Indeed, not all new users will know to click 'view mini presets', and an empty folder instead of seeing their new mic preset may confuse.
Sent a possible bug report.. the issue is, your new bank, let's say you called it "My-Mics" or something.. the correct folder of course but when clicking it in the main preset view, it shows nothing inside.. thus 'possible bug' reported.
In time, we learn where things are best done for the ways we like to work.. I like working inside the mic pane to load in presets for example - at least in my case I think it just saves time - and I personally didn't think to access 'mini presets' via the front end.. because when working on these, I'm inside the mic pane, or inside the FX pane, so to me, just easier to load presets from there - and I guess never think "I should see" any mini presets in main preset view - but others may indeed think it's odd and have to traverse "why?".. and will do that and feel their new mic presets are lost - but indeed, just a small thing but can mean some may not 'get it' - but clicking "view mini presets" and working within the specific panes works fine too..
Not sure if maybe something will be changed? Maybe just a greyed text message in the left side of the main preset viewer, when a user clicks on an empty folder or one with only 'mini presets' inside, to say something like..
"This main preset management view is for complete presets. Click 'view mini presets' above to see your microphone, FX or other mini presets, which can be filtered to type for easy selecting"
That way, the learning curve is satisfied, and users making their first mic arrays, will know it is not lost, but that they can click the mini preset view. Simple but maybe all I can think of.. as doing other things like 'not' displaying folders without full presets would be more obviously strange to new users who still have not encountered the mini presets view. I'm pretty snow-blind to the button "View mini presets".. if anything maybe it could be a little more obviously a button too IDK.
Re String Length inside Note Edit...
I don't mind not seeing individual string lengths.. It means, we can logically construct humanly possible mathematical differentiations for all the different string lengths we want to, using a 'baseline' or the max overall string length. Things like "I want to make all strings 10% shorter".. done with a small move of the tool.. but if all strings were represented at different lengths, is that just 'representational graphics?' - nice though to see that 'curve' perhaps? I like it but I don't feel drawn to working with that way instinctively.. just how I see it and imagine this may the reason it's displayed this way (to make maths to do things with all strings easier for us mortal humans).
I'd say it's a fun idea to be able to see exact string lengths.. (maybe in future and alternative view is a worthwhile possibility?) but still, I'm not sure I'd need, or really want that personally.
Generally, I feel there's much discussion among users starting out with editing things, with some similar and understandable notions attached. Often, I see a desire for 'better', or to have something more 'correct' within various presets.. and that's indeed fine.
In broad strokes though, there's a lot of cross purposes and 'best', 'better' or 'correct' is individually relevant, only in as far as someone believes that others must also think 'the same way' about what 'better' etc. means. And this is demonstrably objectively impossible. Subjectively, everyone hears differently, in their different rooms/spaces and have differing tastes, repertoires and expectations and limitations (from speakes/audio equipment etc.).
Maybe in a perfect space with great equipment it's more possible to say "This is better"... but, when played on someone's laptop, they may not hear the bass which makes a certain preset/edit "soft" - they may only hear mids and some pin-prick trebles and thus say "Horrible".
Various ways to view it - but apart from acceptable norms (Venn diagram "popular" overlapping with "quality" - many ways to overthink it maybe), there is a lot of room for someone's "good enough" piano to be someone else's "WOW excellent!" piano and the inverse.
In all reality, as with audio, there is no 'perfect visual' for anything, in making a modelled preset. We can know numbers, and that's great and important (esp. in remembering how far we like to move certain sliders around for example - we can remember to repeat these edits better.).
But, let's say you've made a dozen changes to a preset and now you're editing string length.. when changing a string, it won't matter if it's expressed as exactly 1.8metres long, or a number tied to the overall length (mathematically, it is easier to work in the latter, if making decisions based on percentages relevant to the max string length number, which can give great starting points to massive changes).
The trick, which is real, is only exposed by the fact that no 2 pianos/presets will respond the same ways to any given tweak to design components like string length.. each is uniquely going to do something different.
If you change some strings' length, each of those will individually shed the overtones they had, and radiate a different assortment into the model (which, esp. with sustain pedal held down) will assert some unique character effecting differences.. tiny per string, but add up (if looking for massive effect, using the Spectrum Profile on the main interface can truly alter the overall timber more instantly, and possibly with a more human-understandable, and directly heard, consequence for each alteration.. whereas altering one string at a time might add up to a long edit session where we may not be able to easily expect a positive result, and backing out and beginning again may take a long time, if we persist with the effort - so in effect for things like string length, I feel we might want to deeply experiment.. and the current view where string length is hitched to the max length can be more human readable/recallable etc.).
That main trick though in all of this, is our ears.
That's all.. I'm sure some mathematical attempts may be made to create various components of any piano model, to make it 'make sense' per string mathematically, per balance of X to Y and so on.. but like any physical piano, it's the incredible 'fuzz' on reality, which means, each one is different.. within bounds, and as they relate to the neighboring stings etc. (and this may be different per piano/preset/instrument etc. based on physics.)
But - definitely, the fascination for me, is not so much looking at numbers - but moving the string length (or any other controls) and 'hearing' is this what I want? For sure, keep at it, if you think "I'm going to make them all individual lengths, one by one".. it's not impossible - and you may finish and listen and remark to yourself "Wow, strange.. I wonder what else I can do to now mitigate the way it now sounds" (often radical changes of course mean either undoing, attenuating, or making an 'adversarial' change to other controls).
I believe there's a mistake in thinking about it as "I will make a more perfect piano" - because, I believe what Philippe has given us in most pianos, is quite wonderfully regulated pianos, and some reasonably detailed alternatives to highly regulated ones. The main presets are about as good as you need any piano to get (in terms of lining up perfect elements measured, incl. string lengths as they talk to the engine etc.), and the alternative presets each give little fuzzy alterations to many factors, on surface and in-engine.. and this gives us many presets on any piano to get busy editing from..
But, there is no perfect, or correct piano anywhere in the world. Persons all like something different - and though many will say they love Piano X, many will also say Y. Even when a piano (or anything else in the world, maybe like a Bugatti or Rolls Royce etc..) is often though of as 'the best', well, there is always a large number who think different and prefer another and maybe dislike the very things which 'make' some things loved.. maybe a person hates smooth cars, and to them a Ferrari is better But, maybe a certain model of a car, with certain tyres on, and when on a certain kind of tarmac... other may prefer a rally car, with dirt tyres on tracks with mud and jumps.. there is no correct 'car' if you factor in, there are different roads we each are driving on - similar with pianos (also worth mentioning, after recording any piano, there's a further world of possibilities too of course, whether to do more work to the audio.)
But - all that is about saying "edit with your ear" first.. if you dislike an experiment (like making 1 or more individual strings different lengths), back out and start again.. or just really listen while moving 1.. and know "OK that makes a change I like".. but you will 'risk' doing it to the string next to it, knowing that 'may' alter something you just did on the prior string.. as they each will influence the overall timbre as you edit more strings. If it over time 'gets away from our vision', this is kind of the same, as if we openned the lid of a real piano.. we are hearing the kinds of things which may happen if we individually shortenned some strings.. and perhaps, it may or may not work.. but the experiment is possible with a good mathematical level of certainty that what we hear is quite accurately what could happen.
I guess, last suggestion about string length edits.. it may be refreshing to zoom up out of individual strings to the entire spectrum profile.
Here's a quick example - just made a "Big Toy Piano" from the NY Steinway D.. mostly, main spectrum profile, a soft velocity curve, some basic interractional elements (longer strings to reduce inharmonicity implict with the other edits involved, hammers harder/louder, impedance, direct sound duration, cutoff, Q, duplex scale, sympathetic resonance and some other minor things like strike point.)
This doesn't give a 'better' piano.. just one which could without much further work (esp. less in audio post production) might be usable, to me, for maybe the kinds of pianos you hear in commercials (aghast!) or 'in the area' of felt pianos and soft contemporary music, without the Celeste pedal yet engaged to make it 'fluffy' yet chimy. I think most of the characteristics of it are down to the spectrum profile edits on the main front interface, the rest tweaking to 'recover' or 'push' other elements.. and 100%.. no numbers looked at.. just moving controls to hear "Ah yep.. that's going where I want it to go".. and I ended up with a simple piano sound for intimate twinkle-twinkle piano, which I envision mostly being for 'tracks', not solo classical.. but is an example of going for a goal and attaining 'that goal'.
Fundamentally, it may be erroneous to seek that kind of holy grail vision of "perfect piano".. because, maybe there is not such a thing in existence, and it's valuable to know how the controls 'sound', so we can manage to go somewhere towards a piano with certain characteristics we seek for example for a particular repertoire. Anyway, worth thinking about in terms of narrowing down "what am I tweaking for?" into some more definable things.. and of course, not saying don't try for some ideals of perfection.. just that, to get there it might be a fine ideal, to try aiming for some specific things, working out what controls do specific things and not be too concerned about how the numbers are presented, but more so in 'what do I hear' when moving a slider - not trying to make this overly verbose - but hopefully constructively giving some roads to take instead of feeling stuck at forks in the road.
We might make some extreme edits among many, only to 'nearly like' what we have done, but know that "Oh dear, it has some terrible candy ringing sound I can't work out how to remove".. but often, it's just a matter of doing the most common task with 'string length', and that is to overall lengthen, or reduce length overall. In many cases, just making the strings all longer (with a single click then drag) can make them all less inharmonic, or by making them all shorter, make them all have more inharmonicity to 'spice up' a set of edits where we might think "Oh, maybe I've removed some personality in this one". So, longer = less inharmonicity and possible nicer 'less jagged' sound.. shorter = more inharmonicity and possibly nicer 'more character'. And like all the above, most probably on a per piano, per preset and per user basis, per piece in any given repertoire.
In this below example, it's a case of editing for a certain character piano with a kind of contemporary feel without being a fully-felt-piano sound, but in the area.. It got to a point where I was hearing "OK nearby".. but by lengthening strings (from 2.7, to 2.93) it reduced some 'candy' from overtones.. and got me where I wanted it. That's my most common 'use case' for string length alteration.
Audio - both extracted using the same MIDI so you can hear playing the same way can sound 'normal' or 'relaxed' or 'held back' even though velocity in MIDI is the same:
Big Toy Piano demo
Audo of the default NY Steinway Model D preset it was made from:
The original NY Steinway Model D before editing
FXP to load into Pianoteq to play:
Big Toy Piano preset
Although not as extremely 'toy' as the small one in Pianoteq, just to me is inspired by the idea of "What would happen if we just magnify magically the tiny one into a larger size?". No reality based edits in this.. just 'inspiration' as guide, and I ended up with a piano which could be used in a lot of ways, and sort of does have some nice things about the toy piano, even if kind of expressionistically rather than exactly.
It's probably obvious, that Big Toy Piano would be useless for a lot of repertoire, perhaps is not likely anyone's idea of a good piano - but it will do fine for certain things I do - and the goal in such things is often not about highlighting an 'excellent piano' (like solo classical for example).. but as a layer in tracks upon tracks. It's easier to use something like this piano sound for certain music, rather than playing a wonderful NY Steinway D as it is, and to then have to work on it's output in a DAW to make it more cloudy/fluffy/intimately pushed in certain ways.
For anyone fascinated with pianos, audio and Pianoteq, I can't say enough, all the above is why I love this product so much. It's the most useful music software in my world - and the most impressive (among very impressive tools).
Just hoping all that text wall helps some people become inspired to try some things out. And as I try to remember to do these days, also want, as a takeaway, to say the defaults are indeed wonderful and quite impossible to 'better' IMHO now.. it's all about getting something extra/different/focussed for specific musical reasons along our timeline.
All the best.
Pianoteq Studio Bundle (Pro plus all instruments) - Kawai MP11 digital piano - Yamaha HS8 monitors
