ROFL.

Very sarcastical, Dewster, but because I cannot figure out any real objectives in Your response, I still think that complexities are valid and part of those brain activities for which playing and listening to music a rewarding experience is.

Just as with the temperament issue: your brain has to compensate for the imperfect intervals to hear music out of it. Similarly, your visual brain does compensate for the compressed colour map and shifted white balance with historical old colour movies, or to correct the perceived sound direction for displaced sound sources to pair it with the visual source.

Hi, don't worry about Dewster input. Like in other forums I found that there is always a member that will play the role of bad guy. If you look at all it's posts since the beginning of the topic, you will clearly see that Dewster has decided to kill the Physis even before trying it. He started from potential software issues, to the poor quality of the keybed ( which I think is actually excellent) then he criticized the tuning limitation ( which is not true) then criticized a marginal missing recording options after looking at the manual, then he continued criticing the sound and this strange argument about sustain pedal effect. He finally admitted in one of the latest post that anyway he doesn't believe in physical modeling technology. His Sense Of Humor is just another angle of attack. Being so negative is simply a clear demonstration of a lack of objectivity or a rather a clear mission in this forum. The good news about Physis piano, is that all the feedback I get from musicians that either tried it or purchase it are extremely positive and all confirm that physical modelling offer such delightful musical sensation versus sampling. I guess we should trust who have tried the instrument more than speculation.

Isn't this all beside the point? The original question from dewster was about the recording because the recordings (especially in the first clip) of the Physis DO sound:

1. either as if they have some post production compression added to them which mitigates against the natural decay curve (this has nothing to do with 'compression' in the sense that mp3 is compressed where there ought to be no noticeable effect or change to the original recording).

or 2. as if the Physis itself has been set to give an augmenting note envelope rather than the normal (for piano) one of continuous (though non-linear) decay.

I think this is the question dewster was asking in the first place and it does not appear to have been answered, exactly.

Among piano folk You will encounter more right brain people as in the outside word, and they get easily emotional.

They found themselves in a very short time either on the enthusiast side as on the opposite. Changing side can come very suddenly, too.

We easily forget that at least some people here may be females (with more developed right brains). I have just noticed that implicitly always assumed all You guys are guys...

I suppose you're right, yes.

Regarding male/ female - well I've no idea what sex we are either, most of the time. BUT (and a big but) I do question your assertion that women have better developed right brains. I think women tend to be naturally better emotional communicators, but that's an entirely different matter. But in my experience, women are more 'matter of fact' in their outlook than men...this is surely 'left brain', isn't it?

...and (now I come to think of it) I also have to question your implication that right brain people are somehow exempt from the rigours of logical thought. I don't think that's so.

In any case, I think the left/right brain thing is hogwash, anyway.

Not my intention at all. I do try to quash unfounded happy talk, as it can lead people to make poor purchasing decisions. There tends to be is very little new or exciting going on in the DP world - not my fault and not a crime to point that out now and then. My negative vibes stem mainly from the lack of innovation in this industry.


I didn't say anything about software issues or key actions.


Well you wouldn't know it from the spotty manual.


The ability to record to WAV | MP3 should be a standard feature, particularly on a high-end model.


Yes, will someone please address this? The only time I've heard and AP do this is in dynamically compressed recordings (nothing to do with MP3 compression).


I have absolutely nothing against modeling per se, but I do have issues with the way it's done lately and the negative impact it is having on sampling or hybrid approaches. Pure modeling, when the model is complex and high fidelity enough to simulate a specific AP, warts and all, is something of a holy grail. Until we can do that easily and inexpensively and realistically, I prefer the realism of a recording (however augmented) of the real thing.

It's likely an artifact of the Zoom recorder. It sounds very much as if there was a dumb AGC circuit processing the incoming audio while recording, or some kind of post-processing was applied to "normalize the recording for a consistent volume level," as the Zoom's promotional literature describes it.

Just guessing, though.

Certainly, no sympathetic resonance algorithm should provide for *increases* in volume during decay

Cheers,

Ben

I don't think there is much doubt that everyone who have posted in this thread so far are males . In fact, almost everybody (apart from those asking advice for their first DP purchase, who, once they've got what they came looking for, never post again) participating regularly in Digital Pianos forum are males, in contrast to the other forums I take part in. Probing in detail into technical gadgetry (as opposed to just using them) is almost a sole province of the typical male brain, or the left hemisphere (?).

Trying to explain the difference between sampling and modeling to my musician friends almost always send the women to sleep, while most of the men seem at least to be interested. Women don't go into the minutiae of discussing in such detail every aspect of an electronic gadget: they just want to know whether it works, and the only way to find out is to try it out, in the case of a new DP.

I'm reserving judgement on the Physis until I get to try it out, as the recordings I've heard so far don't shed much light on the tonal response of the thing. And why drown out the piano sound with all that accompaniment clutter (I'm tempted to say 'rubbish'), when all we want to hear is the piano sound? Something short and simple like Chopin's Prelude in C minor, Op.28/20 will give us a good idea of how the sustain behaves (and how good it is) and how chords sound, and the various resonances at all dynamic levels, while making no technical demands on the player (other than voicing).

Modeling vs. sampling of pianos is similar to reverb.

First, the algorithmic approach. There are plenty of algorithms - some amazingly simple - that give a semblance of "space" or "ambiance".

Second is the convolutional approach, which exactly recreates a complex reverberant space via sampled impulse response.

The first approach will trick lots of untrained ears, and can give amazing results with fairly minimal computational expense. The second is the real thing and will trick all ears. To make the first approach more realistic, one plays "bop the gopher" adding algorithmic nuance and complexity to address each element that reveals the man behind the curtain. For 100% fidelity the model generally has to be as complex as the real thing.

I just don't think we're there yet with AP simulations. We have some simple algorithms that sound amazingly piano-like, with user adjustments that roughly correspond to physical parameters. But one can't expect absolute realism from them. One can easily get loads of realism from recordings.

toddy said:
I think women tend to be naturally better emotional communicators, but that's an entirely different matter. But in my experience, women are more 'matter of fact' in their outlook than men...this is surely 'left brain', isn't it?

bennevis said:
Women don't go into the minutiae of discussing in such detail every aspect of an electronic gadget: they just want to know whether it works,


I rest my case.

Hope for such a sound demo very soon too...

I think this maybe insofar right, that more subtle effects should not be captured by brute force of simple amplitude modulation. Just like all serious instruments have dedicated Una Corda samples, as contrasted to cheap and dirty solution of an Una Corda effect by volume reduction.

But having dealt a lot with temperaments, there ARE undoubtedly very real subtle events behind the curtain. It is generally known phenomenon, that appropriate music played with a mesotonic temperament, the resulting more "volminous" sound is perceived as physically increased sound energy. (Due to the internal positive interferences cleaning most major and minor 3d s). The input energy doesn't change.

And soundboard parameters like impedance are even in Pianoteq to change the sound propagation which in turn has definitely an effect on the decay curve, just like the soundboard interaction. You maybe right, that these effects or some of them may be min·is·cule, but these are still open questions as long we can read a well founded answer here.)

* * *

One objection: I cannot quite get why especially modelled instruments don't offer full-hearted comfortable setting and editing support to set and manage user defined temperaments with independent selectable basis key (and all independent of stretch setting). This terrain should be their core competence. (The scala files approach in Pianoteq or in whatever other SW instruments like Ivory is not a state of the art user friendly solution IMHO - however better than nothing.)

I wasn't aware that different temperaments could be associated with differences in perceived loudness--an interesting observation!

I'm pretty sure, however, that the particular effect dewster described is an artifact of dynamic compression applied during the recording of that demo piece, unrelated to how Physis models sympathetic resonance. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

Piano technican's and piano forums are a true treasury of facts, expertise and theoretical knowledge.

Similar energy distribution considerations of a piano maker

I can recall a thread there with similar considerations but I coudn't find it... Just an analogous thread about inharmonicity - a complex interplay of physics and psychoacoustical perception