Topic by livelock

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  • livelock
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Topic: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

Hi, as i am moving to another country i am rethinking my setup completely.
In the past I owned Clavinovas only and hence now I was thinking about buying a CLP440-480 or even AG N1. Then I found information about the Roland V-Piano and finally i ended up listening to Pianoteq 4.

Use case: I mainly play the piano for fun, advanced level, but I like good quality sound and a good action / feel, i feel it inspires me, that response etc. I always felt limited by the Clavinovas and also tried hooking up soundbanks with it, but i found it quite inconvenient at that time.
So now I am considering a software solution.

Key requirement 1: Super low latency.
I am considering hooking up a FiiO e17 with my notebook. It seems to have ASIO drivers, so that should work.
What about WSAPI? Does that work?

Anyone using E17 or other DACs with Pianoteq?

Key requirement 2: Sound.
There are a lot of threads on this, and i read most of them, now i am still confused, as i didnt have the opportunity to play all those instruments. i read the DP shootout and listened to samples theres. Not much comparison vs the new Pianoteq 4 though.
I like the idea of the V-Piano a lot, that you can play with the physical attributes, like 3strings, or changing hammer weight or doing it with silver strings.
Does PT offer a similar richness?

Anyone care to give some view on PT4 vs Avantgarde N1 vs Roland V-Piano, both on good Headphones as well as on a good loudspeaker setup?

Key requiremenet 3: Action.

If i go the PT4 route, i would need a good keyboard that is at least on par with a Clavinova mechanics.

what would be good stage pianos that are reasonably stable and somehow work well with Pianoteq. Good looking and plain without super big screens, or something that can be entirely dimmed, would be good, so that you can just focus on playing the piano, but still have some buttons with which you can control some of PT4 functions.

Any recommendations?

4) Loudspeakers

a) Is there a hybrid variant with loudspekaers and good sound sound, so that PT4 can generate the sound, but the sound comes realistically from around the piano?

b) if not, can i simply hookup my music system loudspeakers to the piano, will it provide good sound? When i did that in the past with my clavinova i felt irritated that the sound came from somewhere else and not the piano.

Once scenario that i could imagine would work (expensive) would be probably for me be to buy the N1 if it plays well with PT and play it just like it is and then hookup PT4 whenever I want different sounds.
Pro: can be played on its own, great action, beatiful, great stand - piano like
Con: Heavy instrument, very expensive
Unclear: can play sound coming from computer / PT4 using its own loudspeakers, works well with PT4?

As i have no experience with stagepianos or DP4 whatsover hence its difficult for me to assess other options.

So would be interesting to get your feedbacks on what other scenarios work well and what their attributes are.

Reply by mabry

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

If you decide on the Pianoteq/Keyboard combo, then to get the best latency you'll probably want to have an external audio interface even though something like WSAPI or ASIO4ALL may give decent response. I used to use ASIO4ALL feeding a set of Bose PC speakers and while that worked pretty darn good for Pianoteq, I've noticed subtle improvements in latency since switching to my current setup:

Numa Nero keyboard
Pianoteq (and various other virtual instruments)
PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL audio interface
Yamaha MSP7 powered studio monitors

And the Yamaha monitors give me a bigger sound.

Reply by bebop603

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

I'd stay away from dedicated DACs unless you can try them yourself first--most of them aren't designed for low-latency use.  I have superb  low-latency (1.3 ms @ 96khz) using an Echo Indigo Sound Card (Expresscard interface).  I can't hear any detectable latency using this setup vs. my digital piano audio-out.  If you can't get an expresscard interface, a prosumer sound card like an Apogee Duet(excellent sound quality) can get about 5ms latency through USB.  A firewire soundcard will get you slightly better latency than USB, but still not as good as an expresscard or a PCI soundcard on a desktop machine.  Thunderbolt audio cards are starting to roll out, but are not that widely available yet.

I bought a laptop with an expresscard interface (Dell Studio 14) specifically for expresscard capability.  It's getting hard to find laptops with expresscard interfaces anymore--though you can find a  Dell Studio 14(core i3) on Ebay for about $400-500 like the one below. This is model I have and runs Pianoteq 4.1 without breaking a sweat.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Studio-14-...3794wt_908

I'd highly recommend Sennheiser HD580/HD600 headphones for Pianoteq--just beautiful sound on the D4 with these phones.  You'll need an external headphone amp to drive these to their full potential--I can get just barely adequate volume levels straight out of the Echo Indigo, but an external amp really brings out the bass the way it's meant to be.  I bought a used Little Dot Mark V that's pretty awesome for that purpose--also each channel is separately amped, which I think helps with piano sounds where bass notes are mostly coming in from the left channel. I'm not feeling the need for speakers with the HD580 phones-- it's an "open" headphone design that sounds very speaker-like. Also very comfortable and I sometimes forget I have them on.

Controller:

The Studiologic Numa has some fans on this forum, might be worth checking out.   My controller is actually a Kawai mp9000, which is about 12 years old at this point but has very sweet wooden keys.  You can find these on Ebay for about $700.   Really solid instrument (though internal sounds are usable but dated ). Very high build quality with a thick aluminum top that is almost a work of art...but I digress.   Only drawback of using the MP9000 as a controller is that the midi signal bottoms out at about 25, so the velocity response in Pianoteq will have to be adjusted.

The newer Kawai MP10 and Roland FP7f are both excellent pianos and controllers as well---though I get bored with the lack of Piano variety on dedicated digital pianos.  Having a tweakable software instrument keeps things much more interesting for me.


V-Piano: The advantage of Pianoteq is that new instruments (and improvements) come out all the time. Also middle range of the piano is much better on Pianoteq.  Features on the V-piano like copper and silver strings, 3 strings are just gimmics IMHO.  The sound from the V-Piano has more of a "hard strike" sound than the current Steinway-inspired Pianoteq. Some people prefer this, but I imagine Pianoteq will be getting a new piano option in the not too distant future that will provide this type of sound for Pianoteq-users as well.

Last edited by bebop603 (22-08-2012 18:30)
Pianoteq 5, Dell Studio 14 (core i3 2.26 ghz), M-Audio Uno midi connector, Echo Indigo Djx (expresscard), Little Dot MK V Headphone Amp, Senn 580 Headphones, Kawai MP9000 digital piano

Reply by livelock

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

Based on the recommendations i checked out the expresscard soundcard, the XLR audio interface and a couple of rolands...

1) Roland FP7F - althought it should have PHA3 it felt and appeared cheap to me, maybe it was the strange white colour...
2) roland rd700nx - very nice instrument!
3) RD 700 GX - also nice, strangely the action felt slightly better to me, althought it is PHA2

I guess I ll go with the RD700NX, i am not sure though whether i can control pianoteq values (or other software instruments) with the hardware keys, does anyone know if this works?

i know there are dedicated controllers like the numa, and motif that can do that, however none of them has something like PHA3 or do they?
Then I would go with the controller that plays best with software and still has piano-like mechanics. But probably there is no such board.

Does anyone use the 700NX with Pianoteq? is it a great couple?

Last edited by livelock (23-08-2012 23:55)

Reply by livelock

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

mabry wrote:

If you decide on the Pianoteq/Keyboard combo, then to get the best latency you'll probably want to have an external audio interface even though something like WSAPI or ASIO4ALL may give decent response. I used to use ASIO4ALL feeding a set of Bose PC speakers and while that worked pretty darn good for Pianoteq, I've noticed subtle improvements in latency since switching to my current setup:

Numa Nero keyboard
Pianoteq (and various other virtual instruments)
PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL audio interface
Yamaha MSP7 powered studio monitors

And the Yamaha monitors give me a bigger sound.

it looks like the presonus has the same latency issues, that other cards and DACs have, i remember that back then with an audigy card i had something like 1-2ms latency, 10ms was unbearble and 5ms was borderline,
if the presonus has 5ms latency that would be just borderline, my memories might fool me and 5ms might have been not noticable, but i clearl remember 10ms was way too much for live piano playing

Reply by mabry

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

livelock wrote:

it looks like the presonus has the same latency issues, that other cards and DACs have, i remember that back then with an audigy card i had something like 1-2ms latency, 10ms was unbearble and 5ms was borderline, if the presonus has 5ms latency that would be just borderline, my memories might fool me and 5ms might have been not noticable, but i clearl remember 10ms was way too much for live piano playing

If you're going to run PianoTeq through a DAW and Presonus then you might get up to 5ms latency but without the DAW you should be around 3ms or so. That's pretty much been my experience. In my original post, it was my intent to point out that whatever anyone uses, they don't want to use the headphone output...a DAC or something like the other things mentioned here is a must.

Caveat: according to this article, you can get inaudible latency if using the Studio One Artist DAW that comes with the Presonus. I have not tried that yet.

article link:
http://www.musicradar.com/gear/all/comp...991/review

Regarding a comment in another post, the Numa Nero does not have an action like the PHA3 but that's good in my book because I don't really care for the PHA3! But to each his own, of course! I think the mechanics of the Numa are in essence a bit simpler than something like the PHA3. As you know, it's hard to duplicate the feel of a real piano and manufacturers take different approaches. The PHA3 is too bouncy for me, I like the basic up and down feel of the Numa. But of course it's not as easy to control Pianoteq parameters using the Numa as it will be with the Roland. I think you are doing live playing, right? Then maybe you need all the knobs and sliders. I myself don't really need real time control of the parameters.

Last edited by mabry (24-08-2012 05:35)

Reply by jef_citron

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

Hello

Be careful with the AvantGrand pianos, because they have a noise gate on their line-in which cuts the sound under a certain level
This is a big flaw for using the speakers of the AvantGrand pianos !!!

You can see the discussion on this forum :
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthre...ost1840325

Cheers

Last edited by jef_citron (24-08-2012 08:38)

Reply by livelock

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Re: Need Pianoteq 4 setup rec's as DP replacement (vs N1, V-P)

For the ones interested, i read a bunch of more reviews, watched some videos and at times was really confused.

I ended up buying a RD 700 NX now (today) and having a good time with it. Its really great fun on its own.

The final decision was based on:

- action - i tried it liked it most, it may have been confirmation bias, but i found a quite big difference between F7FP and the rd 700 nx
- looks (i like the looks)
- midi controller capabilities (the 4x layered stuff is cool, a real pity is that its not fully integrated with software so you can control your synth on the computer will turning the knobs... for that i ll need a specialized controller)

nice extra although i want to run pianoteq:
- sound (a lot of reviewers said many good things about the sound and that it has plenty of good instruments), also the piano sounds quite good, so will also run without pianoteq at times


Next task will be to hook it up with Pianoteq and some NI instruments and to see whats up with the latency...

... thanks for pointing me to the right set of instruments.