Hi there,
Passing from a stage to standard version of Pianoteq I should be now well concerned in settings... (Someone may argue: that’s what Pianoteq is all about). From a very basic "first step" point of view, I would know if for each Instrument do exists some kind of what one may call a Standard Pre-set... Just like an example, for my brand new Gotrian Piano, where may I find such a "standard"? In Prelude? Intimate?
Many thanks,
Marcop
Hi Marcop,
this is by no means covering everything but hope it helps in your tweaking journey
Check the text in your preset manager window - you'll see good descriptions for the piano presets there.. I'll paste a few here.
Player perspective with two mics.
A versatile preset with a pristine sound, the closest to the original Grotrian Concert Royal grand piano. This preset is oriented toward Classical music. A good starting point for creating new presets.
An introductory preset that lets you discover a colorful variant of the Grotrian Concert Royal Grand. This preset is oriented toward Pop/Jazz/Blues/Modern music.
"Player perspective" and "Audience perspective" are 2 standard ways to set up a Pianoteq instrument.
There are different reasons to use these - and it's a mixture of personal taste or what an audience might want from us. Here are a few to consider...
a)
If you're sitting at your Pianoteq piano, playing and practicing, you might want to use a "Player" perspective preset (where the audio is meant most to sound like you are sitting playing a piano with mics or binaural mode acting quite like our 2 ears, hearing bass notes to the left and treble notes to the right). There is no single exact perfect 'everyone agrees' way for this. We will most likely want to tweak Pianoteq so that this player perspective suits the acoustics of our room and other things for our own tastes - but player perspective presets will suit high quality piano practice requirements (where the ones below might be less suited for practice or recording performances*****note below).
b)
If you have performed a piece to your liking, and you now wish to play it back for others to listen to, audiences throughout history have often responded well to "audience perspective" There are no exact or perfectly defined limits to how this can be done, or "should be achieved" or anything but there are many traditions and techniques to draw from. In most basic form, 2 microphones point at the piano from the side of the piano. Try different distances etc, 3 or more etc.
c)
Experimental territory - like extremely unusual mic placements and mixes, balances with stereo - but it might sound awful or experimental - but it might be what you wish to do for a modern piece in a mix.
The forum has had a really interesting threads about mics - and some of those have links to interesting info.
I'd recommend taking time to keep learning some fundamentals and don't be afraid to experiment with Pianoteq - I personally think you can push it too far but it's fun and you learn by pushing controls around in extreme ways. Just be sure to return to defaults for a solid and enlightening benchmark.
*****Tip re performances - you can choose a player preset to practice and perform (Pianoteq will save the MIDI).. you can then play back that MIDI performance you felt comfortable performing with a player preset - but now you can choose an audience perspective preset to hear it back with - Make up a big room sound with some tasteful reverb and sit back in your own virtual 20th row and hear yourself on stage
I would know if for each Instrument do exists some kind of what one may call a Standard Pre-set
There is no standard setting because what is standard depends very much on how you listen to a piano or want to hear it from.
The presets have different microphone numbers, positions and settings. They have different reverb (very significant). Many other settings can have slight tweaks when you dig around under the hood.
Then there is how you listen to pianoteq. If you use headphones what sounds most realistic is likely to be very different to listening to it through speakers or monitors, or through the inbuilt speakers in your keyboard (sometimes people feed the pianoteq sound back to their keyboard's speakers where possible). Using speaks will make reverb quite a different issue from headphone usage, as to a certain extent reverb is emulating a room's acoustics whereas you're already in a real room with speakers and you get both the artificial reverb (unless you turn it off) and the room's own acoustics.
Also remember that every real piano is different, even supposedly identical pianos sound a little different from each other.
So there is no single standard setting.
That said I have "Standard" and I use headphones and the settings I most typically use are :
* The player presets (sometimes the intimate). These seem to be designed more to match what you hear when you play in a small room or studio setting.
* A preset with the "binaural" sound setting. This emulates what your ears would hear where the virtual headphones are places. I'd suggest this is a good choice to start from in making a custom preset for "player position". It's the most "unadulterated" sound for a human. Binaural models not just the position of the human head, but the fact that there is a head between the ears - the head itself transmits sound to some extent. Although you might expect the "Player" or "Intimate" presets to use binaural based on my description of it, what usually happens is that virtual microphones are used instead. Try binaurual - it's different.
* I often use a custom microphone settings based on the Bluthner Chamber settings. I play this microphone setting often with the grand pianos and also use it to compare pianos. Note that you can save a microphone preset (not a full preset) from any other instrument, including the demo ones (!) and apply that saved version to any other preset. Very handy for quickly trying out microphone presets. You can do something similar with "effects".
Remember that presets and FXPs are someone else's idea of what sounds good for them on their speakers or headphones in their room to match their idea of what is best. Your idea of best or most standard would be different in all likelihood. So experiment, particularly with microphone and reverb settings. Have a good look at the microphone settings in different presets and models to get a feel for what's done.
Hi!
Many many thanks to you both for the well detailed answers.
I will have a lot to work and play. That’s what I was indeed prepared to :-)
Best regards,
Marco
Interesting topic. Where do I find the description of each preset?
Another question, it seems that every piano has "Prelude" as its first preset. As this is the default preset, is it right to assume that this is the basic "vanilla" version of each piano? Although I've noticed that the Steinway D Prelude has some EQ curves and a strange delay, so that's not really the case.
Which preset it the most basic, untreated, raw piano?
if you open the Preset Manager window you can see the descriptions.
regarding the "standard" setting, i don't think it's possible to give a uniform answer. it's my impression that packaging of the models through presets has evolved over time. most later models include presets like "Prelude," "Player," "Cinematic," etc. but older models have very different preset schemes. YC5, for instance, is very different.
my personal preference (i'm a jazz player) leans towards the closer mic perspectives, or the Recording presets that don't have very distant heavy reverb perspectives.