Hi Woody, I just watched your excellent Pianoteq 8 video - it was the first I'd heard about the new version, and as I'm a huge fan of Pianoteq it was an instant upgrade from version 7 (Pro) to version 8. So thanks for the heads-up! I also wanted to share with you the surprise moment when my ears instantly pricked up at the 9.36 point in the video, when you played Black Man Ray. I played all the keyboards on China Crisis's 'Flaunt The Imperfection' album - it was a joyful experience I'll always treasure. I was initially terrified by the prospect being produced by the great Walter Becker, but he turned out to be the nicest chap I've had the pleasure of working with. Endlessly encouraging, and always appreciative of my input, however daft it might have been! So I just wanted to say thanks for that entirely unexpected trip down memory lane - which, incidentally was the first time I've ever heard anything I played on popping up in a KZfaq demonstration! 😊

I am proud Pianoteq user for about a decade and I hadn't change my opinion: Modartt should be awarded the Nobel prize in physics for Pianoteq. Creating mathematical models of pianos being exact to originals is bizarre achievement! It's not a mass on a pendulum or anything so trivial. It's exact, functioning model of reality. Finesse and sophisticated reality.

Woody, I had to stop by after my livestream, and so appreciate you stopping by, that means a lot. I enjoyed checking out your perspective earlier and have to say what a game changing update this is for Pianoteq, and I do not use that term lightly or to generate hype, you feel it when you play it and that speaks for itself. All the best to you my friend and look forward to catching up again soon. Joyfully!

You say you're not as proficient but for someone like me who plays guitar and is just learning to play piano, I'd be happy being able to play as well as you do. Another wonderful video. Thanks Woody. Keep up the good work you do.

probably the best piano plugin in the world

Thanks for the tour! You can let them know I just upgraded from v.6 to v.8 because you brought this to my attention.😊

I rolled my eyes when I saw they have included a guitar but after listening to what you've performed I am very impressed...it sounds incredible! 👍

There was a piano tuner who advertised Pianteq 7 and said that Pianoteq has too much 'Wet' in the reverb mix and it's best to lower it. I tried it and found that it makes all models sound clearer and more defined. I also find that taking the lid off the grands and the upright adds more sparkle to the sounds.

Great demonstration. I upgraded from v7 immediately. Loving all the updates. The Classical Guitar in particular was an amazing surprise. Most people are aware that Pianoteq is great for emulating the feel of a real piano, but I feel this guitar modelling is very underrated by some other demonstrators so far. Like you said, it will take a bit of practice to master, but the sound is pretty legit! 🙂

Wow, pianos are sounding fantastic in this version.

Lovely playing, Woody. I'm a huge PianoTeq fan and have used it for years. Now, you've got me trying to think of how I'm going to find the coin to upgrade! It really is a fine instrument. Cheers, Cliff

Thanks for this review; a good example of what it can sound like when played by someone with more talent than myself. I've had Pianoteq for almost a year, and over the past few months I've found myself using it more and more, whereas my other VSTs only get loaded up occasionally. I don't have access to a real grand (nor a real Rhodes), and unless I unexpectedly become a millionaire that's not going to change soon, but I'm more than happy with the sounds I get from this VST.

Very nice review! You're playing quite well though if I may say so! As always a joy to see you playing and reviewing Woody.

Woody, great playing and video. I’ve been a Pianoteq user for the last 9 years. When I started with the early versions, I loved its responsiveness but the tone didn’t compare with several sampled libraries I owned. It was decent at the higher registers, but lacked much in the lower registers. After several years of buying new sampled libraries, I finally realized that I could not tolerate the latency in the sampled libraries. Even though I have hearing problems, my hearing can pick up minor differences in latency and tone. It drove me nuts. So I finally started using Pianoteq for all my work. It got steadily better with new versions. With PT8, it meets ALL of my expectations. All of the old benefits are still there and now a great sound throughout. Best, Dan

Love listening to you play! Thank you!

Pianoteq is the cadilac of modelled pianos. Just sounds awesome. Nice video.

yes its flexibility is unparalleled and perfect for pop and other genres but I still hear hollowness in tone, samples won't die any time soon I assure you. you press one key of, say, Galaxy Vienna or Steinway and you hear real deal to bring tears in you eyes. still, Pianoteq is very useful in many scenarios. I especially love that it records anything I play so I'll never lose those precious gems should I stumble upon them.

Trumpton - Fantastic! Loved all the song choices (and recognised them). Great demo, thanks, Woody! 😎

Woody’s back in full form!

There must be some brilliant people behind the software, both technical and musical

I had the pianoteq 6 and didnt update to 7, after watching your video I upgraded to 8, and loved the felt presets. just beautiful

Woody, absolutely brilliant presentation and demo of the Pianoteq👏 Beside the wonderful piano sounds, the classic guitar and harp modelers truly sound real and beautiful✨

Hi Woody, thanks for once again an enjoyable demo of an exceptional synthesizer. Your enthousiasm is nice to watch. I wish I could play piano as well as you do. It is indeed as you say: we all look up to players better than ourselves. I wish you all the best!

Beatufiul demo. Among many, 2 things I've always liked about Pianoteq: the pleasure it gives you playing, and that i runs natively on Linux ;)

Nice to remember when the first one first came out. And that the company is still going

16:00 Oh man... the more you 🙀 up that piano, the better it sounds.... 🥰 ... and AGGHH!! Crockett's Theme!! * fan-girling *

This Pianoteq 8 is really fantastic. Thanks for this video, Woody! ;)

Hi Woody, Thanks for the video I had not see a new version had been released, I have used PianoTeq since version 5 and I own a lot of sampled pianos but I always use PianoTeq over all of them, so when I saw your demo I immediately grabbed the upgrade, sounds awesome.

On 7:48 you switched to diatonic mode. It is meant to be used with the harp. Only the white keys produce a sound. As in a real concert harp, the key signature is specified by seven pedals, from left to right D, C, B, E, F, G, A, each pedal being controlled by a group of three black keys.

From "Trumpton" to "Black Man Ray". Really enjoyed this video 👍

Thanks for the great overview. I just upgraded to version 8 today myself. My use is a bit different, I am using Pianoteq as a player piano. I have many piano rolls that have been converted to Midi files. Lots of fun!

Pianoteq8 sounds beautiful. Nice demo.

Thank you, Woody, great stuff, really enjoyed, cheers.

each iteration gets better

16:02 Now this! sounds more realistic than any piano plugin I have ever heard. Very skew, yet acoustical.

the guitar sounds nice and i like your little demo tune ;)

Very good demo, Mr W.

Great review! It’s amazing how good modeling is now. It’s kind of funny though because the nylon guitar in ST8 is better than the modeled nylon in Applied Acoustics Strum GS-2.

I wish that they spent more time on the piano sound and didn't add the guitar. I'll though I do love playing pianoteq, version 8 still has the signature sound in the midrange.

Great demo. Sounds pretty good. I may have to check it out. I purchased the Garritan CFX sampled piano - but had some problems with it: the samples are so big I get the occasional click and pop when the processor does background tasks. Also, being individually sampled, some particular notes have issues (eg. some samples are quieter than the rest so I had to go to great lengths to correct this via midi velocity. A modelled piano gets round all these imperfections.

There's those free FXP packs too... You can get all sorts of weird stuff from bells to an old Yamaha CP70 electro acoustic piano.

Great video, Woody!! 🧡 P.S. On that 'harp', I WILL reverse that sustain pedal in a millisecond. I do not intend to learn harp but I love the sound. 😊

Woody, I am from 70s 😁 thanks for memories, I didn't expect 😉 I have to upgrade to v8, your demo is brilliant! 🙂

Just bought Pianoteq 8 Stage last night. Picked up the Steinway D and EP piano packs. I’m just a beginner on piano but I am blown away by the response of Pianoteq compared to the samples on my Roland FP 60x. That said, I would like to get more instrument packs, but $50 a pop is pricy. It’s a fair price, but it would just add up quick getting more than one or two. I think I want the Hohner pack, but other than that, I would love a sampler pack that offered a little of this and a little of that.

“Back in the High Life”👍

The basic piano sounds are so much warmer than the previous version which were (to my ears) too brittle

Hi Woody, thanks for the great demo and playing. I don't remember you mentioning it any of you previous videos, and I apologise if it's a personal question, but why don't you play a weighted keyboard anymore?

Hello Sir, have you noticed much difference between v7 and v8 in terms of better piano tones? I'm not sure whether to upgrade or not. Thanks

I love the modeling technology, but I dislike the close-mic sound. I like a more true-to-life centered sound... any suggestions?

Hello Woody ! I hope you will see this : what's the song on the celtic harp you played (12:38) ?

I many piano plugins but with Pisanoteq 7.5 and notice the sound quality are a bit unclear. Like a blanket over the speakers. I’ve tried EQ but they didn’t fix it. Is the sound quality in pianoteq 8 more clear?

Thks very much for making a comprehensive review . I have been a long time user of pianoteq but I cannot tell you how much I am disappointed Version 8 and I hope Moddart will read it . Here is my list of complaints : (1) user interface. Current interface is really 20 years old and cumbersome . The version 8 brings a dark scheme to make it look better , but nothing has changed . It’s a cheap marketing trick . (2) version 8 doesn’t seem to come up with any new features , only new instruments and maybe presets . Modelling has still a long way to go and it is disappointing to see that the company has diverted engineering effort to produce a guitar modelling that nobody will use . Fair to say that 99.99% of pianoteq user base are pianists . Any acoustic guitar worth 500 $ will beat the model , so what’s the point ? (3) on the velocity front , you said at the end of the video , that pianoteq feels more real that sampled pianos because the latest have 6 to 7 velocity layers . Well Garritan CFX grand , VSL synchron and Keyscape and even the old IVory II have all above 20 velocity layers . Keyscape reports 32 layers , VSL synchron has 4200 samples recorded by key , and Garritan transfers between 1 GB to 2 GB of data , every time a key is pressed . A top pianist can hardly generate 10 different velocities so … What I would like to see in a version 9 : 1 ) completely revamped User Interface . 2) improved modelling . The usual complaint about the metallic tone needs to be addressed. It is not an issue that you could fix by adjusting the velocity curve , as the latest doesn’t affect the nature of the sound , but only the volume . 3) the core business value of pianoteq ,is modelling of grand piano . Choose less models but improve them constantly, otherwise you are diluting your effort . 3) fix the glitches issues . For instance on Mac if you use pianoteq and have a score in preview , every time preview needs to make a disk access will create a crack in pianoteq . This has to do with how system interrupts are handled . This was actually the first thing I checked with version 8 and obviously it is still there ;)

I’m sure between piano Tech and my Nautilis I could get some good sounds. By the way, Woody, when you get a chance to, if you still have it, get your Nautilis out of storage when you get into your new place, you should upgrade to the latest firmware and try some of the new features. There are all kinds of other sound packs. You can download now and, they have added some more features to it. I am planning on getting it for my M1 MacBook. That way I can run both piano tech and my Nautilis sounds through the same way due to the audio over USB plus midi over USB and all of that. I think the whole piano condition thing is overlooked. I do think it does add more realism to the sound and I don’t always want a pristinely tuned classical grand or upright when I am looking for a piano sound. Sometimes I am looking for that studio piano type of sound.

How to retune it for microtonality.. Please help

18:30 Jan Hammer from Miami Vice? What Song?

if you want to sound like a real guitarist, you need to add in overdrive, whack it up to ear-bleeding levels and ignore the rest of the band screaming at you to turn it down constantly.

Nice

Is the guitar included with the upgrade price, or is at £50 extra? Not clear from the Modartt website…

You mentioned that Pianoteq is available on iPad. What is the name of the app ? Seems like it is not Pianoteq...

The fact it's able to recreate the sound of a piano so closely is impressive But for the price, I'd rather look at Garritan or even VSL's CFX Concert Grand Way more realistic since sample on a real piano, as a pianist it feels better to play classical on them, but for a producer I wouldnt know

I'm a user of pianoteq for nearly a decade but I find it's not my go to when playing live not sure why I think it'd just it lacks oompf

I expected the Classical Guitar to sound bad but it's surprisingly good. Best sounding piano is the smaller Steinway B, especially the Steinway B Improv.

Hi, can you or anyone else tell me in how far the basic acoustic piano sound here differs in quality depending on whether you purchase STAGE or STANDARD version ? I have no interest in addtional key instrument, guitar etc. just a very good basic acoustic piano hence my question. appreciate any answers, including from folks using the 7 versions.... cheers

i apologize if I missed it, did you demonstrate the morphing at all? Pianoteq allows one to morph between different instruments, say, steel drums and acoustic grand piano, in real time.

Thank you, i orderd the STD-Version with Steinway D & Petrof. For Traveling i have a 61 Keystation. Do you know nice modern Songs for a limited Keybed?

What keybood did you use in the video?　Can you inform the model?

I upgraded from 7.5 to 8. What I can see is the same interface with a dark scheme some little cosmetic changes such as the pedals, change of pictures with the presets, but the buttons and general user interface looks 100% identical at first glance. I have tried the guitar , it sounds to me like a piano playing a guitar sound but sounds very remote to a true classical guitar most probably because of the different attack . On a guitar , the finger manages the attack directly with no intermediary and is in contact with the strings at all time whereby on a grand piano the fingers only depresses the keys in order to give a certain speed to the hammer. When the hammer hit the strings, it is not anymore in contact with the key and the finger because when the finger has passed the escapement point, the hammer is in free flight to hit the strings on its own. Therefore I am struggling to understand how you can manage different attacks throughout the same guitar with a midi keyboard without adjusting the parameters on the interface constantly. The only viable use of such modelling looks like post editing rather than live playing , at least this is why my intuition tells me.

I heard that iOS version on the way,is that true?if it’s true then how long?

thanks for the overview! I would be interested in your devices, keyboard, amplifier and speaker if you will! thanks for any further infos.

Thank. You. I. Enjoy. Your. Videos. I. Really. Do. Except... The. Enunciation. Of. Every. Word. In. The. Most. Unnatural. Way.

Amazing... It's so hard to get anything like this in a performance keyboard... Or si it? I think for live playing, we can only rely on keyboards with good samples, right?

pianoteq is way ahead of Arturia's piano emulation.

How does it compare with other products from Native Instruments or Spectrasonics?

Is that The Midnight's "The Comeback Kid" played at 14:16?

What do you recommend 3 instruments for standard pack of PianoTeq?

I havent upgraded from v7 yet to try it myself, but just from this demo, am I the only one that thinks.... maybe it sounds even more synthetic now??? :(

25:16 I even believe that the magic of a real piano is that the airwaves start to give phase shifts in the piano body when blended. Not just the strings themselves. And when Modart can simulate the modulated air flowing in the piano, then it will generate the perfect plugin.

If you play a piano in a forest, does anyone hear?

Don't like this upgrade, my stored V7 presets doesn't sound well with 8. Modarrt tried to pimp up the sound, but they have not managed to

And protip: for some reason their synthesis of the Blüthner Model 1 is the closest-sounding to the real version.

9:22 trumpton!

Love the Children by Robert Miles (RIP) section. Pianoteq is cool, but I have a difficult time getting my hp605 velocity and pianoteq to play nice. I can never get the playability that I can get with other libraries, which is a shame, but it is what it is.

Does it have a Fazioli sample?

I am surprised that you are still sitting at that desk, which was supposed to be only temporary - has the building of your new house stopped.

The sound is not there for piano or guitar. It's like a bad driver is loaded.

And why they don't do wind simulations (brass, wood, etc)? Oh yes, because most probably it will sound like garbage now. But maybe on 5 to 10 years someone can do it, with help of IA of course.

how to solve latency problem

What has changed from 7 to 8 soundwise? , can not hear a remarkable difference as far as pianos are concerned, still the Pianoteq plastic sound. Thanks for the video

Nice but expensive.

😒 p̷r̷o̷m̷o̷s̷m̷

okay that guitar sounds bad. still not happy with the piano sound either. :( I really wanna like it though, it IS fun to play with, just still prefer even old piano sample libraries, or a real cheap upright

Maybe they should just change to making guitar sounds. Never got the hype of this library. The Acoustic Piano sounds sure isn't my coup of tea. The EP's and some of the Guitar sounds good. Still think a Sampled Piano Library with modelled symp. ressonance sounds generally better.

errrr that guitar sound really sucks :)