Pianoteq 5 is out!

[aMUSEd]

They had a 20% off sale in January on all add-ons. I'm now on the hunt for their next one.

We have a few Vibes Add-ons left from that sale, PM me if you want one for that sale price.

No I have that - just want the Bluthier

[Dazed Veins]

@Cable channel
I actually can answer quite fast.

[Spitfire31]

Sure I could use this, but but but how on earth am I going to download it? The basic app is about 40MB. Which will take me over an hour to download. I didn't find info about the size of the packs. Not going to download GBs. There should be a government law which at least forces them to sell box versions. Although I am wasn't planning to conquer the world before producing something. Oh well...

Seem to be some confusion here of MB and GB. One megabyte is one thousand times less than one gigabyte.

40MB is a trivial size. If it takes you an hour to download, I guess you need to get another provider.

/Joachim

[bharris22]

Another Pianoteq question. I am trying to decide between Stage and Standard. For those who have Standard, how often do you use the additional features (microphone placement/output and additional sound design parameters)? I love the idea of pressing the "randomize" button to get a new and different piano every time, and the ability to move the microphones and record their output separately is certainly appealing, but am trying to decide whether these two features are worth the additional $110. I tend to think they would be (over the long run), but would be curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

Thanks!

[EvilDragon]

I use mic placement quite often, as it can definitely do a lot of changes to the sound, and make it fit in a particular mix easier. You can also open/close the piano lid, and that also influences the sound as expected.

BTW when you press the Random button, what you get is most often not a piano sound. But it's interesting from sound design perspective.

[bharris22]

Interesting - thank you for your perspective. What about manual changes to the individual "tuning", "voicing" and "design" parameters (i.e., not using the Random button). Do these greatly impact the sound? Do you find yourself using these often?

In addition, can you separately route the outputs of the separate microphones to different tracks in a DAW?

[pethu]

Interesting - thank you for your perspective. What about manual changes to the individual "tuning", "voicing" and "design" parameters (i.e., not using the Random button). Do these greatly impact the sound? Do you find yourself using these often?

In addition, can you separately route the outputs of the separate microphones to different tracks in a DAW?

Indeed you can, there's a "mix matrix" on the sound design page allowing you to route any percentage of the output from each of the up to 5 mics to any of up to 5 outs.

I myself could probably live without much of the Standard features in version 5 much more easily than in 4, where there seemed to be cause for at least some tweak every so often to get that "precise sound".

Overall, I find I've used the instrument design features much more to invent new chromatic percussion versions - marimba, vibraphone, celesta and what have you - than I've tweaked the pianos. There's such a lot of presets there already...!

[EvilDragon]

Interesting - thank you for your perspective. What about manual changes to the individual "tuning", "voicing" and "design" parameters (i.e., not using the Random button). Do these greatly impact the sound? Do you find yourself using these often?

Yep, they influence the sound itself, how long it decays and WHICH harmonics decay sooner (soundboard parameters), you can adjust the amount of sympathetic resonance, how hard the soft pedal dampens things, how hard are hammers at three main velocity levels (BIG impact on sound), unison detune to get an instant-battered upright sound (but of course, you will want to do this the most with the U4 model )... You can really do a lot to the sound with just these basic controls.

[Numanoid]

40MB is a trivial size. If it takes you an hour to download, I guess you need to get another provider.

Yeah 40MB is nothing these days, that's one of the big advantages PM plugs got over sample libraries, they are small, consume little HDD space, and maybe need less RAM to function properly.

[bharris22]

OK - the question then is am I better off getting Standard or Stage with (let's say) U4 and the Bluthner? Do the Action, EQ, Mallet Bounce and Effect settings in Stage provide a lot of tweakability for a non-pro (player or engineer ?

[EvilDragon]

Not really... Mallet bounce is basically usable only with chromatic percussion and cimbalom, not so with actual pianos and harpsichords.

Action is just for noises, damper area (at which key do the dampers stop?), not much to deal with the crux of the sound. Timbral EQ is a quick wide-sweep brush that changes the tonality of all keys, but doesn't do much more than that.


I would advise you to go Standard if possible, you get D4 and K2 along with the free KiViR instruments, church bell and K. P. Rausch presets. You also get demos of all other models (all white keys are playable, 8 black keys are omitted)...

[bharris22]

Thank you again! I think I will be going for Standard. The additional tweaking of tuning, voicing and design parameters, together with the mics, seems to offer a lot of possibilities. Plus, it is cheaper for me to upgrade to Standard now from Play 3 rather than from Stage 5 (the upgrade from 3 to 5 is basically built into the price from Stage to Standard).

Thanks again for everyone's help!

[Alex Cremers]

The more I play with Pianoteq 5 (which I bought, BTW), the more I think this is the only piano I'll ever need. I think I might become one of them Pianoteq apostles.


Brother Alex

[EvilDragon]

Welcome to the club.

[Alex Cremers]

Thanks, brother EvilDragon!