Topic: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Another users reasearch .

I would like to request what latency you get in your system (describe number of samples please) and at what point you notice latency and what number it needs to start feel confortable or inconfortable.

For example, if you start to notice some latency (delay) ate 4ms, or 5ms, or just at 9ms etc. And when you start to feel uncomfortable with noticed latency, and when pianoteq star to to feel "heavy" using low samples.


I got 10.2ms latency with 448 samples,  and 5.8ms with 256 samples, using dual core. I noticed some latency with 5,8 if pay a lot of attention, but don't anoy me. At 10ms it do not really much anoyme but I feel it could be better.
Who is used to play in digital piano onboard sound are used with very low latency.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

I start to notice latency above 15 ms (it is equivalent to have speakers at a distance of 5 m). I don't know if this happens to other people, but when I play with latency I get my hands tired. For more info visite this post: https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8170

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Hi, I was thinking at first that I need the highest sample rate and192khz and what not... but now I'm using ptq with intelcore i5 - 3,3ghz (but up to around 5ghz in the boost bla bla (6cores times 2) ...) but I think it's a mistake to believe everything has to be so high. I think you get the pianoteqsound also with low settings!!

Now I'm using it like this: sample rate 44100; audiobuffer only 64 samples (1,5ms!!) max. polyph. 96 ... and it's just so fine! I'm listening via dt770pro headphones and motu m2 interface... sound is so good and the latest changes also...

phil best wrote back to me about all that and he said I think for him everything under 15ms is ok if I remember that right.

greetings

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

I have another question? Do you think or know that a real piano is having latency with all the mechanics? Just a thought... there is a feurich upright piano (vienna123) with a special hammerthing for fast repetition... naja... I know nothing=)

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

sadhö wrote:

I have another question? Do you think or know that a real piano is having latency with all the mechanics? Just a thought... there is a feurich upright piano (vienna123) with a special hammerthing for fast repetition... naja... I know nothing=)

On an acoustic piano the hammer is propelled by the key at the beginning of the stroke, according to the document below at low velocity (pp) the striking of the string takes place before the key reaches the end of the stroke. On most midi keyboards the sensor measures the speed of the key at the end of the key stroke. So whatever the latency of the system the sound will not occur before this end of key stroke.
At higher velocities the contact of the hammer with the string occurs after the end of the key stroke, so it is closer to the operation of a digital keyboard.
https://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectu...ybott.html
So IMO it seems that it is not possible with a keyboard with a sensor at the end of the key stroke to obtain a latency equivalent to an acoustic piano.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

sadhö wrote:

Now I'm using it like this: sample rate 44100; audiobuffer only 64 samples (1,5ms!!) max. polyph. 96 ..

The latency is bigger than the one informed by Pianoteq, you have to add a dead time and multiply the 1.5 ms by a factor of at least 2 or 3 depending on the driver. I guess your real latency should be about 9 or 10 ms.

Last edited by marcos daniel (29-12-2021 00:01)

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Thank you YvesTh for the interesting article ... It's early here and I'm not english native but this made me smile a little: "an untrained subject" vs. professional pianist... Why should there be a difference when it's only about loudness (p to F)? It's just hitting keys in the end and not about the "soul" laid into a musicpiece?!

but so my thinking was not completely off... For my personal feeling with my current setup: I don't feel any delay.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

48KHz, 512 samples, 256 polyphony. No appreciable latency... even if I turn on the internal samples of my digital piano, there is no delay between them and PTQ.

Kawai MP11SE / Pianoteq Pro Studio Bundle v7.5.2 (includes every Pianoteq instrument - 21 currently)

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

I have a silent piano (Kawai K300 ATX3) and once compared latency differences between 1) the acoustic sound 2) the internal digital sound and 3) Pianoteq. I recorded all at the same time. I didn't do exhaustive tests, but noticed a few interesting things.

- The internal DP engine is on average 10 ms faster than the acoustic sound (yes you read that right :-) ). This depends on key velocity though.  For fast velocities (loud notes) the DP engine it is ~5 ms faster, for low velocities (ppp) it is ~25 ms.

- With a Pianoteq buffer setting of 128 (with Focusrite 2i2 sound device), latency of average would be comparable with the acoustic, and hence ~10 ms slower than the internal engine.

Conclusion: 128 buffer setting can be fine with dedicated sound device if you want to take the acoustic as a reference.

Last edited by gabe (30-12-2021 10:41)

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

gabe wrote:

- The internal DP engine is on average 10 ms faster than the acoustic sound (yes you read that right :-) ). This depends on key velocity though.  For fast velocities (loud notes) the DP engine it is ~5 ms faster, for low velocities (ppp) it is ~25 ms.

Interesting... This goes the opposite way of what the article pointed by @YvesTh states.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Paulo164 wrote:
gabe wrote:

- The internal DP engine is on average 10 ms faster than the acoustic sound (yes you read that right :-) ). This depends on key velocity though.  For fast velocities (loud notes) the DP engine it is ~5 ms faster, for low velocities (ppp) it is ~25 ms.

Interesting... This goes the opposite way of what the article pointed by @YvesTh states.

I read that too...
The ideal would be to make a slow motion video of a complete piano mechanism in operation at different velocities (pp,p,mf,f,ff) in order to verify the chronology of events (key stroke, key bottom contact, hammer stroke, string contact etc...)
And it is possible that upright  and grand piano are différents...

It would be great if Modartt could provide us with such a video.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Kawai MP11 has a simulation of the delay caused by the different velocities, I don't know in which action it is based, but it adds time for pianissimo.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

YvesTh wrote:
Paulo164 wrote:
gabe wrote:

- The internal DP engine is on average 10 ms faster than the acoustic sound (yes you read that right :-) ). This depends on key velocity though.  For fast velocities (loud notes) the DP engine it is ~5 ms faster, for low velocities (ppp) it is ~25 ms.

Interesting... This goes the opposite way of what the article pointed by @YvesTh states.

I read that too...
The ideal would be to make a slow motion video of a complete piano mechanism in operation at different velocities (pp,p,mf,f,ff) in order to verify the chronology of events (key stroke, key bottom contact, hammer stroke, string contact etc...)
And it is possible that upright  and grand piano are différents...

It would be great if Modartt could provide us with such a video.

It may be particular to the sensor system of the ATX3 system (and Novus NV-5, NV-10). It measures the hammer travel, not the key. I think between two points. The last point is going to be before let-off, so the velocity measurement is complete before the hammer hits the string (or stop rail).

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

YvesTh wrote:
Paulo164 wrote:
gabe wrote:

- The internal DP engine is on average 10 ms faster than the acoustic sound (yes you read that right :-) ). This depends on key velocity though.  For fast velocities (loud notes) the DP engine it is ~5 ms faster, for low velocities (ppp) it is ~25 ms.

Interesting... This goes the opposite way of what the article pointed by @YvesTh states.

I read that too...
The ideal would be to make a slow motion video of a complete piano mechanism in operation at different velocities (pp,p,mf,f,ff) in order to verify the chronology of events (key stroke, key bottom contact, hammer stroke, string contact etc...)
And it is possible that upright  and grand piano are différents...

It would be great if Modartt could provide us with such a video.

I also have a kind of transacoutic piano. So will be able to measure the timing between the "acoustic" peak and "digital" peak, according to different velocities.

Last edited by Paulo164 (30-12-2021 23:22)

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Paulo164 wrote:

I also have a kind of transacoutic piano. So will be able to measure the timing between the "acoustic" peak and "digital" peak, according to different velocities.

I would be very interested in seeing what you find. The way I did it is to use a second computer for measurement. I.e. use you normal computer for pianoteq and not for measuring. The measurement computer had a sound device where I recorded the analog output of the piano and at the same time either the analog sound output of the Pianoteq computer or a microphone for acoustic. If you have more than two inputs on your recording device you can do all three at once. Keep mic not too far from strings (a meter already adds 3 ms), in the middle. It helps a lot if the environment is silent (i.e. you only have your piano sound in the mic recording). It helps if you have both a spectrogram and wave form for measurement, but timing should be determined from the wave form. Low frequency noise can mess up the acoustic measurement, so you could filter that out, but make sure you filter all signals the same way. Good luck!

PS For those interested, there is an interesting paper on temporal dynamics of a grand piano here: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio...no_actions

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

gabe wrote:
Paulo164 wrote:

I also have a kind of transacoutic piano. So will be able to measure the timing between the "acoustic" peak and "digital" peak, according to different velocities.

I would be very interested in seeing what you find. The way I did it is to use a second computer for measurement. I.e. use you normal computer for pianoteq and not for measuring. The measurement computer had a sound device where I recorded the analog output of the piano and at the same time either the analog sound output of the Pianoteq computer or a microphone for acoustic. If you have more than two inputs on your recording device you can do all three at once. Keep mic not too far from strings (a meter already adds 3 ms), in the middle. It helps a lot if the environment is silent (i.e. you only have your piano sound in the mic recording). It helps if you have both a spectrogram and wave form for measurement, but timing should be determined from the wave form. Low frequency noise can mess up the acoustic measurement, so you could filter that out, but make sure you filter all signals the same way. Good luck!

PS For those interested, there is an interesting paper on temporal dynamics of a grand piano here: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio...no_actions

Hello,

Dully noted. However, I don't intend to measure the absolute latency of my setup. The purpose is to measure how the "acoustic" latency increases/decreases according to the incoming velocity. So I will setup on purpose a high latency on the digital part so that the 2 peaks ("acoustic" and "digital" ones) are well separated on the timeline, making reading the measurement easier.

In a second time, I will do a measurement with the minimum possible digital latency to see if I can get as close as possible to the latency of my acoustic piano.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Paulo164 wrote:
gabe wrote:
Paulo164 wrote:

I also have a kind of transacoutic piano. So will be able to measure the timing between the "acoustic" peak and "digital" peak, according to different velocities.

I would be very interested in seeing what you find. The way I did it is to use a second computer for measurement. I.e. use you normal computer for pianoteq and not for measuring. The measurement computer had a sound device where I recorded the analog output of the piano and at the same time either the analog sound output of the Pianoteq computer or a microphone for acoustic. If you have more than two inputs on your recording device you can do all three at once. Keep mic not too far from strings (a meter already adds 3 ms), in the middle. It helps a lot if the environment is silent (i.e. you only have your piano sound in the mic recording). It helps if you have both a spectrogram and wave form for measurement, but timing should be determined from the wave form. Low frequency noise can mess up the acoustic measurement, so you could filter that out, but make sure you filter all signals the same way. Good luck!

PS For those interested, there is an interesting paper on temporal dynamics of a grand piano here: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio...no_actions

Hello,

Dully noted. However, I don't intend to measure the absolute latency of my setup. The purpose is to measure how the "acoustic" latency increases/decreases according to the incoming velocity. So I will setup on purpose a high latency on the digital part so that the 2 peaks ("acoustic" and "digital" ones) are well separated on the timeline, making reading the measurement easier.

In a second time, I will do a measurement with the minimum possible digital latency to see if I can get as close as possible to the latency of my acoustic piano.

Just to let you know I have done some measurements but it appears there is 2 peaks due to 2 phenomenons when pressing a piano key : first the hammer noise (quite tiny), then the string noise (much louder).
I think that the acoustic piano "latency" should be measured as soon as the hammer noise appears. So I must do again my measurements with this in mind, otherwise it's pointless.
I will keep you posted.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Paulo164 wrote:
Paulo164 wrote:
gabe wrote:

I would be very interested in seeing what you find. The way I did it is to use a second computer for measurement. I.e. use you normal computer for pianoteq and not for measuring. The measurement computer had a sound device where I recorded the analog output of the piano and at the same time either the analog sound output of the Pianoteq computer or a microphone for acoustic. If you have more than two inputs on your recording device you can do all three at once. Keep mic not too far from strings (a meter already adds 3 ms), in the middle. It helps a lot if the environment is silent (i.e. you only have your piano sound in the mic recording). It helps if you have both a spectrogram and wave form for measurement, but timing should be determined from the wave form. Low frequency noise can mess up the acoustic measurement, so you could filter that out, but make sure you filter all signals the same way. Good luck!

PS For those interested, there is an interesting paper on temporal dynamics of a grand piano here: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio...no_actions

Hello,

Dully noted. However, I don't intend to measure the absolute latency of my setup. The purpose is to measure how the "acoustic" latency increases/decreases according to the incoming velocity. So I will setup on purpose a high latency on the digital part so that the 2 peaks ("acoustic" and "digital" ones) are well separated on the timeline, making reading the measurement easier.

In a second time, I will do a measurement with the minimum possible digital latency to see if I can get as close as possible to the latency of my acoustic piano.

Just to let you know I have done some measurements but it appears there is 2 peaks due to 2 phenomenons when pressing a piano key : first the hammer noise (quite tiny), then the string noise (much louder).
I think that the acoustic piano "latency" should be measured as soon as the hammer noise appears. So I must do again my measurements with this in mind, otherwise it's pointless.
I will keep you posted.

Sorry to come back so late to this thread !!

Here are my conclusions :
Depending on the speed you depress a key, there is an offset between the time the hammer in an acoustic piano hits the string and a MIDI controller triggers the sensor to produce the Note-On event.

Let’s assume the string and the sensor are triggered at the same time when you play forte. Then you will have a delay up to somewhere 5 to 10 ms when you play softly for the digital piano. Said differently, the digital piano is late compared to the acoustic one when playing softly.
This delay increases from 0 to 10 ms when velocity decreases from 127 to 1.

I explain this phenomenon by the fact the digital piano triggers the note-on always at a fixed distance of the key to the keybed, whereas on the acoustic piano there is a coordinate/speed equation much more subtle occurring.

As a consequence, a perfect digital piano should trigger very early its note-on events and apply a variable delay depending on the velocity.
By doing so, the main issue is you will loose precision because triggering early the sensor implies you measure the speed on a shorter distance.
So it is a trade-off to find here between accuracy of the measured velocity and accuracy of the timing.

Please note that I purposefully ignore the system latency in this reasoning. This is out of scope.

Thanks.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

The best MIDI Keyboard is the FLK MK23 Keyboard, he simulates on the keyboard mechanically where the action of a real Grand Piano triggers the hammer and uses high resolution velocity (4096 instead of 127) to capture finer details for PianoTeq to render the pitch/tone/dissonance/color, etc.

I went from a 128 velocity keyboard to his MK23 (with the high rez MIDI option) keyboard the PianoTeq sounded way more colorful and alive.

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

Mk4UmHa wrote:

The best MIDI Keyboard is the FLK MK23 Keyboard, he simulates on the keyboard mechanically where the action of a real Grand Piano triggers the hammer and uses high resolution velocity (4096 instead of 127) to capture finer details for PianoTeq to render the pitch/tone/dissonance/color, etc.

I went from a 128 velocity keyboard to his MK23 (with the high rez MIDI option) keyboard the PianoTeq sounded way more colorful and alive.

Thanks for your feedback about the FLK mk23.
It is very interesting to have here an owner of this “famous” (for educated people, though) keyboard.
As an owner, do you have any technical details about how it is supposed to simulate the way a grand piano triggers the hammer and particularly hit the string ? Is there any mention of an adaptive delay induced by the incoming velocity or real time speed ? This would be invaluable to know.

Also, some side questions please :
- Are you able to trigger consistently a similar velocity value when hitting many times the same note at the strength ?
- Are you able to repeat quickly one note without side effects like missed note-on or “hot” velocity value (ie. 127 suddenly) ?

Thank you !

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

I usually play with 192Khz and that's what gives me the lowest perceived latency (I try playing a note with my digital piano with volume on to compare better).

I'm new to DAWs, but I've noticed that when I use Pianoteq in REAPER, the latency is gone. It's like using the onboard piano sounds in my DP. Not sure why this is though. The only thing I can tell is it uses 48Khz if I remember correctly. But that sample rate gives me a higher latency if I use Pianoteq standalone... Anyone knows why?

Re: Lattency. What you get ? What do you notice ?

srodrigo wrote:

I usually play with 192Khz and that's what gives me the lowest perceived latency (I try playing a note with my digital piano with volume on to compare better).

I'm new to DAWs, but I've noticed that when I use Pianoteq in REAPER, the latency is gone. It's like using the onboard piano sounds in my DP. Not sure why this is though. The only thing I can tell is it uses 48Khz if I remember correctly. But that sample rate gives me a higher latency if I use Pianoteq standalone... Anyone knows why?

Block size,  buffer size and driver option in Reaper.  The numbers are probably set lower in Reaper.

You want to set this to the smallest you can get away with - then increase it slightly until you just think you might notice latency again, then back it down slightly until it's gone to find the sweet spot with a bit of headroom, and no noticeable latency.

Possibly the driver Reaper uses - check if Reaper isn't using a slightly different one to the slower Pianoteq standalone.

You should be able to get away with a smaller buffer margins in the standalone because you are only dealing with only 1 to 3  instrument tracks (1 instrument, or up to 3 in Standard and Pro layering).
Whereas when you work in the DAW slightly perceivable latency may have to be tolerated in order to cope with say 20 tracks or so, or maybe hundreds in your orchestral Magnum opus!

Last edited by Key Fumbler (31-08-2022 17:39)