Any third-party effects you'd recommend?

A challenge may be if people want free/donationware options, and how technical they are.

For the better options, it’s also important to understand gain staging, otherwise it’s easy to overdrive some plugins.

For free/donationware, you can do a lot worse than Airwindows. The trick there is finding some saturation you like, and perhaps a tape simulation as the final stage.

Then just before the output stage (before tape/clipper) you can use JS Inflator.

For paid plugins, the sky is the limit.

I’d say experiment with free first.

I normally use for live playing the Sonimus consoles (N and T), and Logic’s QRS reverb (true port of the original ultra high end reverb code), plus compression and tape emus etc. to taste, but I own a lot of plugins and have lots of choice.

UAD isn't zero latency, so beware of that.

Here are some of my recommendations from an earlier post

https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php...33#p993833

Lots of other good posts in that thread

Check their website, they have tables for the native ones. Most are over 1ms.

Exactly, so low it's irrelevant, provided you are not stacking lots of them.
Yes I know some folks are actually under the impression they can detect such things and that somehow that even affects their playing!!! I am confident that they are wrong, and they would say something along the lines like "just because you can't detect it" blah blah.. Even if it is something that someone can occasionally sense I don't believe it has ever made a difference to someone's playing ability once ever.

Thanks all for the suggestions so far!

I've had a bit of a play around with some of the suggestions this morning, bearing in mind that the goal is playing experience verisimilitude first, sound quality second.

Airwindows (h/t dikrek): Really good entry point if you want to learn about audio engineering - a very generous set of plugins that are in conversation with one another[ (prompting you to think about their differences), but are individually easy to control. Playing around with some of them, I was able to see some improvements to the sound, but always at the cost of making it sound more processed. I couldn't find a good balance to keep the sound feel natural, but likely this set of plugins gives you what you need by sheer volume, if you're ready to develop the skills

Convolution reverbs (h/t dikrek and Key Fumbler): I've definitely found that convolution reverbs sound more "acoustic", but the emulations of hardware reverbs sound "better". I don't know, convolution reverbs coloured the sound a bit too heavily for me, as a rule. But, when I found an IR that approximates the natural impulse response to my room, things started coming together. I dug out an old IR I created as an experiment and observed that even with a low quality IR file of my room, I was getting very authentic results - so it looks like the "fit" is much more important here than the quality. I'll see if I can produce an even higher quality version of my local IR, to see how much more juice I can get out of this avenue.

Pianoverb2 (h/t brundelfly): Didn't resonate with me (ha!), but inspired me to boost the built-in sympathetic resonance in pianoteq a touch for what to my ear was a more natural version of the same effect. It's a preference thing, as I'm happy with the purity of the resonances I get out of the model, but if I worked with a preset that to me lacks colour, this is a great way to solve that! Incidentally, I also tried out their free chamber reverb (PSP Chamber), and that one is *really* great. Probably my favourite algorithmic reverb plugins so far, not that I delved particularly deep... but it gives me some very clean glue that doesn't sound overly processed and integrates well.

Waves GW Pianocentric (h/t brundlefly): Much as I would prefer to hate on a gimmicky black-box plugin, this one kind of rules. It just adds a slew of well-balanced processing effects that improve the listening experience without changing the character of the model - it's just a better version of itself. The "GW Clear Piano" preset is such a good pairing with the models I tried it with, I'm tempted to call it a universal recommendation.

Going on a bit of a tangent - I've heard this anecdote that when they were doing the live action remake of Aladdin, they added some makeup smears/imperfections to Will Smith's CGI genie model, because trying to make him a perfect blue Genie looked artificial - in other words, by simulating a more "real" form of artifice by way of make-up, they shifted the audience's mind towards a suspension of disbelief they were already ready for. So a CGI genie in makeup was less distracting to them than a perfect CGI genie.

I was thinking about this story in the context of simulating mic preamps: obviously simulating analog noise would make the sound more "recording"-like which you could argue takes away from the realism. However, fundamentally pianoteq has to come out of some speakers at some point, and I just don't have any real-life reference of what a piano living inside my speakers would sound like. I do, however, have a reference to what a recording of a real piano sounds like. Long story short, I found that to some extend, adding analog noise canceled out the uncanniness of hearing a piano out of speakers a bit, which in a subjective/psychological way improved my perception of the realism of what I was hearing. So I ended up turning the Pianocentric "Analog Noise" option **on**, much to my surprise. (I did have to harshen the transients in my DAC to avoid too mellow a sound though)

Anyway, since Pianocentric seems to be applying a well-judged balance of various processing techniques, it's quite good value for money provided you are happy with its choices. It probably doesn't do anything that a combination of Airwindows et al couldn't accomplish with the correct config, but for audio engineering luddites like me who just want a "make gud" button, it's rather neat!

For the record, with the plugins I tried so far, I couldn't detect any performance-relevant delays, at my sample rates

Thank you so much for all the suggestions so far! If you have any other ideas, keep them coming!

Sure but I’d normally want a reverb and maybe a Fairchild 670 and the Ampex tape, all together that’s about 5ms more latency, starts to easily add up.

If you’re doing only one it’s OK of course.

Thought you might be interested in trying an IR I created from an algorithmic reverb I use regularly. It represents a relatively small studio-sized space, and I typically mix it in at a fairly low level - maybe 15dB below the source. I've verified by null-testing that this IR pretty accurately reproduces what the plugin does.

Modartt doesn't support uploading flac files so I'm sharing from OneDrive. As this is being shared in the furtherence of a discussion about music technology, I think this qualifies as fair use:

https://1drv.ms/u/c/6c8d622bbbc3eef1/Ec...w?e=9ahRGO

In my experience, analog emulation / enhancement and whatnot plugins rarely do anything meaningful for a realistic piano sound. They mess with overtone structure, creating effects that can sound tempting at first but that ultimately don't genuinely improve upon Pianoteq. Just save yourself the trouble of sticking supposed 'sonic magic pills' like Gulfoss on to Pianoteq. Why would a plugin like that do something that the Modartt developers themselves, who have worked on Pianoteq for more than 20 years, didn't think of?

The one thing that does really make a difference in my experience is a good external reverb. LiquidSonics Cinematic Rooms Pro is not cheap but fantastic (and you can sometimes buy it at a discount). The new Valhalla FutureVerb is also seriously good, very Bricasti-like, and very affordable. I prefer these significantly to convolution plugins.

In addition to this, a flexible, clean compressor, like the ToneBoosters Compressor 4, can work well for at the mixdown stage, though you can achieve a similar, and very clean effect by reducing the dynamic range in Pianoteq itself.

If you really want to go down the enhancer plugin road, I would recommend the Louder than Liftoff Silver Bullet Mk2. If used with caution, I find it can add some warmth. But it's easy to overdo and it can muddy things up.

+1
That's what I use for the Pianoteq Rhodes as well and I can say it is on top of the competition simply because there is not anything like it. Basically Jamal has put together everything from his own custom IRs of tubes/amps, to the Scarbee suite for vintage Keyboard FX which was already a jewel + his own fx plugins he has developed over the years at GM. You basically have so much stuff you probably don't even know where to start and it complements Pianoteq very well because it looks at exactly everything that is currently missing from the EPs starting from preamps and amps.

Just to check in on this topic, I did some further experimentation and have landed on a set-up I like:

- Inspired by the EQing of PianoCentric, I added the "Grand Piano Enhanced" EQ preset to my Pianoteq Effects chain, but dialled the gains way back to ~3dB. This keeps the sound natural to my ear but adds presence.

- I found that disabling the Pianoteq Limiter was crucial to get the right level of responsiveness. Surprisingly, the limiter had a greater impact on my subjective perception of dynamic expression during play than the dynamics setting itself

- I found some treasures in AirWindows: with the Point plugin, I could subtly sharpen the transients which compensate for my somewhat sluggish speakers (though in fairness they are new, maybe they'll break in over time). The TubeDesk plugin is a simple but effective instant-engoodener, adding convincing analogue warmth that offsets the speaker-ness of my speakers (I added a wet/dry mix of TubeDesk - the full effect was too muddy). Nb. neither of these were necessary for headphone use, which illustrates that these tweaks depend on your audio set-up.

- The combination of the Pianoteq EQ + the AirWindows plugins obviated Pianocentric for my purposes, which is good because I found their combined CPU footprint to be significantly lower than Pianocentric. Win!

- I kept investigating reverbs and found that, on speakers, the best effect came from a convolution reverb of my actual room, dialled back to the point where I can't consciously hear it: this just blends the instrument convincingly with my audio surroundings, and hence places it in the room for me. I could also get 90% there with a short algorithmic reverb if I aligned it with my natural room acoustics. Other reverbs sounded artificial from the speakers (because they contradicted the natural acoustics), but are fine (or even great) with headphone use.

It paid off to get my head into DSP a little bit, as it helped me understand exactly what was missing in the audio. The way I figured out to keep the sound natural: experiment to find an effect that makes the sound "better", at the cost of being more artificial; then dial it back until you can just about no longer hear the difference. This lets you end up with a sound that sounds "better" in a way you can't quite put your finger on.

if you take advantage of the current UAD sale, you can get nice savings. I bought a bunch of them (too much actually) and I really like the effect sound city studios can have on Pianoteq, making it more full-bodied, warm  and "in a room" without it being washed in reverb - uyopu know, the full subjective audio jargon roughly meaning "I like it". Their Lexicon 224 is also very nice if you´re into that kind of vintage, grainy reverb sound. I´m not too crazy about PTQ built in reverb. no real life latency issues I could feel on my MacBook Pro with these (they add 6.5 and 2.6 ms respectively).

still on reverbs, liquidsonics ... oh man, Cinematic Rooms is an absolute stunner, but isn´t cheap even with Black Friday. Tai Chi lite, otoh, is also crazy good (more vibey) and only $29 right now - That would probably be my 1st recommendation. if you're after convolution Reverberate 3 will get you covered.

as for compression, I don´t use much on piano anyway and my stock compressor is enough if needed. likewise with eq, any clean digital parametric does the trick. notice I´m no pro audio guy by any stretch, just a devoted amateur with the mild dose of audio snobbery we all ove to cultivate.

Try the free Acon verberate and the zynaptiq one as well.

If there are still discounts, liquidsonics tai chi is phenomenal. Or cinematic rooms pro (but way spendier).

The last one is Hans Zimmer’s reverb.