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Hi everyone.

Pianobook, the group that distributes free sample libraries has released my binaural piano library called The Experience.

The Experience is my Mason & Hamlin Model A recorded from three binaural perspectives in the player's position - Head Center, Head Left and Head Right. You can use the modulation wheel to "pan" the sound image. And if you are adventurous enough to download some free apps, you can enable head tracking which keeps the piano strings in front of the keys, no matter which way you look. It can truly be "experienced" as a virtual reality piano, pun intended.

Anyway, download the Kontakt/SFZ and read more information here:

https://www.pianobook.co.uk/library/the-experience/

There's also a video there introducing it, and demo'ing the panning effect. Use headphones.

And I'd like to thank members of PW who helped provide feedback as I was making this, especially JonkyWonky who probably will be hosting slightly different SF2 version in the near future.

Congratulations, that's a really great achievement!

Hello,

Congratulations on your achievements, @Dore!

Cheers and happy developing,

HZ

Good but I can't change the velocity response. I would like the piano not to sound too quiet when I play really soft.

Does Kontakt not allow you to remap velocity to adjust the curve as desired? If not, there are other programs you can use that would. Maybe you can route your MIDI to one of those on the way into Kontakt's playing of the samples? (I've never used Kontakt and don't know much about it.)

In kontakt, on the top of the kontakt rack in the multirack position, there is a KSP button. Press this and choose preset , factory, and find change velocity. You can change the velocity min or max.

I don't have a better solution for sfz other than find/replace the velocity splits in a text editor.

This is great Dore.

It is incredible that you are the only person in the world supplying Mason & Hamlin VIs.

Of course, you can do just about anything with Kontakt, but this instrument uses a more complex way of 'velocity response'. It doesn't use the simple slider that goes from 0 to 100%, but some kind of graphic window showing a curve, actually, two windows to be exact. When I mess with it, I only make things worse.

Thanks! I just tried this but it's not what I mean. When I play soft, the notes simply disappear, because the velocity does all the way down to '0'. Even when I play midi velocity '13', it still sounds impossibly quiet. For more realism, the velocity should start from +/- '30'. I tried to raise the curve at the starting point in the graphic but that doesn't do anything.

All I can say is that there are three ways to change the velocity settings (that I know of) in Kontakt.

The easiest way is as I mentioned above, is changing the multirack KSP min setting to something higher and adjusting the curve. I can understand if this doesn't do exactly what you want because the velocity splits and EQ'ing may not shift they way you might think they would.

The more difficult way, which may work, is to hit the toolbar to edit the library, enable the "Group editor" window. Then choose a group (one at a time, there a bunch, so all have to be changed) look beneath and you'll see a bunch of curves. Some, if not all of the groups have a curve that looks like a velocity curve (going up left to right). Change all of them.

The third way is to open the "group editor" and "mapping editor", choose each group and edit the row of wave files above the on screen keyboard and drag the velocity splits to higher velocity. You can edit to your heart's content.

Hope that helps, and wish I was such a Kontakt programming guru that I could make a GUI that helped people do this. Every controller is different unfortunately, and I didn't get much response in trying to figure out what people have in a previous poll request.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to change the velocity ranges in the SFZ version, here is a procedure below. There are 4 velocity layers, and thus 3 split points. Each velocity layer has it's own loudness range. Wish this were easier:

********************************************************
HOW TO CHANGE THE VELOCITY RANGE (SPLIT VELOCITIES)
(the velocity at which a different sample is triggered)

Open the SFZ file in a text editor and find/replace all as per below:

Velocity range for p samples is (0 to) 45: Find/replace "45" with something else
Velocity range for mp samples is 46-74: Find/replace "46" and "74" with something else
Velocity range for mf samples is 75-105: Find/replace "75" and "105" with something else
Velocity range for f samples is 106 (to 127): Find/replace "106" with something else

Replace those entries, and the split points will update.

********************************************************
HOW TO KEEP THE VELOCITY RANGES, BUT CHANGE THE VOLUME WITHIN THE RANGE

To change the loudness range of each velocity range (which might be the best to increase volume generally)

Change by find/replace all of the below entries:

amp_velcurve_15=.01
amp_velcurve_45=.20

amp_velcurve_46=.25
amp_velcurve_74=.5

amp_velcurve_75=.3
amp_velcurve_105=1

amp_velcurve_106=.6
amp_velcurve_128=1

Easiest to explain what these mean: amp_velcurve_XX = YY, where XX is the velocity split value (see above section) and YY is the fraction (1 being 100%) of loudness the sample will play at. you can see velocity 15 plays at only 1% of the full volume of the p sample and then rises to only 20% of the sample full volume at velocity 45. You can find/replace these numbers to adjust. I'd suggest replacing .20 with something higher, and then doing the same with velocity 46 (remember velocity 46 is the mp sample)

Again, wish it were as easy as adjusting a curve with a mouse, but if you understand it, it's not so bad.

I am about to see if it'll play on a little netbook . . . I think that may be a step too far.

I think I did a bad job of explaining myself. I'm okay with vel. sensitivity of the instrument. I just don't want it to respond beneath midi vel. '30', because then, when you play rally soft, the notes become literally (!) inaudible. No other VST piano does that. Even at the softest velocities (under '30'), the notes have still enough volume. This is not the case with The Experience Piano. Anyhoo, I found a way around it: I can limit the velocity range in the MIDI Modifiers section in Cubase. I've set it from '30' to '127'. Now when I play really soft, notes are still audible.

You also have a EQ issue. The first midi value of every velocity layer sounds too muted (it even sounds darker than the softer vel. layer below it).

Man, where were you when I was seeking feedback working on this?

I know what you're talking about - its really difficult to EQ each velocity layer and get the splits to blend perfectly. You have to perform each note at exactly the right brightness (this means each note recorded up and down the kb must be the same brightness within the layer when recorded), which is very challenging, and then get the brightness to open up as linearly as possible through EQ/velocity tracking tricks.

Also, for each velocity layer (for example mp), I had to perform it 4 times (pedal up/Left/Right mics, pedal up/Ctr mics, pedal down/Left/Right mics, and pedal down/Ctr mics). And each of the four performances had to match so headtracking (panning) and pedal/no pedal would sound seamless. I did my best.

Pianobook as of now hasn't allowed updates, but I was considering doing some minor updates and posting on this forum.

That would be great! Thank you for all the work, Dore.