Steingraeber Prelude vs Player - A/B comparison

In my opinion, the only difference is that the mics are under the lid and closer to the hammers in both Steingraeber and Grotrian Prelude presets (same position). In the Player, they are outside at ear level of the player. Freezing All output settings of the Player and loading Prelude makes them sound very similar except for reverb even if the note by note spectrum profile differs. So I suppose, if you don't like the hammer noise itself, just move mics further away.

One of my Pianoteq tricks to soften attack is to adjust the energy slider right just a little. It's in the design box at right, for anyone new who might only see a picture of piano strings - click those and the design box opens.

Too much adjustment to the right though and you get "Wahwahwah". But with say something between 0.01 and 0.07 can be pretty 'safe' - I tend to stop around 0.02. If you want, add to that by also sliding the inertia slider a little right, to give a tiny relief to any approaching whah peddle effect. I find it takes a little off the top without adding anything much unwanted. If I like it but it adds some almost imperceptible zing, the 2 further things I might do are Q factor slider a little right and also maybe dial back Duplex scale a little. Sometimes I end up with more than I bargained for and save a new preset from there.

Failing that, and back to microphones..

Here's what I'd do - make sure you've selected the preferred preset Player, then select the Freeze params, then one-click select "all output settings". Then select any piano you want. Remember of course, different pianos are modelled probably along with things like heights and widths (think upright) so your mics will always sound different on different pianos I'm sure.

Apart from any further differences under the surface (only available to Modartt), the mics have different left/right delay times.

The clues:

Steingraeber Player preset...

Mic type U87-figure 8
left mic has right channel delay 30ms
right mic has left channel delay 30ms (so both are equal)
mics are 71.8 cm apart (closer together than Prelude)
both point to centre at 31.4deg (softer angle, maybe gives more room space in sound)
vertical angle 0, so flat (again more room)
height 1.24 Metres (further above keys)

Steingraeber Prelude preset...

Mic type same U87-fig8
left mic has right channel delay 11.1ms
right mic has left channel delay 14.2ms (psychoacoustic spaciousness with near mics)
mics are 80cm apart (wider)
both point to centre, left at 47.3deg, left at 42.7deg (harder angle across the strings)
mics angle downward slightly, reads 345.5deg in settings so, theoretically down 14.5deg
height 1.06 Metres (closer to hammers)

Those differences could lead to differences in a given person's sense of attack loudness - any left right difference can add depth but sometimes can make something sound more brittle too - although all of these pianos are perception based and to me the Prelude plays beautifully - but I can see how it can seem more attack heavy. My perception is that, on top of the normal things about the above, also because, you're also maybe feeling a little less "at home" with Prelude because maybe the delay left/right could slightly confuse where a given hammer strike occurs, and the doubling effect of the delay (as well as the delay already built it too) might all confuse a real piano players sense of "what on earth am I hearing in front of me?". A confluence of additive abstractions.

Interesting things happen with sound where location of our perception of initial transient can have impact on how we perceive other aspects of sound. Pianists can be more definite about how a piano should sound whereas my tastes in sound come from before I played piano - for me, I hear first "a recorded piano" because of that.

For some, the Prelude might be a better recorded piano sound and those who never sit in front of one, may not have your concrete perception of hardness of attack. In your experience, as it should I'd suggest, the Player preset(s) might seem more realistic/better to players out-of-box.

One last bit of the maybe helpful: I'd also recommend anyone new to Pianoteq to make sure you're only clicking freeze params directly after selecting the preset in the list, because it's really easy to forget the freeze window is open! (Doh!) - and I've known myself to choose other presets in the meantime, and then not understand why something is not freezing properly. Also remember to check if you have anything frozen before anything else, if you're having strange 'issues' with your tweaks - kind of an aside but might save someone a moment or two

Those are the 2 main interface approaches I can see to take - hope they do the trick.

My pleasure David

It's really amazing to make a number of very small changes to achieve something we want in Pianoteq. I've made a mess of many early experiments because I was stuck in old work habits (Eg. full rotation of dials on synths to get an outlandish effect). Such a pleasure to have such a finely tuned system delivering us a real-time virtual instrument of such fascinating detail.

A tiny changes goes a long way - they seem to affect each other - so yes, anyone who may be new to Pianoteq reading, don't be scared to alter things in any way you want but definitely be aware that in terms of realism, often, it's several tiny things which make the most satisfying changes (even though you can make modern synth sounds worthy of any modern production).

There's nothing stopping you from isolating channels for each mic and sticking to that - point them until you find the spot - it may work for you to an extent and for your space indeed. More I suppose on this below as I type away..

Eg. of a quick/dirty fix for sounds which you might want to tame - it's a starting point thing:

1.
Check in "Effects", "Delay" - what Milisecond delay is there?
2.
Check "Reverb" - what Millisecond is set for "Pre-delay"?
3.
Match them up baby, Yeah!.. or use a number which is related to some mathematical construct (exactly double, half, quarter, exact third 33.333% - do some calcs, try this - shave off or add odd numbers - see/hear how it changes things - keep what works). Apply same general schema to other settings where time is involved, like mic left/right delays and so forth.

All throughout the digital music systems space, similar tricks are used - I should watch my back for the secret sound record producer and engineer's guild, they hate people posting about this secret stuff! Joke.. bad one I know ;0)

Mics for "what we hear" are attempted but often they're marketed for specific market and may be a difficult sell. In terms of record production, they're also not really required because all the physical tricks can be manipulated in the digital stage anyway.

AND album buying public expects something of a produced sound (say what you like but mom and pop buying "Classics for a Rainy Day" want to hear nicely produced product - not what the musician hears) or at least more of an audience perspective, not like us greedy blighters always wanting better realism sitting at the keys I am living in the space of creating a blended sound mixing the two - my mics are often 'wrong' but they're for my own final sound staging in Ableton for example.

Should be said again here, that less can be best whilst I remember to say it.. esp. for player perspective. More mics will just generate more field distraction - when you just want to focus on your playing.. but for more mood, all bets should be off. Any other presets, including the venerable ones included as always, are each a kind of step towards art, as much as science.

Starting from a proposition that we have too much signal (too many mics, or 2 mics both delivering full stereo image) typical issues as well as unlimited variant oddities can arise from that kind of over-delivering information, or bad information to a system. Problems are many and varied, some to do with some baseline anomaly with a simple fix (usually a tool or plugin to deal with these) to the very obscure, which still may have roots in the simplest of the rules governing the physical/electrical domains. For much modern music, these are sometimes fine - in the overall mix and a final image can be ironed out in the master channel - simple things like compression, limiter, DC offset fix at this stage. But I'm sure classical recordings would want to deal with anomalies before they get to the master. Still, they might add the same chains there, but like a lot of things, best to kill the main issues before the end of the chain if it's doable.

Eg. of something from the past which was fixable with a switch and dial - 'tape bias' was a physical fix for a offset issue specifically. The head moved slightly to track better (literally physically changing the signal passing over the read/record head) etc. In digital terms, it might be expressed or fixed by re-affirming a new 'floor' and recalculating, rather than anything physical.

More about 2 full stereo images coming in from 2 mics. If left and right microphones both have full stereo fields in play) are theoretically arguing over which should be electronically preferred by our electronic reproduction devices, and then next in sequence, by our ears and then brain.

So by keeping some crossover like you describe, we might hear something more representative of our real world hearing. It might also be a little like a moving tape head, bias, flutter etc.

That is probably as simply as I can put it before getting knotted into specifics. Certainly try killing it off before you have to deal with it later in the chain - by isolating or eliminating mic channels for sure if it works. Left mic, just left chan, right mic just right channel. But play on - add, subtract.

There are no rules, except the rules

But what's really going on is more detailed than this and there are many reasons why you might want to look at separating your mic channels and adding more mics.

Nothing wrong with more mics - but again, just one mic can deliver a wonderful piano sound. You could add wide separate stage or audience mics giving a subtle stereo field - EQ in a way to highlight bass and treble and mix low - can feel like room reverb washing around - without making the piano sound itself "too stereo". Just another of my favourites.

Many techs would argue for their definitive arrays used for many decades, but I'm very open to new/odd mic arrays - balance and mixing for stereo width etc. is just run-of-the-mill for modern music, less so for traditional classical recording.

How else does your brain defy your very own logic?

Consider the human brain, listening for the attack for direction which then lazily by comparison calculating with less attention to the tail - making more suppositions about the originating direction as per the impact, and guessing more about the latter end of a WAV file - as if we're moving forward in time, rather than backwards - some mighty reverse engineering going on in that statement and beyond bounds, no doubt.

It's not magic though, in the end. It's reality, and the bending of this is where the fun commences.

Apply inversion (under effects in an audio program, like Audacity) to a channel or both L&R in a stereo audio file - even though the waves are similar, they're technically upside down in a way - and we do hear it differently. Weird mic arrays with pushed channel controls can produce similarly strange sounding stereo fields.

The staying inside of bounds is where sensible things occur but of course it's great to know some rules, so that 'the way they are broken' becomes somewhat more informed by reality - that's when listeners say "Oh, wow" more often than "Eew". Even so, everyone's understanding can be different to an extent - but somewhere lies reality. I flirt with the creative more so than the theoretical but am informed by theory to some extent - and even if muddling about I can often find that I've found something works well, if only because I knew something, instead of million monkey twiddling.

Recommend always to push for new understanding for anyone not sure if sound is interesting.

But by all means break those rules - it's often where we find interesting production techniques etc. For genuinely top flight classical recording (which I have no experience in, other than through lesser types of recording for modern music, observation and study), the ears (audience) are generally highly educated (if not by academic research, then at least by osmosis) and will notice more quickly than other audiences, the deficiencies or oddness when mics run wild.

But, in spare time, a lot of sound professionals will burn their candle at both ends to run experiments in good sound stages. Many set up time and again the same array for similar works and relish being given an opportunity to unleash some of their experience in terms of "I just know I can make a better sound by doing x and y differently.. but.." - and on it goes

The beauty of having the mic array in Pianoteq! Love it.

In more detail, re "letting the mic hear what it hears", our ears though, are not flat diaphragms with adjunct side ports and singular processing available - and they have a large and often irrational processing unit installed in between (our brains)

So directly to "why do many presets have each channel composed of a blend of both left and right microphones, often with a delay for the secondary microphone?"

I'd say because, it's less sterile than 100% adherence to theoretical bounds.

Eg. Our ears hear some of what the other does, even though they point outward and forward mostly. The mix is (not speaking for the Modartt team) likely IMO because of crossover IRL.

Some of my favourite mic setups in Pianoteq uses all 5 mics each performing a task independent of just stereo field - to hopefully fulfill my ambition to end up with some very usable album-ready studio "recorded piano" sounds. Way more elaborate stuff added in a DAW, with tracks, splitting multi instances of Pianoteq, with each track for a given mic etc. It's humbling to have this available without the need to run across a stage and back to a desk over hours - just click click - wow. Eg. 2 close with some player perspective, 3rd and 4th further out full piano sound, the a distant 5th mic for room wash with left/right and more kinked settings to create 'vibe' for want of a better term. We can all have at it - try all sorts of things and I highly recommend getting to know a DAW and split your tracks and experiment.

Always end up coming back to Pianoteq for the defaults as reference - they are so sane it's wonderful.

Back to mics - A dumb mic will hear what's in front of itself. Call it left. Then place #2 and call it right. They are dumb, no matter which way you look at them, they're tools on sticks in the air, pointing across each other.

There is processing to do to make sense of the resultant field. In simplest physical terms, you abide by the basic rules which make sense for a stereo recording setup on any stage - time tested etc.

But, in Pianoteq, each piano is a work or art, as much as a living tree of algorithms.

At some point, the masters of the ship decide what defaults to release and Philippe seems the best sound guy I've ever encountered for immediate know how for even the most odd thing about a sound.

Each piano is a scientific work of art - best way to explain differences between models and presets. The team will know what they are doing - but like anything over time, we hear and demand more answers - if we are inquisitive and I'm loving the inquisitive people such as yourself on this forum looking into things to do with sound. Lots of endless ideas to be tossed around.

I found this video a while back (the presenter speaks slowly so I speed it up 2x) but he fairly clearly explains and demonstrates some mic techniques and some reasonable terms and theory etc.

How to mic a room in stereo - Ian Schreier via YouTube

There is no single correct, perfect nor some would argue, best way. No shortage of info in more tech terms than the above video or my riffing on the topic - and the woild is yer oystah!

Some will say it's everything about "what comes out of the speakers" and draw a hard line under that whilst kind of insinuating, we can do anything as long as it sells to a market - whilst also acknowledging limits to what's possible with today's sound systems out there in user-land. It's not cynical to be in that camp, but you can at the same time, be reverent about the shoulders of all the giants we stand upon, whilst also kind of scribbling on their statues with marker pen - as long as it's enjoyable or artistically or scientifically valid or relating to some other human value, it will find a reason to be.

Maybe, the only more certain way to reproduce sitting in front of a piano (as distinct from hearing stereo playback of a produced piano sound as per an album etc) would be to get into "VR Helmet" territory

But for a no-nonsense classical pianist to accept wearing a sweaty helmet "AND" still try to channel everything ideally meant! by the composer to be expressed by the immortal nocturne they are playing, is kind of a sad image to behold no?

All interesting for consideration.

Cheers D,

yes, the amazing thing about sound and music is how endless it all is - there are almost TOE level maths around so much of it but then you add artistic and further invention - always new territory to discover. Also, to a passing crowd, the level of science underpinning it all can seem invisible and I think we're beginning to really benefit from digitisation in relation to a more vivid realism.

Not sure I understand your quesion re Blumlein pair vs. coincidental pair (XY pair?) - time to watch the video again needed.. however, instead, and hopefully less confusing - I'm going to go ahead and post some links to some quite good info - useful for anyone interested in stereo and mic setups, esp. with tools built into Pianoteq.

Linkathon:

Pretty good interactive view of mic settings, incl. Blumlein and others.. you can add data and see how it causes changes in other settings.. Really simple but quite elegant.

sengpielaudio.com

Nice article "Two ears, two loudspeakers" which adds some depth to normative understanding of the topics. Good, simple animation near bottom of page, showing sound wave behavior throughout a room.

Syntheticwave.de

Article, "What Can and Cannot Be Expected from Stereo, Logically" - touches on historical mic techniques for orchestra and then pairs we're familiar with - some good depth. Reg On Audio - from 1996.

Regonaudio.com

Links page of other Reg articles for adding to the collection of rabbit hole(s)!

Reg On Audio

Didn't realise until now, this is also from Reg On Audio..

Beyond frequency response

Anyway, among the bazillions of articles (Wikipedia - is also not lacking in some good info as a go to), these are in my collection - probably read some of them in print in the 90s - thankfully most of it is as valuable/relevant today. Actually quite a soft spot for Reg - very generous amount of thought and info.

I've been keenly following your posts about transducers and speaker placement - fascinating to keep abreast of it. Can imagine your excitement to have your real piano repro the Pianoteq models. An admirable project and a half!

Really understand hesitation altering an instrument but with the care I'm sure you'll give to the task, you'll be certain to get it working well. Fantastic project - I wish you time and patience to have it the way you want! You are a rare person, and a pianeer!

Thank you all for your advices.
I didn't think the mics position could have such an importance in the sound.
Anyway, all this is to complicated for me. I will still continue to find the right preset for each instrument by comparing them and adjust little things like velocity curve, dynamics, hammer hardness.
Have a good day,
SK

Mic placements are indeed fascinating, and frustrating at the same time!

I’ve come to the same conclusion. Recently I’ve been trying to do some mic placements of my own. Although the results have been fairly pleasing, unfortunately I lack the expertise to make the fine adjustments. Coming back to the stock presets, with a few tweaks and maybe a carefully-chosen imported IR, they sound a lot better than my efforts after all. Oh, well… It’s been fun trying, but I think at the moment that my time will be better spent finding good IRs for the pianos rather than fiddling with mics. Having said that, I’m keen to study the valuable info posted here by Qexl, and I dare say I will be tempted to tinker with my mic placements every so often!