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OK this is not a question of buying the right monitors or amps or anything of the sort. So please no such suggestions. :-)
I have already fiddled with various parameters and the resulting sound has become very good but I was wondering what various parameters can be adjusted to maximize the sound fidelity that's lacking especially in the midrange freq particularly while playing chords.
In other words, I'm not an expert in the field of electronic music and I just don't know what to do with all these parameters like the delay or comp etc.
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That it has too many knobs is an indication that the product was specified by engineers rather than musicians.  Just make it sound like a piano, I say. Add a few knobs to let me compensate for my venue, my speakers, my hearing, my choice of music, and my taste ... mostly EQ and reverb. (On an acoustic piano I've never been able to locate the mallet bounce parameters! Nor the "humanization" knob.)
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I agree to an extent.
If one knows his or her way around such technical things then she'll be good. But I guess for most of us it's too much functionality that yields more confusion than it's necessary. I wish as you pointed out, there was one or two dedicated controls with enough cues and guide to adjust for speakers.
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I just found a related thread here: https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?pid=4950#p4950Seems to me I'm out of luck as far as DP speakers are concerned? That post alongside its consecutive post share my sentiments.
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@meghdad: That thread expresses the notion that you can go just so far by tweaking. At some point you have to consider the quality of the sound system. You seem to agree with that. And so do I. But note that the posts were dated June 2009. At that time Pianoteq was in its infancy. It was really, really, really, really, really, really, really bad. Yes, you all know that I don't like Pianoteq. But the recent versions at least make it clear that it's TRYING to sound like a piano. But back in version 2 (the oldest one I ever tried) it was not even as good as a child's toy. Really bad. ![[Linked Image]](https://i.ibb.co/MMDc33J/schoenhut.png)
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Hahaaa @ image.  What I'm trying to achieve is to have some knowledge about acoustics of the room and speakers and their relation with the parameters but that I suppose would consume some time and I have already spent some time on tweaking those parameters. I might need to consult an audiophile or an acoustics engineer. 
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There is a freeware, Room EQ Wizard which can give you with a microphones, the response of your room and a reverberation curve.
Last edited by Frédéric L; 06/08/21 03:33 PM.
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I have spent the last two to three years tweaking the hundreds of tweakibles in Garritan CFX, VI Labs German Grand, and Pianoteq 6 & 7. I was able to get so lost in the variants that I lost sight of what a piano sounded like.
I've come full circle and now play Pianoteq 7.3 with almost no tweaking whatsoever. All I do now is turn off Pianoteq's reverb when listening through my speakers (home theater amp with quality speakers), and I moved the velocity curve lowest point to 8,0 to reflect the fact that I cannot realistically play velocities below 8 with any consistency, and reduced the highest velocity from 127 down to about 118 as that is all highest velocity I can/choose to play. From those two points, it is a straight line slope. Those are all the tweaks I use.
I believe, like one of the posters in that Pianoteq Forum thread you referenced, that the supplied presets are very good, and hard to improve upon.
I believe that the greatest influence on the quality of your sound experience is the quality of your speakers/transducers, and the room you are listening in.
Last edited by Ralphiano; 06/08/21 03:43 PM.
Ralph
Kawai VPC1 Garritan CFX Pianist since April, 2015
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I put a vst into a DAW, I use Mainstage on Mac, and use a parametric eq on the output channel to adjust for the speakers and the room. So this is _not_ something to fiddle with in Pianotek, but I do think that paremetric eq is the right tool for the job you are asking about. [img] https://imgur.com/Nb0357L[/img] How do you setup this curve? Its very easy for piano. Just play up the piano and find notes you don't like. Start low and find the first boomy stand out note. This is probably your room resonance, or could be a speaker resonance. In the parametric eq I'm using it shows the frequencies in real time. So go to the lowest frequency, which is the fundemental frequency of that note, and cut that frequency until it sounds OK. You can go up & down in semitones and adjust the q setting (like how sharp or steep the frequency cut will be around the chosen frequency) in case the resonance effects neighbor notes. Keep going all the way up the keyboard finding notes that stand out for being too loud or wrong sounding. Note that a frequency cut will also affect the higher harmonics of notes lower than the cut frequency. You can test this by choosing a lower note, looking which harmonic of that note is effected by the frequency cut, and then toggle the cut on and off to hear how the tone of that lower note is affected. I have cases where without the cut a note doesn't sound louder, it sounds harsher. Now its possible you are playing an instrument where the sample itself has room resonance or some resonance of the original instrument that you don't like. Those are easier to find with good headphones, so you can make a parametric eq just for the instrument. First you might want to eq your headphones! You can eq your headphones the same way, perhaps starting with an FM synthesizer (?) which as a very simple generated source should come clean without any resonance or weird eq of its own. Do remember that any eq you figure out for speakers, that eq is specifically for those speakers in that room, and in that location. If you move the speakers to a different room the eq will be different. Your speakers eq can also be specific to how loud you listen because of the loudness control effect. Ie if you listen very quietly then the middle frequencies get over emphasized in your perception. If you want to listen quietly on your speakers you can also use a loudness curve. [img] https://imgur.com/Aq8iV2l[/img]
Adult beginner. Roland FP90X, Embertone Walker vst, etc.
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. . .
(On an acoustic piano I've never been able to locate the mallet bounce parameters! Nor the "humanization" knob.) Haven't you seen the big knob just in front of the keyboard? The one with ten mechanical actuators ?<g>
. Charles --------------------------- PX-350 / microKorg XL+ / Pianoteq
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"Compression" and "Decay" won't (shouldn't, anyway) help with correcting for poor loudspeaker frequency response.
One place to start, in Pianoteq:
. . . Click on the "Equalizer",
. . . and run through the "Presets" at the upper-left-corner of the popup window.
With luck, you'll find one you like, or at least that points in the right direction. Go through _all_ of them -- don't stop kissing frogs, there might be a prince hidden somewhere.
. . If you find one you like, use it.
. . If it just points in the right direction -- it improves the sound -- then try using it as a base for small changes of your own.
In the process, you'll learn something about how the _sound_ is changed when you change the response curve.
There don't seem to be limits to how many EQ segments you can specify; you should be able to correct for things like narrow-band room resonances.
That "Equalizer" puts to shame anything that I've seen on any DP's built-in sound generator.
A "parametric EQ" would be nice, perhaps, but the Pianoteq EQ lets you get to a similar end-point. (I suspect that "parametric EQ's" are not easy for non-engineers to understand. That's just a guess.)
Good luck. Don't be surprised if you finally bite the bullet, and get better loudspeakers --
. . . "You can't make a silk purse from a pig's ear."
You might, though, make a usable pigskin purse.
. Charles --------------------------- PX-350 / microKorg XL+ / Pianoteq
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I believe that the greatest influence on the quality of your sound experience is the quality of your speakers/transducers, and the room you are listening in. Agree. My friend hasn't been bothered to tweak VSTs or complaining about sound quality since he replaced his old Motu M2 and HS8 with APOLLO X6 and Genelec 8040. 
CA98+ART RM5~~RME ADI2 DAC+tube Pre-Amp VSL CFX&D274&Bluthner1895, Pianoteq7, Ivory2 ACD, Galaxy VintageD&StD, Bechstein DG, Embertone 1955Walker
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"Compression" and "Decay" won't (shouldn't, anyway) help with correcting for poor loudspeaker frequency response.
One place to start, in Pianoteq:
. . . Click on the "Equalizer",
. . . and run through the "Presets" at the upper-left-corner of the popup window.
With luck, you'll find one you like, or at least that points in the right direction. Go through _all_ of them -- don't stop kissing frogs, there might be a prince hidden somewhere.
. . If you find one you like, use it.
. . If it just points in the right direction -- it improves the sound -- then try using it as a base for small changes of your own.
In the process, you'll learn something about how the _sound_ is changed when you change the response curve.
There don't seem to be limits to how many EQ segments you can specify; you should be able to correct for things like narrow-band room resonances.
That "Equalizer" puts to shame anything that I've seen on any DP's built-in sound generator.
A "parametric EQ" would be nice, perhaps, but the Pianoteq EQ lets you get to a similar end-point. (I suspect that "parametric EQ's" are not easy for non-engineers to understand. That's just a guess.)
Good luck. Don't be surprised if you finally bite the bullet, and get better loudspeakers --
. . . "You can't make a silk purse from a pig's ear."
You might, though, make a usable pigskin purse. Good stuff. Charles. The parameters on Pianoteq (std) do cater for small/poor speakers and provide for a very acceptable (usable) pigskin sound. . . .but with all the other variables, small changes make a big difference.
Last edited by peterws; 06/09/21 01:12 AM.
"I am not a man. I am a free number" " ![[Linked Image]](http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/Joplinbadgetiny.jpg) "
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Well I asked my teacher to sit on the bench and give my setup a professional pianist try. He seemed to really enjoy the experience, including the Petrof pack. After taking into account his perspective and your much-appreciated opinions, I seem to have nearly perfected the sound as far as my speaker and room acoustics is concerned. The key I think was to increase the reverb (Small Room) , as I had set to to -30 db because I wanted to "feel" the natural reverb of my small room but it actually degraded the experience and muddied the midrange sound. The EQ was set to UpperMid to compensate the perceived weakness in the midrange but it didn't sound natural, especially to my teacher's ears who solely plays acoustic pianos. So I changed it to punchy but the bass does not sound crisp so I may keep the current reverb level and just tinker with the EQ based on its current setting.
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