Pianoteq "college".

I know a lot of people who could be well fit for your criteria of "advanced piano student or a concert pianist" who happen to regularly practice on a real garbage "real" uprights or grands, some because of the financial reasons, but some, surprisingly enough, just don't care much. Compared to that a Casio DP paired with Pianoteq would feel like heaven. This comparison will always be very personal and will vary a lot. Saying that again, I happen to be surrounded by really huge amount of classical people who, again, could fit your criteria. However it is extremely rare, I would say actually to a degree of total inexistence that someone from them would bother educating themselves about PC audio, ASIO, buying the Pianoteq software, learning how to tune it to their needs, spending extra money on a dedicated PC, monitors, pro- souncard, speakers, stands, etc. I'm speaking about very wide number of piano world people including very small amount of a real concert pianists, piano teachers of all levels, students, kids, their parents, etc. No one willing to get technical. On the other side people who do like technical aspects are not real classical pianists, they are from another music worlds, i.e. pop, electronica, film composers, etc. I'm speaking strictly about my personal observations of the reality around me. On the other side A LOT of 'classical piano people' started using digital pianos (turnkey solutions) on all that levels mentioned, compared to previously wide spread believe that "nothing could replace the real one" - actually meaning that they'd rather use that true garbage upright with half of broken keys than even touch a digital, which is still relatively strong among some.

Thanks for your input.

I presume even pianists or advanced students, who practice in some "garbage in home" need to do final practices on hi-end cocncert grands. That's why all important piano schoolds concervatories have expensive concert grands for some practice.
I refer about a clean ready system, and not junks of cables, stands, devices & stuff all around. Look this upright Steingraeber with pianoteq engine :

https://www.steingraeber.de/en/steingra...nt-pianos/

Now imagine something similar, "as direct & clean" as this, but with concert grand piano action & keys in the shape and adjusted to feel as a Steinway concert-D grand. The sort of thing like :Take the bench, open the keyboard lid and play. The only thing they would need to learn it's about the ON-OFF button and sellect between 1 to 10 (instrument number buttons). :-)
Of course, if someone wish, there would be option to other features, by sacreen and mouse, as in a computer.

BTW, speaking about the future and the evolution I started a thread here a while ago:
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=3629

Sorry if I'm dragging it to some other direction than it was originally intended, just some input, still kind of quite related.

We did?

The ultimate and best idea.How many users would be willing to spend good money for a complete package from Pianoteq itself, including a perfectly tuned keyboard and optimal monitors? Maybe one could suggest this to the management ;-)

I can see Pianoteq becoming widely available for digital pianos at some point. Roland already use substantial modelling technology in their digital pianos, especially the LX range of digital pianos. Unfortunately, I don’t enjoy the action of these instruments terribly much, and their modelling options don’t have the wide scope of Pianoteq... I wonder what they’re working on behind the scenes...

Dexibell produce a sound module that you can use with any digital piano / midi controller. This would be an interesting turn for Pianoteq to take.

The alternative is working directly with a DP manufacturer who have a great action, and providing the ‘software’ side of things for them. I can’t see Kawai or Yamaha being particularly interested in this. They’ve both put significant resource into developing their own solutions for their ranges of DPs.

I think the one thing that would make this a solution that would be very accessible would be via iPad. Unfortunately I think people would want a totally wireless solution, and I don’t think Bluetooth technology is up to this at the moment. What I’d want is piano connected to iPad via BT, and then headphones connected from the IPad via BT.

The future could be interesting!

Let's put things in perpective.

The start just needs a MIDI signal controller, a MIDI bar, to feet to bellow wooden keys. With that,  piano manufacturers could design/adapt many wooden keyboards with action, and create from compact baby grand actions to large concert grand long wood actions.

People would sellect what software versions they want. Who don't like softwares could use a sas simple as just sellect a piano model or some presets for each. Or there would be some MIDI buttons on the controller, to direct sellect, so no need of much mouse and software/screen attention. The laptop could be set to automatic load pianoteq software after turn on.

This idea it's about give people a closer or more often prime piano experience, and in some cases (grand concert action with high end studio monitors) give advanced piano students a way to practice with quality, in cases concert grand in shape and tune are not easy to get.

After so many pianoteq engine advances, maybe it's time for a experiment. Get many advanced piano students, and ask them to play in two pianos.
-One Baby grand not in great shape and not from a excellent brand.
-A a piano with concert grand action (can be a concert grand with censors used just like a MIDI controller) with pianoteq and prime studio monitors installed, with Steinway-D Hamburg and Steinway-D New York and Steinway B, to try out.

There is a crazy idea (not viable now) I didn't mentioned yet. Redesign pianoteq engine to Intel Core i9-10900K (about 10x faster than needed by pianoteq now) processing power. With such processing capbility as basis, a redesigned pianoteq could compute more piano physics variables to create a sound even more natural than already it's now, to try to beat the haters. Just as a second option for prime pricy systems, and not to replace the actual version, let's say, since the vast majoroty of people don't have a i9 processor.

Interesting suggestion, thanks.

But the pivolt point needs to be much longer to emulate a true long concert grand piano, in case we talk about the more extreme side of this idea, to, train concert grand pianists.

Steinway-D concert action & keyboard:

Bosendorfer Imperial action & Keyboard:

So the depth of lenght of "Casio GP310 like furniture" would need to be a bit longer.

at any rate, my suggestion was to make a prototype or proof of concept easier.

I found a good example of why scapment it's so important for pianist training.  Scapment it's something acoustic piano industry would get rid of if they could, but since it can't be eliminated, there are important aspects about how use it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJoA1w-k9ak

Kawai created some very interesting wood keyboard systems, like in VPCI and other DP, but none mimic scapment faithfully to the point of creating the limitation scapment adds. Concert pianists need to practice with this limitation, let's say, because they will face this limitation in live performances.

I somewhat missed this thread before. Vey interesting video indeed. However,  since there are no strings and dampers in a digital piano, the constraints of repeating notes at very low or very high velocity are not the same at all.  I remember reading an interview with Bechstein engineers explaining why they had decided not to include a complete escapement simulation in the Casio/Bechstein hybrids. They made a strong case that they could achieve as fast or faster note repetition at any velocity with their design compared to a real grand...Now the question is, do piano students really have to get used to the limitations of actual acoustic pianos? I think that good acoustic pianos don't have any significant limitations!

Having extensively tried the Casio/Bechstein Grand Hybrids before discovering Pianoteq (and almost buying a GP-500), I agree with ethanay that it has a fantastic action. The best I ever tried on a non-acoustic piano. I am not classically trained, but my wife is and she also felt that the Casio/Bechstein had the closest feel to an actual acoustic grand. The connection to sound is incredible. Unfortunately, the Casio sound engine is not really up to the action's standard, and when we later adopted Pianoteq, we wished that we could play it with a Casio/Bechstein action. At the moment, it is kind of an expensive proposition...I think one of the participants to this Forum (BM?) uses a GP-500 to control Pianoteq.

I trust your word and from others, about Casio/Bechstein hybrid feeling great. More people once said, that the scapment's "clic" it's something grand piano industry would had get away of it a long ago if they could.

But since grand pianos always have such "clic", and concert grand pianists have to deal with it even in the best concert pianos of the world, this is something many digital piano manufactures wishes to mimic, like Kawai, Roland, Yamaha. Bechstein engineers probably didn't recreate it due costs and due the fragility of the plastic material, that would not endure many yers of use, as scapment mechanisms involved are frail somehow and more elaborated to shape and assemble in a production line. So, in my understanding, this was more of a marketing excuse of them, but anyway it's still very a good product and the result feeling (free of "clic") it's something piano makers probably can just wish that was possible in a real acoustic grand.

I wonder if someone will create a action like that, without "clic" of scapment, for real grand pianos, by using a digital system with MIDI, like the Casio/Bechstein one you and your wife liked so much, and ultra fast electric motors to kit the hammers on the strings following the MIDI comands.

But I must say I once reed some text telling that some slight "clic" was of help to train pianists to play difficult pianissimo fast moments. I think it was a review about a digital piano which recreated scapment feeling. Or perhaps it was just marketing too...

I am not ENTIRELY convinced that the "equipment" hampers serious students to a great extent,
Sure, well maintained high grade pianos are blessings, but it is my belief that the serious student's focus is on the music and their interpretation of it.

Soldier on, practice on this bar room upright for now - better times are coming when you GRADUATE !.

As an accomplished pianist, I use Pianoteq daily for my practicing on my Roland LX-17. Currently, my Vogel 177 T sits there idle due to living arrangements. I keep it tuned and play it when no one is home, but it's silent most of the time.

Is it something that others can do, sure, but would they? Are these people going to invest in a setup that not only feels good but sounds good? Many people involved in the arts are not computer savvy. I know because I supported them for decades. It's mostly, with exceptions, an either, or situation. For them, a turn-key solution would need to be developed so that there is little pain. The presets need to be easily accessible, nothing too esoteric or technical, otherwise the system becomes an expensive paperweight. Given the lifespan of digital pianos, the computer system needs to be upgradable to go along with the piano and be capable of running the latest software to match. Because most working musicians won't be playing the tech race and will be focusing on their music, a company developing a turn-key solution will be required to offer lengthy support on obsolete equipment. Getting parts for older keyboards, and sometimes computers, becomes quite difficult. I know from experience from dealing with much older equipment during my tech days.

There are also a lot of caveats here which need to be thought about.

The action of most digital pianos is gross. No matter how far they've come in emulating the feel of a real piano, it's still not quite there. The action is fatiguing to play on. A real piano has a resiliency and a bounce to it when played while the digital piano, name any brand, is stiff and rigid including those that have a "real piano action in them". It's this rigid part that's the biggest problem for me because after many hours of practice, my hands and arms ache and I never felt that on my grand or any other acoustic instrument. I also find my technique is different on the digital compared to the acoustic instrument and I have actually overrun the digital piano and caused big skips in the output when switching due to pedaling differences and overall different piano technique.

There is no need for the escapement or double escapement in a digital piano unless these serve the same purpose it does on a real piano. Digital instrument manufacturers that have this "feature" are selling BS. The escapement allows the hammer to remain ready to play a second time without returning completely to home position like a harpsichord or clavichord. Cristifori discovered early on that the simple-escapement mechanism was necessary to get the hammer ready quickly and he worked that into his early action because having the hammer drop completely down to home position made playing extremely difficult. Playing repeated notes still required lifting the finger completely off the key to allow the hammer to return to the bottom, otherwise the note wouldn't sound the second time or reliably multiple times.

The double escapement developed and invented by Sebastien Erard in 1821 was a game changer because it allowed repeated notes to be played quickly on the grand pianos by catching the hammer before the hammer returns home. This is the click sound and clunk we feel and hear when playing quietly and softly on a grand piano. Interestingly, this is non-existent on most upright and spinet pianos and only exists on grands, so practicing on uprights has the advantage of creating a clear and crisp technique because there is no way to play otherwise.

The sound can be awesome on a digital instrument. With Pianotec, we have access to a multitude of the most expensive pianos in the world all within the confines of our computers and digital pianos. There's nothing like feeling like it's a "Steinway D day", or being in the mood for a Petroff Mistral. The ability to tweak these subtly to suit our ears and moods, and adjust the audio so we can hear them tenderly is the best world we can be in.

But there's a catch...

The sound output is only as good as the speakers or headphones we're using in addition to the room acoustics and everything else that makes up the sound we hear. In my opinion, no matter how great the sound is on a digital instrument, it sound detached from the piano as if it's coming from a CD-ROM this is regardless of whether there is added ambient effects, room-setup, or other things done to tweak the sound. The issue is, also my thoughts, is in addition to the sound reverberating everything else in the room, the piano case too is adding to the sound along with the plate and soundboard. We can sort of get that effect by playing with the parameters in Pianoteq, and some digital piano manufacturers such as Roland include that in their setup features, but it's not the same. The piano is lost.

Playing locally on the digital piano is not an option if we want real piano sounds. Roland for example, uses an okay sound. It suffices but it's really very plain. Using the piano as a MIDI controller works better with the Pianoteq sounds but there are some technical issues here that have to be dealt with such as the usual OS "fixes", power management, background tasks, etc. I went through great lengths to get my system working properly thanks to Dell and Microsoft running all kinds of background services and utilities that are totally unnecessary for everyday use. The biggest culprits I found were Dell's Support Assistant, and some other things from Microsoft which would interrupt the processing and cause big glitches while playing.

For someone to sell a turn-key solution to musicians, it needs to be 100% easy to use, nothing that will require fiddling and faffing around to get it to work. The matching MIDI controller or digital piano has to feel right and be 100% reliable, and the sound has to be just as good as a real piano. All in all, I think we've come close but still too far to sell a package that works as such and isn't too costly at the same time to not only produce but also purchase.

I think it would be unreasonable to expect Modartt to get into the business of making the action, cabinet, speaker systems, etc. but I think it would be very achievable to bundle the Pianoteq software into a turnkey system which would probably be something like a Raspberry Pi (or other small-form-factor computer) in a box with a few knobs and dials and a small display.  It would basically be Pianoteq running on Linux, but with the Linux being stripped down and hidden from the end user so that it wouldn't require any technical expertise to manage.

This is actually very common nowadays.  Most people probably have devices that are little Linux PCs inside without even knowing it, such as wifi routers, TVs, fitness watches, digital cameras, refrigerators, thermostats, etc.

There's a pretty good chance that the few available piano modules on the market today are actually Linux computers inside and could just as easily (if not more easily) have been based on Pianoteq, such as the V3 Sound and Dexibell modules.

I don't think it would be necessary to provide for the ability to upgrade the computer hardware for the same reasons that none of the products I mentioned above provide that ability.  If the product does the job then there's no need to upgrade the hardware, and if there are major advances you want to take advantage of that require new hardware you simply buy a new one and trade-in or sell the old one.

Now that Pianoteq for iOS is available, another option would be to have some kind of docking station that worked in
conjunction with a user-supplied iOS device and would provide an audio interface, USB port for the keyboard, and power input without the complexity and clutter of using various dongles, stands and cables to do the same thing yourself.  The problem with this solution is that it's not turnkey and also Apple tends to change things and make your hardware obsolete.  A quick search found products from Alesis, Focusrite, and Behringer that could almost fit the bill which are all discontinued because Apple keeps changing the docking connectors and form factors.

While I agree with most of your comments , I disagree with your view on double escapement simulation on digital pianos .
This may well be less understood feature in a DP because of lack of clear explanation of how you can exploit it .
Of course , it’s purpose it not to emulate the double escapement main feature which is the ability to re-strike a key before it goes completely up as on a DP this is is achieved with triple sensor .  What the letoff simulation does on a DP is to allow you to generate low velocities after positioning your fingers at the point where you feel the resistance . If you hit the keys from this point , you generate very low velocities ( I can manage 1 or 2 ) in a consistent and repeatable manner , so when you have sequence of pianissimo chords played at slow tempo ( largo or so) this a fantastic feature . This technique is called ‘playing off the jack’ not be be confused with ‘playing above the escapement’ . The knuckle resistance  is a colleteral effect of the Erard invention but pianists realised they could take advantage of this unwanted feature and come up with the ‘off the jack ‘ technique . This is sometimes refer as playing on the ‘second keyboard’  and because of the small impact , it produces a very subtle sound which in some VST is wonderful .  It is kind of feature that once discovered and mastered , you can’t live without , similarly to Una corda sound color effects . There is a video on YouTube that confused many people because it explains how to play ‘above the escapement’ . The video explains how to play ondine . In fact this technique is only exploiting the possibility to hit a sound without the need to hit the bottom of the keybed , and to let you fingers operate in that region . In this technique you don’t even feel the let off point of resistance as you are playing slightly above it , and you beneficiate from the ability to restrike a key in the same region thanks to the triple sensors . But definitely not to be confused with ‘playing off the jack . Hope it clarifies

It really does I would be happy to make a small video to demonstrate it if you want. I  cannot speak for the Roland, but it definitely works with the VPC1. After the point of resistance, if you hit the key too softly , then you end up having a silent note (which is the best way of doing it, when you want to  play silent notes to generate sympathetic resonance with other notes), but if press strong enough , the hammer will hit the keys, as the hammer is still connected to the key at the beginning of resistance. Again , make sure you halt your fingers at soon as you feel resistance and press the key with sufficient force so that the 3rd sensor detects enough speed. Best is to use  linear velocity curve in pianoteq and also on the  VPC1  ( select 'normal curve' in VPC1 editor)  to experiment the effect.  When you get the desired effect, then you can start tuning your velocity curve, making sure you preserve the effect while improving playability for other velocities. If you use a software like velpro, best if to use an S Shape for the upper register and keep linear resister in the low section of the keyboard.
You need to get a sound for velocity 1 , this is the minimum velocity that triggers a sound. Velocity = 0 is not interpreted as a''note on' event in midi protocol but  as a 'note off' event and will not  generate any sound.

No , I probably did'nt express myself in my previous post. Velocity 1 should trigger a sound, the lightest possible sound you can get in the midi range as allowed by the VST. Only velocity = 0 triggers no sound and is treated as a note-off event.  Obviously if you convert velocity input= 1 to Velocity output =0 , you  facilitate playing silent notes, but with a good VST , you shouldn't have too.  I have a few VST , I will make different tests today and let you know. With Pianoteq  it definitely works , you have a sound at velocity 1 and you can also generate silent notes. I can only play generate sounds  in a consistent  and repeatable way very light sounds at velocity =1 if  I use the let off technique discussed previously. Without let off feeling , it it obviously possible to do it with a right DP, but much more hasardeous and repeatible. There may be situations and for velocity in the 10-15 regions played at slow speed where the the let off can be a slight disadvantage, but the ability to triggers extremely low velocities is definitely a big plus when the VST allows to differentiate a maximum range of velocities.

a note off event. Sending a note on message with velocity of 0 takes advantage of the MIDI running status . No sound is produced , but the note off message will be sent , resetting dampers on the note is sustain pedal is up.

So just as I described, with velocity = 1 being silent. That means it's pretty easy to generate silent notes but pretty hard to play pianissimo using the letoff because you have to be able to be able to consistently play notes with velocity = 2 (or just slightly higher) without any of them being velocity = 1.

It also causes the discrepancy I described using software like Piano Marvel because if I play an exercise and play any of the notes with velocity = 1 I won't hear them but Piano Marvel considers them being played correctly.  Or if I play a correct note but accidentally brush lightly against an adjacent note it might not affect the sound at all but Piano Marvel counts that as playing an extraneous note.