I’m now researching how to build a Raspberry Pi based thing so I can have a headless version of this running so I don’t have to use my laptop.Īnyway, sorry about all the gushing and the massive wall of text, I’m just so excited I had to tell someone and this seems like a really friendly and welcoming place so I decided to dump out all my thoughts right here! Now when I go back to the stock piano it’s just not the same, there’s a clear limitation with how they did the sampling, for instance it feels gimped when I play super duper soft or really really hard, like it’s compressed, and I get a sense of the various thresholds when it switches between various samples, whereas with Pianoteq it’s so organic feeling, I just can’t go back. Of course stock it’s using samples and they sound really good, but to my ears Pianoteq is just as good and maybe better sound-wise, but even being a complete beginner I can 100% feel the difference in playability.
I have a pretty nice (to me) hybrid with real full length grand piano keys, so I decided to hook up my laptop to see how it felt on a “real” piano (well much more real than my MIDI keyboard) and it’s a COMPLETELY different instrument with Pianoteq! I can’t even describe how much better it is. What I can’t get over is the playability.
Within the context of a mix it’s basically impossible for my (albeit aging) ears to detect that it’s not sampled. I absolutely cannot believe what can be achieved through modeling and synthesis these days! It’s still not yet 100% perfect so there’s a little room to grow, but it’s WAAAAAY closer than I imagined.
I have a MIDI keyboard set up in my living room with some nice speakers and an HTPC and growing tired of massive multi-hundred GB sample libraries, longer load times, etc I decided to take a peak at what’s out there and came across Pianoteq and I’m completely blown away!
I do a little of amateur music production/mixing so I’ve done plenty of tinkering around with various piano plugins over the years, almost all being sample-based, and for some reason didn’t really even consider a non-sample based piano plugin because I figured all would sound way too fake. I just purchased this last night and I have to say that I can’t get enough of this thing! For a little context, I’ve been playing bass for about 30 years and once I hit 40 I decided that I need to branch out and learn a chordal instrument for real (was a tinkerer before) so I started taking up piano (only been playing for about a year and a half). I just found this community by googling everything Pianoteq and this seems like a really nice little corner of the internet!