Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Pianoteq 7 has now been released

I wonder why it’s version 7 and not 6.x? It really doesn’t feel like a major update.

This probably sells better.

I don't think that is entirely fair. To be honest, I think the sound has improved only marginally, but the introduced morphing and layering, which are entirely new concepts to Pianoteq (like them, loathe them, or disregard them), seem to me adequate reason to up the version number to the next whole number.

I wholly agree! (You get it? ‘cause you mentioned rounding up to the next ‘whole’ number, so I use ‘wholly’ as a sort of smart-ass pun....)

Yes, I think I get it now; it's basically a play on one of the words. That's utterly cool and amazing. If only that could be transfered to Pianoteq and the sample libraries. Now, that would be a game changer.

In fact Pianoteq Trial even goes as far as disabling normal behaviour of pitch bend wheel within +/-2 semitones range of those silent demo keys.

I doubt that you are "confused".

PART of pianoteq's development process does involve recording at least one example "wooden" piano of the make and model that they have under development.

Doubtless they play their model "against" the recordings many times during their development.
I dont see that as "sampling" - I see it as having a reference recording of a wooden piano.

YMMV, etc.

It was the new NY Steinway - it was extensively tweaked through to provide the sound on the recording. Unfortunately I didn't save the settings after making the rendering!

I see, I think you've managed to get a very nice "woody" and full sound that I've found difficult sometimes with Pianoteq, especially with the Steinway D:s. Lovely piece of music as well.

By my experience:
- Add more microphones, change the positions
- Change the microphones, they have quite the impact on the sound
- Use a more "professional" reverb, the space where you "put" the piano has a lot of impact. Space Designer from Logic/Mainstage for example has a "warm piano room" preset that sounds like a (suprise) warm piano room and a lot of warmth to the sound. There is also things like "wodden room" that indeed adds a more "woody" sound. I think people underestimate the quality of the room, the big VSTs are all recorded in extremely nice studios, the whole selling point of Garritan CFX is the sound of Abbey Road studios.

There are more in detail things that you can do, but those specific things have a big impact on the sound in my experience.

Why are we so obsessed with ‘wood’?

It sounds so quaint, woody, but still we’re obsessed with it.

You know, there are much better perspectives (metal) than good ol’ wood out there; perhaps you guys should try them out!

I 've been toying around with the demos v6 and 7 lately. More or less I like them, at least for practicing. Now I use the v7 demo. I switch often from one piano to another, but mostly I use the NY Steinway D and Petrof 275. I noticed a somewhat strange behavior though with the Steinway D NY. When playing D2 and G5 at the same time, G5 gets a bit "chocked". Using another piano it sounds ok. Other than that, I like the responsiveness combined with the light CPU usage as it makes living with the ESI Keyring 49+ tolerable while waiting for the Roland to arrive.

So now we’re complaining about Pianoteq ‘choking’, and before, it was not ‘woody’ enough; for god’s sake, what next?

You know, if you decide to dissect the Sistine Chapel’s painted ceiling I’m sure you’ll find many ‘issues, inconsistencies, and bureaucracies’, but does that make it any less of a masterpiece? NO!

Pianoteq is a masterpiece, so please let it be and stop dissecting it for flaws that are at best subjective!

Good point, Pete. You're right. No dissection of flaws is needed. Pianoteq has only one flaw.

I guess if Pianoteq was so bad, it would be out of the market for years now. And, if it was so good, there won't be any sampled VSTs around...

So, even if for some people is anathema, it should have some good things on it, I guess.

But is it woody enough?

Keep in mind that the reason sampled VSTs are still around has more to do with marketing.

They know (the VSLs, and Synthogys of this world) that we are obsessed with “huge”, so they play us like violins stuck on the same note for eternity!

They tell us about thousands of layers (“huge, so it must be good/better”); they then tell us about the mammoth requirements: huge SSD storage space (to store the thousands of samples), tons of RAM, many cores, the fastest clock speed in town, and so on.........

“If one needs a quasi super computer to run sampled libraries then that must mean they’re great” (a placebo that works wonders on the psyche).

“It costs hundreds of dollars more than the rest so it must be better” (a justification to soothe the inner voice questioning the purchase; a.k.a. buyers remorse).


Pianoteq tells us of no such things (it only requires a puny few MB of storage, almost no RAM, and a basic dual core); so you see, it can’t compete with the “huge is better” hysteria that has clouded the judgement of many!


Once again, bigger is not better (it has been scientifically proven)!

Woody is good. Tinny is not.

Yeah. And the fact that they sound better is entirely incidental.

You know, my wife left me for the piano tuner, and as far as I know, he had an average goose-head tuning lever. Granted, it was not ‘tiny’ but neither was it ‘large’.

He tuned my wife well; but as all things go, I’m now with a guitar-shaped Brazilian who needs no tuner (she tunes herself), and I could not be happier.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is, but I digress!