Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards AUDIO Yamaha P140 <> V-Piano <> Pianoteq what's better ?

For me, it's a contest between Ivory II and V-Piano - the rest aren't in the same ballpark - but there seem to be some truncated upper register notes in Ivory, so the nod goes to the V.

Of course, the V has an advantage over all other players because the song was originally played on the V, with these settings.

There's some truth to that.


For me, V-Piano and the last two software pianos are pretty good. Hard to tell what's a clear winner sound-wise.


At this point, the preference has to do a lot with hand/music connection that each piano provides. The playability of V-Piano is no comparison to P140 or Panoteq. Simply no comparison.

I have no idea how the last two software pianos feel on a very good MIDI controller. But what's good for me to learn is that V-Piano's sound per se is not bad after all

Hi alekkh,

By the way, did enjoy your playing of the Tchaikovsky concerto octaves (first movement) as it certainly wasn't bad at all! Nice demos...

Not only is the V-Piano's sound "not bad" but there is the feeling of complete control over every nuance when playing. Have you heard my recent recordings, here?

1) http://www.box.com/s/zq36ch5zpx0crl13lze5

2) http://www.box.com/s/es6e6kboe873zu0l2m9m

3) http://www.box.com/s/ur243tggb8gkdonr5az2

All three pieces have been presented as an example of where expression has full reign in the playing, and, the music can speak for itself.

pv88

Which Ivory II piano are you using? (Aren't there four different ones?)

Also, can this test be repeated with some better music?

you guys are the pixel peepers of music... lol

The first is V, the sound is vivid and dynamic. The second is Pianoteq because the dynamic is very bad, sounds like all notes are on the same volume level. The third is P140, apparently lack of string resonance, especially compare to the first two.

Ivory's Steinway sounds very close timber-wise to the V-Piano, that extra umpf to the sound, especially on the forte notes, but you can hear it throughout. The Vintage D on the other hand is more mellow, but I like that. And you said you added reverb to the P140?! It still couldn't hide the short samples. Oddly enough, it sounded more convincing that Pianoteq to me, though both have their shortcomings.

But I agree, we should have another comparison of with a piece played by someone at a professional level and with a lot more nuances - from p to f, staccato, legato, pedal, etc. I wonder if we could revive the "DP midi playback comparison" thread to add the V-Piano in the mix.

These types of threads are always fun to be a part of.

I think the Vintage D is nicest, the most "real" sounding, but is a bit dry. The reverb does improve the P140, but it's still not good. Whilst tonally I would say Ivory II is more realistic than V-Piano I didn't prefer it to the V-Piano. Ivory was quite bright, maybe a bit too bright. V-Piano is ok on this and wipes the floor with PianoTeq. But there is no light and dark in this piece so it might flatter some pianos and condemn others.

Why don't we all record the whole piece? I don't think that this staccato part is very ideal to hear the whole range of sound. Here's the whole thing in Ivory II Steinway:

http://www.box.com/s/de7a69c4373d959fe3dc

Here's the midi used: http://netcpp.com/VPianoPQP140_comparison.mid

MP3 encoded with 192khz. Just post your links to box, we don't need to put this in a compressed video right? Or should we make another thread?

What do you mean? Country? Punk?

You are welcome to do it.

BTW, I think that making the pieces longer and adding more music will create clutter. The character of each piano is way obvious already.

If you want to know each of the pianos yet better, proper next step would be playing these pianos yourself. Audio demos never get one far enough to actually invest in a particular piano, if the intent is playing and not just recording MIDI.

In reverse order:

Yamaha
Vintage D
Pianoteq
Ivory II
V-Piano

On that showing the Yamaha and Vintage D would be completely out of the picture for me. The Yamaha was too one dimensional and there was something about both the woolly bass and "clucky" hammer sound in Vintage D that was really annoying. I couldn't live with that.

Pianoteq handled the subtle dynamics really well but that (default?) tone was not at all convincing, particularly in the bass. Being modelled, of course spending time tweaking it could pay dividends.

Ivory II was impressive. I could live with that. The treble had a very good bright tone but the envelope was a little clipped. For me the sound lacked a little weight in the mid and lower registers and would need EQ.

V-Piano is the clear winner for me.

Kudos to you, nobody commented on that one yet. Pianoteq stands out as the most non-dynamic piano. Which was most obvious during recording.

I would go even further and say after owning P140 for a while that it most decidedly wins over Pianoteq. "Short samples" are probably just overly fast "no-pedal decay time" relative to other pianos. Yamaha likes it that way for some reason. P140 is not that bad folks.

The V-Piano recording has a lot of reverb though, surely I'm not the only one to notice it? Too much reverb colors the sound and also somewhat connects these staccato notes. I think we should keep the reverb down in future comparisons. Unless we're comparing reverbs.

It's fun though, much better than everyone yapping at each other about what sounds good or not

Punk? NO! I said better music, not worse noise.

Country? Not my first choice, but acceptable.

Even some old night club standard would be useful.

But a classical piece would be best ... one that shows off some air and some dynamics and some thickness.

Just turn down the knobs on the noises. Gone.
There are four: hammer noise, damper noise, pedal noise, and string noise.
I don't like any of them, so I mute them.

Great compilation, very interesting. But don't you think that the double octave creates a very specific harmonic combination? Single notes, and some other chord combinations would show off the differences better - and some much longer note times to demonstrate decay characteristics.

And also, recording all the samples dry would surely be fairer: using reverb is like holding a wine tasting with Coke added to the Premier Cru Bordeaux.