Reply by MeDorian

  • Avatar
  • MeDorian
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 28-06-2015
  • Posts: 240

Re: Harsh metallic sound

With the three areas I mentioned in my recent posts, I think the DAC I'm using (Apogee Boom) is the main reason I'm hearing Pianoteq sounding this good. The harsh sound could be distortion in other DAC's, I had this when I used the onboard sound on my PC in the past.

I also think it's important to calibrate the setup as a whole, making sure peak levels are as they should be, broadcasting levels (YouTube etc) I have set to peak at - 7.5 dB, but generally under this level for classical music. I do this with software metering, in Pianoteq, Apogee Boom control software, and hardware metering on my analogue mixing desk.

Nick

Last edited by MeDorian (05-07-2024 09:47)

Reply by dikrek

  • Avatar
  • dikrek
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 06-02-2023
  • Posts: 132

Re: Harsh metallic sound

ikos wrote:

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased Pianoteq (8.2) and while I really like its playability, I find the sound quite fatiguing after some time.The main culprit is very harsh metallic ringing present in almost all the models and presets, but more pronounced in some of them (e.g K2). It sounds like unnatural presence of higher harmonics in resonance of the strings without dampeners. The effect is of course present on real acoustic pianos, but it doesn't sound that harsh on them. Arturia Piano V models the same effect, but much more subtle and easier on ear. I tried tweaking Pianoteq settings, but I couldn't remove the harshness without getting unrealistic sound. Even If I significantly reduce sympathetic resonance, the harshness is still there. The ringing can be noticed even with a single note. For example, if you play a short D4 fortissimo with K2 Prelude preset, after the "main note" stops, the harsh metallic tail continues for some time. It gets worse during actual playing, when all these resonances and inharmonicity sum up into quite unpleasant metallic screeching. Diminished chords in higher octaves sound terrible, like a wire cutting metal or something on those lines. Again, it is not that harsh on real acoustic pianos. Is there anything that can be done about it? I don't really care if Pianoteq doesn't sound 100% like the real thing, but I do care when my ears start hearting...

Depending on your playback system, different presets work much better than others. Try the “warm” ones and also set condition to 0.5 (not halfway, but 0.5).

Let me know what you think.

Reply by nahnou

  • Avatar
  • nahnou
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 28-05-2024
  • Posts: 7

Re: Harsh metallic sound

planetz wrote:
MeDorian wrote:

Hi planetz, on the back of the HS5 monitors, you can reduce the high frequencies, I would set this to minimum, also reduce the bass to see how this might sound. If practical, move your keyboard forward to increase the listening distance, I'm 4 feet+ away on my setup.
 
I think Pianoteq with no reverb might be just too dry, at least some reverb would bring the instrument to life.

I find these issues in music setups can often lead to a new and better sound, seems to be an ongoing thing for me.

Nick

Thanks for the reply, though I'm not sure I understand it. Are you suggesting there is no harsh metallic sound in Pianoteq, and it's my environment?

I'm not trying to "bring the instrument to life" as much as I'm trying to not kill my own ears.

Hello planetz,

I think using pianoteq (or any modeled virtual instrument) without reverb and delay is not a good idea and always produces an aggressive, unbalanced sound. I had already read your post since you started it but I didn't think pianoteq was used without these effects.
You said that your room was treated, but if the treatment you're talking about is made up of panels that absorb frequencies, this generally results in a room that can be interesting for mixing, but gives poor acoustics for playing music and very quickly tires the ears... so the combination of all these parameters is for me a very probable cause of the aggressive sound you experience with pianoteq...
I hope this will help you to investigate in this direction and see if it solves your problem...

Last edited by nahnou (05-07-2024 20:38)

Reply by Key Fumbler

  • Avatar
  • Key Fumbler
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 20-10-2018
  • Posts: 1,514

Re: Harsh metallic sound

nahnou wrote:
planetz wrote:
MeDorian wrote:

Hi planetz, on the back of the HS5 monitors, you can reduce the high frequencies, I would set this to minimum, also reduce the bass to see how this might sound. If practical, move your keyboard forward to increase the listening distance, I'm 4 feet+ away on my setup.
 
I think Pianoteq with no reverb might be just too dry, at least some reverb would bring the instrument to life.

I find these issues in music setups can often lead to a new and better sound, seems to be an ongoing thing for me.

Nick

Thanks for the reply, though I'm not sure I understand it. Are you suggesting there is no harsh metallic sound in Pianoteq, and it's my environment?

I'm not trying to "bring the instrument to life" as much as I'm trying to not kill my own ears.

Hello planetz,

I think using pianoteq (or any modeled virtual instrument) without reverb and delay is not a good idea and always produces an aggressive, unbalanced sound. I had already read your post since you started it but I didn't think pianoteq was used without these effects.
You said that your room was treated, but if the treatment you're talking about is made up of panels that absorb frequencies, this generally results in a room that can be interesting for mixing, but gives poor acoustics for playing music and very quickly tires the ears... so the combination of all these parameters is for me a very probable cause of the aggressive sound you experience with pianoteq...
I hope this will help you to investigate in this direction and see if it solves your problem...

Dry acoustic sample instruments recorded in acoustically damped booths often sound even weirder without added reverb.

As for the room treatment that's a difficult one to make blanket statements for. You need to know just how highly damped and at what frequencies to make an assessment.

A highly damped room designed primarily for mixing surround sound or for surround sound movie playback can potentially be too highly damped for pleasurable playback of some stereo material over loudspeakers, especially when listening to dry virtual instruments - dependent on the recording.

I dare say like the vast majority of users I've never listened to Pianoteq dry in a highly resonant lively big real room (in other words natural lively reverb). That could be an interesting experiment. Most of us don't have houses big enough for that though!

Last edited by Key Fumbler (06-07-2024 09:28)

Reply by Declanomad

  • Avatar
  • Declanomad
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Spain
  • Registered: 19-10-2021
  • Posts: 21

Re: Harsh metallic sound

planetz wrote:

I've been following this thread for awhile, as this is a problem that affects me too. I am confident the problem is not my room, speakers, or anything to do with my setup—it is with Pianoteq.

Downgrading to 8.1 helped only a little.

The velocity curve trick helps only a little. But we should not have to do this.

Stereophonic (my preferred modality) seems to make the harshness worse, as do any spatial effects like delay and reverb.

It is particularly bad on the Bechstein DG.

Has modartt acknowledged this issue at all?

I've just been playing the Bechstein DG on 8.1 with softened hammers, p 0.23, m 0.75, f 1.44. After velocity, pianoteq fx and mechanical noises, hammer hardness and impedance are my gotos for setting up the sound. The octave one above middle C had more bite than the other octaves, but also my speakers are a little bright in the trebles, and a tweak with EQ is probably due. Overall it  was pretty good.

The MK1 has a fun easy sound if you need a break due to sensitisation.

Declanomad's Website

Reply by planetz

  • Avatar
  • planetz
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 23-06-2024
  • Posts: 6

Re: Harsh metallic sound

I appreciate everyone's replies, this is a polite forum. A welcome change from....the entire rest of the internet

edit...i just wrote a really long post and it was all deleted except for this first line ^ wtf

that's so insanely frustrating, i spent a f*cking hour on it. i had a quoteblock after my first line, are those just stripped from the post if they aren't at the top?

what i said in my post was pianoteq dry (YC5 on vintage patch with no reverb or delay) sounds great to my ears. i get no resonance in any way at all in this environment, except with pianoteq. i only started using it dry because it somewhat mitigated the harshness. also, the vintage patch has a hard cut at 5.2khz, so it was surprising to hear the persistent harshness around G4. a lot of things together make a little difference (hard limit on velocity, remove amp/delay/reverb, cut EQ), but nothing fixes it completely. my point was that I am 100% convinced the problem lies in the software.

maybe a solution would be more clear to me if I was on a version that is not Stage? Maybe having more control of the sound would provide a new solution? It just becomes a catch 22 because I would not want to spend more money only to find out the problem remains.

edit 2: doing some more research here, some people think the "duplex" setting (unavailable in Stage afaik) is the culprit...

Last edited by planetz (09-07-2024 03:34)

Reply by dv

  • Avatar
  • dv
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 01-11-2021
  • Posts: 333

Re: Harsh metallic sound

planetz wrote:

maybe a solution would be more clear to me if I was on a version that is not Stage?

edit 2: doing some more research here, some people think the "duplex" setting (unavailable in Stage afaik) is the culprit...

The solution to this problem (ie that you can't test in Stage, not necessarily that you hear a harsh metallic sound) is simple: Pianoteq has a very generous demo which you can use. Sure some notes are silent and it has a time limit, but the time limit can be reset easily and the silent notes can be either worked around or you can just test tunes in C major.

Hope you can find the root of the problem and solve it for you. Some people claim that some physiological or psychological reasons cause some unfortunate listeners to eventually dislike pianoteq, like some people hear Yanny and others Laurel in that test -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

Where do I find a list of all posts I upvoted? :(

Reply by planetz

  • Avatar
  • planetz
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 23-06-2024
  • Posts: 6

Re: Harsh metallic sound

dv wrote:
planetz wrote:

maybe a solution would be more clear to me if I was on a version that is not Stage?

edit 2: doing some more research here, some people think the "duplex" setting (unavailable in Stage afaik) is the culprit...

The solution to this problem (ie that you can't test in Stage, not necessarily that you hear a harsh metallic sound) is simple: Pianoteq has a very generous demo which you can use. Sure some notes are silent and it has a time limit, but the time limit can be reset easily and the silent notes can be either worked around or you can just test tunes in C major.

Hope you can find the root of the problem and solve it for you. Some people claim that some physiological or psychological reasons cause some unfortunate listeners to eventually dislike pianoteq, like some people hear Yanny and others Laurel in that test -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

Thank you, I didn't know we could demo the various versions. I will give that a shot.

Unfortunately, Pianoteq is so good that it's ruined all other Piano VSTs for me. I really hope I can dig something up.

Reply by RG

  • Avatar
  • RG
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-11-2024
  • Posts: 1

Re: Harsh metallic sound

Maybe i bit late in the game or in this thread, but could it be due to different sampling rates in Pianoteq and the used audio interface? I'm still in the tweaking phase in regard to this issue, but currently it looks like it helps me and my ears to ensure that the same sampling rate (e.g. 48k) in every app / interface involved is set.

And don't get me wrong, I really like this VST.