Extraneous vibration E3 key on Steinway D model?

I guess it was because I was playing in the key of C. I just recently purchased Pianoteq and specifically starting playing the Steinway D today. Still thrilled with it overall.

I totally agree. That's definitely an impressive achievement, taking a model from "almost perfect", to "perfect", and then passing the threshold to "perfectly realistic", like a real instrument that has its own unique personality.

I think it sounds right, but some pianos more than others can be made to sound shrill.

Lots of factors for what you describe sb, but here's a bunch of things as they come to mind. Probably no particular order, but they relate I think.

A big 'secret' of piano playing you might see thrown around online (Youtube from memory too) is to be light on the bass - no need to be over a certain velocity - a thunderous bass line where appropriate sure - but for a lot of styles, you could say, go light on bass is pretty good advice.

That shrill factor though is part of the awesome 'terrifying' thunder we get from really well crafted crescendos and big chords (like post classical composers play with) etc. probably rarely ever sounds too close to many music lovers' ideal as isolated staccato notes alone down there but plenty of musicians use that sound to good effect in different ways.

If your bass notes are sounding too shrill for you though (even without velocity), should be fixable. Worth reconsidering your velocity of strikes first then some other settings. But out of the box, I think the D is delicious.

Maybe a tweak to soften things might help with what you prefer to hear..

It's head-spinning how much you can alter the sound (you can make some great modern sounds by over-doing settings too) but I'd start here..

I'd start with turning down, shortening or selecting other reverbs - sometimes in a room/headphones they can be adjusted to suit those better. Sometimes if cabinet has similar frequencies as your room and reverb, it can be an easy fix.

The sense of cabinet noise with residual bright string zing and/or boom etc in a real piano can certainly be found in the Pianoteq pianos - some rooms/speaker/headphones can benefit from any number of tweaks to make it sound the way we want - which is a dream.

To soften this kind of thing, if you alter microphones in the interface tool, set them further away, they pick up less up-close sounds and more 'room' too, tending to be softer and more 'music' and less instrument artefacts. Close microphones are often a more modern thing so, we're probably used to hearing 'recorded' classical music with 'audience' mics and more modern music with closer mics by proportion, but you'll see a lot of Pianoteq presets have some excellent close mic arrays and some skillful mixed distant ones too - so choosing between these might change what you hear a lot. There have been some good forum talks about mics over time here.

Depending on your playing velocity and your "velocity curve" settings (you'll see a lot of us really recommend taking extra time on that curve!), it may sound too round and soft or, sharp and brittle or shrill because of it across all keys and more velocities. The default straight line velocity curve has been sounding better with each update to my ears - but always, you're likely to get improved sound from tweaking it for your keyboard and style.

There's a step-through calibration button bottom left of the interface. It's worth some forethought about what the terms mean - but the step through setup gives good pointers along the way. I tried a lot over years to get better curves and honestly think I've come up with a better one every time I've spent time on it (never used to bother doing this with other VSTis because I never got the level of benefit from them, like I do with Pianoteq - it is worth it in an big way IMO.

I'm really happy with the last curve I settled on a few months ago - but still like the default flat one occasionally for casual sit-down&play sessions. For a while I would choose among more - but really liking the few now.

loudest where fff = seriously maybe a few strikes like this per hour of music.

fff
ff
f
mf
p
pp
ppp

softest where ppp = a gentle bump of felt, again not many strikes this soft in a typical session.

My common preference is for a velocity curve that is about finding a comfortable balance between "this is playing too loud" (results in feeling restrictive) & "this is playing to soft" (results in feeling like having to over-play and strike keys harder than real pianos). Either way, you'll over time find your preference. Same with any VSTi.

BTW, the Pianoteq velocity curves page may have one nicely fitting for your keyboard to try out.

Hammer hardness too has a big impact of whether the light velocity gives more soft felt sound or how much more spark is generated on impact.

There are other settings like under the "ACTION" button, damper position and damper efficiency - well worth moving the sliders a little at at time - you can make very little felt contact on strings or a lot - for more ringing or really faster damping - esp! in bass - both directions can go too far, so always worth taking time before deciding a finished setting.

Back to hammers - I like to broaden the effect with hammers, a slight softening of the "Piano" range - maybe a click either way with the "Mezzo" hammer range and possibly a click harder with the "Forte" hammer range.

That way I feel like I get the best of the soft bass and low velocities - and mid velocity seems deeper, to me, but the forceful strikes I do like some bite.

Over time, I'm enjoying realising how much more dimension there is to playing piano too - it has to be for me the thing I'm most grateful to Modartt for - (I used to be so much more MIDI only - and back in time with more primitive tools, I rarely used to notate piano sounds under 80 velocity which kind of 'does my head in' to think on that now - mainly modern types of music).

Now, well, honestly, high end of forte velocity is rare for me - only when body weight comes off the chair and down with force = FFF but that's just my pref now (don't break your keys!) but that's the gist. My normal playing range is maybe something less than ~5% of the time over 80 velocity - it's possibly only because of Pianoteq that I can hear the depths available, as in a real piano, reasons to learn to play less harshly as often as I used to (nothing is wrong with forceful etc. if that's a pref, no rules etc - but for me ah) relaxing into the whole body of possibilities available to us - less bombastic style 100% of the time Nothing wrong with loud - but I'm just glad I've found the rest of what I've missed all these years - nuanced piano - p through mf is where I see the line on the readout a lot - with dips and peaks, hill, valleys and all that.

Always loved classical music - but today with a software piano that can make it sound like good recordings, I'm learning so much more nuance. First time I sat at a very impressive real grand a few decades ago (could have been a Steinway) it was so nice, but scary how it showed me how much I needed to improve to make it sound good.

Last tip - if someone's not a top level pianist and it's more about enjoying playing without all the worry about greater nuances etc.. you can lower the dynamic slider - also good for flattening out huge ranges (like some really loud or soft midi files).

I can't hear the problem. Loser. (or winner, depending how I look at it

Greg.

First I see you counts with the first C as C zero, so for me your E3 it's indeed E4.   

I noticed more vibrartion in D3 than in E3 (0:11 to 0:13 in you MP3 file) of Steinway-D model. But on E3 it'as more conjoined, while in D3 it's more after, more residual let's say.

But for me E3 have more vibration, with a tinny cintilation in the end of the decaing note.
But the Streinway-D bass have such things in most keys of bass. It's something from the model itself. The question is to know if it's present on pianoteq more than in the real thing

And for the K2 I noticed too much vibration too to the metalic side and also with cintilation, like something vibrationg over a glass table. I found anoying...
Like sugar or salt, when in excess it tends to anoy.

So, your sound file it's like try find hair in a egg, when we compare to other notes of model-D or especially when compares to K2 bass.

Good ears can a a curse. I don't buy headphones cause no model pleases me. I went to a music store and tested a AKG and noticed many ringing effects that was not from keyboard but from the phone itself, but the seller keep insisting that he heared nothing like that.

Good eyes for color  tones it's another curse. That's why I don't watch TV anylonger, since digital video broadcast have a lot of artifacts, no more decent gradients anyware. So I quit it. It looks just like garbage to my eyes. I dream when I will be able to watch TV again, since digital HD broadcast just pure and simple destroyed TV entertainment for me. This plus that LED TVs all looks horrible to my eyes too, since the light it's not uniforme, view angle became trash even at 10 degree, and dynamic range it's a crap. No TV model on stores pleases me.
I trully don't understand how people accept these crap around HD films, HD TVs, HD broadcast, since for me it's all garbage (crap dynamic range, crap gradients, distortion at 10 degrees, crushed blacks and clipped whites, motion blur, image artifacts, blocking, details vanishing due compression or even grain reduction filters when they creat video master from film). I would like to understand how people can appreciate such trash so much. I feel trully like a alien in a land of blind people...