Thanks very much for your video. You deliver what Modartt should have done: A direct comparison of v7 vs v8. First I listend to your examples with a mediocre louspeaker, and I couldn't tell a difference between 7 and 8. Then I listened with some decent headphones, and I still have a hard time to make out a big difference. The difference is very subtle, if there is any. Maybe you should have recorded the MIDI and played it back with both pianoteq 7 and 8, so both versions get the exact same MIDI input. The differences I do hear with your examples could well be due to small differences of you playing the keyboard. Having said that, I think I hear a slight improvement in the attack phase of the piano with Pianoteq 8. It seems to sound a bit more colorful when compared to version 7. This is more audible at the harpsichord. For me, however, the piano is much more important than the harpsichord, so I guess the upgrade from 7 to 8 is not for me. Btw: I agree that Modartt should release Stringteq, where they emulate the sound of violins, cellos and so on. I think this would find a much broader audience than their Organteq.

@@fordprefect383 I agree it is subtle on the pianos, maybe some of the other pianos have a bigger difference, but I'm not sure. The second longer piano demo is the same midi file, but it can be hard to highlight the differences without totally losing context of how they really sound. It sounds to me like less energy is being generated in the midrange, opening up the sound of the piano.

I'm sorry but still the same artificiality continues. Such that its artificiality can be understood in 3-5 seconds. I agree that it is the most playable virtual instrument on the market, but I think it needs more soul, more randomness, variety and more wood.

@@midimanradium1285 I agree

​@@midimanradium1285 It already has that soul and randomness, which can be easily attained by moving the 'Condition' slider somewhat to the right. Unfortunately, in most presets this slider is at the leftmost position, which represents an ideal piano in a *perfect* condition, and everybody just leaves it as it is. Moving it a notch or two to the right makes every piano sound much more real. And all this without taking into account the huge amount of parameters that can be fined tuned...

Thanks!

Yep ! And Wind and Brass (when played with a Wind Controller or Breath controller),

I would die of happiness if Modartt developed good modeled solo strings. I think apart from the Expressive E strings, the only other "solo strings" physical model title is an iOS app called FingerFiddle. It is quite expressive! The timbre changes drastically depending on where you play, such as "normal" bowing vs. sul pont or sul tasto. If your "bowing" uses a whole fingerprint instead of the fingertip, or strays from string-perpendicular toward string-parallel, you can make some great shrieky sounds. Alas, FingerFiddle suffers from the same "uncanny valley" vibes as other physical model synths, like the occasional inharmonic squeak on an otherwise dolce note. It also has the worst of the worst: very audible aliasing. So, fingers crossed Modartt decides to explore string modeling, because I think they could nail it.

@@msld_sound the interface/control is always tricky with strings. But maybe having faders you can map to physical faders to control bow position and pressure could work!

@@msld_sound there’s also the SWAM iOS apps. Maybe you don’t quite classify them as physical modelling, but it definitely covers a lot of that ground vs samplers. I think for making good modelled strings, potentially having LFOs and envelopes (which can be done with external midi) to inject some life can go some way to making up for the input interface limitations which seems like one of the biggest difficulties. FingerFiddle is fun, I must play with it again sometime, but it feels a bit impractical.

I heard about SWAM the other day, and it is essentially that. Sounds good from what I've seen, but I've yet to check it out myself

That's a good point, I haven't played around with that feature!

@@NickLeonard interesting sound design possibilities I think... Maybe limited uses in a more classical context, unless perhaps it's to try to reproduce the interplay between Glenn Gould-ish vocalisations and the instrument... 😉

@@xinaesthetic might be cool for some ambient or experimental sounds, either way, its a cool feature!

@@NickLeonard the other day, a video about Pianodrome in Edinburgh showed up in my recommended feed, which is a really nice project to restore or otherwise reuse discarded pianos into sculptures etc... But in the opening of the video where they were illustrating the things digital pianos can't do, including slamming down the sustain pedal and shouting into the open body of the piano for example, there was a little voice inside me saying "well actually... never say never". It was a feature I'd wanted in Pianoteq (I might even have requested it a while back), didn't realise it had been added. Not that this negates their wider point, really.

I haven't tried those, so no. Arturia makes good stuff, but I haven't tried their pianos.

That's awesome! There are also lots of great amp sims that you could send pianoteq to, I've gotten some great results with effects outside the included ones

@@NickLeonard Yes. Agreed. Effects inside pianoteq are not best in class

@@furiobisotti8150 most of them are pretty good, but you can certainly find better options out there!

I think you can manually sharpen the treble and hopefully save that as a preset. I haven't played around with that too much, but I remember there's a window where you can set the pitch of each note

You can do that.

I don't think so, seemed the exact same to me

I don't know of one, and unless someone makes a custom one, I don't know that we'll see one anytime soon. It would require an extra big housing and multiple axis of rotation. It would certainly be possible, but more expensive and a small market for it. I've also never seen a grand with a locking middle pedal, many uprights, yeah, usually for a practice felt/celeste but a locking sostenuto would be new to me. Where have you seen that?

​@@NickLeonard I did reply to your question Nick, but it got deleted. Maybe because I put a link in. The link was to a pianists wordpress site that had an image of a locking middle sostenuto pedal. You can find the page and image by doing an image search with the words "sostenuto pedal" - if you get the same results as me there's an image that then links to Weng Lee's blog. Anyway, it seems, much to my surprise, that a locking middle sostenuto pedal is pretty rare these days. When I was a student in the 1980s my university had 2 concert Steinways with that function and the piano teachers taught how to play some French pieces using the sostenuto (locked) and then the left damper pedal and right sustain pedal simultaneously. I guess times have changed and it looks like grands these days don't have the locking facility, so certain pieces now, I think, cannot be played authentically any more.

@@lockinski that's interesting, I'll check it out! and yes, only channel owners can post links as per youtube policy (prevents spam/scams) I've worked on a few hundred pianos, many concert and semi-concert grands, steinways from all eras, but I have yet to see that on any, but I believe you! maybe it was a trend for a little while that didn't catch on

@@lockinski I found the image in question on Weng Lee's blog, but that is a picture of an upright. While it might be possible to make on a grand, it's much easier to have the swivel required for locking on an upright, since there's much more room to move in the cabinet. On a grand, it would require re-designing the lyre. An upright has an adjustable thin rod and cable system for the middle pedal in a locking felt situation, whereas a grand has a much larger solid rod that wouldn't like being pivoted, so the best way would be to put the pivot point directly under the back of the pedal, which is also free-floating and only connected by a pivot in the middle of the pedal in the wooden housing.

that's odd, not sure what could be going on there. what do you have for monitors? You can also always render multiple copies of the same track and see if there's differences in the recordings. Of course, there will be, as there's some randomness in the model, but if there's anything going on with the timing or tuning it should be obvious

@@NickLeonard I have 2 stereo amps...4 speakers...using Focusrite 6i6....I'm going to do an Uninstall and reinstall and see if things calm down

@@zumadale Not sure what your amps are, but maybe on some proper monitors or headphones you'd be able to hear the differences, they are quite subtle I'll say, but they are definitely there

@@NickLeonard Yamaha HS8's and Carvin PA with 15 inch speakers. Worked great in ver 7. Something is degrading ...not sure what it is....going to figure it out

@@zumadale The HS8's should be good, I used the HS5's for years

I haven't tried everything out there, but I've had the Korg D1 for a few years and I still like it. I did a review of it. I haven't found a digital piano that perfectly emulates a real piano, though!

@@NickLeonard Thanks, I'll take a look at the D1.

I should do a comparison with a real piano and see how close it can get! I regularly tune a nice Steinway B in a studio with plenty of nice mics. It would be a fun test!

@@NickLeonard it would be great and very effective!

@@NickLeonard That's what really missing! I still low "raw" sound of 7, but how 8 is closer to reality I ask myself. VST (with different mic settings) is to the rescue! Same pre-recorded MIDI (with different intensity) and A/B switching would be the best 🙏

ArgoBeats no need to doubt, I think the same as you. Finally someone who thinks like me. I won't go into details, but for me, it's a losing product from the beginning.

Yes, though the Celviano pianos already have high quality sounds built in. They do have a midi connection and that's all you'll need from the piano. They have great action and a good interface, I just think the speaker system in them in not that impressive considering the cost!

@@NickLeonard can I use pianoteq with clp775 thats what I have?

@@AliAhmed-kk8lt yes, it has MIDI as well, that's all you need

They were never playing at the same time, I cropped in the comparison just to show the interfaces better. These are not processed in any way except normalizing to -1 dBTP. You're that it sounds a little crispy in parts here on youtube and it doesn't in the video on my pc. It's not hitting the limiter in davinci resolve, and that's the only plugin after pianoteq. I'll check what youtube prefers for audio codecs In terms of the musical performance, I think my velocities are too loud, and I should've backed them off some

@@NickLeonard I like what you do with pianoteq...I like the analytical view point of a real piano tuner. I learned just enough to tune my own piano a while ago. My right shoulder couldn't take it....figured it was time to go digital. What I find with digital is I'm able to play along with recordings now. The slight out of tune real piano I couldn't do that.

@@zumadale it's brave to try to tune it! It takes like 10-20 tunings to get a baseline where you can do a decent job in less than 4 hours, then about your first 100 to get proficient enough, then a couple years or a few hundred to get your speed up to where you can do a pro job in 60-90 min. That's to say, it's worth a shot for fun and learning, but you're never going to get the 10,000 hours to master it unless it's your job

@@NickLeonard Ha ha..I know. I took a few lessons hands on with a guy in Phoenix that's a pretty renowned piano tuner. Damn if I can recall his name...lol...I'll figure it out. He was buddies with the likes of Bill Bremmer if you know who he is.. Anyway...learned enough to tune pretty well it just took me forever using Tunelab. I like pianoteq cuz it allows me to jam directly with The Beatles and many many others.

@@NickLeonard Jim Coleman! Lol...that's his name. He was basically retired and gave lessons out of his home. He was getting along in years but I learned a lot with him and used youtube for addition lessons. Tuning is really hard work...my neck muscles and shoulder really let me know. I was able to tune the center string with tunelab ...and eventually was able to tune the unisons by ear....at first I used tunelab for unisons...lol....but figured out how to do it by ear and get that beautiful "bloom" going. Any way I hung up my tuning hammer in favor of digital.

I can hear a difference