I tried really hard to get the exact tone, but after giving it a few tries, I've come to the conclusion that the exact tone can't be achieves with how pt3 works at the moment. Not that it's inferior or anything, but it can't do the right processing to get the Yamaha heavy processed sound.
A break down of P250 Grand Piano 1 sound and related PT3 controls:
P250GP1 sound is pretty clear combination of fundamental + metalic overtones. So, for each range of keys, if you get the fundamental tone to sound similar, and adjust the amount of metalic content on PT3, it starts to sound similar.
I used mic positioning to change the fundamental tone and imaging to be very clear and very close. The mic placement also changes the tonality quite a bit obviously, but even with that I couldn't fake it since the basic limitation here is that the base piano is different. The metalic content can be fine tuned with the hammer hardness. Initially I tried fiddling with the EQ, but since P250GP1's metalic tone sounds different for different ranges, one EQ setting wouldn't solve it all. The better solution was to lower the first fundamental in the harmonics mixer which made the sound a lot more lighter, and somewhat closer to P250GP1.
The biggest problem is that P250GP1 sounds quite different depending on the key range. The bass range is very boomy and heavy, with the metalic content having a very resonant, nasal sound. The mid high (c3-c5) section is quite mellow in comparison, but bursts with metallic content on the strongest layer. The higher keys seem to sound pretty much consistent with PT3, so I didn't really spent to much time on it.
For this problem I had to give up, and just concentrate on making sure the piano as a whole reacted similar the P250GP1, relating directly to the hammer hardness settings, and how the scaled up with velocity. An interesting thing I found was that P250 has more dynamic range than PT3's default setting, which in my opinion makes it sound more fake, but as soon as I increased the dynamic range a bit, it started to feel a lot similar to the way p250 reacted.
Another thing that makes the P250GP1 sound is the strong attack, which comes more from the string. I thought it was the hammer sample, but listening carefully, it turns out P250GP1's hammer sample isn't too loud. It's there, but not responsible for the initial "knocking" sort of sound.
This dense "substance" in attack was controlled by direct sound, and impedance. The direct sound needs to go to the left, to give it a strong fundamental. And then I slightly lowered the impedance, and lowered the filter cutoff, raised the Q slightly to have the fundamental die out a little quicker than the usual PT3 settings.
The end result.. well, I wouldn't say it's sonically close at all. But it does "play" in a similar fashion.
This experiment did yield some very important knowledge. The big problem for me with many of the PT3 pianos was the weak fundamental around the c3-c4 range, and to bring out the fundamentals was all about the mic positioning. Particularly the third mic way at the back, gave more body to both the high and lower registers. So it was mainly tweaking the back mic, and the treble zone mic, to get a strong fundamental. It's still a little more boomy than I'd like it to be, but a lot better now.
Also, another problem was the metalic overtone on the c3-c4 range, which was easily removed by lowering the hammer hardness a bit. It did muck up the overall sound, but it took the metalic tone out in medium velocity range.
So anyway, check it out, let me know what you think. I'm also doing a more non p250 orientated one coming up soon.
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...phones.fxp
Last edited by kensuguro (29-03-2009 18:15)