Real hammers whip through air. Where's the air in Pianoteq? (Page 2 of 2)

I'm surprised people still do not complained about the lack of noise when closing or opening the piano lid.
In future version I'm sure it will be implemented, as well as a high lid noise, for the vintage add-ons historic instruments, since it's so old it would create noises like opening a old worn door.

;-)

For the environment acoustic roons, there will be option choose to sellect a room in a very old abandoned theater, with noises of roaches and rats moving around, and water drops from the roof.
You will be able to play like the recluse Phantom of the opera.

Just to please the most fanatic users...

Thanks! At least now we know! I don't think it's insignificant, though. You include other noises that are arguably drowned out. This "noise" is actually tone, it's not just mechanical noise. I also think that since a lot of what people hear is from recordings that often feature mics close to the strings, we do have a sense of it. And whether it's drowned out in a live setting I think is arguable. So, given the consensus that it exists and that we can hear it, I think it'd be worthwhile to include. And the few who don't want to hear it can simply move the slider all the way left.

*I* don't think Pianoteq is at the point where I am waiting for the "last bit of realism" yet, and the extremely subtle sounds we are discussing are still way down on my priority list.

Greg.

DELAY VERSION much more fun

I'm surprised people still do not complained about the lack of noise when closing or opening the piano lid.
In future version I'm sure it will be implemented, as well as a high lid noise, for the vintage add-ons historic instruments, since it's so old it would create noises like opening a old worn door.

;-)

For the environment acoustic roons, there will be option choose to sellect a room in a very old abandoned theater, with noises of roaches and rats moving around, and water drops from the roof.
You will be able to play like the recluse Phantom of the opera.

I'll be extremely surprised if this is the reason for the "ping". To prove it one way or another, I suppose we could record a real piano without the damper having recently left the string. (either by removing the damper, or very gently pressing down on the key to lift the damper off, and then pressing it down as quickly as possible etc etc)   Of course, if we don't mind the sympathetic resonance, we could just depress the sustain pedal down and wait a while too.

Greg.

Joshua,
I misunderstood you.

Yes, I know that Pianoteq already incorporates the tonal variations for repeated notes with the dampers off.

I thought you were saying that Pianoteq does not yet reproduce the "ping" of an acoustic piano properly EVER,  regardless of whether the dampers are on or off. Sorry about that.

Greg.

I must've missed them. I see them now. I'll have a listen...

BTW, it's azrael4 who's looking for the ping.

I'm looking for the effect of dampers leaving the strings. I was just guesstimating how that might result in more "ping" if the hammers are hitting strings that are already set in motion by the dampers.

Since this thread is still active, I would like to show that the "woosh" sound of hammers flying in the air IS audible (and graphically visible) when a closely miked recording of a real piano is made, such as the Purgatory Creek demo with a real Steinway B.

Here is what it looks like:

This is the first note of the recorded demo lasting around 200 milliseconds.

The first 25-30 ms may look like noise at first, but normalizing to 0dB shows that it is a real periodic wave, clearly audible in the file I uploaded (somewhat amplified and lenghtened with silence because Windows Media player doesn't like mp3 sound bits shorter than a second).

I uploaded the whole first note and the first 30 ms as separate files.

It may be debated that this first sound is actually the dampers lifting off, but to me it really sounds like hammers flying in the air. This sound is of course not separately audible afterwards as the piece is played, but I think our brain is capable of subtly registering it and interpreting the reality of the hammer movement (because we know what's happening in the real world) and missing it when it's not there.

I have done a number of comparisons of this first note as played by varying Pianoteq presets and also my Black Grand samples and the "woosh"  is never there (we already know this for Pianoteq). I tried to see also if for instance the sound of a hammer "crushing" fast on a string is different when comparing a real piano where it might be somehow modulated over time and not a fixed "thud" sound, but I didn't find any evidence of this. In fact, the hammer noise of the Black Grand sample is very similar to Pianoteq's...

Of course, all this may be lost when music is listened to from afar, but sometimes we want a detailed closely miked sound which might need this extraneous element for realism.

Try quickly flapping all of your fingers in your face and let me know how much "air" noise they make.  Then consider that hammers are smaller, and are under a solid piece of wood.  I can definitely feel the air in my face, but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to hear very much.

Then consider that within a millisecond, they hit the strings - not much time to hear air noise is there?

Dampers lifting off the strings - yes - hammers in the air - no.

Personally I think it's time to put the baby to bed.

Just to conclude, if I move my finger fast near my ear, I definitively hear a low frequency front similar to what I uploaded. But since it is 30 ms before the attack of the first note of the demo, I agree it could be the dampers.

I just wanted to add some evidence that there is something there that's audible with headphones. I don't want to say it's important and should be added, I love the sound of Pianoteq as it is, I play it all the time, it's just that there is something in the P.C. demo that definitively sounds live, not better, just more real, that I was trying to pinpoint by comparing it to other sources of the same sound.

That piano doesn't sound better, in fact the short sustain in the demo shows that it was a new piano (at the time) a bit stiff and still in need of settling.

Yes I realize now it seems too long to be a hammer transient and must be dampers raising at first when the pedal is depressed, but the sound is very intriguing. All dampers lifting usually have a "reverberant" quality that is absent here (maybe because the piano is new) so I am a bit in the dark since the actual time the hammer travels in the air would have to be measured to be sure. Of course this time varies with the velocity of the attack, and so would the sound if there is any. A slow velocity would be silent of course, but what about higher ones, like in this demo...

I understand about the latency, I am very happy with my 5.3 seconds latency. It's just that the initial attack is very important to characterize the sound, as you know very well, and since Pianoteq does a great job of emulating the "steady state" (not so steady, of course) I thought maybe some time could be spent in trying to find out short initial events that might be important psycho-acoustically, so to speak.

I was thinking about this as well, and I realize that I'm sure it could be implemented (if it hasn't already been) for when you depress the sustain pedal, but when it comes to each individual damper lifting with each depressing key... that would take a very special type of midi message/keyboard.

In the same way most synths/midi controllers have aftertouch, they would also require a pre-touch of sorts that would measure the height of the key. As you depress the key, it would effectively "lift the damper" based on the amount of key press you push down.

Now this causes a few problems:
1 - What midi channel would this go over? (custom obviously)
2 - What midi controller supports this?
3 - If we choose to ignore this, the only way to effectively recreate it is to add latency which takes away from the playability of the instrument itself.

Anyway - I do agree that this classic whooshing sound is definitely the dampers being lifted from the strings. My question is - is this already included from when you depress the sustain pedal? Do you hear any noise at all when you only press down on the damper pedal?

As other posters have mentioned as well: There is obviously more work that needs to be done with Pianoteq. I think they have a fantastic product and are definitely working in the right direction but as some people have mentioned... there's something that still just doesn't sound right sometimes in the higher registers (for me anyway). I can't pinpoint it, but it sounds too perfect?

That being said - they're obviously heading in the right direction, and I think they should perfect the piano part of the sound before worrying about individual nuances that our midi controllers don't support

Just my 2c.

Skip, I'm sounding confused because I suspect that there are several initial soft sounds that are almost indistinguishable--perhaps some air, the movement of the damper and the key, etc.

Listening to the posted mp3, to the very few milliseconds just before the definite sound of the hammer whacking the string\the key hitting the keybed, I do hear a ramping up of a soft sound. Sorry to dwell on this sound immediately prior to the clack, but it would be magnified when playing several notes at once, and even if not, we do know from working with sampled pianos that very small differences in the attack make a large difference in the sound. A millisecond too short or long makes it too suddenly bright or turns it into a violin...

What I'm saying, I think, is that I understand that it would be impractical to try to include all of the soft sound prior to the attack, most of which is inaudible, but a millisecond or so of soft sound at the start of the attack, when that soft sound is most audible, according to the recording, might be worth exploring. (Might, might...)

When I maximize the note (0 dB), the noise before the note is at about -26.4 and -29.2 dB left/right respectively.

It's sound is very similar to the noise my DP keybed makes when the speakers are turned off - more of a dull thud than a whoosh.  And I'm quite sure it's not dampers activating the strings.

Once when I still had my grand, I pulled the action out, and struck a key (the  hammer flew up of course), and when the key bottomed out on the keybed, it made a dull thudding noise.

At -26dB, it's not a very prominent part of the sound.  This tends to confirm that Steinways are well built - as they've managed to almost eliminate this non-musical sound (apparently Pianoteq has completely managed).

Glenn

Here's an interesting article on some research into a continuous keyboard controller:

http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/system/files/...yboard.pdf

Greg.

Hello Joshua,

I just encountered this thread in the forum and have not read all of the replies, but would like to discuss the notion of "whooshing air" that you describe, as hammers approach the strings.

I strongly suspect the sound you hear is not due to air turbulence caused by hammers.  Why not?  the hammer head has to accelerate from a standing start through a distance of no more than about 2-3 inches, in the time of approximately one-fifth to one-tenth of a second.  Even if the acceleration was nearly instantaneous, we are only talking of about a terminal velocity of 30 inches per second (3" divided by 0.1 seconds).

If you realize that 60 mph is a mile in a minute, or 5280 feet in 60 seconds, or 88 feet in one second, then consider that 2-1/2 feet per second is only about 3 miles per hour -- hardly enough speed to cause air turbulence -- especially in something with as small a cross section as the leading edge of a piano hammer.  So the average velocity is 30" per second, and from a standing start, the final speed at impact might only be 5 to 10 miles per hour -- there is neither enough time, nor distance, nor surface area to cause a whooshing sound.

More to the point, please note that if you swing your arm through the air as fast as you can, even with fingers outstretched, you are moving far more air than would be moved by the above mentioned hammers.  Do you hear whooshing sounds when you wave your arms with fingers outstretched (to move the maximum amount of air possible)? The obvious answer is 'No'.  In the case of the swinging arm, a major league baseball player can accelerate his hand from 0 to over 90 mph in approximately 1/3rd of a second -- but there is no whoosh from air turbulence from even a professional major league baseball players arm or hand.

On the other hand, when Tiger Woods swings a golf club (or his wife swings one into his face), the whoosh you hear is NOT due to the air, per se, but rather to the resonance of the flexing golf club shank as it slices through the air. 

So, what are we hearing instead?  Many times, grand pianos emit whooshing sounds (actually I prefer to call it a "hissing" sound) when the sustain pedal is depressed, and the dampers collectively leave the strings at the same time.  This occurs when the dampers are slightly misaligned when they rest on the string after the previous time they were lifted (by depressing a given note or hitting the sustain pedal).  When they are lifted by the sustain pedal, the slight misalignment can tend to excite the higher harmonics inherent in all strings, but especially of the low and midrange strings.

Now that particular hissing sound can be emulated in Pianoteq by increasing the sustain pedal noise and hammer noise.

I hope this clarified what you were experiencing.

Cheers,

Joe

In fact, Pianoteq already has that sound...I recorded the sustain pedal noise in the Pianoteq Action effects panel, and the first 30 ms sound exactly like my uploaded sound bit! Sorry to have bothered everybody with this, it's only the pianist pressing the sustain pedal at the beginning of the piece, an effect we already have with Pianoteq!

Pretty good microphones though...

Yes, the reason I didn't see it when the midi file is played by Pianoteq is that the sustain pedal Ctrl event comes AFTER the first note in the file. I edited the file to put it approximately 30-40 ms before, and here is what I get when the file is played by C3 Short Treble, with the sustain pedal noise boosted to its maximum :