sound error -- upcoming recording -- please help

Hi Gently,

good news - it can be altered if you need..

that's actually not a problem, but is normal on real pianos.. quick explanation..

On most pianos, there is no damper on high notes beyond a given note.

For the NY Steinway, the last dampened note is note 91..

Solution:

In main interface (in Pianoteq Standard/Pro - this is not in Stage version BTW),

click the "Action" button where you can alter damper details..

Drag the "Last Damper" control all to way to the right. (or right-click it and type a number for the last dampened note you want).

Hope this get to you in time - best of luck with your project!

[Edit to add below..]

BTW - this doesn't relate only to playing notes above the last dampened one.. It does not matter if playing notes below the last dampened one.. by eliminating the higher notes' ability to resonate freely, you eliminate their "excitation" and reduce that extra 'singing' no matter what lower notes are played

You may realize too though, by eliminating those freely resonating higher notes, you may also make noticeable changes to the overall piano's timbre.

You could also try instead, other changes to dampers.. for example.. if you close off the last damper, you might want to lightly adjust the damper settings.

Occurred to me, I could save some follow up misunderstandings by pointing to that here also.

Cheers.

Hi Gently, and welcome to the forum!

I downloaded your audio file, listened to it without hearing anything special, analyzed it with a spectrogram without seeing anything strange. Could you please describe precisely what is the issue, and in particular at which frequency it happens? I suspect that the problem is not in the audio file but in your audio device. I suggest you listen to that file on another computer with other headphones.

[Edit to add this line]: Timing! Glad it seems solved
...

If the 'last dampened note' nor the further below ideas do not apply to the sound you hear, then you could be experiencing an audio issue on your end (some kind of software loop-back program for recording onboard maybe - or caused by some other communication app or unusual audio routing due to a certain sound-card or mic/line-in issue (headphones in the wrong jack? etc).

I say that to rule in/out - because if it's like a 'ghost note' - could it be better described as an echo? If so, maybe only you are hearing that on your system.. perhaps we can't hear that in your audio file supplied. (stranger things do occur)

But if it's part of the piano sound it should be alterable..

First 'next' thing I'd suggest to try, is lowering duplex scale on the front control.

Second thing, try select/copy and right-click pasting this next line into the main Equalizer's "Res EQ" pane..

Resonance Equalizer = [1000, 2350, 4200, 10200; 0, -5.5, -25.0, -15.0]

and paste this next line into the Equalizer's "Res Dur" pane

Resonance Duration = [1000, 1650, 3100; 1.00, 0.49, 0.37]

You'll see and hear that it's rather severe (so you can hear an obv. diff).. but try altering this to you liking; returning values to default and make your own cuts which remove the tones you don't wish to hear.

Third next thing to try..

Since you have Pro..

Open the note-edit panel and select "Duplex" - then draw in a downward sloping line around the notes which you hear as having too much duplex effect. (using "control notes" in note-edit view can help create neater lines - but the brush tools can make quick work of all kinds of shaping across ranges).

Sincerely hope something in those considerations is what you need Gently.

BTW - I don't hear duplex as wrong (hence the first paras), just characteristic of a piano, but it's alterable in Pianoteq. Other ideas..

Recording:

Style/genre? - Classical or art music solo piano.. can be that ambience is preferred to a close mic sound.. try mics set further away from the piano (picking up less close recorded sounds like hammers/duplex/resonances directly).

Modern or contemporary piano and solo/mix - more "album" specific production happens from way up close to extreme stereo widths, FX, experimental etc.

If your project is solo piano, I'd just be aware, your ears (and mind) may be hyper aware and hyper critical before an important performance situation - but, I'd like to be able to 'be there' to help your issue in real time - hope some of this works to help out!

..

Yes, thought you were referring to the note itself - but the way you describe the "accompanying" tones in your second post seems to suggest it's the "Duplex scale" you're hearing (or not wanting to hear so much of).

Again, not hearing your audio as exhibiting a problem - the duplex ringing is a real part of pianos' sound. Different pianos manufacture that area of the strings differently, patented ways etc.. I like Steinway's harp.. it feels a shame to hide it.

But certainly many ways to alter everything about it. Hoping duplex hits the spot.

Many of the other controls are all worthwhile pushing high and low to hear what they do - then from default, make some gentler attempts at a few minor adjustments in favor of your ideal.

Edit: seems to have been resolved - the effect I noticed was not the one you were having problems with.

Bit of an unexpected fight to get the file ! But I believe I can hear what you're describing. In the tail of the first note, just as it sounds like it should continue to silence after the 2 second mark, the amplitude rises again before fading out. As if someone had just turned the volume up and down briefly making the note "come back again" before tailing down to silence. You don't notice this same effect in the tail of the second note.

With some experimenting, it seems to me like this is an artifact of the modelling of the phase variation between the strings as the note tails away. You can hear this more easily if you listen to lower notes, you hear the phasing as strings vibrate in and out of sympathy. If you watch the output level meter while you hold the note, you'll see the level rise and fall as the strings move in and out of phase, that is they will add and cancel, reducing or increasing the total level (acoustic power) at any given instant.

In most cases you can barely hear the actual difference in loudness this yields, but there seems to be perhaps a range mainly in octave 5 to the start of 6 where that effect creates a noticeable null and peak, which sounds as if the note tails off quicker then rises up in level again. You can see the level meter follow this, coming back up quite a bit. I'm hearing it most on C#6, whereas in the recording yours is occurring on D6, but I still do observe it from C5 up, nearly as much on C#5 as C#6.

I suspect Ver 7 might have more aggressively modelled this string phase behavior? (Apparently not from the problem having been resolved.) I can certainly hear how it would be disconcerting in a piece dependent on the quiet disappearance of the tail of a held note, if the note appears to come back again briefly before silence.

@Platypus: yes, you make a good point.  Now that I can actually hear the notes correctly again, I notice the increase you describe.  That's quite helpful to be aware of -- thanks.  Okay, I should stop posting now, and get back to it!

'The amplitude rises again before fading out": this is simply the beating effect between strings that are not perfectly in tune (here we hear indeed a very slow beating), it is not a modelling artifact and can be heard on any real acoustic piano too. In fact, we are quite proud that our model provides now such complex behavior.

With the recently introduced double polarization, there are now 6 acoustic modes per overtone on a note having three strings, to which you have to add the sympathetic resonances, hence dozens of acoustic modes that can generate quite a nice variety of beatings.

Within Pianoteq UI, you have some control on the beatings via the Unison width parameter (Standard and Pro versions): the more you push it to the right, the more beatings (and the faster) you will hear, and vice versa.

Glad I could help . I thought MacBooks had decent soundcards, so maybe the culprit is not the soundcard itself but something in the connections or elsewhere. What you describe looks like harmonic distortion triggered by some non linear interaction.