pianow that was a problem with early synchron pianos such as their cfx,
I wouldn't consider that a problem with the CFX, that one is also not sampled with the robot hand but with the built in Disklavier system. On the other hand if you think of it it's kind of a natural behavior since if you play two notes on an acoustic piano, one with pedal and one without, the note with pedal will be louder so if the volume on a VI is the same than that would be the unnatural behavior.
johanibraaten No, if I press a note on the sustain pedal at the same speed on a real grand piano, it will also be just as loud. The sound will just be a bit fuller because the other strings are vibrating along with it. However, with the same force (same velocity value), the robot finger reaches a higher top speed because the damper doesn't have to be lifted and the key moves more smoothly. This seems to have finally been taken into account. In the editor, set one note at vel. 15 without the pedal and one at vel. 15 with the pedal in Synchron Steinway. The sound in the pedal will be much louder. The result isn't realistic, because I pressed both keys at the same speed while playing.
pc-king No, if I press a note on the sustain pedal at the same speed on a real grand piano, it will also be just as loud.
Yes but you need more force to achieve the same speed with no pedal in an action with a damper mechanism. It might be a problem in VSL 274 though, I don't know. I can also see it being a problem when rendering midi files.
johanibraaten A professional pianist can intuitively play two notes of equal volume, one with the pedal and one without. He automatically reduce the force slightly with the pedal, achieving the same top speed. The velocity value must represent the top speed of the key or hammer, not the force. F = ma
pc-king A professional pianist can intuitively play two notes of equal volume, one with the pedal and one without. He automatically reduce the force slightly with the pedal, achieving the same top speed. The velocity value must represent the top speed of the key or hammer, not the force.
That's what I mean, if you're used to an acoustic piano you automatically reduces the force when play with pedal if equal volume is desired. So to mimic that behavior on a DP it should be made so you need less force to reach a certain volume when you press the pedal. It could be a problem though in situations described by @Johnstaf if you have different samples for pedal upp and down, if you play a note without a pedal and then hold it and press the pedal then the note might have an unnatural rise in volume. This is a problem in the first generation Avantgrands.
johanibraaten No, because with the N1, for example, I don't have any influence from the pedal. I play with the same force on the pedal, and of course, I don't want it to be any louder.
In other words, if the velocity values are the same, it's because I pressed the keys at the same speed, meaning with less force on the pedal (on a real grand piano) or with the same force (on a digital piano). So, with a virtual instrument, I expect these notes to be the same volume either way.
Interesting, but it still seems a bit much, and for some perspective, VI-Labs is nowhere near 60 layers (never mind 100), yet some people swear by that MD, so it begs the question, should VSL spend more time on programming/modeling and less on recording a bunch of samples?
Hint: a little sampling + modeling goes a long way, is less taxing on resources, and some might argue that it allows for more realistic resonances….IMHO!
Pressing a key on any piano is not exactly equivalent to fixed “force” because movement is involved, as well as tactile feedback from the inertia and static weight and what we intuitively try to achieve is a target key acceleration, instead of target force. Thus, on an acoustic piano, when you press the damper pedal, the keys become lighter and easier to accelerate and you can intuitively press them with a lighter force to accelerate them with the desired acceleration (rather than desired terminal velocity, because often you might not even press all the way down, only keep the momentum do the rest).
However, in the world of MIDI controllers where you have no dampers and no varying key weight, you will always press with the same target acceleration and if the underlying samples have different audio volume, that’s a problem. The Novus is a special case and I think no current virtual piano would make up for the fact it has varying key weight. Ideally, there would be a parameter which, when enabled, will produce slightly louder sounds when damper pedal is pressed.
Pete14 Hmm, you can easily distinguish between the different recordings by setting the gain response to maximum everywhere (0-127). I think, it's never 60. More like 10. Even less in the higher registers.
CyberGene Ideally, there would be a parameter which, when enabled, will produce slightly louder sounds when damper pedal is pressed.
I swear that sometimes it “feels” like Yamaha is doing something to this extent, but I can’t say for sure…..
The problem of too loud notes in the pedal also occurs with the Synchron CFX, which was recorded with the internal playing system. Apparently, the Yamaha people forgot about it, too. That's what happens when professional pianists aren't involved in the recording process. (Sorry, Mendl...)
CyberGene However, in the world of MIDI controllers where you have no dampers and no varying key weight, you will always press with the same target acceleration and if the underlying samples have different audio volume, that’s a problem.
If the difference is big I agree it's a problem but a slight difference might perhaps feel natural for someone that plays most of the time on acoustics.
pc-king No, because with the N1, for example, I don't have any influence from the pedal. I play with the same force on the pedal, and of course, I don't want it to be any louder.
This is of course subjective but I think this is a reason why the pedal samples on the N1 are louder than the ones without (I have the N1 too). Try to play this chord with the internal sound on the N1 with no pedal and then hold it while you press the pedal.
johanibraaten I've known about it since around 2012. That's exactly why I started looking for VI back then.
pc-king Ok, I misunderstood you. I thought your "no" meant that you didn't feel that this was an issue with first gen. Avantgrands. Anyway, since there is objectively a physical difference between keyboards with damper mechanism and those without I guess it's subjective how one want the sound engine compensate for that.
We humans are funny creatures with the way we adapt to things. The first time I played a grand I was startled by the difference in feel when using the sustain pedal. Now it doesn't even register.
Pete14 VI-Labs is nowhere near 60 layers (never mind 100)
for some time i thought they're doing that big numbers for marketing reasons but nowhere in the vsl's website you can find the number of samples per keys, they just do it cause it seems right to them, that's the reason why they've invented a robot hand to make multi layer sampling easier for them. and vilabs also has changed their methods about the number of layers, their ravenscroft had like 20 layers and it's dynamically limited and narrow, so they decided to record more layers for the md and it has over 30 (maybe even more then 35 layers), i say both approaches are equally valid, considering they both have great playability and sound 🙂
Pete14 so it begs the question, should VSL spend more time on programming/modeling and less on recording a bunch of samples?
i don't think they need to do less sampling to be able to do more programming, it's obviously what they want their product to be, and of course i wound be happy if they decide to use modeling for some of their shortcomings such as resonances and pedaling, but still those things aren't like top top priority, but again a resonance engine on vsl pianos like the one pianoteq has is a potential game changer. specially now that they finally have una corda samples, the resonance engine (which also fixes the pedaling bugs) is the final piece of the puzzle.
Pete14 Hint: a little sampling + modeling goes a long way, is less taxing on resources, and some might argue that it allows for more realistic resonances….IMHO!
i agree, perhaps one day…
pc-king More like 10
tf?
pianow what does tf mean?
Pete14 hould VSL spend more time on programming/modeling and less on recording a bunch of samples?
It isn't quite so cut-and-dry as this. The piano libraries are only part of their business and their developers were stretched pretty thin.
Part of the issue was until last year, many of libraries were developed for two sample players that they made in house - the very old Vienna Instruments player and the Synchron player. They were different enough that work done in one had to be re-done in the other. Maintaining both players was causing enough extra work that they were unable to take on big new enhancements due to this.
Finally last year they decided to discontinue the Vienna Instruments player for these reasons and this infurtiated a lot of long time users who had wanted to stay on the old player for as long as possible. I was not one of those infuriated, as I saw this coming and stopped investing in the Vienna Instruments libraries long ago and moved everything to the newer player. I figured it was the case that this would happen, and advised people to buy the newer Synchron versions instead of the older ones, but often a group of enthusiasts of the old Vienna Instruments would enter the thread and convince them to spend their money on the old release instead. Now suddenly those people will have to pay an upgrade fee.
Regardless of whether you hate their decision to discontinue Vienna Instruments or not, the fact is that their development has significantly ramped up. For their regular sample libraries (outside of the piano libraries), they had this classic Dimension Tree that tended to scare new users away, and have implemented a much more inviting Flow View. They added much requested tuning capabilities for alternative tuning systems, allowing microtonality with their instruments. It is a noticeable step up in development since they've been unshackled from having to continue to support Vienna Instruments.
But the flow view related programming is obviously taking up a lot of their resources, and in addition to that they are doing lots of back end programming work that benefits all of the players including the piano player. Sympathetic resonance is not good at the moment, yes, but I'm sure they'll get back to that. It makes sense to me that they are focused on addressing things that were preventing them from appealing to new customers, and this was more serious of an issue on their orchestral libraries side rather than the piano libraries front. We're seeing the movement, they aren't just sitting idly by - and the programmers are really really good and doing great work. It's just a matter of not enough hours in the day and they have to focus on what helps keep the company profitable.
And the people who do the recording and the editing of new libraries are not the programmers. Very different skill sets are needed. In most cases to make a new piano library the involvement of the programming team would be very limited. So they can't just tell random staff who are available to create sample libraries to do some programming instead, if they aren't developers. It's not the right people. So it's not an either-or situation. If they didn't have them making this piano library, they would have them sampling a different library that wasn't a piano library. This still wouldn't free up the developers time for sympathetic resonance.
