Pianoteq 7 (Page 3 of 3)

First impressions are very good. In particular, I applaud the Pianoteq team for their new "Fine details of sound" website presentation which give audible examples of heretofore somewhat mysterious parameters in Pianoteq which allow shaping the sound to one's liking:

https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq?s=new#pane_sound

Been playing in 7 for hours now.
One of my concerns was how the presets I have been working on and improving since version 5 would fare in 7? First of all, the factory presets sound better than ever, and I have been enjoying playing them again. But my own presets also sound better, and the changes I have spent so much time making to adapt sound to my taste, playing style and sound environment basically transfer to this new version! It's a relief for me that I can benefit from all the improvements, yet not have to spend a lot of time re-doing all that work.

In 7, there is a new spatial quality, like the sound has depth and "surrounds" you. Attacks are clean and solid. Levels are consistent across the keyboard and even default velocity curves are better normalized. I can play and play with my favourite sounds, and nothing seems to stick out to annoy me (yet;) , like sometimes in earlier versions. The Morph feature is such a logical and easy way to create presets that combine all the desired qualities. Love the Flatten parameter!

In a nutshell, the Pianoteq experience is now closer than ever to playing a "real", physical instrument...you can almost touch it!

This new version is a genuine improvement, both in the interface and especially in the sound. Warmest congratulations and deep appreciation to everyone involved creating and distributing it. Astonishing work!

The thing is, Pianoteq was one of the only reliable pieces of software that would microtune "on the fly" in Dorico, my entire workflow depends on it. Very very sad to see it go

The 'midi-tuning' feature is now opt-in, you have to enable it in options / midimappings (and save it). If you do that , then the microtuning of Dorico should work as it used to with 6.

Thanks Stephen, I’ll do a proper cleanup.

That's a UI glitch, thank you for spotting it. We will fix it it in the next update.

These comments definitely sum up my initial reaction (before reading this thread) after upgrading my Pianoteq Stage to version 7. Part of the initial problem was that I had frozen my output setting to "Binaural" and the upgrade unfroze it and I ended up on "Recording". But even after fixing that something still feels off. Of course it's just my perception and I'm not a professional and I've never played or heard live any of the PT models I have.

With the NY Steinway D something feels wrong with Bb3 (counting from 0). It has sort of a dead digital feel to it. And I swear I heard a pitch shift on the final long sustain of this test recording, yet the spectrogram doesn't agree with me. (I recorded this with an independent program directly from the same Linux JACK audio output that routes to my headphones.)

Then with the Bechstein I'm getting a different vibe. Instead of the previously commented "wiry" or "twangy" overtones from the Steinways, the Bechstein in PT7 has more of a ringing "chimey" overtone, as though a glockenspiel were being played simultaneously. Here's a comparison:
- Bechstein, Pianoteq 6
- Bechstein, Pianoteq 7

The Bluethner also has more complexities to its tone in PT7, which I imagine was intentional, but I'm not sure I like it yet. It also feels farther away somehow, even though I'm using one of the Recording presets that has minimal reverb.

The Steingraeber appears to be the least changed.

Maybe this is all intentional, and maybe I'll adapt to it and come to prefer it, but given the previously quoted comments it looks like the jury is still out.

Thanks as always to everyone at Modartt for making a high-quality, affordable product with excellent Linux support and a non-draconian licensing model.

Hi Philippe, thanks for the reply. No, they're both using "C. Bechstein DG Recording 1".

I checked again, your Pianoteq 7 recording has indeed been done with the default preset C. Bechstein DG Recording 1 from Pianoteq 7  version, but I am 100% sure that your Pianoteq 6 recording was not done with the default preset C. Bechstein DG Recording 1 from Pianoteq 6  version. You are not comparing the same presets, they have quite a different perspective. Maybe some frozen parameters hidden somwhere... Please check again. An easy way to check that your are using a default preset: the preset name should not be italized.

EDIT1: if you provide a MIDI file, it will be easy to check.

EDIT2: talking about comparison, an interesting v6 versus v7 comparison by fakemaxwell on VI Control Forum: https://vi-control.net/community/thread...st-4679736

OK, finally found time to play.
For now I tried win10, will try Linux later.
Regarding sound I hear big improvements.
Unfortunately I can't say the same regarding stability...
Playing with asio4all as output I had two output disconnects within 30 minutes.... Sound suddenly disappeared and asio4all messages regarding connections appeared....
Also tried the low latency mode... Latency was minimal 10ms...
Wich was clearly noticeable.
All suggestions are welcome.

Wow. Sometimes the strangest things ...

Most likely it was the Output setting frozen to "Binaural" because I almost always use headphones.

So I made another comparison, this time comparing the Pt6 "Steinway D Classical" and "Steinway D Pop" presets in their unmodified default "Recording" output mode and then changing it to the "Binaural" output. Then I tested the same MIDI file on the Pt7 "NY Steinway D Classical", "NY Steinway D Pop", "HB Steinway D Classical", and "HB Steinway D Pop" in "Recording" and "Binaural" output modes. Here's the original MIDI file and the WAV files recorded straight off my JACK output as it sounds on my headphones:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/...sp=sharing

My impressions are as follows:

PT6 -- "Pop" is naturally brighter and louder than "Classical", but both sound clean and enjoyable in both "Recording" and "Binaural" output modes.

PT7 -- In general they all sound more distant and indistinct.
- Switching any of these tested PT7 presets to "Binaural" outputs sounds terrible.
- All the tested NY Classical presets have much more reverb than in Pt6 and feel very disconnected and muddy.
- The HB Classical and Pop presets sound OK in "Recording" mode but sound much worse in "Binaural" mode.

My 2 cents. I use Pianoteq every day for several hours, however I'm very bad at judging the new versions. Partly it is because I get very much used to the recent version and the new one feels odd just for being new for the certain amount of time. Generally I trust the developers and believe in the technical progress. Now after playing for a few hours I like it quite a lot. New features like morphing/blending - not my cup of tea, although there is nothing wrong about it since people seems to like them. New way of freeze feels very questionable, maybe I did not get used to it, but previous one seems to be more clear and easier to use. Overall, the hype is real, thumbs up!

Hmm, I'll have to make notes next time it happens. So far I've only used the factory presets in v7. The glitch seems to happen when I'm changing instruments rather than different presets of the same instrument, but I'm not totally sure that's always the case.

Hi all.
The new Pianoteq 7 seems great.
However, I can only run the 64-bit stand-alone version because the 64-bit VST version cannot work with my VST Adapter for Sonar.
This VST Adapter works with 32-bit .dlls only.
That's a pity since I cannot use it in normal projects. I can only use a 32-bit .dll version but there is none in version 7 (afaik).

Is there any hope to see a 32-bit VST .dll in a future update of Pianoteq 7?
I need it to work with VST Adapter for my Sonar Application (it's an old version of Sonar).

Notice: pianoteq 6.7.3 did have a 32-bit VST .dll version.

I have a specific workflow in Sonar for years now and would be great to employ the pianoteq ver 7 as well. Thanks anyway!

Interesting! Thanks for confirming that. A question about output modes, i.e. changing from "Recording" to "Binaural", does this change anything under the "Effects" section in the Stage edition? Or is the output a completely independent parameter?

You're right, I totally forgot about the Effects section. I was able to get satisfactory results with the NY and HB Steinway D "Classical" and "Pop" presets by changing the Reverb preset to "Clean Studio" or "Dry Room":
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/...sp=sharing
The new "Classical" and "Pop" presets still aren't the best for my very subjective preferences. But I'm glad that this is all basically just a question of configurable presets, not a fundamental problem with the Pt7 model changes. As a matter of fact, I'm really liking the first two in my above folder of examples.

Thanks again to Philippe for his expertise!

The Morph functionality seems very versatile, detailed and thoughtfully designed and implemented.
And it's nice to be able to quickly select between several common micing techniques (AB, XY, ORTF and mid/side) in the Output dropdown menu.

I LOVE the new features in 7 - everything sounds great!  My only issue is the freeze options being reset every time you open standalone, as mentioned above. This requires me to open my "baseline" preset that has the right settings I want to freeze, right click the freeze clipboard, manually select the 6 parameters I always freeze. (diapason, main volume, limiter, velocity curves, pedal assignments, local midi mappings) and click on the "X."  This minor annoyance kills the mood and inspiration when I want to just pick an instrument and start playing.

This is an issue for me too

@Julien: here's an update on the phenomenon which I'm going to call the 'switch glitch' (momentary distortion after switching presets). It seems to happen most often when switching between different pianos with different types of mic configurations. Just occasionally it happens when changing to a different preset of the same piano. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen fairly often. For testing purposes, I've only used the factory presets at sample rate 44100. I've tried buffer sizes of 128 and 256 with similar results. I hope this is helpful.