I keep reading good things about Pianoteq on this forum but although I'm not a complete IT dumbo I'm not sure how it works. I have a Roland HP101, presumably I need the Pianoteq software, a computer and separate speakers? Could someone point me to a good tutorial suitable for beginners please?

Hugh Sung posted a useful tutorial on setting up Pianoteq on YouTube here

It's simple enough though, you can connect the keyboard to the computer by USB or Midi, if you choose midi you may need a midi to usb converter depending on your sound card.

From there it depends on the quality of your components and how demanding you are as to what you need to add. You may need a better sound card, Macs usually come with a decent sound card which may be fine, Windows machines usually need something better than the default. You can add a better internal soundcard or an external one like Hugh demonstrates.

You can listen with headphones, send the Pianoteq sound back to your DP via line ins or add external speakers of some kind. Most people seem to use powered monitors but they can be very expensive.

edit : +1

It looks like your piano has:

Output jacks (L/mono, R)
Input jacks (L/mono, R)
MIDI in connector
MIDI out connector
two headphone jacks

And has no USB or Firewire connections. So you will need a MIDI cable from MIDI out to an external soundcard.

The external soundcard can be USB or firewire (for connecting to your computer). I would recommend a PCI or PCIe card though, and in particular the EMU 0404 (for entry level), or one of the others if budget allows.
http://www.emu.com/products/welcome.asp?category=505&

I have an EMU 1820M (discontinued model) so I'm biased. However, unlike many soundcards, the EMUs have native ASIO (vital for low latency).

Then to hear what you are playing there are several options:

1) Connect the soundcard to the piano with audio cables (L/R), and hear the sound on the piano's speakers (not usually very good quality IMO),

2) Connect the soundcard to external powered monitor speakers

3) Connect headphones to the soundcard.

Several users that I know of are using the EMU 0404 very successfully with Pianoteq.

I use powered near field monitors and headphones - my 1820M has the same black box as the 1212 and 1616 models - the headphones and monitor speakers plug into this box.

You might try posting your queries on the Pianoteq forum.

Glenn

The best thing to do is get one thing to work at a time. Don't connect a dozen cables ad little boxes and expect it to work the first time.

So, First you might try getting sounds to play on your computer with enough audio quiality to make you happy. Get a CD recording of a solo piano concert and play it on the computer. If your standards are quite low then the lettle speakers inside the notebook might be good enough for you. But I doubt that. Most pianists are much more demanding and want very good sound. It could get expensive.

But if you are going to the trouble of using Pianoteq you must care a lot about sound. Audition some speakers using you CD recording of the piano concert. It takes time and you wil have to liten to many speakers. Close you eyes and ask yourself it it really sounds like there is an acoustic piano in the room. Or does it sound like speakers?

The next step is to connect MIDI to you computer. You should be able to record and play back MIDI data. No Pianoteq yet. Just get the midi connection to work.

Next get the pianoteq demo (It's a free download) and use it to play a MIDI file you already have on the computer over your new speakers.

Now the last step, getting it all to work is trivial.

Chris,
What speakers are you using? I'm on a quest for the best speakers for reproducing Piano(teq)

Thanks everyone, I've to enough to go on for researching.