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

So I have been using pianoteq with my casio px120 for a few days now. And I haven't listened to the px120 built in sound since. Seems like pianoteq sound is much fuller and more alive. What does everyone think how it compares to a really good DP (roland v-piano) or a real acoustic?

I have been practiceing canon actually using the grimaldi harpsichord on pianoteq and i am hooked on it. Even this harpsichord on pianoteq sounds better than the one in the px-120. I actually haven't practice with piano sound for a few days. The sound from my laptop sounds excellent on a $70 Sony mdr-v6. I don't have any high quality monitor speakers so the headphone will have to it for now.

My px120 must 've hate me now for reducing it to just a midi controller

From what I've heard on recitals over at ABF the Casio's make excellent midi contr'''ollers. Now my own piano is the DGX650 (not a lot o people know that) which I find better than Pianoteq which lacks bass IMO. But P has its strength in recording from midi previously played on the Yamaha. its fun trying out all the sounds. I may well change my opinion before too long if and when I find the right combination . . .

In terms of sound, everybody will have their own preference. Pianoteq is a bit light on bass which is why I have a subwoofer set to max.

In terms of reproducing all the behaviors of an acoustic piano, Pianoteq and V-Piano are the only two "digital piano products" that get close. (See the DPBSD thread where they're the only 2 that passes all the technical tests.) Example -- you press a combination of keys, half-pedal, press some other combination, full pedal/de-pedal -- the strings of an acoustic piano will interact with each other to make some really neat sounds.

Pianoteq is also harder to play well. With the internal PX150 sounds, my son (8) playing seems perfect. With Pianoteq, you can hear all the imperfections -- hitting the keys too hard, pedalling too soon, the miss-hit notes are more jarring, etc. But when you do play well, Pianoteq's dynamics really show up. My daughter (6) has pretty fine control but without a wide dynamic range, you couldn't hear the difference.

I'm using the Pianoteq "Bluthner". I've _never_ complained about "weak bass" -- it's massive, IMHO.

Maybe my ears are faulty?

Maybe I've forgotten what an acoustic piano sounds like?

. Charles

It would be interesting to do a "head-to-head" comparison of Pianoteq against (for example) a high-end Kawai or Roland.

The problem would be doing a "fair" comparison. Do we try to make the pianos sound identical, using the "sound designer" features of each one? Do we try to get Pianoteq to match the "default sound" of the Kawai (based on a sample from one acoustic piano, I think), or the Roland default "Supernatural" grand-piano (which is based on a mix of several underlying samples) ?

It's not simple.

I'll be watching to see whether Pianoteq users (with whatever physical keyboard) migrate to other DP's with built-in sound generators as an "upgrade path", or whether they switch keyboards to improve the feel, and keep Pianoteq.

. . . I don't think we have enough data, yet.

. Charles

You'll know that I did the comparison with my own piano a few months back now. There wasn't a lot of difference but in most peoples ears Pianoteq was the winner. Listening to a recording you wouldn't expect concrete shattering bass and well you didn't get it either!

"PianoTeq" lacks bass is a strange statement. Which of the pianos? The K2 has much stronger bass than the D4. It is probably the best piano if you're not married to the Steinway D sound.

I also think the Pianoteq Bluthner has good (or even excellent) rich bass, the best of all (D4 K2 etc,...)

About the bass, it's a matter of comparing different VSTs.
Of course every VST tried alone will sound good.
Comparing it to others, Pianoteq seems to lack something in the bass and it's not just a matter of equalization. But of course it's subjective.

Anyway, if you want to have a nice setup you need a good external audio card, good speakers, good headphones, a notebook, all the cables, etc.
So for me an high-end DP has been the final choice.
You push a button and you have a working digital piano.
With VSTs you have to boot the PC, you have all this cables, you may have additional speakers (because they may be better than the DP's ones) and they're just horrible to see IMHO (a real piano doesn't have speakers lol), etc; so yeah it's too technical, it's informatics instead of music.

I feel trying a lot of VSTs, hardware components and stuff in the quest to a perfect sounding virtual piano (which will never sound 100% real anyway) is like wasting time, unless you love that quest of course. If you love technology, computers, AND piano and you love to try Pianoteq and other things, why should you stop. But if you, like me, get that feel that the more you play with all these things the more you're separating from the music, then just take a step back and buy a good DP with good stock speakers.

Yamaha Clavinova's sound beautiful and they're perfectly fine for practicing.
Then, one hour a week I get to play on my teacher's grand, and every DP, Pianoteq and any other VST can embarass themselves there. :P

This post perfectly explains why I purchased Pianoteq. For my use, all the other considerations about which is better really don't matter (which is not saying they should not matter to others). I have no problem with the piano sounds that either my Yamaha Motif XS8 or my Casio PX-5S produce. But the factors discussed by the poster I quoted do matter to me. I started a thread about the V-Piano, asking about it vs getting Pianoteq for my Casio. On the advice of some, I got Pianoteq and am happy with it for the reasons stated here. Unfortunately, I made some statements which I believe are true for me, but the thread did get away from the points I am making here.

The statements I made was that if piano was my primary instrument and I had spent years cultivating that art form through lessons and untold hours of practice, I would want nothing less than a "real" piano, with a DP being an adjunct for all the reasons DP owners cite. Since the piano is not my primary instrument and I don't have the investment in time and effort that a dedicated piano player would, the issues about which is the best DP or VST are not really a focus for me. The things that the poster I quoted talked about are the things I was looking for in piano software, and got with Pianoteq. I hope this makes more sense now that the context is hopefully clearer. Thanks to MossySF for getting it said clearly.

Tony

255
I think someone looking for something relatively inexpensive but high end in sound could do well to pair pianoteq with an inexpensive controller (even something like a casio PX150 works well for this). IF you already have a computer, you could have a setup for well under $1000 that would probably be comparable to higher end offerings costing twice as much or more from Roland, Yamaha, and Kawai, etc... in terms of sound and playability. So just on cost-benefit basis it could be a very attractive option for many. Also, while some don't like the character of the pianoteq sound, many do; moreover, many find that once they get it tweaked to their setup, pianoteq is very responsive and expressive, especially in terms of playing over a good dynamic range. So if you just really enjoy the way the sound engine connects to your keyboard, that might be another motivation to adopt it.

However, in practice I didn't find using pianoteq to be very elegant. I have pianoteq 4 (the previous version) and played around with it. I am interested in the technology and enjoyed playing around with it, but I found that after the curiosity factor wore off I just never really used it. It was a bit of a pain to get set up (I was running it through the speakers of my old Yamaha P250, had ground loop issues that were annoying to have to sort out), and even when I got it working, I just found it to be a hassle to use compared to simply turning on my DP and playing. Still, I'm glad that the choice is there for people who might find it to be more of use than I did.

Warm Regards

I guess that's not surprising since they are the only two that actually modeled physics of making sounds rather than just replaying samples. That DPBSD thread is very interesting. The test was on v3.6 of pianoteq. I wonder if the latest 5.0.1 would be even more improvement.

I am actually thinking of getting the optional 3 pedals unit for my px-120 which would allow half pedaling. Still not quite as good as some other DP which allows various fine grade of pedaling but better than just an on off right now.

@ MossySF & wildpig: the newest VSTs also have string resonance and 4th generation processing well integrated with the samples.
So it's not anymore "Pianoteq VS samples": sampled VSTs are already implementing physical modeling, for example Ivory II. Just saying.

A couple of things -

What does the middle pedal in a three pedal setup do?

I agree with fizikisto about the hassles of hooking up a computer for music. In my case, the connections are fairly simple - a single USB cable from my Ultrabook to my Casio PX-5S and then a single 1/8" stereo cable on both ends between the earphone output of my Ultrabook to the 1/8" stereo audio input to the Casio.

In general, I prefer my all-in-one Yamaha Motif XS8 workstation for sequencing and that sort of thing to a computer even if the computer is far more powerful. Once you get used to the workflow I suppose anything becomes second nature. But as has been stated, even with my workstation, one button turns the whole thing on and it is ready to go with no extra fooling about with hardware. For my Motif XS8 I use a pair of Roland CM-30 monitors connected such that one monitor controls both for volume. The CM-30 allows multiple inputs, so I can connect a CD player or my Tascam GB-10 slowdown device or even the audio of my Ultrabook to listen to it and my keyboard at the same time. The Casio has audio input jacks so I don't need monitors or a mixer for that.

Tony

Good point! A lot of higher end DP's also make use of algorithms to create the effect of things like string resonance. So there's a blending of sampling and modeling that is becoming a standard in the industry.

Also, I don't know exactly how pianoteq works under the hood (so I could be mistaken), but since they have models based on specific pianos (like the bluthner ad on) I assume they start with some kind of samples and use them to parameterize their models somehow. So I suspect this sort of convergence between sampling and modeling happens at both ends, just in different ways.

TonyB
It depends on the piano. On some pianos, the middle pedal lifts the dampers only on the lower third(-ish) of the keyboard. That way you can play and sustain bass notes and then move your hands up to a higher register and play without the higher notes sustaining. This is more common on uprights (though many uprights don't have a middle pedal at all).

On other pianos, the middle pedal acts as a sostenuto pedal. This raises the dampers for the keys that are currently depressed so that they will sustain, but does not raise them for the other keys (which will continue to sound normally)

Warm Regards

I think I suffer from the same affliction. My tweaked version of the Bluthner garners no complaints from me.

I have a DGX640 (earlier model of your DGX 650), and Pianoteq 5 Stage.

What exactly do you mean by the quoted statement? Do you first record on the DGX650 and then somehow transfer it to Pianoteq? If so, exactly how does that work? (In my setup, Pianoteq automatically records a WAV file, but only when using Pianoteq sounds, not the native sounds of the DGX640.)

Thanks.

I think technically Pianoteq continuously records things in midi format that playbacks the pianoteq sound. You have to export a recording in order to get a .wav file. I haven't done this but I think its also possible to load a midi file and have pianoteq playback with the pianoteq sound. I know I've at least edited a midi file generated by pianoteq and played it back through pianoteq again and then exported to .wav (yes I was cheating).

@ TonyB
On digital pianos and VSTs, the middle pedal is always the sostenuto pedal.

@ Vid
You're correct, it records in MIDI and then if you want you can export to WAV.