Sound saturation

Thanks. Why is even limiter on by default? Didn't notice it. Anyway I'd still like to know why is this even happening. I don't understand this fenomena.

Every VST has defaults which are aimed at working across the largest range of devices. A lot of users have laptops etc.. so will probably complain if it's too soft.

People complain most about their VST sounding too quiet in my experience - and new users with less experience with audio will consider low volume a sign of a poor quality. That's been my experience with all sorts of VSTs but maybe Pianoteq has other reasons too but those seem pretty typical to me.

I think Pianoteq is at a fairly high level out-of-box (I have mentioned I think it could be lowered a touch in the past iirc) but if we have some audio skills or time to read some forum posts from over the years or above from EvilDragon who gave the certified #1 top advice for the problem above, you'll see many people with all kinds of interesting strategies, simple and complex to make Pianoteq sound the way they prefer, for recording or playing with realism in mind.

I don't ever expect any VST to be perfect (level wise) when plugging it in and expect to edit things like compression to make it the way I want, but I'm typically someone who likes to customise, rather than thinking the defaults are the full or final picture - so would really recommend anyone check out all the inbuilt controls including the effects panel where there's a gain slider on the right.

Depending on your setups, a preset sounding too loud could be also helped by raising the dynamic slider (so soft notes sound softer) and setting different velocity curve which may make your key strikes more tamed (some keyboards send too high velocity compared to others).

Excellent. -7 seems a good region. Volume may be set too high for some of us but probably most will experience something quite right.

You can choose 'freeze parameter' to make it so across all your pianos and presets.. same with velocity curve and other customisation.. and you might like to save presets for particular edits to your own folder with their own names like "Brahms2019 concert" etc. After a time you might have a growing list of pianos you've edited with more than just volume and dynamics customised, like tuning and so on.

All systems are different but there are possibly other things to look at if you still come across some issues around loudness making things too harsh.

It's normal for users to adjust audio to be sure esp. if recording or being more critical about results than most. There's no real precisely correct defaults on any VSTi. There's only individuals with their devices and expectations. People will be mostly fine with defaults which get better each iteration - and there will be others with systems which sound hotter than ours, or who have greatly developed piano or audio skills - but with time we all learn to use Pianoteq the way we like best no matter our desires for outcomes

If you have remaining hassles though with a too-hot signal, make sure you try different volume balances between volume knobs on the PreSonus (Try things half way - then turn up one, turn the other down, try the reverse of that until you get a nice comfortable level - with instrument high and main low might be a good start to try).

If I balance at 12 o'clock (on my similar PreSonus audio box) similar knobs, the sound is OK - but not the best! I can juice out of it.

If I instead set one of the 2 available for my setup, to something like 4 o'clock, and the other to like 10 or 11 o'clock I get a much sharper sound with more dynamics and punch.. and if those 2 knobs are set the other way around, I get maybe something like the least best sound of these examples, way softer, less tones overall, flatter etc.

So, even with digital audio, there's some old school stuff in play sometimes with esp. things with a physical pot inside a dial.. it's not as pronounced as old analog gear on my PreSonus, but there's a good chance you can adjust the volumes in your chain to hear an improved sound through your speakers - time taken is worth the discovery IMO. (There's a chance your PreSonus has its own differences).

Also make sure you're using an ASIO driver if you got one for your PreSonus (ASIO4all is free and more than worthy - not just for Painoteq but for most audio work) - and worth also opening the ASIO panel (in Pianoteq Options/Devices/"Show this device's control panel").. and make sure the relevant audio driver is lit up. You may know all this - but if not, it could help to try out different settings via the panel.

You can disable other audio drivers there too if they are also showing up (they can clash/glitch and I've experienced it seeming like distortion).. I will often disable regular Realtek type drivers via the OS before plugging in an external audio USB (by plugging that in should load your correct audio drivers for the PreSonus BUT some OS like mine will sometimes fail to unload the regular Realtek ones). Get rid of them by right-clicking the 'speaker' icon in Windows tray (or similar in other OSs) to get to a pop-up, something like "Playback Devices" - there you can right click the basic ones and disable them.. then plug in your box's USB and you should see your USB audio device drivers there now ticked in green.. then start Painoteq and someone called Bob becomes one of your parent's siblings!

Also in the ASIO panel, you can change things like buffer size - which can help being set to a larger number if you're getting glitching or fuzzy audio. Not everyone's hardware can cope with way low numbers there - but larger numbers come with some latency.. it's good you can see all these figures in a few windows while you tune things for an optimal trade off. That PreSonus box should be more than OK.

Most others will enjoy the default output as it is (probably would get more forum threads about it being too low if it were lower - but just making an informed guess about that). I'm no longer surprised at how different each user's kit can be though. Largely consumers are not all looking for specialised recording settings or too super nuanced with their playing or set up, but those who like many others here and posting their music are will make all the power-user changes to suit their own ear and gear