Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Pianoteq introduced a Steingraber E-272

My experience has been that I much prefer the sound of Pianoteq through monitors instead of headphones. On the other hand, people who use open-backed headphones say that the sound is good. I have not tried them.

I sprung for the Steingraeber with the Bluethner as the addition. I find them both distinctive and a real pleasure to play.

Pianoteq really handles demo versions very well and their interface is so strong.
I appreciate the company's efforts at continual improvement ~ though I understand the tonal color is not to everyone's taste.

I'm pleased as punch.

cheers.

Hmm,
Now we have to ask, IS THE PUNCH SPIKED ?

If it is can you please send some over here LOL

Best two choices you could make

Definitely give them props for the demo versions. Not many VST's (to my knowledge) do that. No loading of samples, just start laptop, launch and play. So simple. And great GUI.

To me the Bluethner seems a little "boxed in" and muffled and I feel as if I'm sitting far away from the piano. Maybe it's because I'm using monitors, never tried with headphones.

Love the Steinway D, Grotian, and now the Steingraeber (which I feel is a great improvement).

It may be that you are hearing the "duplex scale resonance" ...
from the manual:



I can hear it as a ringing after the damper is applied in a staccato strike for example... a high pitch ringing then decays, that at first I thought just came from sympathetic resonance in the undamped strings ... but after tinkering - I found it to be this duplex scale resonance.

It drove me bananas until I lowered the default values on it (and possibly the sympathetic resonance setting), whereupon *that* ringing has ceased.

Just a thought that may help.

cheers,

Jack

I tried the Steingrauber. Didn't like the E272, but I found one setting I did. Very nice! But now, I don't like the Bluethner.
Can you pick and mix between different versions of Pianoteq? Maybe that'd be the next big thing . . .

Thanks Jack. It's my belief that a kind of droning background (essentially non-musical) ringing seems to be a characteristic of modelled piano sounds. The Physis Piano also has all sorts of odd ringing artefacts and I hear it on all PT models. The Roland pianos have not ringing as such but an excessive droning resonance going on. You don't realise quite how oppressive it can be until you switch back to a sampled sound - which I accept can arguably be too 'dry'.

There are times when I really enjoy PT but only for an hour or so and then it's a relief to switch it off. I'll keep trying with it though.

Cheers,

Steve

You might just have helped a few folk out with that comment---so many people complain of it sounding metallic!
Well Done!

That is one of the wonderful things by Pianoteq, made possible by physical modeling:
You can really turn off the duplex scale.That was one of the first things I did. ( I mean that is not any patched add-on recoring or gimmic sound effect as standard ROMplers / loopers / samplers fool you with. )

To be honest to sampled VST-s, their main idea is to record a real instrument. If the real Steinway has duplex scale, then it will get recorded and that's exactly what I would like as a customer. I don't see the point of having a sampled real Steinway only to add/remove inherent Steinway features thus making it anything but Steinway. Sampled instruments are honest, maybe stupidly so but that's the point. So, I don't think the fact you can remove (a bad implemented) duplex-scale off a modeled instrument is a huge advantage. But each to their own

CyberGene,
That might be true for the multi-GB and expensive sample libraries, but not for the standard digital pianos in the affordable to mid range.

I can see your point.

But of course a limitation of sampled instruments is exactly that they are sampled: this means the best they can achieve is to sound exactly like a recorded piano. To the extent that something like PT really is literally mathematically modeled its goal is to recreate sound through the physics of the instrument. Thus the long term goal of modelling actually is reproduction of the instrument, rather than reproduction of a recording of the instrument. Of course I don't believe for a minute that the PT folk don't refine the sound through listening to the output--which of course isn't literally modeling, even if it remains mathematical.

I still wonder how exactly Pianoteq works. I remember there were some Russian guys here on the forum, working on another physically modeled piano and while their effort was rather rough and in a very early stage, it had some quality to it that made it sound closer to a real piano, particularly where Pianoteq still struggles. They mentioned Pianoteq is using a modeled technology that's not very precise and close to how a real instrument would be recreated in a physical model. If I am not mistaken, they used the term "waveguide" in regards to Pianoteq and it was implied that's inferior technology. Wondering what happened with that other technology and if their statement is true that Pianoteq technology might be an approximation to modeling that is far from ideal.

Well, it that is true, then Pianoteq had better be working on a better modelling technology to rival that Russian effort, or else, they'll soon be fighting a competitor with a better product---like Altavista was when Google came along!!!

I've been trying to find the thread or anything at all on the Internet about that Russian modeled piano with no success So maybe it all was just a bunch of cr*p. Can anyone remember the name of their modeled piano?

I was so disappointed when Altavista died, I found it more useful than Google at the time. Case sensitive searches!

They got complacent and Google invented something more useful...

It is not by enhancing the candle, Edison did invent the light bulb. I suppose that making a far better modelled piano may need a new approach (simply making a moddelled piano which doesn’t infringe the Modartt’s patent needs a quite different approach too). The problem is that it is difficult to predict the potential of a new approach. It may be useless but we can’t guess it without developing it enough further. Then I don’t think Modartt will risk a too distant approach, but enhance its model (as they did between v5 and v6)

For what it's worth I've just sorted out PT6.2 with the latest Steingrauber. All my presets were encompassed within (didn't find that out till I'd started on new ones) and everything sounds better than ever. A big advancement, particularly on the D4 which just sings. So good in fact, that I see no real reason to buy any more . . . . (well I might do)