@Cruelstrings Lol, well first some little improv piece on a basic chord transition, than a very very sloppy rammed out version of Mozart's Rondo Alla turca. Then I made a little musical joke, by playing one the famous ending of the Hammerklavier's Scherzo, and the intro of the Appassionata :p The other demo (yamaha) has Bach's BWV 924 Kleine Praludien and in the end Beethoven's Opus 31/2 last movement.


@Sullivang, like I said its most apparant in the range of C4-C#4-D4, but this has nothing to do with stretching, it is because there actually WAS something resonating in that piano. And at the frequencies of C4-C#4-D4 that something starts to rattle (and was recorded with the samples).

Ah, good, at least we are talking about the same artifact. Sorry - I thought it was only C4 - my mistake. Given that it does affect a group of notes, I'm forced to agree with you that it may bother me too. ;^) (although it hasn't yet - not in your demos)

Greg.

The Yamaha sounds good to me. I do hear a slight "twang" as you hit the key harder. Never having played a really great piano, I just figured that is the way they sound. I hear a little of this in my Yamaha P155. It gets s slight metallic sound as it get louder. Over all I like the sound

My piano tuner friend has responded on that Yamaha demo

- It sounds like a real piano. (phew! ;^)

- He said that he notices a unison a bit out (which is what Erich also commented on - I assume it's the same note but haven't checked yet).

- He thinks there isn't enough of a timbre change between pianissimo and forte played notes.

- Commented on the lack of ambience - when it comes to great pianos, he's used to hearing recordings done in a concert hall with great acoustics.

No comment on any buzzing sound whatsoever. (I have now asked him to listen for this though - will probably report back)

Greg.

Same problem here, same dvd. I managed to install it without the Bosendorfer... waiting for an reply from Synthogy support.

Best regards to all.

Thanks for checking sullivang. To be honest, I have played with it for hours, and there is really 0% doubt in my mind about the annoying metallic cling in it. Have you ordered it yourself? I'm sure if you were to play it you would very soon notice it too. About the pp to ff range, well I think they just recorded it (I guess they have some machine for this, for the different velocities to be constant), are just the way they are. I can't imagine what you really can do wrong with that.
The ambience we already talked about, I don't add alot of ambience, because I am using Ivory to play, not to make cd-recordings.

I will try to make a good recording today of Beethoven's Op2/1 opening, see how well it goes. I'l post it played by my presets of the Steinway, Yamaha and Bosendorfer, and the midi file. This should be abit helpful. Also I expected there to be MUCH more attention for this new Ivory?

Victor,
No I haven't ordered it, and I'm not ALL that keen on buying more pianos at the moment, but I was curious to see how Ivory II sounded. Anyway, looking forward to your recordings!

Greg.

They all cost a fortune thats for sure! I already had my regrets about the Garritan Steinway and Alicia's Keys .

Hi
I'm new here and my question may seem a littld basic: I've just come across the discussion on Ivory II. First, I thought it was a piano, but now understand it is software. But is this something you can use to play through the computer directly, using any keyboard?
Thanks to anyone who can enlighten me!

Hmm, maybe it's time for a "Software Pianos" forum here? They are indeed different things than Digital Pianos...

How can we make this happen?

This has been suggested several times.

Ok final demo, enjoy!

Steinway: http://www.box.net/shared/53ldmu9u86
Yamaha: http://www.box.net/shared/b34yhkz28l
Bosendorfer: http://www.box.net/shared/xvqovttxba
Midi file: http://www.box.net/shared/zuredqouq1

I am in this moment learning how to use Reaper, so I rendered in Reaper, using Vintage D. Hope you dont mind...
http://hphsite.de/temp/untitled.mp3

To get the best out of it, I modified the velocity curve.
So this question arises: Has Ivory II a flexibler velocity adjustment than Ivory I ?

Hello,

Does anybody know if Synthogy made new recordings of the three pianos for Ivory II?

Thanks.

So my first weekend of Ivory II *sweat*

My first impression remains: What a piano.

First suggestions: Try to use a very resonating soundboard and increase the resonance of the pianos a bit: You get a good impression how "living" a piano can sound.

I am using more or less the default adjustments of the DSP's but found out that there seem to be special EQ settings for each piano (there are special room simulation programs for each piano).

The resonating C4 on the Yamaha is in my opinion not disburbing, but I agree that the Boesendorfer is a bit "behind" the 2 others.

I am quite impressed by the stability of the first release... had no crash the whole weekend.

Alexander

Anyone here able to do one or more DPBSD MP3s? I'd be very appreciative! No reviews will be published without your full approval.

To Peter
I think Your rendition with Galaxy VintageD is not directly comparable with the Ivory samples, partly having recorded with a low volume setting and partly because it seems to have much more reverb/convolution settings.

To Victor:
Thank You for these MP3s. I have Vintage D as well and in all rendering I could find details to reveal the non-acoustic source.

I would rank the three for my own taste: the Steinway first, Boesendorfer second and Yamaha third. (I could not make up my mind yet how to rank the VintageD with the Ivories, latter beeing a more different beast.)

One question: as my nick reveals, I am interested particularly in historical temperaments - does the feauture "tuning tables" let you really freely define and maintain temperament tables or you can only choose from the predefined ones coming with Ivory?
Thanx.

Here's a demo that shows the artifacts in the Steinway I described earlier:

http://urandom.ca/~tack/x/ivory2-steinway-artifacts.mp3

The first 45 seconds tries to establish the artifact, which sounds like a faint digital squealing, a bit like what happens to high frequencies in audio encoded as low bitrate MP3. It's not present in every note (or at least not to the same degree), but on the 8th note in the opening C scale, you can really hear it under headphones. It's not really audible on my home theater unless I disable all post-processing (like Prologic).

The latter parts of the demo show that the artifact is noticeable during normal playing of softer passages. Namely, the intro to Clair de Lune and the middle part of Fantasie Impromptu.

Now, I should mention that I'm boosting the output by about 12dB. I find the standard output level to be much too low. Of course if you turn the volume all the way down, you won't hear any unpleasant artifacts, but then you won't hear any music either. I don't think the increase is fundamentally problematic, because neither the Yamaha nor Bosendorfer have this artifact at the same output level.

The source midi file can be gotten at:

http://urandom.ca/~tack/x/ivory2-steinway-artifacts.mid

So, am I crazy? Hypersensitive? Does anyone else hear what I'm describing and does it bother them too?

The Tuning Table option presents only 3 options: Off, MIDI, and Default. If there's any advanced functionality related to tuning tables, I can't find it.

I will listen to it tomorrow, however you should definitely not boost the output by 12dB. Why don't you just turn up your receiver? You should get a good signal into your receiver, if you boost it too much you will have a big chance of clipping, and compressed dynamics.

Ok, according to TFM:

I've looked at the rendered wav and I'm nowhere close to clipping. The peak level is about -25dB. I also don't see how dynamics would be compressed here. This is just a naive gain on the output, no compression.

My normal listening environment is the headphone output of my M-audio Fast Track Pro with Sennheiser HD555 headphones. Even at full volume on the Fast Track Pro, at 0dB (i.e. no) gain the ppp-mp range is barely audible. It needs a gain, and as long as there's no clipping, I don't think that an EQ plugin versus having an external amp increase the volume will make any difference with respect to this artifact.

Then why would it be a +12db gain? That would mean it would go from -12 to 0, but not to +12. Makes no sense to me at all.

It's a relative gain, boosting the amplitude by 12db, not to +12db, which would of course be ridiculously inaudible.

The Ivory recordings all sound TOO closely mic'd for my tastes, I think - especially for that kind of music. However, the recordings sound very good - very clear. Maybe that Yamaha twangy sound would fade to insignificance if the mics were further away? (I still don't mind it, and I think it's funny that some find it objectionable, because I bet the Pianoteq folks are tearing their hair out trying to figure out how to model that kind of "artifact". )

I prefer Hpeterh's Vintage D recording. It has more ambience, however it still sounds very detailed. I don't like the typical very distant sounding classical recordings, but Hpeterh's rendering sounds "just right" to me. (yes, it is rendered with a very low level though!)

Greg.

Tack: I can hear the artifact in your recording. Yes - I find that objectionable - it definitely sounds like a defect somewhere to me.

Victor: Is it possible that your velocity curve is not optimised yet? Tack's playing sounds very different - like the lower velocities are being used much more. (Tack's demo sounds very good to me, aside from the artifact)

Greg.

Thanks for the second opinion. It's good to know I'm not hearing things.



Of course my recording specifically targeted the softer dynamics, since that's where I noticed the artifacting.

Mind you, I do tend to have a lighter touch and prefer the softer dynamics anyway, so my playing style means I spend more time listening to those samples than others, perhaps.

One of my biggest criticisms of the sampled pianos I've tried is the ppp to p range. I feel a bit suffocated, even still with Ivory II but not quite as bad as say Alicia's Keys. It's hard to criticize Pianoteq in this respect. If only I could tolerate its sound.

Cheers!

Thanks, Curt88 for your comment (presumably in response to my question). I suppose you mean, "Yes, you can just play through this software on the computer from a midi keyboard.." : I feel a bit stupid – I won’t mention such things again in this thread !

Cheers,

Best Service's Vintage D is a fine piano - less piercing than the contemporary instruments - but IMO the Bosendorfer which is part of their Galaxy II suite remains the star of their show. I bought the Vintage D, but the Bosie is still my daily player.

Victor25, any chance for you to make a recording for the DPBSD project?