The Piano Conspiracy (Piano Impulse Responses?)

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

There is nothing stranger in the world of music then the lack of Piano Impulse Responses…Google yourself: Piano Impulse Responses or ”Piano Impulse Responses” (with quotation marks)…

Some threads on music forums from 2006, 2010, 2015 and various essays from different universities…

Am I missing something? Is it maybe impossible to create Piano Impulse Responses? If that is the case, please enlighten me please as to why.

I've used very ”synthy” sounding cello/violin patches on the Boss SY-1000 but as soon as these go through some violin/cello IR, these very synthy sounds transform into sounding like a real violin/cello…

So I'd love to see Piano Impulse Responses transforming a 90s house music piano into a Bösendorfer…

BUT there are no Piano Impulse Responses to download anywhere to see if this is even possible…

Is there any reason for this?

I'm looking at you Modartt (creators of Pianoteq) while wearing my tin foil hat…

[SeBaer]

So I'd love to see Piano Impulse Responses transforming a 90s house music piano into a Bösendorfer…

How would that work? I can't imagine how an impulse response would transform an arbitrary sound into something as specific as a grand piano. I would assume the end result would as much depend on the source sound as on the IR.

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

So I'd love to see Piano Impulse Responses transforming a 90s house music piano into a Bösendorfer…

How would that work? I can't imagine how an impulse response would transform an arbitrary sound into something as specific as a grand piano. I would assume the end result would as much depend on the source sound as on the IR.

Well with IRs you can transform an electric guitar into an acoustic (and it sounds good and realistic), as I already mentioned running synth patches through an Cello/Violin IR makes it sound like a real violin. Surely a simple ”piano sound” would benefit greatly from going through a ”Grand Piano Impulse Response”…

That is what I'm really after.
Not a specific Grand Piano brand, like Bösendorfer, but just the characteristics of a Grand Piano. Strange that it is impossible to even find a single IR…

[Spitfire31]

Have you tried PSP Audioware's PianoVerb/PianoVerb 2?
www.pspaudioware.com/products/psp-pianoverb2

PianoVerb is freeware and the further developed PianoVerb 2 is $69. You can have a demo for 30 days. Well worth a listen!

PSP Audioware uses iLok. I've never had any problems with it.

[Tj Shredder]

Pianoverb is just the piano space with its strings resonances. If you want a piano string as IR, just take any sample and use it as IR… A stroke of a piano string with its hammer is exactly that, the response of the string to the impulse of the hammer…

[SeBaer]

Pianoverb is just the piano space with its strings resonances. If you want a piano string as IR, just take any sample and use it as IR… A stroke of a piano string with its hammer is exactly that, the response of the string to the impulse of the hammer…

But I assume, if you excite the IR with something else, it gets weird.

[Tj Shredder]

Pianoverb is just the piano space with its strings resonances. If you want a piano string as IR, just take any sample and use it as IR… A stroke of a piano string with its hammer is exactly that, the response of the string to the impulse of the hammer…

But I assume, if you excite the IR with something else, it gets weird.

Not weird, it gets exciting, something else than a hammer is exciting the string...

[Michael L]

Pianoverb is just the piano space with its strings resonances. If you want a piano string as IR, just take any sample and use it as IR…

But I assume, if you excite the IR with something else, it gets weird.

Not weird, it gets exciting, something else than a hammer is exciting the string...

Yes

+1 for PianoVerb - it has a useful set of parameters. Use it before a Concert Hall IR.

Kontakt includes a diverse set of cool "pianolin" IRs, and some "Old Piano FX" IRs that will turn a Bosendorfer into a house piano, so just load a pianobook Kontakt instrument (https://www.pianobook.co.uk/instrument/pianos/) with those IRs.

OR... use weird pianobook samples as IRs. Load a couple of slightly different ones as a stereo pair (or two pairs) into your converb over say, an acoustic guitar or harp or dulcimer . . .

[Nickeldome]

So I'd love to see Piano Impulse Responses transforming a 90s house music piano into a Bösendorfer…

BUT there are no Piano Impulse Responses to download anywhere to see if this is even possible…

Is there any reason for this?

I'm looking at you Modartt (creators of Pianoteq) while wearing my tin foil hat…

The reason for this is that it's not possible. The nature of these sounds are very different.
Impulse responses can mimic the space an instrument is in. It can not model the instrument itself.

[CinningBao]

Great first post Nickeldome

Unless the OP is trolling, they perhaps don't understand what IRs can and can't do. And also, perhaps, how the different components of real instrument interact which result in the complex results we enjoy from competent musicians.

Put simply, OP, the sound of the piano is a number of things: the metal the strings are made of, the tension of the strings, the shape and material of the frame they are held in, the shape of the box containing that construction, the type of wood used for that box, the space the piano is played in, the position of the listener.. and probably more.. and all that is before the player even hits a note.

IRs are kind of filters.. through time. They capture a characteristic of 'a thing' under certain conditions, at one moment in time, so it can be recreated. EQ shapes and reverbs are typical IR material. Amplifier cabinets are also used by virtual guitar stacks to make your guitar sound more convincing. But the IR is only one part of the whole chain; it's there to make the sound sound like it's going through a thing which has a real shape (the cabinet).

Back to your Piano IR request. The frame holding the strings is the digital guitar signal, and the box containing this frame is the cabinet. If you can get the sound of the strings being struck without the cabinet, and then put that through an IR of a piano frame, you might get something which sounds oookkkaaayyy,.. and even saying it sounds interesting as an experiment, but I wouldn't expect to get anything actually useful from it.

Because it's interesting to experiment, I made a couple of crude IRs from pianoteq, all the notes pressed down at the same time, a short and long IRs, then played some crappy old piano sample from an ancient soundfont through it, and it did not make the soundfont sound magically better.

In a nutshell, I'm not sure your original premise is correct, and you won't actually be able to up-cycle crappy sampled pianos to a fancy-shmancy concert piano sound. Pianos are more complex than a set of samples and faders to turn up or down hammer sound or room reverb.

And what are you expecting from Modartt? If they use IRs in any part of the engine prior to the reverb layer, they are likely calculated 'as needed', rather than a secret magic list of IRs which they just plop in the end of the chain to make the pianos sound different. They have probably one of the most advanced multi-layer physical models on the market, with a zillion parameters of which we only see a small percentage, so I highly doubt they are 'cheating' with a secret list of concert piano cabinet IRs.

I hope that makes sense.

[IV!]

An interesting topic. I agree that IR is not a panacea. But one of the purposes of IR is to capture the instrument body resonance and the nature of interaction with the "sound generator". If there are IR of violins and acoustic guitars, then there should be pianos, but then there are almost none?..

One of the reasons may be the nature of the sound recording. Electric guitar, electric piano, string-bowed instruments - all of them can be recorded using pickups, that is, almost without taking into account the resonance of body. The piano, it seems, is almost always recorded with microphones... putting body on body is not a good idea, so piano IRs will not be as effective. On the other hand, I would love to pass the sound of EPiano through the piano IR!

Another possible reason is the large range of this instrument, which requires several (many) different IRs on the keyboard to make it sound realistic.

Despite all this, my foil hat is with you, Yadrichik Chaya - I also believe that piano IRs should exist in this world, at least for creative tasks! Maybe someone should do it) If there are such things as AcmeBarGig Red Shift Pickups (an experiment to replace guitar pickups and body), then there must be something for the piano.

[whyterabbyt]

If there are such things as AcmeBarGig Red Shift Pickups (an experiment to replace guitar pickups and body), then there must be something for the piano.

why? just because someone scratched an itch/filled a niche, that doesnt mean all possible similar-but-different things have to exist as well. this is in the well-trodden territory of 'why has noone done a clone of my favourite hardware.'

if someone wants a thing, then Im afraid it often boils down to 'so build it and they will come' not 'hope someone else will make it exist'

[Ah_Dziz]

I'm guessing that properly setting up a piano to capture the various resonances independently as IR files is way more difficult, expensive,and time consuming (anyone here have a 20000$ piano they're willing to take apart for this) than slapping some contact mics on a small wooden instrument. This is why you can find tons of guitar, bass, violin, cello etc IRs and not so many of pianos. You can do a lot with using math to come up with the resonant frequencies involved and then setting up more traditional filters / EQs as resonators.

[whyterabbyt]

I'm guessing that properly setting up a piano to capture the various resonances independently as IR files is way more difficult, expensive,and time consuming (anyone here have a 20000$ piano they're willing to take apart for this) than slapping some contact mics on a small wooden instrument.

indeed.

[CinningBao]

I've just noticed I posted my entry to this discussion a week or so before Modartt released the update which allows us to shove stuff through the soundboard via a side-chain.

Maybe the OP should pipe some sweeps or samples dings through that, turn them into IRs and see what they get.

This vid I made around the time of the new release shows you how to access and muck around with the piano soundboard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsdVoKC1ow