Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Pianoteq 4 released

Very nice new grand, very versatile model based on a Steinway D. Plus new Convolution reverb and new effects - delay, chorus, flanger amplifier and compressor.

Pianoteq 4

Cool, downloading

great, but I don't see pianoteq play 4. I have pianoteq play 3.

OMG FINALLY!! License upgraded...currently downloading the update

The play version of PTQ4 will be released in May.

Too bad, can't download the free upgrade then. I guess they are smart to do that.

Will try trial. O! Calibrating for velocity and sustain level! Cool!

Will be interesting to see if they have been able to improve the sound.

Played around a little with the demo. Sound has certainly improved. Sounds like a piano now for the most part.

At the same time, there is something ugly about it that I can't quite put my finger on yet.

Thanks for the heads-up BazC - looks like some great improvements.

I may have to whip out my netbook again to see how this updated version sounds/performs.

Cheers,
James
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I tried the demo. I wasn't expecting much, and Pianoteq delivered. Not much.

It's sad that a $150 sampler can sound wonderful, yet Pianoteq at $100 cannot.

Agreed...I am filled with disappointment by this highly anticipated release. I guess there was just too much hype on the PT forums; I really thought they would be able to compete with samplers by now, but unfortunately, the sound just isn't there yet IMHO. Guess we will have to wait 3 more years for PT5 :P

Yeah, 99€ for the less functional play version, vs 249€ for the full version (Which has essentially the same sound). It's difficult to deviate from the core sound of a specific modelled piano even with the tons of parameters that PT offers; kind of ironic really :S I still love the playability though!

Exactly what is "playability"?

Tried the 4 right now and I have to say it is far better than the 3.

The base was vastly improved. Staccato in midrange-low range keys is infinitely more correct. The sound overall is better and - for the first time in PQ history - somewhat pleasant.


But Pianoteq still sounds like a piano made of sheet metal, sitting deep inside a haystack and underwater, all at the same time.

Much remains to be improved.

Priceless....

In a word: lifeless.

I wonder, though, how you can say it's "infinitely better" if it's still not very good. Infinitely better would be ... at least as good as an acoustic piano.

So, at best, it's marginally better. (And I don't even think that highly of it.)

Hey James,
What is the spec of your netbook? INterested to see if a netbook has enough grunt for this or maybe VinD.

Netbooks are questionable. My wife has one. Atom N450 processor, 1 GB RAM. Not much good for anything beyond email and surfing.

It's just an old Dell Mini9 (slow Atom N270 CPU, 2gb ram, 32gb SSD), but running OS X.
I mostly use it for Skyping my sister (I bought her the exact same machine, also running OS X), managing sounds on my Nord, and testing MIDI queries from Kawai customers.

Despite the low spec, it actually runs Pianoteq v3.6 reasonably well (with the lower bit-depth), so it'll be interesting to see how the performance of v4 compares. I believe the OS X's 'Core Audio' is more efficient than Windows XP's 'Direct Sound'.

Cheers,
James
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