, with audio samples to listen to with a click and final FXPs to download.

Not saying it's real simple but you can get a lot from sticking with it

Excellent AM - keep at it - really makes my day to see people get into this

https://forum.modartt.com/file/50a3onfr
https://forum.modartt.com/download.php?id=3883

I've gotten a basic FXP ready--sorry for the delay.  The CFIII is a bit of puzzle, because there isn't much technical information published and accessible online about it (certainly when compared to the CFX); there aren't many examples of the instrument that are recorded in ideal conditions (and guaranteed not to be the CFIIIS)--and the examples that are available online vary significantly (probably because the differences between the CFIII and CFIIIS aren't obvious); and it has a very unusual scaling that was changed significantly for the CFX.

Because of older Steinway Patents (I believe) regarding placement of the bass bridge, other piano makers have had to come up with novel solutions for the design/scaling of bass strings to match the general sound of a Steinway D without replicating the actual positioning of the bass bridge on the soundboard.  I suspect that Baldwin, for example, used triple wound the bass string to give greater strength to sound and to compensate for the lack of kinetic sound energy transfer from the bridge to the soundboard because the bridge had to be positioned differently from the Centennial Steinway design.  This may also be why Mason and Hamblin have a different structural support for the underside of the instrument that supposedly distributes sound energy more efficiently or why Bosendorfer uses "resonating" cases, and so on...

Yamaha used several unique tricks for replicating the Steinway approach without replicating it and for resolving the "bass-tenor break" between the two bridges which is usually audible in badly designed or badly maintained pianos.  Yamaha typically uses a single bridge instead of separate bass and tenor bridges.  This I suspect, in addition to being something they can patent and perfect themselves, is to help increase the overall area of energy transfer to more of the soundboard for the whole instrument, giving the bass (and entire range, for that matter) greater strength and power more quickly to more remote parts of the soundboard, because the bridge can't sit exactly where the Steinway Patents have it which is considered--if I recall correctly--something of a sweet spot for resonance.  Yamaha also, only for the CFIII (not for the C7 or CFX or any other instrument that I'm aware of), extended the trichord range of the piano seven notes lower than usual (taking the trichords across the traditional bridge break) to unify the sound of those notes better.

However, both tricks bring disadvantages: the single piece bridge changes the color slightly of the sound (making it slightly more muted than a traditional Steinway sound) and it doesn't eliminate the sound of the bridge break, it only diminishes it.  The latter trick gives the instrument a stronger (arguably warmer) mid-bass, but the added strings for extending the trichord range of the piano appear to force the lowest bass strings even farther away from the ideal energy transfer point that creates the "Steinway sound" in bass strings.  This quiets those strings somewhat, and then the contrast with the louder trichords in the mid-bass makes them seem even quieter.  The net result is an instrument that sounds like a concert grand from the mid-bass to the high tenor but sounds like a smaller instrument (like a Steinway B or Yamaha C7) in the lowest bass range.  (Hence why I first thought it was a C7 not a CFIII while listening to it.)

The good news for the FXP is that the new resonance eqs allow for some compensation for the unusual trichord scaling, but the bad news is that with the COVID situation, I would need to test a CFIII to get precise results, which won't be possible for the foreseeable future.  While I'm generally pleased that I've matched the general tone color of the CFIII in the preset, it's not nearly as precise as it could be if I could spend a few hours testing one.  Also, this is a 5 mic preset, so if you want to more closely resemble the Hamelin recording, disable the last three mics, since the first stereo pair will be much closer to the mics and ambient spacing that would have been used in the original recording, but the 5 mics will be nicer for warmer recordings.  Any mid to large recording room or small to medium hall reverb will work nicely with the preset, if you don't have access to the old convolutions files I use in my presets.

To add to the general confusion about the CFIII, it was replaced by the CFIIIS in 1990, and Yamaha document isn't entirely clear what tonal, scaling, and structural differences were included in that redesign, and many people posting about the CFIII will group it together with the CFIIIS as though they are functionally identical, which in my experience isn't the case.  The new CFX is also completely different and purported solves the quiet low bass problem (but I don't know if it still has any of the trichord scaling or other novel features of the CFIII).  Both have a Yamaha sound and Yamaha-style of action (long keysticks, fast key drop times, and high damper efficiency), but they sound totally different.

https://www.michellespiano.com/wp-conte...scaled.jpg

I have been studying the presets in the Pianoteq Workshop. I'm pretty confused at this point how these actually work. If anyone can teach me an easier way on how to do these type of professional presets, that would be helpful because I'm getting speechless on how these people can make these types of presets.