background sounds electronic

Nope.

Polyphony doesn't change the quality of sound (it doesn't make Pianoteq sound "better"). Internal sample rate doesn't really make a huge impact if you change it from 48k to 192k (personally I hear no change in the quality of sound at all)... Pianos have little to no spectral energy above 12kHz.

>>I personally don't understand what you mean by "electronic mixed sine wave".
Perhaps the word twang might better describe the sort of sound, with the pedal down after the notes have faded.  A real piano gives a broader sound board growl(?).  I have not looked into recording.

With the assurance that it should be good, I will explore a bit further - increase polyphony etc.

I use an upright at home and the stage piano when away at work during the week when I live in a local flat (and a Steinway grand at piano lessons :-) )

The output from the NVIDIA card is to a good amp and HiFi speaker system.

I am using a USB midi converter cable, but I cannot see how that could affect the sound in any way?   Still it does sound like an electronic artefact - If the software does not naturally do it, I will look into it more.

Thanks for your replies folks

I had the same thing happen and found the root cause to not be PianoTeq.

I use a Kurzweil PC3LE8 to drive PianoTeq. Sounded fantastic so I decided that I might as well run the line out from the Kurz through the sound card and be able to use one set of headphones/speakers.

Worked well, except D#5 had a distinctive electronic hiss ("transformers" style). Removed the line out from the Kurzweil and nothing changed. Removed the line in from the sound card the beauty was back and D#5 was again clean.

I would suggest you eliminate all but a pair of headphones to make sure it's not ground noise or other interference from active electronics.

If you use a laptop, disconnect the power supply and check if the noise is gone when running on battery. It's very, very often what happens.

Alais...I must fully agree with the frist poster of this subject; I happen to have the same nasty experience, specially with the D4, and most perceptive with the more softer derivates, like the "Intimate".
Happily the "Classical Recording"is suffering less.

There are really sinewaves in the decay portion of the sound, in the middle kb area. It is as if somebody is softly whistling your note when it decays.....

So we are NOT talking here about spurious noises, coming from earthe loops, laptop power supplies etc etc.
I can thrustfully state that my setups are free of that, and besides Pianoteq I use other sound generators, like Hauptwerk, having none of these issues.
I also tested with diverse Audio interfaces, like Focusrite Saffire, M-Audio, EMU and MOTU units.

So there is room for improvement on this.

Another thing:  I certainly do NOT like most of the built- in reverbs. They add some obtrusing "bulk"to the middle audio area, that makes your beautiful transparant pianosounds much more "heavy".
Even if you move the MIX slider a lot to the left, at say minus 12 or 15 dB.

Instead  ( IF one needs reverb sometimes)  I use a separate convolution VST, with the impulse response of the Anloo church in the Netherlands, which is a fine small medieval church having a reverb time of some 1,5 seconds.  And the surprising thing is, that THIS reverb does not al all have this nasty effect, even when mixed in at a much higher level ( say minus 4 dB or so).

Another thing ( 2): which I also spoke about in another post:  I do NOT like the built in headphones simulation, called BINAURAL......
This to my opinion does alter the basic sound, which is should not do!!!
Instead of that I use the Toneboosters ISONE, which is perfect, so that you ONLY hear the sound moving a bit to the front in your head, WITHOUT altering the tonal characteristic.

Now don,t understand me wrong: I still find Pianoteq giving me the most realistic playing effct, and also a VERY nice and convincing piano sound, but one should try out these things  for improving the sound even more.........

Greetings,

Geert

If you hear whistles at the tail of notes, just before the sound goes silent, then it could be caused by the soundcard supporting only 16-bit output. If you export a 16-bit wav file with pianoteq, and listen to it, you should not hear this whistling sound anymore at the tail of notes because Pianoteq applies dithering when exporting to a 16-bit wav.

If you are on macos, you should check the bit-depth of your soundcard output , in "Audio and MIDI Setup" (found in Applications / Utilities ) -- Presse Command-1 to bring the "Audio Devices" window if it is not visible. It should display "2ch - 24bit Integer"

If that is not the issue, you should definitively post an audio example (wav preferably) of that sound so that we can check if something is wrong

Ok, thats quick...!!!

Very much to my surprise, its the MOTU Microbook II I use!!

I hooked up my ( cheaper...) EMU 0404USB. This unit does come up with a settings display where I can select a bit-depth.

Much to my surprise, not only on 24 bits, but also on 16 bits its clean as hell!!  Now I have to find out, if this problem changes when I manage to get the MOTU into 24 bits.... but this is really a bad day for me, as I use the MOTU for all sorts of sound, and it is so much more versatile. But in the end, it is only the sound that matters of course.

SO, Pianoteq, nothing to blame there..!!  And I  suggest for people with this problem, to change Audio Device and look again.

This all was done with direct program. Next step will be, to look into this with Reaper and VST, as probably there I can adjust the bit depth of the MOTU.

Julian, thanks for the reply!

Greetings,

Geert

16-bit and 24-bit recording
The MicroBook system handles all data
with a 24-bit signal path, regardless of the
I/O format. You can record and play back
16-bit or 24-bit audio files at any
supported sample rate via any of the
MicroBook’s inputs and outputs.

This is from the manual. And this explains, why there  is no setting for bit-depth.

I give up! On another PC, I get bad results with boths soundcards, on the stand-alone version.
Can not get it better by changing settings.

Julien, could you pls tell me, where I can send a wav-file for you to evaluate??

Greetings,

Geert

Hello Julien, and other readers: As I yesterday got very uncorrelated results testing with two different PC,s and also different Audio Devices, I suddenley by accident discovered the reason:

I was testing with slightly different fx,es......!

So now I have discovered that the effect of the strong non-harmonic sidetones is strongly related to the position of the Mute slider. AND REPRODUCABLE ON ALL MY EQUIPMENT !!

One should test it with the D4-Intimate fx. And no reverb or other effects. Try the E3 ( in the octave directly below middle C), or other keys in that octave.

With the Mute slider at 0 ( zero) it is ok. But at  mid-positions, say 0,35, there is a nasty tone developing in the decay, that is close to D6  ( which is just two semitones below the natural harmonic...)

I sent these results to Julien.