Question about performance, cpu settings and polyphony

Hello,

I'm a beginner Piano student, a friend suggested to me that I should try the midi functionality of my ePiano and so I came across Pianoteq. I bought the stage version and I'm excited about the sound quality it gives me, it's such a huge difference to the inbuild sounds of my piano.

I have a question about configuration and cpu performance. My laptop has a default energy management setting, if I run Pianoteq at that setting, the performance screen warns me about "large fluctuations". By default, Pianoteq set up a "maximum polyphony" of 48 voices.
Here's a screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/QTC60Yo

I have to say though, that I don't encounter too many issues with these settings. There's an occasional crackling noise when I play (seldom), but otherwise everything works alright.
As suggested in the pop up info, I switched my Windows energy savings settings to "maximum performance". After that, the warning of "large fluctuations was gone.
So my questions is:
Pianoteq chose a polyphony value of 48 voices. Would it be worth it to maximize my cpu performance and be able to raise it too.. say 128 voices? Would that be a noticable difference in sound quality?

Thanks in advance and best wishes,
Stefan

Key Fumbler wrote:

Canon_D wrote:

Hello,

I'm a beginner Piano student, a friend suggested to me that I should try the midi functionality of my ePiano and so I came across Pianoteq. I bought the stage version and I'm excited about the sound quality it gives me, it's such a huge difference to the inbuild sounds of my piano.

I have a question about configuration and cpu performance. My laptop has a default energy management setting, if I run Pianoteq at that setting, the performance screen warns me about "large fluctuations". By default, Pianoteq set up a "maximum polyphony" of 48 voices.
Here's a screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/QTC60Yo

I have to say though, that I don't encounter too many issues with these settings. There's an occasional crackling noise when I play (seldom), but otherwise everything works alright.
As suggested in the pop up info, I switched my Windows energy savings settings to "maximum performance". After that, the warning of "large fluctuations was gone.
So my questions is:
Pianoteq chose a polyphony value of 48 voices. Would it be worth it to maximize my cpu performance and be able to raise it too.. say 128 voices? Would that be a noticable difference in sound quality?

Thanks in advance and best wishes,
Stefan

Make sure the sound device is working in exclusive mode. ASIO or WASAPI mode.
You could try increasing the buffer a little, until the problem goes away.

Run at 48khz. More is a waste of CPU.

If you go into the menus you can see what polyphony you are actually playing. If you have lightning fast fingers and use a lot of sustain you could eventually notice what's called voice stealing. Even then that's pretty subtle when you're at 48 voices already.

I max it out 256 but only because I can - that's effectively the same as infinite polyphony. I don't imagine with my skill level I would ever hear voice stealing during playing at 48 or 96 voices anyway. Consequently I am probably not pushing the CPU any harder anyway.

Is 48 khz the same as 48 polyphony? I didn't think they were the same! What is the difference between them, if there is a difference?

Hello,
thanks for your advice. I checked, the option to run software in exclusive mode is active. I use Asio4All.
48khz, do you mean the "internal sample rate" of Pianoteq? This is 44100 Hz in my case, with no higer option available.