How to increase the piano audio quality?

There's truth to what Phil says.

I'd begin with a checklist..

1
is your sound card set properly (with ASIO4all - and with it's best settings)?

2
in Pianoteq have you set up your velocity curve (and made sure it makes the best sounds with your keyboard at all velocities) - it's super good to do this well.

3
try on nice earphones if your speakers aren't too good to see how that goes..

4
Youtube and other platforms process audio (sometimes make bad recordings sound a little nicer, and some nicer ones sound a little worse)

5
Phil adds what he says are "superficial tweaks". To my mind, it would likely be a little compression and EQ (maybe plugins in a DAW) - that probably seems like 'cheating' to someone new to audio - but reality is, adding a little compression or a few small EQ changes is second nature for many musicians/producers. It's just what we do and to be fair, we all can! The tools are even inside Pianoteq - just for sure read the manual to see just how editable everything is.

Genuinely reaching out to suggest to take time to learn about Pianoteq's features and I'm sure with time, you'll make significant progress towards enjoying your system to it's fullest.

Nothing new about any of this and your post is very likely one of the most common first posts - "How to make it better" hehe

It's something a lot of new users of any product will wonder - but it's not even an issue for me (or Phil) or the many people like on the Pianoteq references page. It's a great tool - and it's totally normal to make it sound great in various settings.. but everyone's system, budget etc. will be different as will results.. and small speakers and so on will be somewhat limiting of course.

I'd totally listen to Phil and take in what he says about sonority though - it's not a curve ball it's reality - I wish I could play as well as Phil too - but time gets us there - (Pianoteq is so much more expressive than the other piano software which I no longer use) - even if fairly advanced as a pianist - using esp. electronic tools does probably hold a few surprises for people used to real pianos - but you can make small changes to things like velocity curves and EQ to bring out what you want to bring out in the pianos.. the defaults are quite full and absolutely great for 'tweaking' for any purpose.

Best of luck shinanqu!

Well said dazric,

the velocity curve should probably be #1 any time this comes up.. it's great that you leaned in and figured out your curve, it can change everything, even on low-spec systems. It definitely comes most to life when that is done.

Just linking here to the Pianoteq Keyboard velocity curves page so readers who are new to this might find one already made for their digital piano keyboard.

And, Qexl, as this used to be one of my issues as well, I will repeat that I am a fan of the third-party program "VelPro" by Springbeats (www.springbeats.com) to use to set up the curve for your keyboard (recommended to me by one of the Modartt folks, though I forget exactly who).  Setting your keyboard's velocity curve in VelPro allows you to leave the Pianoteq velocity curve settings open for artistic interpretation, as many authors use for their FXP presets, especially with the electronic pianos. 

If you have a 'brand X' keyboard, you can still use the curve that people have listed in the Pianoteq pages for your keyboard, but just put the data into VelPro (I don't know that it's drag-and-drop, but most curves aren't that hard to enter manually anyway).

And, as my medical and scientific communities demand for disclosures during presentations, "I have no conflict of interests to declare relevant to this presentation."  (I paid retail for VelPro, which I was happy to do because it fixed such annoying and important issues for my system.)

:-D

Velocity curves were quite bewildering to me until I figured out what was going on with the midi velocity values. I think somebody should do an instructional video on the subject, but here's a quick tutorial:

Velocity = [0, 5, 15, 30, 49, 72, 98, 127; 0, 13, 29, 46, 65, 85, 106, 127]
This is the 'Moderately slow keyboard' preset from Pianoteq (obtained by copy & paste from the velocity curve menu). So, what's going on here? The first set of figures (before the semicolon) represent the raw input data. The second set of figures show you how the curve will 'translate' this data. So, in this example, most of the velocities are being boosted (input of 5 gives output of 13, 15 gives 29, and so on). Hover the mouse over each control point in the velocity curve window and you'll see readings like '5, 13' and '15, 29'. It's possible to modify the curve by adjusting any of the control points and adding new ones. So, if you felt that the louder dynamics were a bit too strong, you could try gradually pulling down the control points in the top half of the curve.

I hope this is helpful. It would be really useful if we had some more sophisticated tools for velocity analysis and curve setting. For example, it would be great to have some reference audio files (simple chords and phrases) for various presets, demonstrating how the different dynamic levels should sound.

Happy to help . When I was new to Pianoteq (coming from the world of acoustic pianos) I lost count of the number of hours I spent trying to understand the velocity curve...

Yes, VelPro now has multiple presets (good for different styles, such as bright pianos across multiple software companies' instruments, truer or gentler pianos (using the same piano instruments), and organs or organ-like pianos if the software inaccurately has velocity settings for the instruments and you want to achieve a flat response curve. 

Also, my brother pointed out that if you have an electronic throttled car, you can buy chips that re-map your throttle response curve for your car, as he did for his BMW X-1.  It doesn't really make your car quicker, but it might make it feel quicker, since a softer throttle push will get you relatively more throttle, but then again (like with velocity curve mapping in musical instruments), a deep jab at the throttle won't do much more than the soft push, since you've mapped your Y-response earlier into the X-action -- as the instruments go, you start at 0,0 and end at 127,127 - it's how aggressive that you get there that you can change, but aggressive early means gentle later, or vice-versa.  And, as stated, you can also plot a flat curve (as organs use, where it's "all or nothing", or even a reverse curve (though I don't have a reason for that).

thank you very much David.
sounds like it will be worth giving it a try.

thank you again dazric.
I am baffled by it.

dklein,

  I checked out Velpro's demo. its only for Mac.

there are no built in presets.

I tried emailing support. but there email is not working.

could you please tell me more about the built in presets?

thank you very much David.

the demo is for Mac only.

and there are many empty slots to create user presets.

I guess I would only get it if there were built in presets.

thanks again. 

thank you very much.

since there are no built in presets, I'm not interested in it right now.

indeed dazric.

maybe someday they will have built in presets.   

A fair point. That's why I think it would be useful to have some benchmark audio files, i.e. 'this is what x preset should sound like if you are playing mezzo forte', etc. (Edit: it would be even better to have some test midi files that were calibrated to play accurately with the 'Normal keyboard' curve. Then we could make our own audio files from any preset, as desired).

Know the feeling well!!!

Warmest regards,

Chris

I think that I don't understand why one should want to use VelPro, since Pianoteq has the possibility to change the velocity curve as well (and to set various curves).
Is VelPro doing that job better than PTQ?

Also, I sometimes notice that the PTQ sound sounds 'muddy' and/or harsh. Interesting fact: when I play piano on a later occasion, the sound is brilliant again. I've come to believe that my mood of the moment is a great factor of influence here. Any body who thinks the same?

Have a nice day!

Two more reasons to use VelPro:

1)  If you happen to use other VST programs other than Pianoteq (Native Instruments, Hauptwerks, etc.), the VelPro lets you set your velocity curve ONCE which then is applied to all of your music virtual instrument programs.

2)  Specifically within Pianoteq, the velocity curves are saved with the FXP presets.  Therefore, many creators of presets use the velocity curves for creative purposes, making them flat for electronic instruments or simulations of (such as a modified piano that is made to sound like an organ), making them soft for delicate detailed instruments, or making them hard for instruments to sound bright and lively - if you use the Pianoteq velocity curve function to 'normalize' your hardware keyboard, and 'lock it' with the parameter freeze function, then you miss out on these characteristics of any presets that you may download.