Ringing frequencies with Steinway B

Hi Phil,

Each piano in a showroom will be slightly different to the next and it's probable that some character in those frequencies existed in the piano which was modeled.

I don't hear something incorrect - but if I wish to make any piano "cleaner" (for wont of a better word) from real world artifacts, here are some things I'd look to first:

Firstly, outside of Piantoeq, just be sure treble on your audio system is not overly-boosted. More about this can be written but essentially, small speakers or consumer grade equipment can often push bass and trebles to "sweeten" overall consumer experience - but can also push too much treble or make bass too boomy. Factor in non-acoustically treated bedrooms/home studios etc. and nobody's space sounds the same - not witch-craft, it's factual stuff - you may get great results after you alter your external EQ! - not a drill.

So, if you have some controls over this, try altering bass, mid-range and treble settings to something closer to a flatter line (at least lessen some of the pushed elements until it sounds less "candy" or "tinny" or "booming").

To Pianoteq..

In Stage:

• Right-click the Velocity box, apply "Moderately Fast Keyboard" curve

Why? There may be much work on getting your best velocity curve but sometimes just selecting "moderately fast" can make a positive difference as a starting point at least to evaluate (if that's heading the wrong way for your keyboard and/or style, try "moderately slow" and take it from there). For a lot of people this may be regrettably overlooked - AND can be the single most important setting you will make - take good chunks of time to experiment with the curve, search the Pianoteq curves page to view curves for your keyboard, attempt (even many times over months) going through the calibration routing because one day you may totally have an Eureka moment etc. But for many, a harsh curve can make any notes you play ALL sound too "CLIPPY!!!" (ahh!) and forcing mostly frequencies best reserved for genuinely FFF velocities - if you play like that, then it may come down to getting some more experience, lessons or know that with more time your playing (expression etc.) will improve. Get the velocity curve somewhere closer to "real" and the rest may be so much better..

but if you're already cool with all that, some other more instant things to try in Pianoteq Stage:

• Increase Dynamics (slider under volume) - this can breath more life with a click - making your playing and all the sounds more real without doing anything else in Pianoteq.. the Steinway Model B "Bright" preset has a low-ish dynamic setting of 38.. if I want something more like a concert grand "feel" for some expressive playing I might raise that number to more like either side of 50 - raising this number has a nice side effect of reducing "harsh" over-playing in terms of velocity. Many people may make a fine career from playing all things at high velocity but learning about playing with some expressive intent can NOT hurt - even the best students may eventually understand this - and even those free-ranging it too might eventually realise "Oh yeah, you can get so much more from playing soft, then hard".. it's not rocket science - but it is overlooked IMO - nobody needs to play every note over 70 velocity.. always worth considering if skills are not yet developed.. advice along those lines MIGHT just save some people even quite a few years on their development, if they have no tutoring or just watch Youtube videos

• Turn off "Delay" (button lower right)

• Turn off or lower "Reverb"

• Click "Action" button and lower "Key Release" and "Sustain Pedal" noise

• Try turning down some of the treble in EQU3 in "Effects" - drag the dot down some

• Click "Equalizer" and create a roll-off on trebles by clicking the line at around 8000 and then add another dot at far right, then gently drag that down about -2dB or -5dB and alter the dot at 8000 to something like 10000 etc. - experiment

• Don't overlook lowering or turning off reverb! - experiment at least a little with this setting - try changing the reverb tone as well - it may be all you want to do and work for your room space and/or headphones better than other things here

In Standard and Pro:

There are many more things possible reaching into much more depth but just GENTLY applying some of the above may be all you want to do.

Just some quick examples (without so much detail) of extra one-hit things you could do as well as the above with Standard and Pro which may touch on such audio artifacts in interesting ways - one could spend much time balancing all these together gently:

• Slightly lengthen strings to roll off all kinds of overtone interactions

• Change microphones (plenty of presets - maybe choose ones further away from piano so there's less detail in "up close" squeaks and hammer hits). This is extensive in scope and there's so much you can do with mics, it is phenomenal IMO

• Lower Impedance (cabinet resonance)

• Lower Cutoff (less high frequencies processed)

• Raise Q factor (high frequencies diminish faster)

• Lower Sympathetic resonance (less resonance from neighboring strings')

• Lower Duplex scale (less complex resonance in mostly high frequencies)

• Add 0.07 or less to Energy, leave inertia or maybe shorten (personally I like this for taking some initial transient burst away YMMV with each thing you're trying to accomplish - always worth taking this little detour IMO

• In "Action" panel, alter all (things like damper position and duration can make a more clean sound, like removing some felt touching strings which might lessen some overtones - lots of details in that panel

• Lower hammer noise (I do like to do this, may result = more "recorded piano" type result than real life "player" position preset though

• Lower Hammer hardness - maybe begin with one mouse scroll down per Piano/Mezzo/Forte

• Turn off (or alter) compression

• Changes to Unison width can alter how frequencies work together - try higher and lower, using slider or precise numbers

• Add a little Octave stretching - see if that helps - it can sweeten or sour in interesting ways

• Alter Direct sound duration. Longer or shorter might work - worth carefully adjusting this esp. after changing a lot of other things

• Also, overlooked maybe a lot, right-click "Unison width" and change "Unison Balance" from 0 to something like 0.8 - give time to it, try way different numbers

• Widen Dynamics (slider right) for often breathing more life into the playing and therefore the "canvass" you're working on.. you may over time realize you make nicer sounds by playing less hard and with less velocity overall, the accents of higher velocities will stand out - in which case those may (like a real piano) work better without all the other tweaking anyhoo

Those are most of the quick go-to settings in the main interface to balance and alter - but under the hood, you have some 30 different settings which can be applied on a note by note basis, drawn in, given randomized values and so on - to totally just swing something on notes or ranges of notes alone if you need.

The ability in Pro to really gain reach into things like spectrum profile and on an individual note basis - amazing.. any "zing" or transient you want to accentuate or disappear = doable. Learning curve is high but not impossible for most people with some serious intent in their music making.

Nothing like Pianoteq is possible elsewhere in my experience for playing (from practice to performance) and through to recording (like working with a real piano in a studio - better in some obvious ways) and certainly nothing pertaining to such high levels of reality and so vividly - but in short, with time spent you can learn how to do almost anything you want to a piano preset's sound. Make a bright piano dark - make something completely new - with some experimenting, reading, learning you can make a lot of advances - and I encourage anyone to get into the settings and try them out - break some things, learn why, back them off or start again.. make some smaller changes and eventually you'll learn what things you like to do to get the best sound in your space (or for recording with whatever intentional professional outcomes are required).

Even with just the above, and even with Stage, you can still do a lot

Worth searching this forum for other threads about editing Pianoteq presets also - going back many years people have posted about what changes they want to make and asking similar things.

Hope that's a help for anyone thinking about how to edit presets in Pianoteq. Just do the opposite of these above things, if you want to make a darker sounding preset brighter.

Oh dazric, mighty fine of you to say, thank you (just generally typing away imagining what I might have wished to find online for myself in years past - thinking things like, "Maybe a nice list of some things to try" etc. - and kind of trying to speak to new users as much as experienced ones, loving always the idea of more people understanding the software).  Has to be said, a lot of this kind of thing can be read about in the excellent manual too - but something is nice about conversationally re-assessing and typing out from different perspectives attached to particular questions - and also occasionally dipping hats to the generous and delightful people populating the place such as yourself dazric.

I love reading your posts too you know and observing the journey we are making with Pianoteq - and always appreciate everyone's knowledge and expertise here and the other forums (those who post FXPs and music! have my utmost admiration). Have to say, this is one of the most enjoyable forums I've bumped around in.

There's such a treasure trove of terrific ideas and explanations in this forum - and once you get into the depths of the available controls, Pianoteq becomes as deeply interesting as piano itself to me

Here's to tweaking to the perfection we are each seeking.

From your description i think I had a similar problem (around A4 at high velocity) with the Steinway D which I took care of by using the global Equalizer of the Stage version (below Action / Mallet Bounce, above Effects).

After identifying the frequency range of the ringing sound I altered the Equalizer curve to go down to -8 dB around this precise frequency range, like that :

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It solved the problem for me.

Yeah, I'm afraid I am!

At least starting out with Standard first. Then Pro if necessary.

Cheers Phil, really no skin orf re typing, it's actually a pure pleasure.

I really like the text diagram by Soel there elegant and demonstrative - bee's knees.

Without wondering why, copy and paste this following line into the main EQ interface:

Equalizer = [4000, 4050, 8200, 8300; 0, -25.0, -25.0, 0]

You'll see something like a fat trench running through a mid-high frequency range - horrible horrible stuff visually.. should sound absolutely awful.

Run the mouse across all the keys - you'll be surprised.

The main EQ (button) is not only volume auto-compensated it's also confined to PRE processing what is fed into the engine (think of limiting or enhancing certain overtones).

So, if you take a smaller chunk out of some range here just pertaining to the zing you hear, you don't get too much deficit, like you would with 'normal' post type EQ. The manual covers this but really nothing beats experimenting, seeing and hearing.

But utter black magic occurs when you also use the EQU3 parametric EQs (POST processing) in "Effects", so you can sort of return 'something' to whatever you're removed above - but without the "zing" you just smacked with the main EQ hammer.

Strategically and almost surgically, you can pull and push overall EQ and overtones around - the bumps in one corresponding in the other, with some "fuzz" or character to boot.

Overall result = not too shabby, compared to otherwise getting into the full spectrum editor in Pro. Darn worth a try in Stage - I absolutely love using the 2 types of EQ in Pianoteq "adversarially" to attack small issues or even working broadly on a preset.

Happy piano-ing!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Pianoteq tweaking. As Qexl says, there's quite a lot you can do, even in Stage (EQ, reverb, etc.). When you're ready to start exploring the incredibly cool features of Standard, install the demo version. It won't interfere with your Standard installation, but you may want to create a new folder within the Presets Manager in which to save your experiments. You can create many variant versions of presets in multiple folders - the only problem is keeping track of them all!

Are you sure? I can understand why by reading your quote, but I thought it was limited to personalized FXP loading.

I would have expected that presets in Stage would sound the same in Standard. Did you happen to hear any difference from that respect?

Also, if you do something like changing mic types or positions (in Standard or Pro) and then load the fxp in Stage, you won't hear the effect (the mics will remain in the default settings). To quote from https://www.pianoteq.com/pianoteq6 : 'In PIANOTEQ Stage, preset loading is limited to parameters that are present in the interface. Presets built with PIANOTEQ PRO can be loaded in PIANOTEQ Standard without limitation.' You can test this for yourself with the Standard demo.

I have to say, Phil, it really ain't about me as much as it is about whether or not your copy of Pianoteq Stage is enough for you to arrive at your desired outcome.  Anyway, the quote is one taken directly from a Pianoteq webpage, https://www.pianoteq.com/pianoteq6.  As you know, Phil, one can argue demo presets that are on the Pianoteq instrument webpages and appear with the word customized are official Pianoteq presets, if you want to argue over semantics!

Onto the subject at hand, which is "Ringing frequencies with Steinway B" or Steinway Model B Bright preset as accessed from within your copy of Pianoteq Stage.  Specifically, the Steinway B Bright and other presets immediately adjacent it inside the Pianoteq Preset manager include identical mic positions.  They are similarly in common with the presets Steinway B Wide and Steinway B Dreamy of the same mic positions. 

In addition to others, the Volume, Damping Duration, Damper Position, Hammer Hardness, Direct Sound Duration, and Unison Width parameters differ among these presets.  Of which, the largest variance and most striking note-to-note occurs within discrepancies found in the Pianoteq Volume parameter  —as I see it from its window on my copy of Pianoteq Pro.

Noticeably, the Steinway B Bright preset additionally has an Instrument condition showing a value (0.10) in Wear and tear.  Which alone seems the most probable source of your dissatisfaction with the preset.  So, I am including a customized version of it with mint condition set for you —with your copy of Pianoteq Stage— to test it: https://www.forum-pianoteq.com/file/a5qm2zll
Let me know if it solves any of your problems.

And, let me reiterate; individual note and group note adjustments have been limited to volume changes on the standard copy.  Only Pianoteq Pro permits other parameter adjustments on a per note basis!

hey Qexl,
       
     thank you sooo much for your kind excellent reply!!

Dare I say, that in your case, Pro is the only way to go? 

The Spectrum Profile in the NOTE EDIT window varies remarkably from the Steinway B Bright preset to the adjacent presets.  These variations occur within your aforementioned note ranges.  And, each of the preset's profile is nonlinear, differently!

Incidentally, now I'm finding Pianoteq Stage does have its own Condition slider.

Your composition and  Pianoteq sound very nice together.  Also, in keeping with the subject of this thread,  I always make any adjustments for 'stray' harmonics using the note-by-note editor in the spectrum profile - Pro version of course.

Kudos,

Lanny

I wouldn't say your video intrudes peterws - personally, enjoying your playing (sensing fine improvement in overall musicianship if you ask me) - sincerely, it's a joy to hear - nice work.

Those YouTube links auto-convert into video preview pics (there's possibly some current trick or other to stop that happening but not worth the worry IMO) - certainly not a worry to me at least - certain others also don't mind I'm sure - would be quite a sad line to take otherwise - do keep at it peter