with the "c" shortcut

I certainly love working on the real deal, but for home practice I don't think it can be beat, especially with a nice MIDI controller. Some techs might turn their nose up at anything digital, but Pianoteq was created by a piano tech, so he didn't think it was a dumb idea haha Most technicians are on the older side, but I grew up working on computers first, so it's great to see two of my interests combined like this!

@@NickLeonard I have no problem replacing my real grand with pianoteq at all for live performance. I use two stereo sound outputs thru PA systems...I assign mics to each separate speaker...if I turn it up...it vibrates the room and your legs...lol

​@@zumadale It certainly has it's advantages haha. I've even seen some people gutting uprights and putting a digital piano in for a more "authentic" look. I wouldn't condone that unless the instrument is going to the dump anyways, but a good use of the old cabinet if you have a permanent stage setup. Of course, there's lot's of situations where you want an acoustic piano, but for everything else, Pianoteq is amazing.

It's the most realistic piano VSTi there is. I don't know why people call it 'plasticy,' they'll find a reason to put anything down.

It's in the top 3 in virtual pianos for me.maybe it holds the 1st place

@@adownbeatexegete1549 I promise I want to love Pianoteq, but I find it plasticy compared to something like VSL :/ I'm not at hater, quite the contrary actually, but... It could be my untrained ear too, but something sounds quite fake compared to other VSTs.

I last tried version two way back in 2006 ? and loved it, although at the time it was receiving criticism. I just think that good modeling is the way to go, and that they usually get somewhere close enough in the end. This version seven is absolutely stunning.

@@EgoShredder I haven't tried the older versions, but even the improvements from v6 to v7 were great!

There are, of course, drawbacks with both, but being a technician and recording acoustic pianos, I know how much goes into it. Not to mention nothing beats editing MIDI ;) For a top notch acoustic recording or sample library, you need of course a great piano, which has to not only be tuned right before the session, but also checked over for regulation and action noise and performance issues. All of that gets extremely expensive. You have to have a good room acoustically, and a variety of high end mics. All of that is thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obviously out of reach of most people. You could pay a few hundred and go to a good studio, which if you're doing a solo piano album is the way to go. You could try recording your average home piano with budget mics, but you should at least get it tuned before, which will be about 150-200, more if there's repairs and regulation that needs to be done. The voicing will likely be all over the place, and most uprights and small grands don't have a big sound or good bass if that's what you're after. It may be more real and more unique and that can be great for certain styles, not so much a modern jazz or classical performance. There are advantages and disadvantages to samples vs modeling, but you can't beat the freedom and creativity of modeling. Another thing I think trips people up is hearing a real piano while playing vs listening to a recorded/sampled/modeled piano through their headphones and monitors and feeling like it's not real enough. At least compare apples to apples. A great acoustic recording vs a plugin, not your memory of playing a piano in the room!

Many people in the music industry have no clue about music and technology history, and about many other things, to be honest ;) As Nick probably knows better than me, keyboard instruments have evolved quite a bit along the CENTURIES, the pianos we play today are the ones Beethoven played and so on and so forth. Add organs, the electromechanical stuff, transistor organs, electric pianos, clavinets, synths... the list goes on forever. To a lesser extent, that is also true for the guitar, and so on. So, 'REAL piano' hardly means anything. People just love having fights over anything: analogue vs digital, Mac vs PC, Linux vs Unix, this DAW vs all the others, Fender vs Gibson, Steinway vs Yamaha, my team vs your team, and so on and on. Even though with technology there IS a risk of something (or someone!) being replaced sooner or later, or at least being vastly reduced in significance, esp. now with AI, these are beautiful tools which CAN give opportunities to many more people who, for whatever reason, cannot afford or do not want, 'the real thing'. Besides, many accomplished pianists love and use Pianoteq, and the fact that big names like Steinway and Bechstein endorsed and allowed their brands to be used, speaks volumes. Unlike in many sample libraries ;) Digital photography DID replace analogue photography, for instance, pros and cons. A different beast in some ways. A good photographer is a good photographer, anyway. Elton John and others already used digital pianos, expanders, etc. decades ago in concert. As you rightly point out: just make music and be happy ;)

@@NickLeonard Agreed. A fun fact is that Beethoven often used 73-key pianos, putting a lie to the argument that every student needs 88 keys. He also valued the robust nature of British pianos like Broadwood. Sometimes he could be very practical, unlike certain snobs I have met. And before Beethoven there were composers like Mozart, Haydn and Bach who only used primitive predecessors to the pianoforte as we know it. How anybody can insist they need an 88-key acoustic pianoforte to play their music... this just baffles me.

I just saw, that you have a video with a review of Korg D1. I guess, I'll find the answer there.

Thanks, Scott! You mean overtones, or sometimes upper order harmonics. Every instrument has them, and the strength of each dictates a lot of an instrument's unique timbre. As for versions, Standard already has a ton of features, in pro you get access to higher sample rates (irrelevant for the vast majority of us) and individual (per-string) note tuning. Also something I don't think many people would ever touch. It allows you to actually change the pitch of the individual strings in each unison, but you can still detune evenly in standard. There may be some other features, but personally, I'd stick with standard and spend the extra on more instrument packs.

No need to be sorry about the fish part.

A bass note on a stretched piano, or something like a guitar or synth that's not stretched? Octave stretching also has to do with overtones and that's a matter of string length and thickness. A small spinet will have a greater degree of stretching compared to a 9' concert grand. Typically on a concert instrument, I'll be looking at around 10 or so cents flat on bass and that much or a little more sharp on treble. On a very small upright it might be more like 30 cents!

@@NickLeonard Thanks for the reply! 30 cents would perhaps be noticeable to me I suppose, but I'm talking about a much larger difference, and I think it's more to do with perceived pitch than harmonics. I do play piano but as a piano tech you obviously know far more than I do about those subtleties! The music I was thinking of is usually either rock of some sort with a bass guitar, or something synthetic like EDM. Basically a bass note can be perfectly "in tune" but I hear it as up to a semitone sharper than it actually is. I've never really explored this, so perhaps some research is needed. I was wondering whether other people have had the same experience.

Pianoteq is slightly more CPU hungry (but still quite low) compared to a sampler, but a sampler has to load from disk, so best results there would be an internal SSD. I haven't had any latency problems with Kontakt libraries off an internal SSD. I don't know anything about that DAC, but for low latency, you should be using ASIO drivers and I don't know if that unit supports them since it's not designed as an audio interface from the looks of it. Any audio interface should be capable of under 10ms round trip latency, which will be higher than the stated latency, unless it also tells you the roundtrip number like focusrite does. You can test with the free RTL Utility program. Under 10ms shouldn't be perceptible, my focusrite gets as low as 6.5-7.5 ms and I don't notice it.

Ravenscroft 275

I'd suggest Production Voices 300 Grand.

yeah, looks like it has MIDI over usb, so it should work fine

I'd have to try and compare again, but the K2 is an original piano designed by Modartt, not modeled after a Kawai

It should be silent. The escapement mechanism will trigger before the key strikes the strings if you go slowly enough.

@@NickLeonard Thank you so much!

27:47 I noticed the 11/8 interval immediately. To my ears, it sounds completely resonant, but to others, it is an unfamiliar sound. The size of 11/8 in the Carlos Alpha scale reminds me of 22edo’s 11/8 approximation at ~545 cents (545 cents vs. 546 cents is an imperceptible difference).

Korg D1

Gracias, pero mi español es muy malo, no intiende jaja.

@@NickLeonard oh sorry haha ​​my question is why does the demo appear in the vst?

@@freetown10 the demo file I played was from a MIDI file that I added into Reaper, if that's what you mean

@@NickLeonard I mean, in the interface of your pianoteq, it says "demo" as if it weren't the full version.

@@freetown10 oh I see, it is the full version, standard comes with 3 instrument packs, so there are more I could buy, but it doesn't include the full range of instruments unless you get the studio bundle with everything, but you can demo everything, just without some keys working

I do think it's very accurate, nothing is perfect, of course. Consider also the microphones and their placement, as well as the room. I'm not sure which libraries you were comparing it too, but if you replicate a similar mic and reverb setup that will get it closer. Many samplers also have more post EQ and noise reduction baked in, something pianoteq doesn't need. It could be a certain frequency range you just don't like that you can easily eq out

@@NickLeonard Thank you for the prompt feedback, you do have good points, replicating the whole setup used in the samplings or even what we hear in videos from real pianos would get closer to what the general public ends up getting used to, the recordings. Based on your last sentences I will explore the EQ parts and room setup, I can't play with mics in Stage version and would not have proper knowledge to do it. Just for the record, I would like to make pianoteq sound as close as possible to this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/opp5frygkqnVdoU.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/opp5frygkqnVdoU.html

​@@carlosroberto366 I don't know what piano models you have, but the NY D on the pop preset is the closest to my ear to this Yamaha. Yamahas tend to be fairly bright and clear. You could also try out 3rd party impulse response-based reverb. Also, adding a little wear with the condition slider or detuning the unisons slightly can add some reaslism

I use the Korg D1 (RH3) and I recommend it, you can check out my review video!

Sonata No.31 in A-flat Major, Op.110. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fpmDa9ad29Wsn4k.html

Yes, it says so on their site. On the standard version you can set the total unision width as well as the pitch of the note, but not the individual strings in the unison

@@NickLeonard I found piano tuning simulator from tunelabs download section just to practice tuning by ear .thats what i was going to use the pro version for. i may still upgrade from my stage 7 version. i love Pianoteq its so lifelike and i still like tuning my old upright. Thanks !

Velocity is one area ir excels in, but if you don't like the tone... Of course, there's a ton that goes into recording piano and especially maintaining an instrument for recording!

@@NickLeonard yes, that's for sure. :)

I use Windows, and my DAW is Reaper

I do love that attention to detail

Thanks for pointing that out, not sure why that happened. Fixed now, but I'll have to check my other videos.

They do rarely have sales

There is no mirror... There's a TV with a picture on it, of that's what you mean

thats an ambulance, cuz I'm too sick

You have a good point, and I should have also demonstrated the individual notes. However, I find that sometimes it's easier to hear the tuning in the more real-world context of a chord. Yes, it does introduce a lot more harmonics and overtones, but it can also make the "rubbing" of out of tune unisons more apparent. Of course for tuning I don't do that, but it's a good check that the unisons sound good together.