ReasonTalk.com

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to buy Pianoteq and be done with it. What did 'past me' do? Go through almost every single piano library EXCEPT Pianoteq (solely because I thought it was expensive), and just waste time and lots of money.

Pianoteq 6.

Best. Piano. Ever.

The End.
____________________

Pianoteq 6 brings numerous refinements in its engine and physical model, now implemented in all of the 49 physically modelled instruments.

Steinway & Sons have approved the sound and playability of the Pianoteq virtual instruments Steinway Model D and Steinway Model B, which have gained from the refined physical model. These magnificent virtual grand pianos will appeal to all musicians in search of the most famous piano sound signature.

This major upgrade also adds compatibility with the VST3 format and the ARM architecture (Linux version only, for example on Raspberry Pi 3 boards). The tuning section has become even more advanced with new tools, and the standalone version now offers a MIDI playlist, an improved MIDI archive and can export audio to FLAC and MP3 formats, in addition to WAV.

I couldn't agree more - Pianoteq is simply amazing. I bought PTeq 4 pro and never looked back:
*cheap upgrade path
* able to adjust "my" piano sound in every conceivable way.
*easy on the CPU on and on...
*sounds more realistic on almost every level compared to samples (subjective sure, but not by much - only top producers would know the difference)

Used it in reason for years with the midiloopback trick - if you're on the fence, or like me and do a ton of piano tracks, you'd be nuts not to get it - I haven't 'shopped' for those new piano sample libraries for years and I don't ever expect to again.

Wish there were more "teq" out there to choose from (aside from the mini-models like the organ/synth/guitar stuff). Wallander Instruments being the only *real* players in the modeled instruments area aside from Pianoteq.

meh... i don t really like to much at firs timpressions the mid are a little fake sounding

You'd be surprised how gullible people are when they believe they are aware of absolute facts - plenty of "fake piano" comments when a real one is played back, plenty of "No Auto-Tune" Vocal claims yet there's obvious hallmarks of auto-tuning.

The occasional amazing ears in a controlled environment may be able to tell the difference in a blind test, however the vast majority, industry professionals included, would never know.

Yes, befor Reason 9.5 came out my biggest problem was, that there was no good piano.
After Reason 9.5 was released one of the first things I bought was Pianoteq 5 and the search for good piano libraries was over.
Yesterday I've updated to Pianoteq 6 and it is free for one year after the purchase, very nice.

Apparently nothing sounds like a real piano. Hans Zimmer piano by Spitfire is 450GB uncompressed.

I gotta say: I'm really liking Pianoteq.

In the past, I had tried RealPianos, but it sounded quite fake.
And I have Spectrasonics Keyspace: The grand in Keyscape sounds great when you're demoing it, but once you start to play a real piece, I felt it sounded a bit fake (I have a pet peeve that I don't like how note-ends sound on sample-pianos, because you don't hear the sympathetic resonance continuing if you are holding the pedal down. It BUGS me)

But when I play on Pianoteq, it just feels like there's a real piano there - it acts like I expect it to. Love it.

How would people who have both fare it to radical piano?

Reasonable man wrote: ↑

17 Sep 2017

How would people who have both fare it to radical piano?

I have both, and I greatly prefer Pianoteq. I have yet to find a VST/RE/Sampleset piano that FEELS like you're playing a piano, and just feels right. Like I mentioned above, my pet peeve with most of these pianos is how releasing a note while you have the pedal down doesn't have the strings still resonating (sympathetic resonance) - and Pianoteq gets that right.

Radical pianos is good to get some unique character in some of it's pianos (e.g. they can sound good and grimy). But if you want a piano that FEELS good, I'd go Pianoteq.

I thought I'd have a go on Pianoteq last night, cos everyone keeps going on about it.

It's great, innit? The demo makes 20 minutes go very fast.

Pianoteq comes with 4 additional piano sounds from the 18th and 19th century.
I love them more than the Steinway, especially for playing Haydn and so on.

Yeah got Radical and Arturia Lab 2 (V-Piano) and 88Orchestra but PianoTeq beats them all. I love the new feature of recording all your performances into MIDI clips when in standalone mode. And Linux support, great for me for exercise. Will buy for sure.

Do they ever do sales? I do not really need it, I just want it EDIT: They have a contest right now, you get 20 EUR discount by submitting a piece to youtube. Cool, going to exercise Misty jazz piece.

Pianoteq is no hype, pure joy and unparalleled sound. It's something you rarely if ever hear about and is far better than anything out there.

Let your own fingers and ears tell the tale - don't take my word for it.

After trying many pianos myself (including Radical piano) I have also settled on Pianoteq as my one and only piano.

Go here and download many pro piano midis and play them through Pianoteq and have yourself a free classical piano concert: http://www.piano-e-competition.com/midiinstructions.asp

This sounds very, very good to me. I'll have to look into it one of these days. Of course I'm a sucker for anything piano related if there' even semi-capable playing involved. Or arpeggios, damn you arpeggios.

FYI one of the best comparison video is this one, including Radical, Reason Pianos and PianoTeq:



Hat off, such a great pianist there.

I was waiting for V6 to drop and after playing with the demo for months on end i finally have 3 models to play with. Its such a joy to play.
For me, pianoteq is, without a doubt, the most playable, most expressive piano VST there is.
Sampled piano's, like Ivory are beautifull sounding but they lack the expression of Pianoteq.

Pianoteq 6 Stage is the same price as the Reason 10 "update". If you have enough synths and samples, and want a good piano (Radical Piano will not cut it, you'll see) then you need Pianoteq.

I did a fun experiment last weekend:

My mom has been playing piano for 40+ years (and teaching), and has ZERO computer experience (i.e. hopefully no bias of which "plugin" she prefers). So I thought she'd be a good person to see which piano plugin was best for her.

We tried Spectrasonics Keyscape, and PianoTec6 (sorry, I don't have Radical Piano)

Within 5 seconds of playing the Yamaha grand in Keyspace, she frowned, and said it didn't feel right.
Specifically, she said that if you only play ONE note, it sounds amazingly realistic. ...But start to play a classical piece, and it felt stilted, and fake. She didn't feel like she was playing a piano.

Then we tried PianoTec6. She immediately (within 5 seconds again) said that it felt a LOT more realistic, and was just FUN to play. She felt the pedal was working as she expected. I asked if she'd be fooled into thinking it was a real piano, and she said no, but pretty close.


We also tried one of the Rhodes pianos on Spectrasonics Keyscape - she was much more impressed with that than Keyspace's grand-piano. She said that one worked better because she didn't have a benchmark to compare it to, so there's it can't sound "fake" to her.



Anyway, that's the summary. Thanks mom.

Which is a very good point when it comes to Piano instruments. You can't just go by audio demos. You HAVE to play them. If you're a piano roll pianist, then I am sure you could care less about the feel. But to a real pianist, it makes a night and day difference.

lzap wrote: ↑

18 Oct 2017

FYI one of the best comparison video is this one, including Radical, Reason Pianos and PianoTeq:

Hat off, such a great pianist there.

In the comments section, the pianist was asked how Keyscape compares to the other pianos he played in the video. He gave the following answer:

I think Radical Piano "plays" the best, and Ivory II "sounds" the best. PianoTeq plays and sounds pretty good also. Keyscape could be amazing if it supports half-pedaling (but it does not).

Oh nice, I was reading just few comments unable to find his opinion so I gave up. I would love to hear more about Radical, Props only share this in the manual:

"Most sample-based piano instruments and sound libraries on the market use a predefined number of velocity layers. Depending on how soft or hard you play the keys, samples from a specific velocity layer play back. Due to memory limitations, the number of velocity layers aren’t often that many. This can make the velocity response feel and sound unnatural. Thanks to the combination of samples and physical modelling in Radical Piano, all sound sets feature very wide and completely seamless velocity ranges."

https://a.phcdn.se/static-live/pdf/oper ... d1a324.pdf

Radical is still sample based, but from this paragraph I tend to think it just uses samples for hammer and pedal noise. It amazes me, I would like to know how they generate such a good sound. Anyway, I am just curious. Enough chat, I am gonna play it now!