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I'm considering recording Grade 8 on my ES920 using Pianoteq as it's a pain to hire a good acoustic piano from here. Any caveats you can think off? I'm currently using the Bluethner. I tried the demo of the Bosendorfer (which should be better) but I didn't like it as much (weird because I do like the demos on their website). Do you think that the "weirdness" of Pianoteq compared to the onboard sounds or a sampled VI will be an issue? I think that Pianoteq is way more expressive than the onboard sounds despite the unconventional sound. I'm also considering looking into the Modern D, but I'm kind of concerned that I won't like it when I start using it (they don't provide a demo or return policy).

Another thing: I've managed to successfully play Pianoteq through my ES920 speakers using a Macbook Pro M3 (USB-B + line input jack) after struggling with my old Linux laptop. I think the sound is alright through the speakers (a bit of hissing but not really audible) and there isn't much delay while pressing the keys. I wonder whether the Macbooks have some decent hardware that make the use of an audio interface less important. Should I still look into an audio interface regardless? It's supposed to improve audio quality and allow me to use a microphone, but I need to record video + audio with the same app anyway on my phone, so I don't think it'd help much (I'm not very audiotech-savy though).

Modern D is on sale right now. I bought it. My personal initial impression is it is not night-and-day better than Pianoteq (Bösendorfer or Shigeru Kawai).

A quality pair of headphone is the better and more controlled way to evaluate sound quality. The built-in speaker of your ES910 and your MacBook Pro are both compromised. However, they don’t matter to your recording because you don’t need to use a microphone to record the audio part of your playing. You can record the output of Pianoteq digitally. Using OBS studio, you can record video from any webcam and audio from Pianoteq together in real time, ending up with a performance video with better audio quality than any mic can do. The only thing you need to pay attention is proper gain setting in Pianoteq audio settings so that Pianoteq output do no clip.

If all you are using to listen to Pianoteq is the speakers in the ES920, you probably aren't getting a very good representation of Pianoteq. I suspect the sound system of the ES920 is "optimized" for the onboard Kawai sounds which may be decent (?). I have thought I might like to have an ES920 just for light gigging though I doubt I'd be using the onboard speakers all that much (maybe for monitors?).

I do happen to like the Pianoteq Bosendorfer though some swear by the Steinway D. That Bose is my first choice, then again, I play a "smokey jazz" style which fits it well with the reverb cranked up.

Do you have a decent set of headphones?

Oh thanks for the heads-up, I didn't know that Modern D was on sale, I'll have a look. That's my worry as well, that it might not be that much of an improvement, or I might not like the playability. There's no way to know as there's no demo or trial period.

Interesting, I didn't know about OBS studio. The rules are that the recording must not be edited, which is why I thought that recording ambient sound would be better. I think it should be okay though.



Yep it's optimised for the onboard sounds. I haven't looked into monitors as they are quite expensive and I don't have room for them anyway. I'll be getting a CA701 soon though, the speakers should be better as well. I'll do the final recording with that one, the ES920 is temporary.

I don't like the Steinway D at all, which is disappointing as I got it because I thought they'd do their best to improve it. So I still use the Bluethner. I'll play a bit more with the Bose and maybe get it, but I've got 3 piano packs already haha. I very much regret not getting just 1 or 2 and getting a historical instruments pack instead and I wish you could swap them once in a while. At least I got the Ruckers pack, which is outstanding.

I have the Sennheiser HD599 SE. I think they are alright but not fantastic. I have the AKG K702 abroad for my MP11SE and I think they are better, the bass sounds better to me (although the sound engine is different). I try to avoid headphones as much as I can though. Pianoteq tires me overall, worse with headphones. And my ears are quite sensitive and I end up playing with low volume which leads to mechanical issues.

FWIW (I don't teach, and you play better than I do) --

You're doing a Grade 8 exam. Whoever judges it will be a professional musician. They will have heard _all kinds_ of acoustic and digital pianos, played in all kinds of rooms, with all kinds of mics and recording gear:

. . . They will be listening for your _playing ability_, not for the tone of the piano you played.

So the question to ask is:

. . . Will Pianoteq give a good rendition of how I intend my playing to sound ?

I think the answer is "Yes". Modern D might be better at imitating the tone of an acoustic piano -- but that's not what the examiner will be listening for.

The restriction on "editing" -- that's interesting. If you put a little reverb into Pianoteq (or any other VST) when you play your test pieces, is that "editing" ?

I ask because IMHO, some reverb (not a lot) often improves the sound of a DP. That's a matter of taste, and I suspect that your examiner will be quite capable of "correcting for" whatever you choose to do.

The synchronization of audio and video tracks -- that's been discussed in several threads here. I haven't read any "This is so hard!" reports.

Good luck!

You should record your es920’s sound using the pianos speakers with video in real time with your iPhone. Try it a couple of times to ensure the audio with the iPhone mic is loud enough. If the latency with Pianoteq is noticeable to you, that’s a very good reason to keep it simple and not use it. As Mr. Cohen noted, the judges have heard it all and know how to judge your playing. Reverb is not editing.

That's interesting. It makes me wonder whether some more "higher level" tweaking might help at all. (?) I'm thinking specifically of things like mic positioning but there aren't too many things that are not tweakable.

I know Pianoteq isn't to everyone's liking but it's just something that came to mind.

Best of luck!

To be honest, I'm quite hesitant to use digital pianos to start with (as much as they love them in some ways) for an exam submission. I agree that the examiners should be familiar with all sorts of pianos, but many professional pianists don't like digital pianos, so that could go against me. I'll probably still go ahead as I'm more interested in the ARSM exam and Grade 8 is to get my feet wet after a long hiatus. So as long as I pass this one I'm happy, then I can see what I do for the next one in a few years.

By "editing" I think they mean cuts. The recording must be one continuous take and you can't edit notes of course. Reverb should be fine (I don't like the Pianoteq ones though). As per sync-ing video and audio, I don't think that's allowed if you record them separately although one would argue that the examiners would probably not notice if done correctly. But who says I'm also not editing a couple of notes here and there? I think it's grey territory.

Not sure how good Modern D is in reality. I know the pros and cons of Pianoteq. TBH it does an excellent job at pedalling, including una corda. I haven't seen that anywhere else so far. So maybe the weird tone is an okay trade-off. I've seen people submitting with really crappy digital pianos and even (they claim) get a merit on their FRSM, so :shrug:

Another thing is that I'll be getting a CA701 soon (I hope) so maybe the onboard sounds are fine as they are better than on the ES920. The dynamic range and una corda is still an issue I think though, so I'll probably stick to the VST plan.



That's what I thought as well, that it needs to be recorded from the speakers. I can get an audio interface for the latency, but I'm quite happy with it; it's there, but it doesn't bother me or affect my playing.

I've dropped them an email to ask whether it's okay to record from the line-out though, see what they say.



I tried to tweak Pianoteq (got the Pro version) and I couldn't get it better than the defaults (they are defaults probably for a good reason). The only think I changed sort of successfully was the reverb.

Interestingly, I was trying again last night and Pianoteq sounds way better for me through the DP speakers. When I try with headphones it sounds plasticky. My headphones aren't supposed to be that bad though, so I don't know.

Maybe it depends on who you think of as "professional pianists". I think we must travel in different circles because most of the "professional pianists" I know of play digitals all the time. I'm not talking about the big names who have the $$$ for a crew to carry around whatever piano they happen to like on stage with them or have the 9'er of their choice on the concert stage when they arrive. Those people are way above where I am and where I go, and honestly the majority of them are in a genre I do not frequent.

To each their own. And I don't begrudge anyone who finds themselves in that circle. Heck, I once had aspirations of Carnegie Hall myself. Played on numerous concert grands and a few concert stages over the years. But that wasn't a life I particularly liked or wanted as the closer I got to it the less I liked it.

I am sincere when I wish you the best of luck!

Have you tried to adjust Pianoteq's buffer size (under Options -> Devices). Get it down to as close to 64 samples as possible without getting any stutters or crackles. That should bring latency down to unnoticeable. Also check sample rates and make everything in the audio chain the same (48khz or 44.1khz) - the less conversion, the less latency.

If you can get the latency down, then I wouldn't be too concerned about not using an audio interface. Although audio interface can improve audio quality and further reduce latency (if computer is not up to par), my main reason for getting one would be to allow using XLR (better, more versatile) condenser (requires 48v passive power) microphones.


Besides convenience and (arguably) simpler setup, the only benefit of recording from the speaker that I can think of is you are recording what your ears were hearing (sound and room reverb) while your were playing. However, that is still negated by the quality of microphone used. iPhone mic will probably color the sound a lot. Ideally, you'd want a good condenser mic, preferable a small diaphragm one, to capture the piano sound with fidelity.

Since the sound originated from Pianoteq is digital, converting it to analog, capture it with analog mic, then convert back to digital makes less sense than feed the original digital sound directly to video recording. By that I also mean do not record from the line-out of your ES920 (which takes in Pianoteq sound). Feed the Pianoteq output directly to OBS within your Mac. You can do this with a "virtual splitter" (same audio stream, one copy to OBS, other copy back to ES920) on the Mac by setting up a Multi-output audio device combined with Blackhole loopback driver, or use RogueAmoeba's Loopback app.


Your headphone is quite good. Are you hooking it to the headphone out to the ES920? If so then it may be colored by ES920's built-in headphone amp. If you use Pianoteq, I'd suggest plug the headphone to your Mac.

Another thing to be aware is with headphone you aren't hearing any room reverb other than what you applied within Pianoteq. This is one big difference compared to listening via speakers. For that same reason, when you record Pianoteq's direct out digitally, you will need to enable some reverb in Pianoteq to make it sound real.


If you use OBS, you are recording video and audio in one take, even if they come from different capture devices. And if you get the audio level set properly before the take, then the only editing you will do to the saved video is to trim the excess at the beginning and the end.

There could occasionally be video/audio syncing problem if you use a webcam (some webcam lags a little when capturing). That can also be corrected in OBS, by adding/adjusting the audio delay within OBS - you do this by making a test recording, figuring out the correct audio delay value, set it once and won't need to touch it again for all subsequent recording sessions.

All I know is modern D to me has made the other vsts obsolete and I can’t find a use for them. It has the playability of pianoteq (let’s say 90% of it) but wins out on tone and richness, especially with the sustain pedal sampling which is just sublime. I feel I can control the dynamics extremely well and I love how the tone changes with harder or softer attack, I especially like the softer playing side of modern D and there’s a lot of expression you can muster out of it… it simply destroys any hardware dp sample also, nothing is remotely as good it’s laughable.

Also to add, I had no idea you could now do graded exams remotely? So you don’t have to actually visit a centre like a school anymore to actually sit the exam? I never did my grade 8 exam in the end as I could never find a use for actually having it.

Yep, digital pianos are used extensively by many people making a living from piano. I think my grip was that they wouldn't usually record or send a competition submissions on a digital. It's usually more for practice and the convenience.

I can relate about the concert pianist life. I had a hard time when I quit my studies, but now I'm so glad I did. I can work remotely and still have time to enjoy music on my own.

Thank you for the wishes

Woha, thank you for the tips.


I'll try to lower the samples tomorrow and see if there is any difference. I had 48khz already though.

I was thinking about getting the audio interface because I've got a condenser microphone. But it's really old (ECM-MS907), I bought it 20 years ago. I tried using it on my phone and the volume was so low. Surely an audio interface would help. But not sure it's worth it as I don't think the difference with a phone microphone from 2025 will be that noticeable?



I don't even have an iPhone, I've got an Android phone, which makes the recordings worse.

I did a bad job explaining how I wanted to route the sound. The line out was for the onboard sounds. I agree that it's better to route pianoteq directly if OBS supports it. I'd need to look into the Loopback stuff, I haven't heard of it.



Yeah I'm plugging my headphones into the ES920. I used to do it from the computer, but I didn't unplug the line in from the ES920 into the mac, silly me. I'll compare both and see if there's any difference.

I keep the default Pianoteq reverbs even through the DP speakers. The reverbs can be quite extreme, but I play with the vanilla or player presets anyway, which have less hectic reverbs.



I can try that. It's looking like it might be less of a pain to go hire a studio room and record an acoustic haha.

Thanks for your input. Even Pianoteq destroys the onboard samples, they aren't very good. I wonder if the CA701 are much better...
I'd like to try the Modern D, but I can't see how. It's quite a bit of money for me right now to gamble. I'm happy that you love it though!

Yeah, since covid, you can do "performance exams", which are digital. You don't need to do scales, arpeggios, sight reading and all that. It's focused on just the performance (which I personally prefer).

I won't probably find any use for Grade 8 and (hopefully one day) ARSM and LRSM. I'm not planning to become a piano teacher (although who knows if it'll be useful one day). But I had a hard time practicing for the last 2 years, and committing to the exams have lit a flame under my a$$ and I went back into practice; actually, to the point that I don't care much about the exams themselves anymore because I've got a pile of pieces I can't wait to play in the 10 years. For me, the exams are just a goal post to keep me on track and maybe measure progress, but at this point they aren't that important. I always recommend people out there struggling to get motivation to look into exams; not for the exam itself, but for the accountability and getting back into serious practice.

What put me off completing my grade 8 was the requirements. Singing!, sight reading etc..

I couldn’t sing and grade 8 required me to sing a melody, i don’t agree with this and has nothing to do with the piano as an instrument and that’s what I was trying to get a qualification in.

Also sight reading is pointless imo, I’ve always either learnt music by ear or learnt the music from the sheets, but in my own time, having to read something I’m not familiar with straight off not only is extremely difficult to master but again doesn’t reflect one’s skill at the instrument itself!

You don’t see concert pianists sight reading Rachmaninov or Liszt… I mean not the majority at concerts, they’ve learnt and committed it to memory. Which is how i learn piano music and perform it from memory.

I guess they assess a broader range of skills as some professional musicians make use of them (especially accompanists). But now they aren't required for the new Performance exams, maybe have a look and reconsider if you are still interested The only thing is that ABRSM requires Grade 5 theory for Grade 8, and Grade 8 for any of the diplomas. I think Trinity doesn't require any of this and you can just go for the diplomas should you be interested in that.

as a piano teacher , I strongly disagree with your comment about sight reading . It is an essential skip to have when you want to build a repertoire and to play outside of your repertoire . Classical pianist at advanced level , semi pro and pro are very often asked to perform a concerto or sonata with short notice and must learn the piece quite quickly . Sight reading is essential to decipher passages quickly . Valentina Lisitsa has made a video on how she learned concerto no 2 of Rachmaninoff in a record time and demonstrates her impressive sight reading skills . Also sight reading /singing is very important in music . Sometimes we practise piece without the instrument and give the students a score and ask them to sing it on the spot . We are not judging the quality of the voice as such but the ability to picture the music in the brain and translate it into pitch . Memorising a piece is different skill set , essential as well and not related to sight reading and happens at a later stage in the learning of a piece . That said. I have noticed that students who are the best at sight reading are also very often the most capable of at memorising for visual memory of the score is one of the multiple forms of memorisation that play a role in the process .

Nothing is essential, it sounds outdated to me, many young people learn from midi rolls now not sheet music.

Sight reading is pointless to me, I get some sheets and read it so I’m committing it to memory at the same time… if I have to learn something quickly I’ll do that… that is not the same as sight reading… which requires you don’t know the piece at all, well I don’t see the point in that as I’d just learn it anyway. Also you have an ear so you would have listened to a recording of the piece to help you learn it. Outdated and backwards ways of learning music imo.

Why sight read when you’re not going to perform it live with sheets in front of you, and if you do then fine, but you’re better off learning it beforehand and committing it to memory so you’re not looking anywhere but the piano itself and your hands.

I know about 1000 pieces or more of music from Melodies to full pieces and don’t need the sheets in front of me for the majority of them.

Singing has nothing to do with piano and is a different instrument entirely, has nothing to do with piano itself as an instrument and how you play it, you can sing with your hands and fingers. Your mind is where the passion and music lives not your voice.

Grades seem useless now, again outdated and quite useless if you want to make money from music due to how easy it is on social media etc.. which is where the most profitable musicians earn their revenue now, not the concert halls like it used to be, you wouldn’t be able to get famous 20 years ago unless you found your way onto TV somehow.. now it’s a different world that has left the old ways behind, slaving your way through life as a piano teacher or lecturer/professor is the least profitable unfortunately, I don’t like the way the world has gone but it has moved on.

It really has changed. Copyright law is a total mess. Performing / gigging is competing with people playing their favorites list on some streaming platform. And unless you're in a big city with a recognizable name, good luck finding a place to play. Teaching? UUGGH!! Have been asked a lot of times but really, zero interest.

I had lots of opportunity to go the direction of both performance and teaching, didn't like either of them at the time. I do sometimes wonder where I'd have gone had I taken advantage of a few of those scholarships... (sigh) ... but that was a lotta years ago...