Truepianos - no news?

[Megakazbek]

i've been holding off on getting truepianos simply for lack of features. imo pianoteq still beats truepianos in many ways

The problem is, Pianoteq simply doesn't at all sound like a piano It certainly has lots of features and is great as a synthesizer for electronic piano-ish sounds, but for realistic pianos it's not the best choice.

[Dewdman42]

I'm a big fan of True Pianos and we'll see how it goes, but I just want to say that before I bought it I made some noise about this 1 year stuff because I am generally vehemently opposed to subscription based software, and Roel told us we were going to get a lot of stuff during that year and would not be dissappointed...which didn't really happen much in my view. Frankly, I'm a little annoyed, but let's see what happens in this next update and how much it will cost us more to get the new v2. Seems like more effort was spent working on v2, and not much on v1....the thing we prepaid for... This is why I am opposed to annual subscriptions. Don't sell us a promise of software, that is bs. Sell us software and when you're ready to sell us more software than try to sell us that.

All being said, I do love TP, its a great product. But I'm watching closely because this is the type of thing that causes me to boycott stuff.

[Roel de Witt]

Hi,

Well I think there are only few products that can simulate a real piano so that it can convince purists, if only for 30-60 seconds.. I've heard the Garritan Grand is pretty good though I've not played it myself. Personally I've not been convinced yet by anything I've played that's currently released to the public in a way that I would say, 'hey that's a real piano'.

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Roel / 4Front Technologies

i've been holding off on getting truepianos simply for lack of features. imo pianoteq still beats truepianos in many ways

The problem is, Pianoteq simply doesn't at all sound like a piano It certainly has lots of features and is great as a synthesizer for electronic piano-ish sounds, but for realistic pianos it's not the best choice.

[koolkeys]

I must say, I don't remember Roel ever saying there would be a "lot of stuff" in the year. All I have ever read was that there was a year of upgrades, with no promises. To my knowledge, he has never promised anything, but just said they were working on things. They have given an extra model with another significant update still to come that everyone will likely get regardless of subscription date.

But then again, I don't really know if it's the same as a subscription. You are buying TP in it's current form with a year of updates. It's like any other software putting a time limit on you by stopping your updates when the next one comes out. Just a different model.

But anyways, not trying to be confrontational, honestly. I just don't remember Roel ever making big promises about what was coming. Maybe I missed it?

Brent

[herrvlad]

Personally I've not been convinced yet by anything I've played that's currently released to the public in a way that I would say, 'hey that's a real piano'.

But what do you think when it comes to exporting those pianos to wavs, do you then think the same way? I'm asking because VSTi pianos for sure don't appear realistic when they are played, but maybe after converting they can do so - as there are no matters with playability anymore, then.

[koolkeys]

By the way, I have said it several times lately, but those who say something doesn't sound exactly like a "real" instrument, remember that you aren't trying to impress audio enthusiasts most of the time. MOST listeners don't need exact realism to enjoy the music. They aren't listening that closely!

Sometimes it can get so much about the realism and exact programming that we forget the reason for the music is to entertain and not to "fool" the listener or convince them that we used a real instrument. If the music is there, they really won't care.

And to me, an instrument that is fun to play makes this all a LOT easier. It helps the MUSIC to take center stage instead of the sound. TP does this better than most instruments I've ever played in the virtual world. And to me, that makes the entire purchase worth it.

Brent

[Oxytoxine]

hi roel;

with all due modesity on your part (which is a good and fair attitude, not meant as criticism)and taking into account that it's too early to talk about details etc.; will TP2 soundwise rival libraries like garritan, the bluethner digital model, galaxy II etc.?
i mean it's a good thing to be honest and humble, but if one sells a good product and is convinced of it he may also say it!
i totally agree with what brent said, but almost all other piano vsti developers claim they're libs to be "as realistic as the real thing" and blah blah blah.. so i hope truepianos will not go under in the flood of recently released new libs!


sorry to be annoying with too much questions about TP2.. just can't wait.

cheers

oxy

[Dewdman42]

koolkeys, I don't want to make a big deal out of it, do don't drag me into it. Search the forum and you will find the promises. Subscription models suck.

[koolkeys]

koolkeys, I don't want to make a big deal out of it, do don't drag me into it. Search the forum and you will find the promises. Subscription models suck.

It's not dragging you into it. You said there were big promises. I've followed TP and own it. And I've never seen where Roel did that. Other subscription models have nothing to do with this as this really isn't a typical subscription model. It's just a year of updates, not a promised content subscription like Wusik or something else.

Again, I didn't drag you into it. I just asked where the big promises were.

Brent

[Dewdman42]

Brent, there was a big discussion regarding this very subject and this very software about a year ago. Do a search. I'm sorry you missed it. I don't have time to find it for you now.

[herrvlad]

Sometimes it can get so much about the realism and exact programming that we forget the reason for the music is to entertain and not to "fool" the listener or convince them that we used a real instrument. If the music is there, they really won't care.

You're right. There's no use trying to convince the listener if the sound we're using serves the song. In my opinion that's the most important thing with any kind of sounds, it must serve the song - no matter if it's synthesized or acoustic, if it's a VSTi trying to be like some 'real' instrument or a 'real' instrument, if only it fits in the particular song.

[Dewdman42]

The main beauty of TP is the feel it has, reasonably good piano tone and near zero load time. It is the most playable piano plugin I have ever tried, including Ivory in some respects. It does sit quite well in a mix. My biggest complaint is that is a very small amount of preset variation with almost no ability to tweak the sound either. This is one reason why I have been waiting about a year for more presets and we did get one update about halfway through with one new piano model...but frankly, that was not enough... Had many discussions with Roel via email about stuff they are supposedly working on, and have waited in anticipation to hear the updates. Hopefully the final 1.x update will satisfy.

[Roel de Witt]

Hi,

We don't have annual subscriptions nor will we ever have them, at least in the form that most companies offer them. While we will put the 'update extension system' in place at some time this year, this can be purchased at any time the customer wishes to, even if he/she bought TruePianos e.g. 2 years ago at that moment. The reason why we've not enforced it so far is that we feel that all customers are entitled to the upcoming update and perhaps the same will count if we release another v1.x update after this one before v2.0 hits the public. The price for upgrading to the latest TruePianos version/product will be fair and this includes one year of updates.

We consider TruePianos v2.0 a completely new product which will include TruePianos v1.x as a bonus (modules will be different) and we'll be offering it to all our customers as under the 'scheme' above and those who bought TruePianos v1.x within a period of less than a year before it's release will get it for free.

We started spending more and more time on TruePianos v2.0 since January as limitations on the v1.x engine became more and more obvious. The upcoming TruePianos v1.4 update is the result of some of the work on the v2.0 product which we were able to port back at some level into the much less complex v1.x engine.

We've done quite a lot of work on TruePianos v1.x in the last year but not all that we did worked out as we expected it to partially due to limitations we bumped into with the v1.x engine. There have been several modules send to the betatesters over time that have not been released since we considered their quality not to be good/consistent enough. In total there are 3 such modules which we canceled for various related reasons since the launch of v1.0 which many months of fulltime work went into.

As a logical step we started TruePianos v2.0 development from scratch to avoid such issues in the future.

The above might not cancel out your disappointment since you bought TruePianos with certain expectations which apparently have not been met till now. However the v1.4 update will be very decent and if we can backport any other developments from the v2.0 product to TruePianos v1.x at some level we'll do it.

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Roel / 4Front Technologies

I'm a big fan of True Pianos and we'll see how it goes, but I just want to say that before I bought it I made some noise about this 1 year stuff because I am generally vehemently opposed to subscription based software, and Roel told us we were going to get a lot of stuff during that year and would not be dissappointed...which didn't really happen much in my view. Frankly, I'm a little annoyed, but let's see what happens in this next update and how much it will cost us more to get the new v2. Seems like more effort was spent working on v2, and not much on v1....the thing we prepaid for... This is why I am opposed to annual subscriptions. Don't sell us a promise of software, that is bs. Sell us software and when you're ready to sell us more software than try to sell us that.

All being said, I do love TP, its a great product. But I'm watching closely because this is the type of thing that causes me to boycott stuff.

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Roel / 4Front Technologies

[Paulie Phonick]

Seems like more effort was spent working on v2, and not much on v1....the thing we prepaid for...

Just a thought - the upgrade to TP2 will be a paid one, but priced lower than the full TP2 price. In such case, didn't your money just buy you a part of TP2 in addition to 1.x upgrades? Hardly sounds like money poorly spent to me, if you're willing to contribute a bit of patience as well

Edit: I see Roel has already put it into way more words

[Roel de Witt]

Hi,

It depends on what you consider as realistic. The main limitation till now with traditional piano libraries is playability, more or less obvious sample layer switches (and less of an issue these days, size on the HDD/streaming). While 8-12 sampled layers might seem like a lot it more than you might expect defines the limitation to what extend you can express what you want to play. Tweaking TruePianos to your personal playing style/keyboard characteristics is only possible since at every velocity level of playing the sound is slightly different, something that's not the case with any sampled piano library I've heard/played thus far. If this wasn't the case simple velocity scaling controls would solve all playability issues on traditional libraries.

So being able to express what you want to play brings a huge level of realism.

On the other size there is the pure acoustic realism in terms of how single notes sound as well as keeping other things in mind like potentially correctly simulating all the psychics that go on in a real piano like e.g. sympathetic resonance.

For TruePianos v1.x we chose a implementation that mixes sample based technology with psychical modeling and a bit of synthesis to bring playable imaginary pianos to a product which is quite easy on the CPU, doesn't fill up your harddrive and is highly playable as far as that was possible with the technology we developed at the time. We never intended to simulate pianos in a way so that purists would say, 'hey that's a real piano'.

With TruePianos v2.0 the approach is radically different and thus requires a complete new engine. We are working on combining the above with the advantages that sampled libraries bring, but without much of their limitations.

Regarding rendering a played track. It'll never be better than what you can play in realtime so it brings no advantages. Of course after rendering down the track the result can be slightly improved by literally 'coding' your sequence with the keyboard/mouse but that's not what you do on a real piano.

Personally I've not been convinced yet by anything I've played that's currently released to the public in a way that I would say, 'hey that's a real piano'.

But what do you think when it comes to exporting those pianos to wavs, do you then think the same way? I'm asking because VSTi pianos for sure don't appear realistic when they are played, but maybe after converting they can do so - as there are no matters with playability anymore, then.

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Roel / 4Front Technologies
http://www.truepianos.com/