PT3+empty grand body+speakers can fool an audience?

Glenn: thanks a lot for your comments. I'll try your suggestions.The problem that bugs me is this: when the strings and the soundboard vibrate, the sound travels to  the open piano lid and also to the floor but out of phase ( 180 deg.).Then it radiates into the room, to the pianist and the audience. Of corse, the sound coming from the top of the piano is very different to the one coming from the bottom, not just the phase, but the audio spectrum itself. When you try to emulate this phenomena using speakers inside a piano body (cones facing up and down so they can aim the open lid and the floor with its corresponding phase shift),things start to get messy because, as it comes, PTQ is supposed to be used with a couple of "regular in front of you" speakers (or maybe 5.1 surround), and it already takes into consideration the lid, the floor and perhaps the room. So my question is: can I make the model simulate just the strings and the soundboard tweaking this and that, or putting the mics here and there?. I understand it's not at all the way it's been designed to be used, but maybe this way we'll get closer to a real "Digital/Acoustic Piano" for a live audience w/o PA or other sound reinforcement besides the piano itself (as in a real concert room).What do you think?

I've brought this up before that my ideal setup would be to modify this old upright I have:  Take out the action but leave the old strings and get them relatively in tune.  Put in a MIDI keyboard and place speakers such that they make firm contact with the soundboard.  Then have the MIDI damper pedal also have a physical lever connection to release the damper on the acoustic strings -or not, depending on another lever or adjustment.  Now you have a virtual piano with the added random vibrations inherent in the piano body as well as some sympathetic metallic vibrations from the real strings.  There are a couple of points of view, each equally valid, that keep surfacing:  Either try to emulate a particular high-end pure acoustic piano sound as much as possible to fool an audience and satisfy yourself... or to make a piano that sounds inspiring to the player without so much regard for purity.  I have the utmost respect for the purist because I do listen and love classical piano and I'm sure most performers would like to eliminate the spurious sounds of the action and pedals.

Thank you very much for your comments. You certainly have a point. Both paths of course are valid. When I started to think of all this, I pictured myself playing maybe a master keyboard -the most inobtrusive I could get- and then place 2 speakers aiming at the audience and other 2 over the keyboard, in front of me (I'm thinking in a not so big room).Then I realised that the audio coming from my speakers would badly interfere the ones aiming at the audience, because there isn't going to be a lot of difference in their acoustic outputs due to the small room. So maybe I should use only one pair of speakers...but where do I'm supposed to place them? If I put them in front of me, the audience won't hear very well and the opposite would also be  true. Then I figured that if I put them inside an empty piano body with the lid open, voilà instant grand!(with all the problems it carries!). My idea wasn't really to fool the audience, but to give them a close to real experience, being also satisfying to me.
One more thing:regarding your idea of usig the strings resonance to enhance the sound, I have this friend who uses an old piano harp with the strings on to simulate  acoustic reverb for vocal work in a small, dampened room with great succes, so why not?

Nickfielibert
You're right about fitting the computer inside the body too. I'm also checking the contact speaker thing .To me v3.0.2, sounds a lot more natural for classical piano, but I use very good speakers in front of me forming an equilateral triangle (more or less...) with my head (I also turned down the hammer noise quite a bit) . I assume your piano has them facing up, which can change the sound a lot (but maybe Yamaha took this into consideration, i.e. processing).PTQ sounds great when you're in front of the speakers, not in an 90 deg. angle as it would be in our case being the pianist (you loose a lot of frecuencies).The audience will do fine because of the open piano lid reflecting the audio, but you won't. Now I'm gessing, but two speakers,one pointing up to the lid and another one tilted say 30 or 45 deg towards the player per side (each pair very close to avoid phase cancellations) may do the trick... What do you think?.

As a matter of fact, years and years ago, on a music show in the Netherlands Roland actually did that on their stand ... I think they used an RD1000 at the time which they placed in a grand piano body.
I remember  I was at that stand very early and just started to play on it .. after a while there were numerous people gathered around and one of the Roland guys came and to the general surprise opened the lid of the grand to show there were no strings there... just a digital piano and a couple of speakers... can't recall the exact configuration...
sounded pretty cool and to the average public pretty convincing apparently.

cheers
Hans

I think you can use the Xlutop Chainer or something like that, and chain a powerful vst eq or enhancer to PTQ to tweak the sound. It all remains more or less like a standalone though. The chainer loads in no time including PTQ and all the vsts you want (it memorizes the whole setup) and takes almost no resources from the cpu.  By the way, what's the difference between the CLP's sound and feel and  PTQ?

Thanks for the link. It was great!.The leds looked very Phantom of the Opera. Just add some heavy smoke!

The body of the piano created a visual impact with psychologic effects.

What about the opposite???

If they get a compact digital piano with simple iron stand and very good  speakers, and using radio waves to send the keyboard performance to activate a real grand piano with pianodisk installed, and a microphone placed to the real grand piano, transmiting the sound signal to the digital piano.

Comparing the digital piano "masked" as a real one, and a real one masked as a digital piano, I bet many people will think the the real piano is  digital one, and the digital one a real grand .

PTQ feels much more like a real piano vs the CLP. THe yamaha has only 4 velocity layers and it shows. With 3.0 the low notes are OK now vs the yamaha. Thiswas a weakness before. If only Yamaha could build PTQ into this nice looking body. I'm using a silent PC in a Cabinet close to the piano with a wireless midi interface and an audio cable I'm detaching each time again to avoid wires in the living room where the piano is located. The touch and action are very good. I have the wooden keys.
So, the ideal scenario is the CLP295 body and keyboard with a PTQ sound engine. Unfortunately it is a bit too expensive to take apart and build in the PC with Pianoteq.

Dunno about the average audience, but to the player, I still think pianoteq has a long long ways to go.  It is pretty good for a digital rendition, but far from fooling a performer into thinking it's the real thing.  I mean, if a performer couldn't tell the difference between a real acoustic and PT3 coming through speakers, when he's sitting right in front of it, and playing it...  either he's got some sort of medical condition, or needs to give the bong a rest. lol

I mean, it's not bad at all, but to actually "fool" a performer, I just don't think it's no where near the right ball park yet.