PianoTeq 4 - judge for yourself

Very nicely played.

Of course, utilizing 2 presets for a single piece is not a good option for a "normal" playing environment.

And, I have to say I only listened to a short bit of it and was immediately struck by what a perfect example of the "infamous Pianoteq sound" that we hear so much about.    The music sounded nice only if I ignored the fact that the sound was what I would have expected to hear from a concert piano.   The music sounded nice only if I assumed the music was designed to sound like that and not that it was supposed to sound like a real piano.

I also like Pianoteq4 much better than version 4 but the knock on Pianoteq has always been the signature sound it has.   In my opinion, version 4 does not escape that criticism.   If might be a little better, but not enough so as to have gotten past that issue.   If that knock is ever overcome, Pianoteq will go viral.

I have to assume MODDART knows this also.

This performance remember some silent film piano playing. Interesting.

Who Iam I to judge, but maybe it get better if reduce the hammer hardness or the velocity in some degree.

Here is a link to the same piece for comparison purposes ?

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pla...L%2C+piano

Is this a fair way to compare sounds ?

Criticism or Complaint.

Thank you Raymond for posting this beautiful performance and providing the corresponding fxp file.

First I would like to bring to each one here some insight on the settings that were used in this De Falla recording. If you load the fxp, you will notice that the soundboard Impedance and Cutoff frequency have been raised while the Q factor has been reduced. These three changes in the parameters go in the direction of a sound whose overtones have a longer duration, particularly the high ones. Thus it provides a brighter sound, more metallic, more “ringing” if one calls ringing the fact that high overtones have more presence (Beto-Music may help us with this wording question). From a physical point of view, it corresponds to a more rigid soundboard.

Next I would like to point that everything there is a matter of taste, and one can go in the opposite direction if one wants: reducing the soundboard Impedance and Cutoff frequency while increasing the Q factor, and thus making the sound less metallic and ringing.

Actually, I am convinced that there doesn’t exist a “perfect” piano that everybody will like, because we all have a different taste. This is why we provided more than 30 presets for the D4, the idea behind being of course not that each person likes all presets, but that each one finds a preset he likes.

Moreover, these presets represent only a small subset of all the sounds that can be obtained with the new D4, as you can hear if you go to our workshops section:
http://www.pianoteq.com/d4_in_action?s=d4_workshop.
I encourage you to visit it, you will see, with the three examples that are showcased, that it is possible to come reasonably close to very different types of piano sounds, starting in each case from the same D4 core instrument.

If ever you want us to assist you in finding a particular sound, please do not hesitate contacting us, we will gladly help you.

Thank you all for your comments. I went thru the "workshop" and it really surprised me finding my favorite performer Gould playing the Goldberg variations taken as an example. The final result is really something and my congratulations with the result.

Some notes:

-Glenn Gould tuned his own piano to his liking and not to the liking of the professional tuner;

-When I decided to buy a Grand, it took almost a year to find the right one for my house; Steinway, Blüthner, Baldwin, Bösendorfer, Pleyel (a bit strange!!) and finally ended with a superb Schimmel. The tuner-techician praised the instrument for its clarity and sonority. Today my preference is the Erard, which I encountered during one of my recitals ( a pity that I can't play anymore thát good, atrosis);

-all comparisons with existing recordings are in fact rather useless. We don't know the mic settings, the "ambience"; the ins- and outs of the mastering process.

I am rather sure that a superb grand piano in my house sounds different from the same instrument on stage at the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam). And then of course we have the MIDI as input. Clarity of some notes also depends on the velocity value of that particular note. Does it stand out enough? The only thing with this type of comparison is useful for getting an idea how it must (can) be performed; having the score at hand one can make notes of the performance, that's all.

As Philippe pointed out, it is all a matter of taste. Some pieces - e.g. the Nocturnes of Chopin - should be recorded as intimite, close micing, preferably under the lid. My opinion. When you Google enough you will find a lot of mic settings for recording piano music. I will study those in the next days.

With regards,

Raymond Robijns

Creart, many thanks. A lot of study involved. Project for the coming days (it is raining anyway, so....).
For a real experience of Fantasía Baetica pay a visit to Andalucía(Spain), the small towns and little villages are filled with passion.

Raymond

I'm sorry, but that sounds AWFUL. Nice playing though.

I think this is a classic case of "be careful what you wish for...." I'm sure we were all hankering for a Steinway model, but in hindsight I think they would've been better off finessing C3 and M3. I haven't had much time to tinker with v4, but I'm using v3 for recording right now because it just sounds and responds better. I'm sure some might argue that I need to spend more time with it, and I will when I get the chance.

In summary:

C3 was rich but a bit muddy. Would've been nice to hear that remedied. I always felt K was a compromise in that it was more articulate at the expense of richness.
PT synth/nasal sound is still there, perhaps more so in v4.
The response seems to differ a bit from v3. The upper registers seem a bit more sensitive. I still think there should be a least rough MIDI velocity adjustment over different ranges, not just a single curve that applies to all keys.

I'd have to give the edge to V-Piano, except the price and form factor make it unreasonable (for me). Point is, I know it's possible to get a better, more authentic tone from modeling. But I'm still relatively happy with v3.

You REALLY think it sounds better/more authentic than this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVtiTyMlqAU

HELL NO! Not by a long shot. Maybe it's RaymondRobijns's settings, but there's just no comparison between v3 C3 and v4 D4 (at least that I have yet to hear).

Strange comments. Some guys just shoot and hide behind some examples, without putting some of their own on this forum. No more contributions from this side. Good bye.

Raymond

I am not discouraged. Only I won't post anymore music here. I am too old to accept this unacceptable behaviour. By the way, your website is great and hopefully your company will grow against all odds of today's economic forecasts.

Greetings,

Raymond

Beto, it's not an upright Is PTQ 3 with C3 model

And indeed unacceptable it is, I agree... but still too bad it will keep you from posting music - as so often some seem to have influence on many....

btw were you talking about my website? Or Modartts' ?
If it was about mine - than thanks for the compliment and for the hope that I share :-)
If about Modartts' then indeed it's a good website and I hope that Pianoteq will keep growing and convincing people of what modeling software can do - but the purists among us will always find flaws, maybe even just for the sake of it...
cheers
Hans

Huh? Everyone lauded your playing. So what if some people don't like the tone? That's not your fault. You're too old to be butthurt.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!! The beauty of an inadvertently blind test.

Anyway, Philippe got on the case and made me an fxp. I did listen to some of the samples on the uploads page and immediately thought they sounded better than the samples made in this thread. I do now think that D4 is an improvement in some ways. But I still think it's a bit thin and worn-out sounding. The nasal quality is still there, but of a different sort. It's more of an ahhh than an eeee, if that makes sense. I think it's an EQ issue, but it might originate in the transient part. If I were the developers, I'd break the tone into tiny pieces, extend/loop each, and compare the EQ to an equivalently broken up tone from a real grand piano. I think it'd be futile to compare them with normal playing because of the transients. That's why I think breaking up the tone into small pieces, particularly the first half a second or so, and looping each piece might better reveal the discrepancies. (Just some n00b speculation.)