Topic by davidizquierdo82

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Topic: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

Hi all,

I’m using Pianoteq with a Roland LX706. The keyboard does send variable note-off / release velocity, so this is not a fixed note-off issue.

For reference, my current setup is:

Note-Off Velocity curve in Pianoteq:

input: 0, 41, 127

output: 8, 41, 127

Key Release Noise: off

Sustain Pedal Noise: off

So what I’m referring to here is specifically Damper Noise and the way note release is rendered.

On single notes, the effect is definitely audible, especially if I raise Damper Noise a bit and release the key slowly. So it is doing something, and in that sense it reacts as expected.

That said, even on isolated notes, I’m not sure it sounds fully convincing to me. What I would have expected with a slow release is a slightly longer, more selective tail of certain partials / harmonics after the main decay, rather than a fairly uniform damper effect. I don’t know if that makes sense acoustically, but that is the impression I get.

The bigger issue is in real playing, especially with both hands and with pedal. Then the damper effect starts to sound too obvious, too repetitive, and a bit one-dimensional. Instead of feeling like a naturally varying acoustic behavior, it starts to sound more like an extra noise layer added on top.

So I’m wondering if others hear the same thing.

A few questions:

Do you also find Damper Noise audible and somewhat effective on single notes, but less convincing in actual playing?

With slow key release, do you also expect a more natural lingering of some harmonics rather than this kind of uniform effect?

Have you found a way to make it feel more organic?

Was the solution a different note-off curve, other damper-related parameters, or simply keeping Damper Noise very low?

Again, I’m not referring to Key Release Noise or Sustain Pedal Noise, since both are off in my setup.

Thanks.

P85>Kawai CA97>Numa XGT>FP90X>LX706
Pianoteq 8 Pro (all instruments) + Organteq 2
i7 4790K W11 64bits + UMC1820 + MTM + DT770 pro X
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Reply by Alexis Thibault

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

Hello, the "slightly longer, more selective tail of certain partials / harmonics after the main decay" you're mentioning is controlled by the parameter called "Damping duration". I suggest you to try lengthening it a bit and see if that's the effect you look after.

Reply by davidizquierdo82

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

Alexis Thibault wrote:

Hello, the "slightly longer, more selective tail of certain partials / harmonics after the main decay" you're mentioning is controlled by the parameter called "Damping duration". I suggest you to try lengthening it a bit and see if that's the effect you look after.

Thanks Alexis, that was actually helpful.

I tried what you suggested, and increasing Damping duration does get me closer to the effect I was looking for. For example, with Damper Noise around 8 and Damping duration around 3, I can get a more convincing result when I release a key very slowly.

The part that still feels wrong to me is that the same kind of effect seems to carry over too much across the rest of the release range. If I release the key quickly, the effect is shorter, yes, but it is still very audible and too exposed.

What I would expect in reality is something more blended into the note’s decay, not a clearly detached layer that remains easy to hear across different release speeds. In Pianoteq, once I push the settings enough to get the slow-release effect I want, I also start hearing an unpleasant release layer during more normal playing, which makes the result feel less realistic.

So my issue now is not really how to make the slow release audible — Damping duration does help with that — but how to get that effect without it becoming too obvious and too persistent in the rest of the release behavior.

Did you manage to balance that somehow?

Last edited by davidizquierdo82 (03-03-2026 17:40)
P85>Kawai CA97>Numa XGT>FP90X>LX706
Pianoteq 8 Pro (all instruments) + Organteq 2
i7 4790K W11 64bits + UMC1820 + MTM + DT770 pro X
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Reply by Amen Ptah Ra

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

davidizquierdo82 wrote:

So I’m wondering if others hear the same thing.

Right now I have no way to tell one way or another.  Recently, I did encounter a seemingly similar problem, one like what yours seems.  My solution has been to lessen Damper noise but with a Humanize effect added to it.

It appears changed nearly on all my custom presets  —but always I'd made dramatic changes to Damping duration, that's a given.  (I've had necessarily to bring it way down countless times.)

Well as a fellow percussionist, specifically a drummer, I often find that I like to hear the nuances, the percussive and mechanical sounds from a solo piano piece played whenever as loudly as possible  —and also realistically.  I especially enjoy them out of old performances, however any that had been performed very energetically  —with allegro and allegro con brio, and with vivace.  More likely than not, the more robust the piece, the more in fact I'm going to like it.  I suppose really what I'm trying to say here amounts to my assertion that, in a nutshell, most if not all the noises from the dampers, pedals, and the key releases out of an old piece —being what I like to hear— should happen especially over all its loud passages!

I do have an example to share with you, and to which you may like to listen too.  It is "Carillon" performed by Vladimir Drozdov (1882 - 1960), that I posted into the very bottom of the thread Something about the bass notes.  (Incidentally, it was both mixed and mastered on iLoud Micro Monitors.)

Was the solution a different note-off curve, other damper-related parameters, or simply keeping Damper Noise very low?

Now I'm becoming very curious about what might had been your own findings...

Have you tried already, adjustments to Damper position?

Last edited by Amen Ptah Ra (Yesterday 08:36)
Pianoteq 8 Studio Bundle, Pearl malletSTATION EM1, Roland (DRUM SOUND MODULE TD-30, HandSonic 10, AX-1), Akai EWI USB, Yamaha DIGITAL PIANO P-95, M-Audio STUDIOPHILE BX5, Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 DSP.

Reply by davidizquierdo82

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

Amen Ptah Ra wrote:
davidizquierdo82 wrote:

So I’m wondering if others hear the same thing.

Right now I have no way to tell one way or another.  Recently, I did encounter a seemingly similar problem, one like what yours seems.  My solution has been to lessen Damper noise but with a Humanize effect added to it.

It appears changed nearly on all my custom presets  —but always I'd made dramatic changes to Damping duration, that's a given.  (I've had necessarily to bring it way down countless times.)

Well as a fellow percussionist, specifically a drummer, I often find that I like to hear the nuances, the percussive and mechanical sounds from a solo piano piece played whenever as loudly as possible  —and also realistically.  I especially enjoy them out of old performances, however any that had been performed very energetically  —with allegro and allegro con brio, and with vivace.  More likely than not, the more robust the piece, the more in fact I'm going to like it.  I suppose really what I'm trying to say here amounts to my assertion that, in a nutshell, most if not all the noises from the dampers, pedals, and the key releases out of an old piece —being what I like to hear— should happen especially over all its loud passages!

I do have an example to share with you, and to which you may like to listen too.  It is "Carillon" performed by Vladimir Drozdov (1882 - 1960), that I posted into the very bottom of the thread Something about the bass notes.  (Incidentally, it was both mixed and mastered on iLoud Micro Monitors.)

Was the solution a different note-off curve, other damper-related parameters, or simply keeping Damper Noise very low?

Now I'm becoming very curious about what might had been your own findings...

Have you tried already, adjustments to Damper position?

Thanks, not yet — I haven’t experimented with Damper position so far.

At the moment I’ve mainly been pushing Damper Noise and Damping duration to exaggerated values just to make the behavior easier to hear and isolate. It does seem like there may be a usable balance in there somewhere.

That said, after more testing I’m not even sure Damping duration is the main factor for what I’m after. I actually ended up reducing it again, because I was trying to make the Damper Noise stand out more clearly on very slow key releases.

My impression now is that note-off velocity is doing a lot of the work here.

The problem I still hear is that Damper Noise seems too indiscriminate. It does not seem to respond enough to the overall gesture. In particular, it does not seem to take note-on velocity into account in a very meaningful way.

What I would expect is something more like this:

- if the note is played softly, damper noise should generally remain quite subtle

- if the note is played hard but released quickly, the damper effect should be brief and mostly folded into the note’s decay

- if the key is released very slowly, then the damper effect should become more exposed and slightly longer

What I’m hearing instead is that once Damper Noise is raised enough to get the slow-release effect I want, it also becomes too audible in situations where I would expect it to stay much more buried.

So ideally I would love to have some kind of response curve for Damper Noise intensity / volume as a function of note-off value, and maybe even note-on value too. That would make much more sense to me musically.

I’m attaching an audio example from a sampled piano that illustrates more or less the behavior I’m expecting:

the first strikes are different note-on velocities, always with soft release

from around 0:30 onward, the strikes are again different note-on velocities, but now with fast release

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...e%2001.mp3

To me, that kind of behavior feels much closer to what I expect from a real piano action.

Does that sound consistent with your understanding of how Pianoteq currently handles it?

Last edited by davidizquierdo82 (Yesterday 20:28)
P85>Kawai CA97>Numa XGT>FP90X>LX706
Pianoteq 8 Pro (all instruments) + Organteq 2
i7 4790K W11 64bits + UMC1820 + MTM + DT770 pro X
http://youtube.com/DavidIzquierdoAzzouz

davidizquierdo82's Website

Reply by say yes

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

I think we can see from this example that Pianoteq is currently lacking a global parameter linking function.

Focusing on OP's example, the expected effect can be simply achieved by linking the release velocity with Damper noise/Damping duration.

In addition, with the global parameter linking, we can also explore other interesting ways to play, such as linking parameters like Strike point/Impedance/Hammer Noise to Note On velocity, which I think must be very exciting!

Reply by Pianistically

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

say yes wrote:

I think we can see from this example that Pianoteq is currently lacking a global parameter linking function.

Focusing on OP's example, the expected effect can be simply achieved by linking the release velocity with Damper noise/Damping duration.

In addition, with the global parameter linking, we can also explore other interesting ways to play, such as linking parameters like Strike point/Impedance/Hammer Noise to Note On velocity, which I think must be very exciting!

that would be a nice feature . That said , it can be done today if you use pianoteq as a VST3 in a DAW with scripting facility such as reaper as all pianoteq parameters are exposed . So using  midi mapping in pianoteq you can link any set or multiple parameters in a script that intercept note-on and note-off events and modify the parameters you want to adjust prior to rendition by the model. Nowadays , you don’t even need to be a programmer , you submit the challenge to ChatGPT and it write the script for you . But if I can done within pianoteq own workflow it would very convenient.

Reply by Amen Ptah Ra

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Re: Damper Noise and slow key release realism

say yes wrote:

I think we can see from this example that Pianoteq is currently lacking a global parameter linking function.

Focusing on OP's example, the expected effect can be simply achieved by linking the release velocity with Damper noise/Damping duration.

In addition, with the global parameter linking, we can also explore other interesting ways to play, such as linking parameters like Strike point/Impedance/Hammer Noise to Note On velocity, which I think must be very exciting!

Wrong, if you have only jumped to your conclusions, you've gotten actually nothing to indicate that PIANOTEQ software somehow behind the scenes is detaching Damper noise or even disconnecting Damping duration from the relevant MIDI velocities or by any stretch of the imagination such that don't appear registered inside either its NOTE-OFF or VELOCITY pane.

Besides, say yes, the example davidizquierdo82 chose to post is just his example of a sampled piano; not really an example taken from PIANOTEQ at all.  (Smile.)

davidizquierdo82  wrote:

I’m attaching an audio example from a sampled piano that illustrates more or less the behavior I’m expecting:

Does that sound consistent with your understanding of how Pianoteq currently handles it?

Already a little inconsistency does arise...

Do you have a couple of examples from a solitary MIDI file, that had been rendered by both PIANOTEQ and piano samples?

Well guys, honestly, I just got to admit that you 'say yes' aren’t the only one who can make a mistake:  "Carillon" performed by Vladimir Drozdov (1882 - 1960), that I posted into the very bottom of the thread Something about the bass notes, was in order for me to post it firstly uploaded to SoundCloud, though it had ended up without a very important plugin instance; one which I'd previously neglected to enable.  Now I've since made the necessary correction.

Have a listen if you possibly believe you can find some sort of unrealistic damper noise.  (Admittedly, I've had also some doubts about the noises.)

Last edited by Amen Ptah Ra (Today 23:32)
Pianoteq 8 Studio Bundle, Pearl malletSTATION EM1, Roland (DRUM SOUND MODULE TD-30, HandSonic 10, AX-1), Akai EWI USB, Yamaha DIGITAL PIANO P-95, M-Audio STUDIOPHILE BX5, Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 DSP.