I made my own Steinway!

Welcome to the forum Opus32!
A really nice good sounding pianosound. Well done! I have been struggling too, trying to get a ”nice” sound but I’m always coming back to the presets I modify a bit 
The sound is very beautiful on most pieces but when Moonlight Sonata came I reacted in some way, it sounded different in that piece. The piece after, Something I wrote, sounded good again. Can’t find words in english for the difference. Anyway, upload a fxp. It would be fun to test by playing my own music. And then we all can enjoy the new sound. Thank you!

Best,

Stig

OK, uploaded the FXP:

https://forum.modartt.com//file/cenzd7mm

EDIT:

Use this one instead:

https://forum.modartt.com//file/d89g21nu

For sure! I was more like failing to peel myself from the computer for 14 hours yesterday from around noon to 2 am..... lol.

Give the FXP a try when you can. There's a type of singing character to the upper register of a well-maintained Steinway that is unmistakable. I sound like their marketing department.... lol but it's true.

I was really trying to capture that here and I think I may have succeeded. Ears might be ringing this morning, but worth.

They call it the "bell tone" of a Steinway, but I think it's more of a woody, warm, resonant, crisp, medium tone that works really well for a lot of styles of music.

Awesome! Awesome to hear my creation in someone else's work too! Thank you.

Well, for you and anyone else, the best one I believe is the most recent one I made: https://forum.modartt.com//file/4seoq3e6

It's the one I used for the recording at the very top of my first post.

That said, taste in pianos is subjective, and the modifications I did, to make that most recent one the best to me was to spend time listening to modern Steinway recordings and voice it by getting the timbre in the right range of what would be normal for a Steinway. It really didn't feel like I hit that "just right" spot until that most recent FXP. It seems to respond well to changes in reverb as well, that is, it sounds like a nice piano recorded up close without the reverb on.

It's kind of funny how this happened. I grew up always wanting a Steinway, or other very nice grand piano since I had played on some nice Steinways as a teenager. And, it's a big deal to me, I've always had this very intense focus on the sound qualities of various pianos. In fact, I have a recurring dream/nightmare of being about to play on a nice piano at a dealer, and then there's always something wrong with the piano, like it falls apart or has keys suddenly missing, or I just don't get to start playing and have to leave. Like, yearning to play on a high quality piano is actually a major part of my life.

I guess also I studied physics, so I kind of have an idea of what to think about with the sound of pianos, though there's always more to learn. I.e., continuum mechanics is an especially important subject to the acoustics of pianos. If you think about nodes on a guitar string, that happens in 3d objects, and instead of nodes points on the string, you have nodal lines on a membrane instead of nodes on a string.

IDK, interesting stuff, the key to getting a piano right is to pay attention to how the overtones affect the characteristics. I think that data is possibly not good enough to do this by alone for the construction of an emulated digital piano, i.e. you probably need to see how the behavior of overtones affects the overall timbre. There are more than 8 overtones too, so it would be nice if I could have more direct control of the higher ones. I've noticed that in adjusting overtones, having a more continuous change seems to lead to a more pleasing sound. I.e. if you raise your first overtone, you should raise your second overtone by an intermediate amount so that you're never having any changes in overtones, otherwise it seems to lead to an unnatural, flat digital sound. The thing that makes an acoustic piano sound "real" in front of you is the fact that there are so many overtones that you can here coming from so many directions, going right into your ear.

Like, I made this piano by ear, I didn't have any wave display output to make it with (though I should do that, find some FFT generator to use just to see what frequencies are highest).

Oh ya, Unreal Engine has a sound engine that does FFT on the inner ear, since that's how your brain does spatial location - it's not just stereoscopic, but the fact that your ears have a curved shape, you can actually pick up on the difference in overtones that happens due to the curved shape of your ear. So they're actually making it so that you can pick an ear shape to have the sound go through. Pianoteq should do this. Lol.

This is awesome. It does a very good job of representing the tone of the preset I made, actually, especially the warmer, woodier mid tones, but it really does showcase the whole thing.

This is what I was going for, trying to make it sound good soft, medium and loud, high, low, middle and all combinations of the previous.

Hi Opus32,

I have been “playing” some Chopin MIDI files with your Ultimate Steinway Med Hall -2 fxp and the timbre you have created is enchanting. It is a very “autumnal” sound with a rich, ripe mellow base, a crisp, clear middle portion and the notes in the upper register sparkling like the yellow light off the reddening leaves. Every voice in the pieces sings with clarity, the festival joy of harvest home. I apologise for waxing lyrical about the piano you have constructed but it is a very emotive sound, as all good pianos are, I suppose.

I have never had access to a Steinway to play on, but if you will accept the compliment, it reminds me of the family piano I learnt to play on, which was a late nineteenth century, German, upright grand. It had been with the family since it was purchased my great uncle, whilst he and my grandfather were studying in Germany. Given its adventures and travels around the globe, it does need some restoration work to return it to its everyday performance standard, much like its current, out of practice pianist.

I had bought the Pianoteq Blüthner because the timbre reminded me of the piano I used to play with such pleasure half a century ago, but now I have your Ultimate Steinway Med Hall -2 to refresh the empty halls of memory with sound.

Thank you.

Michael

Opus 32, I really like your Real Steinway.  You've completely captured the bell-like tones in the mid-to-high treble, without entering the world of the modern European pianos.  It sounds like the 'ring' of my mother's Model M that I grew up hearing.  The bass, too, is quite solid.  The high bass to the mid mid-range, though, I find a bit muffled, almost like playing through a partially engaged damper.  I have not figured out how to 'clear it' to get it to match the rest of the keyboard's level of 'punch'.

Really an excellent use of the piano-blending capabilities in Pianoteq to use 'building block' instruments to duplicate yet another instrument of reality.  Fine work!

I'm saying there are far more complex overtones that can be generated by the cabinetry of a real piano.

String overtones will be essentially normal.

Very flat headphones. I'd absolutely turn down the reverb, not necessarily off, also shrink the room size, adjust to the needs of your speakers.

You can also decrease the direct sound duration (by increasing it, I don't know why smaller number = longer sound), probably by about .10 to .20. You can then also reduce the impedance and play around with those settings until the sustain/bloom sounds right to you.

ALSO the first overtone is the loudest I've noticed. That's the one that tends to over bloom, and it might make the sound tinny on some headphones while it might sound far more balanced on some speakers.

Another thing I've noticed about overtones is that if the difference between one overtone and the one next to it is too large, it makes the sound unnatural sounding, so if you adjust 1 down, you might also turn down 2 by a slightly smaller amount.

I really ought to upgrade to pro at this point so I can adjust the overtones by note, among other things. Cutoff is another big one that makes low notes sound rich and powerful on lower notes, but makes upper register notes overly ringy.

Edit: On a side note... anyone know of any software that does time-dependent heatmaps of frequency, i.e. time dependent FFT?

Edit 2: Ya... I think an error on my part on this piano is that the first couple overtones need to be way toned down.

I don't really do much with that slider. It's too many changes for one parameter.

These are awesome, when I upgrade to pro I'll give these changes a shot. I definitely know what you mean about making very slight, subtle changes.

I was actually shocked at how far I had to turn down the first overtone on this one, how it actually didn't start sounding tinny as well, so small changes I do notice make quite a big difference, and any change too far in any direction will screw things up.

Love this stuff, when I have my own acoustic piano I'll learn to maintain it for sure. Love the details of piano sound.

That's a nice sounding Steinway, Opus32.

This is the Steinway I remember when I went for piano lessons. The music department at Phillips Academy in Andover had Steinway Bs in the teaching studios and Steinway Ds in their concert halls.

After lessons, I would go home to a worn out 1948 Wurlitzer spinet that sounded like I was playing on a cardboard box. The key depth was so deep that it  required lifting fingers up really high, otherwise, my fingers would get stuck!

Hi all,
the sound is beautiful. But can anyone please advise why Olga Kern's performance sounds brighter (in fact, much brighter) to my ear than the first piece on SoundCloud in the first post. Am I comparing the live performance to a wrong piece, or do I have a wrong ear, or is it ambience that makes it different? Once again, Opus32's sound is wonderful, a soft and rich Steinway, I just cannot liken it to this live playing, which is fairly bright.
P.S. I used Sennheiser HD215 headphones to compare.

"Destroys my eardrums"!
Quite some claim.

Out of curiosity what loudspeaker monitors are you using?

Do you still hear that problem to a certain (lesser) extent even with your own presets?
Or do you consider it all but eradicated in your own presets?

Perhaps you hear that problem even worse with the presets I recently uploaded in the fxp section?

I uploaded a much darker sounding grand derived from the NY D model in the wee hours. Maybe it was too dark to still be called the Steinway.  I called that "Dark Grand".

Anyway I deleted that preset but uploaded it again within a hybrid with the Bluethner, so it is still there within that morph piano.   
Basically I don't want to spam the FXP section with my experiments. I am pleased with this latest morph.

This possibly doesn't belong in your thread here, but it also has tamed brilliance so it might appeal. I'm not pretending it still sounds like a Steinway.

Just enable the EQ curves for a more brilliant sound - season to taste!

I've been working on a lot of issues, as well as learning more about how these overtones actually evolve over time. 

I've made a more realistic piano since these, but right now it had some overtones causing some regions to sound a bit mediocre.

Honestly, the overtone editing system in pro leaves some things to be desired, i.e. I want a note edit curve for a specific overtone, rather than a spread of overtones for a single key, which would be the last adjustment you'd do.

Sorry, 1922 Erard. Lol.

I think there's too much voicing work done on it to retroactively alter it.

People keep buying the instruments and the product because of this preset, maybe I need to change careers lol

First, ask the producer for understanding. I revised it in my own way. I raised the strength of the hammer a little and changed the position of the microphone. It shows the results of making the attack stronger. I will post the file on the FXP corner.

https://forum.modartt.com//file/b3b9q2rd