If Roland made a D50 vst emulation, would you purchase it?

[ghettosynth]

Has anyone seen any references to what Tera Piano is actually sampling? It occurred to me that what this actually is may not be a sampled piano at all, but, their virtual piano technology and that they eight terabyte number is really just calculated from what they would obtain if they actually sampled it at full resolution and sampling rate.

Or, perhaps, it is a large set of samples of the virtual piano all created offline with the Vpiano again run with the highest degrees of resolution. Perhaps at the highest degrees of resolution it's not even practical to run the VPiano in the cloud directly and it was necessary to create a sample library.

This would explain how they can get many different velocity sampling levels, round robins, and whatever other variations they are employing.

Again, I'm just speculating. If they've talked about what they're sampling, I haven't seen it.

Here's what they say about the "pedigree."

The distinctive lineage that produced Tera Piano shows a family tree with all the right relatives in all the right places. Born of a legendary and timeless Piano. Captured and painstakingly nurtured by world renowned and award winning composers. Dressed elegantly and presented in a player designed and architected by hand-picked engineers from many known and beloved platforms. Adopted by you, the creator. It's going to be a long and happy life.

That could mean anything.

[kbaccki]

Admittedly I've been a little off the grid lately... but now that I'm back on the grid I have to say "I don't get it". The whole 132,000 times more precision, and the 8 terabytes of samples... huh?

First, any controller mechanism will have a practical limit in terms of velocity sensitivity. Are they saying the RD-2000 is sensitive enough to distinguish 128 X 132,000 = 16,896,000 velocity values? Why do I doubt that. Are there any off the shelf controllers out there that can even do 128 velocities? So here we go with filling in the gaps, and introducing nuance that doesn't otherwise exist to get to 16,896,000... using what... "algorithms". At least, that's what is hinted at in the NAMM videos.

Excuse me, but I don't think I want heuristics and statistics and Monte Carlo simulations to determine what comes out of a specific set of controller inputs. First of all, just no. Second of all, if there's an element of randomness or computational dynamism or whatever, how the hell do two passes of the same controller inputs sound the same???

Besides, what exactly is the practical value of 16,896,000 velocities?

http://www.dspguide.com/ch22/1.htm

The difference between the loudest and faintest sounds that humans can hear is about 120 dB, a range of one-million in amplitude. Listeners can detect a change in loudness when the signal is altered by about 1 dB (a 12% change in amplitude). In other words, there are only about 120 levels of loudness that can be perceived from the faintest whisper to the loudest thunder.

Um, right. So let's say the limit is 128dB, and practically speaking -- i.e., when put into practice, as in you're working on 30-track song, or a solo piano piece where lots of notes are playing at the same time -- we need at most 1dB resolution... hmmm... doing some quick math here... I think 128 velocity levels should be good. No? What am I missing?

Ok. Samples. 8TB is a hell of a lot of sample data for one piano. I would think a good deal of the dynamism of a proper sampled piano is actually physical modeling and other special case computations to handle things like sympathetic resonance, body resonances, key repeats, etc. rather than brute force sample playback. Let's just say for the sake of argument that we just have a crapload of samples to represent pedal up for all keys, pedal down for all keys, and sampled string resonance for each key at all (128) velocity levels (that are algorithmically combined). All samples at 96kHz, 24-bit, all samples are stereo, and there are 3 (stereo) mic positions for each sample.

Pedal down. Let's just round way up and say we need 15 seconds of sustain for all notes at all velocity levels (which is not true, of course). A single 15-second velocity layer sample is:

15 sec * 96,000 sample/sec * 3 bytes/sample * 2 channels/mic * 3 mic/channel = 25,920,000 bytes = 26MB per single velocity sample

26MB * 128 velocities * 88 keys = 292,864MB = 292GB

Pedal up, same deal, but let's just say 7.5 sec full sustain... 146GB

Per note/per velocity string resonance... let's use 292GB.

I'm seeing a grand total of 730GB. Let's round it up to an even 1TB.

Where does this additional 7TB come from? What does it contain? What does it do? I mean it must have to do with this substantially more precise velocity... but again, why?

[ghettosynth]

Where does this additional 7TB come from? What does it contain? What does it do? I mean it must have to do with this substantially more precise velocity... but again, why?

Seven more times for round robin

[HunterKiller]

At 7 terabytes that's pretty light, try 700 kilos!

[Kumi_27]

Where does this additional 7TB come from? What does it contain? What does it do? I mean it must have to do with this substantially more precise velocity... but again, why?

Seven more times for round robin

And with 7TB it still is a sampled piano and the sound repeats from time to time (not that anyone notices in a mix).
Then You start up, say, Pianoteq, and no 2 notes are sounding the same. Because technology.
Or You start Diva and happens the same, because modeled oscilator drift and other things.
So... gazilions of terabytes in the cloud to render a better music offline? Especially over 2G network in some neck of the woods. I call BS.

[ghettosynth]

Where does this additional 7TB come from? What does it contain? What does it do? I mean it must have to do with this substantially more precise velocity... but again, why?

Seven more times for round robin

And with 7TB it still is a sampled piano nad the sound repeats from time to time (not that anyone notices in a mix).
Then You start up, say, Pianoteq, and no 2 notes are sounding the same. Because technology.
Or You start Diva and happens the same, because modeled oscilator drift and other things.
So... gazilions of terabytes in the cloud to render a better music offline? I call BS.

Well, of course I was being funny, but, yeah. Their presentations of this stuff so far have just been vague marketing speak.

As I mentioned earlier though, what are they sampling, and how are they doing it?

[Ingonator]

Concerning my problem with the subscription purchase here in Germany i had contacted the official Roland Cloud support and they were very helpful. They even added some trial time in case solving the problem takes a bit longer.

The problem seemed to be that here in Germany at the form for the subscription at the field "stae/province" i had to use "none". Previoulsy i had used "Lower Saxony" there which is the federal state where i live in here in Germany.

Now the subscription process seemed to work and i'll install and check the D-50 plugin now (and later also others including those i alraedy used with the free trial subscription...).

THe download for separate installers seemed to be replaced by an installer for the "Roland Cloud Manager" which somehow seems to be comarable to early versions of Arturia Software Center. Like there the copy protection works having access to your account at the website. When starting the Cloud Manager you have to enter your login data.

Here is a screenshot of the Roland Cloud Manager and a status window (openend from the Windows symbols bar at the upper right) while doing a download of the D-50 plugin installer:
https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... ds%201.png


After the download that black circle on the yellow background seemed to continue spinning forever.
Due to that i searched the location where the Installer was downloaded and here at Windows 10 i found it at: C:\Users\*Your Name*\AppData\Roaming\Roland Cloud\Cloud Manager\tmp

With that i installed the plugin and the installer also asked for plugin locations.
After opening the plugin it asked for the login data of the Roland Cloud and the it was working.

I then found that when i close and re-open the Cloud Manager it continues working again and wanted to do the installation but noticed it was alraedy installed.

After that the Cloud Manager for the D-50 looked like this:
https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... ds%202.png

[Ingonator]

First impressions of the new D-50 plugin (currently using the 64-bit VSt2 in Live 9.7.2 64-bit):

Sound wise the plugin is just great and IMO seems to surpass sample based D-50 libraries like the Roland Anthology 1987 and also the LA-50 Kontakt library i got here and which includes many of the factory presets too. As was discussed earlier that LA-50 library was discontinued shortly after being relased.

Overall the sound of the new D-50 plugin seems to be as close to the real thing as it could get, also based on my fading memory when i owned a D-50 ages ago.

Problems like found with recent version of the Jupiterr 8 plugin do not really seem to be found with this. The GUI is not blurred when the GUI size is increased, the CPU use is low and there is a patch and bank manager.
What is not included yet is Sysex import for the huge amount of available D-50 banks.

Currently 6 factory preset banks each with 64 patches (= 384 patches) are included where the first bank is the famous original D-50 factory bank. The browser also allows adding new banks and saving/loading banks.

Here is a screenshot of the bank/patch browser:
https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2006.png



Here are multiple screenshots of different pages in the GUI also including pages for the partials (both for a PCM based and Synthesizer based partial):

https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2000.png


https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2001.png


https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2002.png


https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2003.png


https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2004.png


https://u53230726.dl.dropboxusercontent ... I%2005.png




As mentioned earlier i do not like the subscription model but i already love the D-50 plugin.
If a future version would support Sysex import the plugin would be almost perfect for me.


Currently i pay 19.95$ for the subscription. After the Beta it seems to be planned to raise this to 29.95$.
Currently i plan to keep the subscription going for a while and at least as long as the price is not raised and when this happened i decide if it is worth completing 12 months to being able to keep the D-50 plugin.
Will be also re-check the other plugins again soon whichi already did with the free trial subscription.


Using the plugin also might help to decide if i would like to buy a hardware D-50 again or not.

[aMUSEd]

Not following how this Tera Piano with 4GB of samples has suddenly become needing '8TB' of samples?

https://www.rolandcloud.com/catalog/ter ... tera-piano

[ghettosynth]

Not following how this Tera Piano with 4GB of samples has suddenly become needing '8TB' of samples?

https://www.rolandcloud.com/catalog/ter ... tera-piano

The "cloud" version of it ostensibly has 8TB of samples. Rainlink isn't release yet so, ATM, you only get the 4GB, which others say is actually only 1GB "online" piano. When Rainlink is released you are supposed to be able to render your files in the cloud on the 8TB version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUK4uMls2wg

[ghettosynth]

..dup

[Terrafractyl]

my god I just watched that video^^ ... Its all about the articulations... hahahaha On a piano? you mean the one articulation done with 80x the 'resolution'?
I just don't understand.
I've thought for years the people running Roland have to be pretty weird. Not many companies I can think of have had the influence that Roland enjoys in their respective industry but at the same time manage to get by on horribly mis-judged products for what, like decades now?
I had kinda thought that this whole Roland cloud thing was them trying to get with the times, and if you do some quick sums it seems they may be onto something when it comes down to their bottom line.... but this just confirms to me that they are still smoking something interesting.
I guess I might bite my tongue when Rainlink comes out and turns out to be actually cool, but the above video raises WAY more questions than it answers, and the first main question it raises to me, Is how do they have such a clearly clueless guy presenting their 'next level' technology?
Surely they have the money to hire someone that can string together a coherent sentence? Even one that actually means something to people that know stuff about pianos and samplers?

[Ingonator]

I do not want to behave like a Mod and of course you are free to discuss whatever you like (and i am sometimes quite good too at posting off topic...) but this thread seems to be related to the D-50 so would it be somehow possible to do discussions about the Tera Piano at another thread? There seems to be at least another one baout Roland Cloud. Could also make sense to start a new threda. BTW i had not checked Tera Piano yet and bought the VI Labs Ravenscroft 275 piano library last year which i really love.

You could also post about Tera Piano in my big thread about Acoustic piano libraries/emulations:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=470003
I'll post there about Tera Piano as soon as i was able to play with it myself which should be soon.

FWIW i just posted my own experiences with the subscription, the Roland Cloud Manager software and last but not least my first experiences with the D-50 plugin at the previous page (and about issues with the subscription process also at previous pages...).


UPDATE:
I just installed Tera Piano as a library for the Concerto player plugin and posted about my first that in my thread about acoustic pianos:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=470003&p=6813581#p6813581

I would have to check this in detail ltaer. Currently i do focus on checking the D-50 plugin.

[Examigan]

First impressions of the new D-50 plugin (currently using the 64-bit VSt2 in Live 9.7.2 64-bit):

Sound wise the plugin is just great and IMO seems to surpass sample based D-50 libraries like the Roland Anthology 1987 and also the LA-50 Kontakt library i got here and which includes many of the factory presets too. As was discussed earlier that LA-50 library was discontinued shortly after being relased.

Overall the sound of the new D-50 plugin seems to be as close to the real thing as it could get, also based on my fading memory when i owned a D-50 ages ago.

Problems like found with recent version of the Jupiterr 8 plugin do not really seem to be found with this. The GUI is not blurred when the GUI size is increased, the CPU use is low and there is a patch and bank manager.
What is not included yet is Sysex import for the huge amount of available D-50 banks.

Currently 6 factory preset banks each with 64 patches (= 384 patches) are included where the first bank is the famous original D-50 factory bank. The browser also allows adding new banks and saving/loading banks.

As mentioned earlier i do not like the subscription model but i already love the D-50 plugin.
If a future version would support Sysex import the plugin would be almost perfect for me.

Currently i pay 19.95$ for the subscription. After the Beta it seems to be planned to raise this to 29.95$.
Currently i plan to keep the subscription going for a while and at least as long as the price is not raised and when this happened i decide if it is worth completing 12 months to being able to keep the D-50 plugin.
Will be also re-check the other plugins again soon whichi already did with the free trial subscription.

Using the plugin also might help to decide if i would like to buy a hardware D-50 again or not.

Thanks for all the information Ingo. Sounds interesting, now if they would just lose the subscription part of it or offer plugins as a separate purchase I'd go for it.

[Ingonator]

Thanks for all the information Ingo. Sounds interesting, now if they would just lose the subscription part of it or offer plugins as a separate purchase I'd go for it.

Offering a purchase without subscription and adding Sysex import would make the plugin close to perfect for my taste. Of course there ill be always something that could be improved.
Adding 64-bit AAX for Pro Tools would be nice too but this seems to be planned. BTW the Roland plugin seem to be 64-bit only (currently VST2, VST3 and AU).
The D-50 installer even allowed choosing the plugin locations opposing to earlier Roland installers.

From the first minute of using the D-50 plugin this seemed to work a lot better than with my previous experiences with the Roland Jupiter 8 plugin. I'll re-install and re-check that one later.

Aftertouch and pitch bend control seems to work here opposing to what someone seemed to have posted at Facebook. On the other hand with pure PCM based patches aftertouch seems to work very limted or could not be used at all. pure PCM patches also do not use a filter, like in the real D-50.
Realtime control with aftertouch etc. is also something that will not work properly with sample based libraries except if the sampler has properly modeled filters etc.
A filter included in a sampler when not using a specific filter model could simply not properly emulate the original filter. You could just get close to the original behavior.
In that respect it doesn't matter that the D-50 "only" had a digital and not an analog filter.
In the new D-50 plugin not having to use analog modeling results in a really low CPU use compared to the analog emulations from Roland.