Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Do vst sample different attacks/dampening?

On an acoustic piano, the sound of the attack/dampening depends also on a how quickly you repeat the same key. The same could be said for any instrument, example in a guitar when you pluck the same string quickly, the attack and the end of the same note will sound different from any intial isolated note. Am I talking nonsense, or there is something we never talked about?

If you're lucky on sampled pianos you will have multi layered notes on same pitch giving different timbre.
Forget about different damper situations and trills and stuff.

Rather common to try and emulate sympathetic resonances as many notes are sounding.
Some do it on highest pitches as there are no damper on those as well.

Repedaling, or whatever term is also exist.

Possibly modelled pianos like Pianoteq might go further, not sure.

On Pianoteq, we can have an harmonic pedal which trigger sympathetic resonance and immediately shut off the note which is playing played. I have tried to emulate it with Synthogy Ivory : playing all notes velocity 1 (whith a DAW, I miss enough fingers) and play quickly an other note. The result was far worse than the one of Pianoteq. Fortunately, this is not that way Ivory is usually played, but this illustrate the superiority of Pianoteq....... about sympathetic resonance (I prefer sampled pianos : VST or hardware but if I have scores with diamonds note - which should be played silently, just for the resonance, I will surely try and compare with Pianoteq).

Note that since sympathetic resonance is mostly due by the sustain pedal, some virtual piano have samples recorded pedal down. It is quite realistic on most cases, but when we release the pedal, the virtual piano (EWQL, VSL, Bechstein Digital Grand to name a few) was usually does switch to the normal pedal for already played notes which is quite weird.

agreed. But for the repeated notes the major difference in my opinion is especially in the attack. There are two different sounds:
1) When the hammer hit a non-vibrating string.
2) When the hammer hit an already vibrating string.

Vienna Imperial switches between pedal up and pedal down if the pedal state changes after the note is played.

The Synchron pianos don't. VSL say they haven't yet figured out the best way to do this. It took a while for this to be implemented in Vienna Imperial.

EWQL pianos have multi-velocity repetition samples (the sound of the hammer striking an already moving string) which sound quite authentic. I think there was a script update for Garritan's CFX which implemented the same feature. On a real acoustic piano these repetitions of the same undamped note create a unique tone, almost a swirling/phasey sound I've yet to hear a sampled piano emulate faithfully, although I think Pianoteq models this behaviour.

Yes, and consider that 50% of piano playing is repetitions of the same vibrating note: not only with single notes, but also with trills, chords or arpeggios.

I believe the VSL pianos can also do that, I hear it with the Steinway at least.

I read up some more on GHIII action since DG30 was announced.
So 3rd sensor is involved in detecting repeated notes

"The MP7SE's Responsive Hammer III keyboard action also features Kawai's accurate triple-sensor key detection system for enhanced playing realism. The added third sensor improves responsiveness when playing the same key repeatedly, ..."

So some kind of blend of a sounding note with a new hammer hit is emulated.

"When playing a fine piano, the amount of pressure applied to the keyboard affects not only the volume of the sound produced, but also the unique tonal character of each note. Therefore, in order to construct a realistic acoustic portrait of the SK-EX concert grand piano, not only is each key recorded individually, but also at various different volume levels, ranging from gentle pianissimo to thunderous fortissimo."

The third sensor allows the note to be played again when the key has only returned part of the way after a note is played. This is also a feature of a grand piano action. The particular sound of the repeated note is a different matter. Some piano emulations deal with this better than others.

No, the third sensor allows a keypress to be registered even if the key has not came up fully after being depressed

I agree «  improves responsiveness when playing the same key repeatedly, ... »only means the repetition can be faster not that there will be variation in the tone between successive notes.

It would be interesting to know how each VST deal with repeated notes. But I doubt they really recorded them, otherwise they would advertise something like "True repeated note sampling". Which would involve doubling of the file size, I suppose.
For example many VSTs record the "true sustain notes", and others just fake them.

But seems they also get that it affect tonal character
"The added third sensor improves responsiveness when playing the same key repeatedly, and unlike conventional two sensor keyboard actions found in most stage pianos, allows the sound of a single note to be gradually ‘layered’ without the previous tone being lost."

Read all about third sensor
http://www.kawaimp.com/mp7se/detail/touch/

All instruments that can receive MIDI messages have to be able to do this. This just means that a new note-on message can be registered at the same key without an intervening one-off event.

Not as I see it - all midi gear would create a new voice for the new note.
This implies gradually layered - mixing them under certain conditions to try and emulate the real acoustic effect doing this.

I have not tried how well they do this, just that they list as selling points this is done. Clearly more than just capture new note early as key is raised.

Trying to see what happends in acoustic - would mean some sympathetic resonance remaining as well as some little addition sound already sounding at pitch.

All pianos that receive MIDI do this the same way.

If they did it would clearly be listed among selling points IMO....if any but Kawai did I stand corrected....