Update on best Pianos?

**Jake Johnson** · 11-20-2009, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by boehnbr

Jake, tell me how to get more wood and less metal out of pianoteq.

Did you try the C3 Worn-out preset? Many people like its sound. Edits for all of the instruments will vary. The M model is generally darker, with more of a "Steinway sound." The best edits for wood vary from note to note, but in general, as I am now learning:

1. Reduce the Unison detuning. (To start, try reducing it greatly, to 0 or about 0.11, and then move up.)
2. And\or increase the Direct duration slider setting slightly.
3. These steps alone may be all that you need. If not, try reducing the Soundboard impedance. (Reducing the Unison detuning will, by default, increase the sustain length, since the hammers are by default slightly off. You can correct this too long sustain using several methods, including moving the Direct duration slider to the right--making the hammers more perfect--or by reducing the Impedance.)
4. Reduce the 3 hammer hardness settings if needed.
5. Reduce the hammer noise.
6. Move the mics around. Try the binaural setting and moving the head around. Slightly to the left of center, facing the keyboard, will give you a warmer sound. There's a sweet spot that varies slightly on each preset, but you'll hear it.
7. Work with the velocity settings to get the sound to react to your keyboard and playing in the way that you want.

Coordinating these things takes some trial and error. It's easy to do too much with one parameter instead of getting the several things to work together.

But come to the PianoTeq forum. Always an ongoing discussion, and the developers listen to users and are open to suggestions.

**sullivang** · 11-21-2009, 09:42 AM

I've got EWQLP now and I whilst I still think the demo recordings on their web site are excellent, I'm a fair way away from feeling the same about the product, unfortunately. Even discounting the performance glitches I'm experiencing (which I assume I'll sort out one way or another), it's just not as good as I was expecting, regarding playability and sample fidelity. I only have the Steinway installed thus far.

Greg.

**michael88s** · 11-22-2009, 09:48 AM

Greg, thanks for mentioning the EWQL pianos. I've been looking for user comments and demos for a while, and they're few and far between.

Can you be a bit more specific about playability and sample fidelity issues?

Michael

**sullivang** · 11-22-2009, 06:57 PM

Michael
You're welcome.

Good news - it's getting better. The performance glitches (note dropouts, and clicks etc) are much less frequent than before. I am not sure exactly what I did to improve it yet - I need to do some regression testing to figure it all out. One thing I did do was to completely remove my antivirus software (Norton Internet Security 2010) - before this I was merely disabling background processing and realtime protection, which I was hoping would be sufficient. It's not perfect yet though. I'll probably make a detailed post over in that thread dedicated to the EQ Play engine and/or contact support. (one problem I have does look very much like a bug in Play, IMHO) Overall though, the performance on my machine is actually very good - I can play (albeit with low polyphony) all three mic positions simultaneously, with all articulations enabled, and ambience enabled. In this maxed out config the limiting factor is my (single) 2.5" 7400rpm disk I think. FYI I am using a Core 2 Duo @2.4GHz with 4GB on XP 32-bit which is pretty ordinary compared to the machinery that I see some other users with.

Re: playability, I am referring mainly to smoothness and naturalness of timbre changes both in velocity and by note. Using a velocity curve (external to Play) has improved the situation though. I also think that the Full versions of the instrument respond better than the Lite versions. I still don't think it's as good as it should be though for a product at this level. I get the feeling the Bosendorfer is something of a flagship in the collection, though, so it will be interesting to see whether it is any better than the Steinway.

RE: fidelity, I sometimes hear some hiss, and I've even heard a bit of crackling, but this is listening to the soft samples at what is probably an unnaturally loud level. (the default dynamic range is actually quite low IMHO which tends to make this kind of problem more obvious, of course)

The overall sound is very very good - just like the demo recordings.

Greg.

**michael88s** · 11-22-2009, 07:59 PM

Cool, thanks again Greg. And congrats on getting your system working so well- pretty amazing I think with just one hard drive!

Michael

**michael88s** · 11-22-2009, 09:00 PM

Greg,

I just recalled my previous experiences with Norton utilities- it was a real performance hog, and things ran in the background frequently, so you may be right thinking that that was the performance bottleneck.

Cheers,
Michael

**ohernie** · 11-23-2009, 03:31 PM

Any time there is a performance blockage I go for the three finger salute to see what process is eating up CPU bandwidth. There are also two free utilities available from Microsoft, processviewer and processmonitor, that let you know exactly what your system is doing.

Ernie

**sullivang** · 11-23-2009, 04:09 PM

Yes, I am already monitoring the system, and have also shut down as many unnecessary processess as I can find.

Greg. (ex IT geeky person)

**eric.coe** · 11-26-2009, 03:55 AM

hi.
I have tried C3 Worn-out preset. I like it.

**sullivang** · 11-26-2009, 08:28 AM

I think a big problem with the EWQL Steinway is simply that there are too few velocity layers. Really, I can only hear about 4 or 5 switches, for the most part, and this simply isn't enough. *I'd* rather they had sampled more velocity layers and omitted soft pedal and repetitions etc. I suppose they could have smoothed it over with filtering but I'm not a big fan of that.

I'll have to load the Bosey and see if it's much better in this regard.

Greg.