My settings deviate only very slightly from the default settings, and, there are only a couple of parameters that are changed. I'm looking for a reality check, and possibly to share settings that successfully improve the sound. I do have some history of “hearing” things that I want to hear, instead of hearing what is actually present, so, I want to share the settings I have developed, and to receive your feedback about what improvement you hear or don't hear to the “distant” character deficiency. Second, I think I have come upon a substantially effective reduction of the “distant” character, making the piano sound much more like it is immediately present in front of the me as I play.
So, I happily downloaded the STANDARD trial version and have been experimenting with its advanced features. Though others here have suggested that I try STANDARD to correct or improve the sound, I had labored under the false impression that any purchase of STANDARD would be a matter of guesswork without any possibility of knowing if it would improve the sound, or how it would improve the sound. I previously had only been aware of a trial version of the STAGE version.
I discovered a couple of interesting things in the process.įirst, I discovered that Pianoteq offers a free trial version of 7.3 STANDARD version.
This weakness is not so bothersome as to keep me from playing it, as the playability is just so much better than the competition.ĭuring a rough patch playing over the last week (I just got back from 3 weeks in the Sierra Madre mountains with no access to a piano) my mind drifted to messing with the Pianoteq sound, and particularly to resolving the “distant” nature of the sound. Especially in comparison to the better sampled VSTs, Pianoteq sounds as if the piano is in another room, or a distance down the hall rather than right in front of the pianist. In the same way, playing a major chord sort of implies a bass note a couple octaves below the root of the chord - if all the harmonics are there, then we expect it to be there.Although I am liking Pianoteq 7.3, and the Petrof Mistral, I acknowledge that the program does suffer from what I and others have referred to as a “distant” character to the sound. If you filter them out, the notes will sound about the same - we take most of our perceptual cues from the higher harmonics, and our brain just inserts the implied bass fundamental. Interestingly, we don't really perceive the fundamental frequencies of the low notes in a piano much at all in the first place. Having a super long bass string instead of a short double-wound bass string probably behaves more like an ideal string (with harmonics that are closer to whole-number multiples of the fundamental), so it should sound like it has a more definite pitch and less like a gong. Piano tuners deal with this be stretching the octave, so that the piano sounds in tune even though it kind of isn't. They don't behave like ideal strings for various reasons, so the harmonics aren't exact multiples of the fundamental frequency. In a piano, the bass and treble strings have a lot of inharmonicity. The overtones are the harmonic series, not just octaves (1:2, 1:4, 1:8, etc.) but an octave and a fifth (1:3), two octaves and a third, (1:5), etc. I think the overall effect of stiffness would dominate this one, however.)
(I have to admit that the zero-first-derivative boundary condition having no additional effect is coming from my intuitions about linearity of solutions to the wave equation, but maybe it still has some interesting effect.
Of course, the pitch of the string also increases with tension, so there's a lot going on. Based on the stress/strain graphs I could find, Young's modulus of a guitar string increases with tension, increasing inharmonicity. In the wave equation, stiffness involves a factor with a coefficient proportional to Young's modulus. (Though, through time in a frequency-dependent way.) But, even when plucking a string, rather than having a sharp peak at the plectrum, it will necessarily be similarly smoothed out. So, this radius of curvature will be visible there. The boundary condition of a guitar string is that the displacement and first derivative of displacement of the string are zero at both ends. Stiffness causes there to basically be a radius of curvature in the string when you apply a force.
My understanding is that this bridge effect is actually what is happening across the entire length of the string it's just that the boundary condition makes the effects of stiffness clearer.