I always play Pianoteq with headphones, with binaural output the sound feels a bit dead.
What I want when I play with headphones is to hear the piano sound as I was seating infront of a piano and play on it.
What do you think about the idea of going stereo with headphones, with player mic position?
Not that I haven't tried it yet, just want to see opinions of others.
I haven't tried this, but you might try positioning two microphones where an imaginary piano bench might be placed with respect to the keyboard. Heightwise, I would place them "lower" than where your ears would normally be, so that you hear the source as something that is below your ears.
Regarding an omni- versus cardioid (heart-shaped pickup and more directional), I might suggest selecting a pair of cardio microphones and point them towards the center of the virtual piano.
Let us know what you think about this.
Cheers,
Joe
P.S. I might suggest turning "off" the loudness and delay compensation, and make up for the difference in sound with the main volume slider and the dynamic range slider on the main screen.
I always play Pianoteq with headphones, with binaural output the sound feels a bit dead.
What I want when I play with headphones is to hear the piano sound as I was seating infront of a piano and play on it.
What do you think about the idea of going stereo with headphones, with player mic position?
Not that I haven't tried it yet, just want to see opinions of others.
If the binaural sounds "dead", have you adjusted the head diameter to actually match your head? I have found that too large a diameter setting will result in the binaural mode sounding rather flat.
(Also if you are using one of the piano models with a player perspective, you can still switch the output settings to binaural for that.)
My limited understanding of Binaural modeling is that they model for an actual presence of a solid head between the "ears". That is, there is a difference between two mics at ear separation with nothing but air between them and a binaural model which allows for the effect of a head.
Wikipedia's page on Binaural recording.
and note in particular the Dummy head recording technique.
This is why I would not expect using mics instead of binaural to work the same.
As we have learned from previous threads, we can’t hear the piano sound as sitting in front of a real piano and play it, using headphones (although I very often have to use them, and I like the sound from my Grado Labs Prestige). But, I hope binaural, in the future, one day give what we need thru headphones. Development goes on.
But, as Joe suggested (I have tried it before), when having two microphones (U87) at the ”piano bench” taking sound from the ”body” of the Ptq and sound coming towards me from my ”Bowers&Wilkins” speakers, not from headphones, then I feel a quite connected experience to a real piano. And having myself/keyboard at same distance from speakers as they are from each other (equilateral triangle), about 1 meter. Well, it works for me.
We hear different and we have our sound equipment in different room, so I suppose everyone have to try out and use the flexibility of Ptq (I still like to do it every now and then). And I noticed that small changes in position of speakers made big difference in sound quality, as well as moving large pieces of furniture around had effect (and that made me more creative, too) My experience, good sound is the same as good room acustics.
Well, that’s what I think about it.