Digital Piano a LONG way off from realism

[HapiCmpur]

the sampled piano can do things the acoustic can't... for example pitch bend, vibrato and filter sweeps Go further and put it through flangers, distortion and leslie. Stop making it appologise for being a sample, instead blatantly treat it as such.

Well said, Noise. It's always best to embrace the equipment you've got and get with the music-makin'. I've got a keyboard that does a pretty nice job imitating flutes, violins, and trumpets, but since the samples don't sound entirely convincing, I just use them when I need something that sounds flute-like, violin-y, or trumpet-ish. And I'm plenty grateful to have a small, portable, affordable device that can sound kinda like a whole bunch of instruments that I don't know how to play. That's pretty cool, if you ask me.

Samples, cannot and do no create harmonics (overtones), etc. Period.

That's true, but samples can (and do) imitate harmonics. I've got a Technics digital console piano that's got to be almost ten years old now, and despite its dated technology, that sucker sounds amazing. When you strike a key while depressing the sustain pedal, you not only get sustain, you also hear the sound of (virtual) open strings "vibrating" in sympathy. The effect is stunningly convincing.

Considering the incredible strides that have been made with digital visual effects in movies, I would not bet against similar developments in digital audio technology.

 

[rightbrainnow]

My piano background is to say the least, extensive. I know all about how pianos are sampled and why there is no substitute for the real deal but I stumbled along something that you might want to take a look at. www.synthogy.com
I have it and use it for midi piano. Without a doubt the best painos I've ever seen. Sampled at 10 velocities per key and many more features that add to the authentic piano sound. Check the site.

Peace,
Matt

how does that work? do you just get a midi keyboard and control the plug-in that way? i have a kurzwiel with midi, but i believe its only 76 keys.

 

[noisewreck]

I guess you're refering to Synthogy Ivory... Yes, you'd load it into a VST host such as Cubase and control it from a MIDI controller. Your Kurzweil would do.

 

[Matt123]

Yea it is either vst (nuendo/cubase/etc.) or rtas (pro tools).

 

[rightbrainnow]

I guess you're refering to Synthogy Ivory... Yes, you'd load it into a VST host such as Cubase and control it from a MIDI controller. Your Kurzweil would do.

yea, I use cubase...im very interested in checking that out. Im no expert with piano, but even i can tell that the sounds dont quite decay how they should. Im no expert with midi either...thanks for sharing that.

 

[Matt123]

Yea listen to the demo's on the website. I think you'll like the sound of them.
Another thing I like about it is that they have three of my favorite pianos (Steinway D Hamberg, Bosendorfer Imperial grand, Yamaha C7). To buy the program its like $350 but if you want to "test" it out first send me a pm and Ill tell you where to go...

 

[noisewreck]

Has any one of you tried Petrof grands? I know everyone talks about the Steinways, Yammies and Bosendorfers, just because it seems that these have been established long before the iron curtain fell.... But, if you are doing classical music or are looking for a piano with rich lush sound, do yourselves a favor and check out their grands. After that you'll think that the Yamaha is almost a GM electronic keyboard...

http://www.petrof.cz/en/

 

[Matt123]

Petrof, very nice pianos. I could go into why all of the pianos I mentioned are superb but I wont for the sake of not many people probably care
If you are looking for an acoustic on a budget be sure to check out Pearl River.

p.s. truthfully im not a fan of yamaha pianos because of the v-pro plates, they give a metallic sound

 

[dgatwood]

Thank you for the kind correction.

I was speaking semi-poetically, not semi-technically when I used the term 'expotententially'.

For the longest time, it was exponential, doubling in a single digit number of years. These days, it's still probably steeper than linear....

 

[nickplee]

I once got a chance to play a Bosendorfer CEUSMaster that I loved a lot.

 

[Asdasd]

Guys, first I'm not losing sleep over anything. My initial post said it all - I'm impressed with sampling, but it will never be close to true piano.

2nd, a couple of you seemed to have not read my post at all, in your praise of samples. Samples, cannot and do no create harmonics (overtones), etc. Period.

3rd, being a long time computer geek, computer power does not grow (i'm fairly sure) exponentially. It is linear. Maybe a steep curve, but not exponential. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. If you go back to the 8088 chip, followed by the 80286, the xx386, then the 486, then the first Pentium, onwards ho to the latest P4 and 64 bit chips... you map computer chip power in a few ways, but most telling is the mips (millions of instructions per second). It's a linear curve. Has it reached 8 MIPS, yet?

Lastly, physical modeling, or writing an algorithm to simulate all the harmonic frequencies that are heard in reality in a real piano, is of course, possible, but many a year off. Certainly more than 5 years. I just found this link which I think is pretty good, if you care to read a little more tech talk on the subject.
http://www.applied-acoustics.com/techtalk-physicalmodeling.htm

Ok well, first off WTF do you mean by samples not creating harmonics? They do create harmonics just like any sound will... Also sampled pianos still sound better than their real analog pianos that cost as much at least IMO. (cause analog has bad recreations too - many pianos even pro pianos have unstatisfactionary highs IMO - kurzweil nailed them on the other hand with their piano). I would probably use good sampled piano on a record rather than real one cause all the noises and annoying stuff is removed (and I do own a good flygel ). Anyway you could create a real piano experiance using samples but you would have to have DAMN many of them - but all the signs point to that that in 20 years there will be huge development.

And computer development is expotential for examples Moore's law(I think) states that processing power doubles every 4? years. That means the curve is EXPOTENTIAL, also I dont get what you mean by a steep curve at all. But just quick look at history reveals that the growth is expotential. (meaning for example that grading from 400 mhz -> 800 processor was as fast as lets say 800->1400). Also gaming consoled that appear lineary: PS1 64 mhz PS2: 700mhz PS3: 3000! mhz. (I am not sure if these are the exact numbers but anyway). This of course does not apply to processors only look at the HUGE improvement of RAM and hard drive space, which is easily expotential (in 80's we moved maybe up maybe 1 mb of ram, and very little hard drive space, these years its more like 1GB and 10 GBs).

yup expotential easily.

 

[Asdasd]

In the case of the piano, there are additional problems. As was stated in the first couple of posts, there are sympathetic vibrations in a real piano that occur and become part of the sound. You cannot capture those by sampling a piano one note at a time.



Not by a long shot.

Samples are the real piano recordings so yes they are...

Well acualy they kind of arent because of the issue of loudspeaker vs. piano.

 

[stevieb]

You piano men got it easy- there is some yahoo on this forum who wants to make his synth sound like an electric guitar- AND HE WANTS TO PROGRAM IT HIMSELF. I seem to be one of a very small minoirty who is telling him he will- and in fact the entire synth world- NEVER GET THERE.

 

[technominds]

You piano men got it easy- there is some yahoo on this forum who wants to make his synth sound like an electric guitar- AND HE WANTS TO PROGRAM IT HIMSELF. I seem to be one of a very small minoirty who is telling him he will- and in fact the entire synth world- NEVER GET THERE.

Wow, what a little bitch you are :O

OK but seriously, I was trying to get a lead sound just for doing some stuff live.. I never once said that I wanted to 'completely recreate the electric guitar in its entirety'.

As for this Piano modeling stuff, people are working on it right now.. I remember seeing an interview of someone at NAMM who explained that they are working on a completely synthesized piano sound.. and as it may not sound EXACTLY bang on right now, give it a couple of years and we'll have it.

You seem to forget that it's all just maths, if you can reverse engineer the maths behind exactly what is creating ANY sound, you can reproduce it.

What does get to me, is all of you people on here bothering to compare the two. The beauty of playing a REAL piano is that absolutely no speaker will reproduce the sound of an actual piano being played in front of you, unless of course you have a speaker created specifically for the task. A piano can be recorded in many ways, but at the end of the day; if its being recorded.. it'l be played through the same speakers as some of these plugins will.

Have a look at Akoustik Piano by NI... it is brilliantly accurate and plays fantastically with a decent weighted controller. I would like to challenge anyone here to record a grand themselves and get a better sound than this plugin. Also, as for the resonance of the wood itself, NI offers control of the lid and placement of microphones... which is getting close enough.

Stop being picky, enjoy having a Steinway built into your machine... that, in all fairness, would probably fool even YOU on a blind test.

Pah, rant over.

 

[Asdasd]

You piano men got it easy- there is some yahoo on this forum who wants to make his synth sound like an electric guitar- AND HE WANTS TO PROGRAM IT HIMSELF. I seem to be one of a very small minoirty who is telling him he will- and in fact the entire synth world- NEVER GET THERE.

I do think that electric guitar synths that will fool anyone are coming... with physical modelling its possible, AND so are many more unbelivible setups not just acustic instruments but completly new "synth instruments". Now of course this will be still some time but it isnt impossible like you make it seem.

Anyway even the sampled e.guitars now will def. fool rookies.

 

[Asdasd]

And BTW; there are already excellent PM (physically modeled) pianos on the market first is the pianoteq software piano. 2nd is the Roland V piano, I dont know if these are perfect but I would be fooled and I have played piano for LONG time and am also not tone deaf.

Its probably not perfect but piano builders didnt make the Steinway grand on their first try either.

 

[mikeeb]

While they should be close, it is hard to model such a beautiful thing with electronics.

 

[Music Bear]

Ivory

I own a Kawai RX7 Grand that I hand picked out of 8 others at the Kawai facility in Southern California. It is a PHENOMENAL instrument, and after many years of owning Yamaha's, but always wanting this Kawai, I was fortunate enough to finally get one.

With that being said, I feel that Ivory is simply amazing. I play on the RX7 a few hours a day...minimum, yet when I am in my studio, playing with Ivory, I still feel like I am manipulating felt, strings and wood. I highly doubt that anyone could mic up my RX7 and get it to sound as good as Ivory sounds on a track.

I have all three Ivory programs (they have a deal right now where you get one of them free) and they really are worth a listen. I realize that the OP created this post a long time ago. Hopefully he has seen what is new, and had the chance to play with some of this new technology.