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

You are actually describing in detail the shortcomings of sample technologiy, which are only mitigated in very expensive Multi-GB sample libraries. It is not only the lossy process of velocity layering and hopefully interpolation. It is also looping, aritifiacially adding extra noises, so that they are configurable, recording losses, ... you choose.
At a comparable price range as PianoTeq, for most digital pianos or sampleed VSTs you dont even know what exatly is inside the black box you are getting deliverd. (exceptions are probably Korg and Nord)

With physical modeling and its theoreticly infinite granularity is superior on its own.
If you like the actual sound is another topic, and a matter of personal taste.

Why is it, that Steingräber, Steinway and Grotian do actually cooperate with Pianoteq? They would not do it, if the generated piano sound would mock their products.

From my experience Pinaoteq made that difference, which made it possible for me to do my silent practice sessions with it - in other words: for me it is very much playable.

I can counter-argument in the same way. Do you know how many parameters are modeled in Pianoteq. Did they model every single wooden corner and crease in the piano cabinet. The lacquer, the nuts, bolts, every single irregularity of the felt, the steel? They simply state they modeled a piano but there are thousands, millions, probably billions of tiny factors that add up to a piano sound. How can you be sure they didn't oversimplify that to only 10-20-30 parameters?


This isn't a real argument. And they didn't cooperate. They only allowed their name to be used. Read: they've been paid for the license. And BTW they allowed sample libraries to use brand names too.

My guess is that the main reason is $.

And that if PIanoteq possibly came so close to the real thing that it would likely persuade many potential customers that they didn't need to buy one of their actual pianos after all, they would be *less* likely to do it.

Which is not to say that Pianoteq is not a good product.

In the 1970s, Hammond worked with Acetone to make the portable X2 and X5 organs, Hammond put their name on it, and these organs were quite good for what they were, but nobody would mistake them for the real thing, nor were they as good as the clonewheels available today. Years from now, we may look back at Pianoteq's current version of a Steinway as being "primitive" in the same way we now look at the early electronic Hammond simulations, which were good for their time.

Do you first check before you said something ? Read carefully from top to bottom especially cooperation partners.
https://www.steingraeber.de/en/innovationen/transducer/

What an interesting project, using Pianoteq modeling and transducers to supplement and alter a real acoustic piano's sounds in real time! (And Modartt was certainly a cooperating partner in that project, though I don't think that was really the question at hand.)

As for how much they feel that Pianoteq by itself fully captures all the nuances of their acoustic pianos, that's not really addressed... in fact, you could argue that if Pianoteq alone could sound fully acoustic, there would be no need for the acoustic piano in that demonstration at all! But yes, they are essentially endorsing it as current state of the art, when they say, "The startlingly-authentic grand piano sound is thanks not to out-dated sampling techniques, but to the physical modelling approach of piano sound ‘Guru’ Philippe Guillaume and his firm Modartt/pianoteq."

Thank you for the detailed answer, CyberGene!



I realized we have talked about this in the past, as I was a little surprised you already own the Grotrian.
Thank you for detailing your settings, I just sat down and tried them. They still don't do the trick for me (and I prefer mind more :)) ). The dynamic range set at 50 seems unrealistically high for me, for live playing (i.e.) the quiet notes sound too quiet and the loud ones jarringly loud. My guess (I may be wrong) is that with the normal touch curve on the ES8 and a linear curve in the CFX you don't really hit the top layers so you don't get such an extreme contrast between the quiet and the loud and you simply play the instrument at a louder volume without reaching fortissimo layers, if I may say so. But I may just as well be wrong. I tried it with a linear curve and the contrast wasn't so high, but it was because I wasn't hitting the highest velocity layers - and this also made the piano sound warmer.
One interesting side effect of the dynamic range at 50 is that the hissing in pianissimo layers is less obvious.
And my last observation sound wise is something I stated before - the quiet notes feel more distant than the normal and loud ones, which is somehow weird and the sound doesn't give me the illusion of coming from a piano in front of me.
The playability impressions remain unchanged - very good compared to other sampled pianos, but far from the feeling of realism I get with PT.

As for the debate above, that's starting to warm up, I don't see the point of trying to convince each other that one thing is "better" than the other. I was simply stating my impressions and I appreciated Gene doing the same, and was genuinely curious about the hows and whys
I put "Better" in quotation marks, because it's all relative for every person. It's great that there are some genuinely good options out there and everybody should enjoy what they like best.

Interesting,
So there is at least a kind of partnership

I have both the CFX Lite and Pianoteq with Grotian and Steinway D. To me the CFX Lite sounds nice and authentic but only for the first 5-10 mins, and then my ears get bored of it. I don't know what it is, and I can't put my finger on it, I've tried all the different settings (presets, timbre, saturation, touch curve, reverb, set to performer, all the EQ knobs) and just can't get it right. It seems 'laggy' and unresponsive to me (using 128 samples, 2.9 ms). I very much prefer the onboard sounds of 'pianist mode' than the CFX Lite. On the other hand, Pianoteq using the same 128 samples, is responsive and alive. I can play it for a couple of hours non stop switching between Grotian and Steinway D.

Off topic:
The quartertone "music"... sounds like the battery of the piano is about to die.

It says Pianoteq helped Steingräber not the vice versa. So, still no proof of Steingräber cooperating with Pianoteq.

Right, Modartt helped them with their transducer piano project. Whether they helped Modartt in developing their software is unknown, and kind of doubtful as I'm not sure what expertise they could have offered. I guess they could at least have cooperated to the extent of loaning them a piano (or the use of one at some studio for analysis). But really, what does it matter? If you like it, it's good. And if Steingräber recommends it as the next best thing to the real thing, that's cool. And if they don't explicitly come out and say that, it's still good. And if you don't like it, you still won't like it, regardless of what Steingräber says.

I think that's only partly true because of a couple of important issues.

For timbre interpolation: that's far from straightforward and essentially requires some form of modelling. You do get it clearly on some VSTs; there are some where I strongly suspect there is no timbre interpolation, and others where there might be a bit of basic EQ at best. If there are sufficient samples across the dynamic range, it doesn't greatly matter; if there aren't, it can matter a great deal. Ironically, though, this is also an area in which Pianoteq has massively over-compensated; in v5, the timbre changes across velocity were excessive. One of the concrete and visible improvements in v6 in my view was that they reduced this timbre variation to a more realistic level but it's still far from perfect. So it's not a clear win for either sampled or modelled pianos.

For amplitude interpolation - yes, this happens on all DPs and VSTs, but that is dependent on properly processed samples which have an amplitude that matches their velocity layer. Surprisingly few VSTs seem to actually manage this; the Garritan CFX is one of the few that does. Some of the poorer VSTs have hugely uneven velocity response, and not because there isn't competent interpolation (which is very straightforward) but because the core samples from which the interpolation is derived are themselves not properly balanced or representative of their velocity layers. By contrast, for properly modelled pianos the amplitude will automatically match the velocity layer without needing anyone to match it up.

When we load a Kontakt virtual piano and edit it, we see the regions : each one has its sample. With EWQL Bechstein, it is even more obvious : there is an obvious gap. I suppose that volumes of samples are not edited accurately and make the gap so obvious. (A pity, the timbre is nice!!)

Excepted this one, I didn’t hear gaps between layers on most sampled virtual piano.

If we really need many layers, VSL Vienna Imperial has 100 of them.

Hi folks,

My rendition of Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.1 on Pianoteq's Steingraeber (Prelude preset, combined with the reverb of the warm preset).

https://youtu.be/XWcaXe0PKwo

Enjoy!

Nicely done, I enjoyed your rendition. The Pianoteq Steingraeber model is becoming my favorite ... on a side note, I also like the wall mounted computer screen. Now that I've committed to Pianoteq, it's interesting to see how people have setup their practice space.

fantastic, this Steingraeber is a game changer for Pianoteq (which I never liked before)

I've always been a fan of Pianoteq and this Steingraeber is really great, I sure will get the new Steingraeber at some point.

What I've found is my biggest gripe with Pianoteq, is this high pitched piercing sound in the middle and high registers. The bass is all right, most VSTis, sampled and modelled, seem to get the low end right. Whether it's the easiest part to get right, the deep low frequency areas of the piano, I don't know, but I can't think of any virtual piano I've heard, with horrible sounding bass.

I don't know if I'm hearing anything others don't hear, we are all different in what we hear, and what our preferences are. I compared the sound of the Steingraeber in the above video, with the related YouTube video below, a Chopin piece played on a real piano. When the pianist was playing the middle and higher registers, it didn't hurt my ears as the Steingraeber, and most of the Pianoteq piano models, as far as I can recall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9oQEa-d5rU

I too find the sound somehow harsh around B5. And I also hear that with all the models.
Generally I use the EQ to give a little correction, and I have good results.

compare it to this, without watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmx5wpDyCFM