Modern D enhancements

Mindbullets · 2025-07-16T21:54:31+00:00

Saw this on VI Control: Hello all. Some exciting news for Modern D owners and I'm here to pass it along on behalf of Vi Labs: We've been working on an update to the Modern D for several months now to fix the various issues that users reported on forums and by email, the official release will come later this Fall most likely. For now we're doing a soft roll-out to address specific issues, but also to release it before our Summer Sale to avoid customers that would buy it now at full price then be angry with us. Also there still could be some more fixes needed before the official release. We fixed the noise build up when playing a lot of notes and/or using extreme EQ or compression. We also enabled the extra Sympathetic Resonance with pedal down playing like we have in our Ravenscroft 275 and Modern U libraries. Plus there are numerous other bug fixes and general improvements, the full change log will be published with the official release this Fall. The new version is available right now in your VI Labs account, it’s the same link, so use our Installer app or the download page to get it. If you want to keep your old version, simply rename it beforehand by adding 'old' to the filename or such. The new version has the same file name, so any DAW projects will load as expected. Custom drawn Gain Curves will have to be made again since they will not load in the new version, but any other setting from your old presets will. *This update requires the latest version of UVI Workstation V4.0.1 or later, or Falcon 3.1.1 or later.

David Lai

I honestly am confused. All sounds on a piano decay, and what I was saying about prolong sustain is this -- unless one uses speed correction software, it's difficult to make the piano decay slowly after the fact. Do you want a piano VI to have digital artifacts because someone applied speed correction to the samples so you get a longer decaying time? I guess the answer is an obvious no.

So for me, I don't let the piano VI adapt to me, I adapt to it. I guess that's why what some of you are complaining are not considered problematic to me. But still, I find this to be really a non-issue.

David B

I went through all 88 keys after work today testing the sustain by just pressing the key by itself to get a feel for the sustain/decay on that particular key. Then I would repeat with the pedal down to hear the smpathectic resonance that key generated and I would release the pedal while still holding the key to return back to the sustain/decay of the single key.

A couple thoughts:

I didn't realize originally that I had both the pedal resonance and sympathetic resonance boosted by several db in my preset. I brought those down to unity @ 0 db. Now the volume shift between pedal up and pedal down will sound more natural.
I turned off my eq, reverb, and tone adjustments. Again, getting back to the natural piano sound. This cuts down on the exaggerations.
After going through all 88 keys, there are only a couple keys where it seems to be overly exaggerated. However, what I noticed with the couple of keys is that they naturally have quicker decay times compared to other keys. Therefore, most of the sustaining tone comes from the pedal resonance when I perform a pedal down key press. Most of the tone goes away when the pedal is lifted and only the "weak" sustaining note is left.

This seems to be the nature of these particular keys on this piano. See in the example below. I'll first hit the two keys where the tone seems to dramatically decrease after the pedal is released. Then I'll play the same two keys without the pedal down and you'll see that the tone decays very quickly after a few seconds. Obviously, the length of the sustain on these few keys lasts longer than a few seconds but it gets weaker pretty fast after the initial attack.

I've never played a concert grand piano so take the rest of my assessment for what it's worth, but it feels like this piano is behaving normally. There are a few keys that decay quicker than others and the tonal change between on/off pedal resonances while holding that key seems more dramatic compared to the rest of the keys, but I imagine this is just unique to this Steinway D.

Here are a few examples of keys that have norma/longer sustains and thus are louder when the pedal resonances are removed. The tonal change seems very authentic and normal relative to the midsize grand I play at church.

Overall, this update seems to enhance the authenticity and playing experience of the Modern D bringing it more in sync with its acoustic source. I'm sure more experienced people with be able to offer VILabs helpful criticism that will further enhance their official release. I'm very happy with it currently, but I look forward to seeing what they do with it in the future. I believe we've got one of the best products on the market right now.

God Bless,
David

David Lai

David B Your test confirms my over all experience with this VI. And yes, I agree that there are some notes that need to be corrected, in that the bloom engaging the sustain pedal after a key is pressed can sometimes be a bit much. But over all, it plays and behaves just like the concert grand pianos I've played.

At my professor's studio, I've played a New York D he first got 4 years ago, and the perceived unevenness in decay time is expected behavior on Steinway D concert grands like this, and usually the sustain pedal will provide more resonance, particularly in the mid to high range of the keyboard.

David B

David Lai And yes, I agree that there are some notes that need to be corrected, in that the bloom engaging the sustain pedal after a key is pressed can sometimes be a bit much.

That has been mentioned. I haven't gone through each key testing the "bloom" by pressing the sustain pedal after each key press, but just in normal playing everything sounds good. It's one of the beautiful characteristics of this sampled based instrument. The pedal resonance gives it that beautiful acoustic quality. The only VSL piano to have that was the old Vienna Imperial with the 2Sus feature, but unfortunately, they did away with it when the Vienna Imperial was "Synchronized."

David Lai At my professor's studio, I've played a New York D he first got 4 years ago, and the perceived unevenness in decay time is expected behavior on Steinway D concert grands like this, and usually the sustain pedal will provide more resonance, particularly in the mid to high range of the keyboard.

Yeah, the two keys I noticed it on were in the mid range. Everything else sounded normal. Overall, I like the new resonance behavior.

God Bless,
David

FREIRE

A very large beat can kill the sustain time a bit. Does it happen also in una corda?

Las

OlivierW They have everything to gain by listening to the musicians' feedback, we give them free publicity in return...! And it's true that the lack of a demo is a real shame, but it's clear today that buying the Modern D is the best thing to do if you play the keyboard, no matter how much you spent on your instrument.

David Lai

FREIRE From the few notes I just isolated without pedal, depending on the note, the decaying time also differs. But I feel the una corda decays a bit slower on some notes compared to non-una corda counterparts, but I can't measure it in a scientific way.

Las

You're quite picky... I've played on acoustics that had more problems than this vst ^^

David Lai

Las There definitely seem to be many picky people on forums. Most people, including myself, are quite satisfied with the realism and performance of this VST. Some of the problems are program based, we can email VILabs or create a support ticket. Others may be the piano's limitations in response, for which I don't think there is a solution.

The good thing is, although VILabs isn't a big team of people, they are very attentive to user feedback, hence this update that has addressed all the bad samples I reported, plus several other issues.

If you have any suggestions or problems, I would encourage you to email VILabs at contact@vilabsaudio.com for the most direct way to get to them.

David Lai

FREIRE To add to my comment above, though the decay speed may be quicker when some of the notes when not pressing the una corda, when they decay to a certain volume, the two are very similar in loudness and response. So I believe this is the limitations of that particular Steinway D chosen for sampling.

FREIRE

David Lai I love to play it anyway. And still find it a bit more brighter or focused than the original version while playing. Did not test single notes. Don't really care.

David Lai

FREIRE Like you, I love playing it, and I believe this update is great. I was only obliging some tech / perfection enthusiasts when I was isolating separate notes.

pc-king

I noticed that with Gain Response, the volume of the samples (vertically) is adjusted at the different velocity levels (horizontally). You do NOT set which velocity value is assigned to which samples, for example, whether 80 should be forte or 90. It can serve as a compressor. A horizontal graph means that pp and ff have the same loudness. The natural setting would be if the curve were exactly identical to the MIDI Response curve, and NOT a straight line with a slope of 1. So if I want ff at 107, because the Yamaha N1 doesn't output any higher values, even when hitting it with a hammer, I would have to set the Gain Response the same way.

My request: Can someone confirm this, or am I making a mistake? Would it then make sense to have a knob that synchronizes both curves? axis label/scaling?

At this point, I'd like to reiterate that the velocity levels currently being played should be visible as flashing bars, and that you should be able to enter points that are connected by straight lines. So important.

Thanks! I really appreciate that the developers are open to suggestions for improvement.

pc-king

Fun discovery: You can also use a touchscreen, a digital pen, and a ruler. As a last resort.

pc-king

If someone wants to do it the hard way, they can also calculate all the values in Excel, double-click on each of the 127 bars, copy the value from Excel, and confirm with Enter... :-)

pc-king

Important: Since the relationship between velocity and loudness is non-linear, I am unsure whether the gain diagonal from the lower left to the upper right corner simply represents the original dynamics of the instrument.

David Lai

pc-king did you not see the sync curves and bend knob buttons, one for midi and another pair for the gain curve? I suggest you watch the walk-through video VILabs did on YouTube. Also, there are lots of touch curve presets for you to try. There is definitely a curve that fits your keyboard. You can also use these presets as a starting point for finer adjustments.

pc-king

David Lai It's called "sync bend". Very nice and helpful answer, thank you.

OlivierW

Since the intermediate update of MODERN D, I sometimes prefer using it without Pianoteq’s resonances. However, in this intermediate version (MODERN D V1.1), I need to push the Sympathetic Resonance up to +6 dB (ideally it should be +9 dB), as it’s too low by default — and I also need to reduce the Pedal Resonance by -9 dB, because the default pedal sustain resonance is far too loud in this version. There will need to be a proper rebalancing in the upcoming V1.2 — note-by-note — of both the Pedal Resonance and the True Pedalling Resonance levels

tonyminas

HZPiano VI Labs recently confirmed this to me, I think I posted that somewhere on the 'Clack as well.

Fair point. Even so, because the hybrids from Kawai and Yamaha are such a big investment I'd like them to be as future proof as possible to keep up with developments in VSTs. Ideally a midi 2.0 implementation would be best but I don't see that happening in these models for some time to come.

HZPiano Also less nasal? I'm allergic to nasalness in pianos and thought I heard a tad too much of that earlier on in Modern D. Seems better now (on a brief first impression).

Yes I think so! My impression is that the tonal profile of the piano has become more crystalline, especially in the mids

HZPiano I do have the TrueKeys bundle but never play any of them.

Good to know. I'll hold off on buying any of those. But it's nice that we are so spoiled by the current offerings. I still would like a piano voiced for a concert hall rather than a studio. But I'm really quibbling over the details here haha.

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