I've been hands on with Pianoteq for over a year now, ever since I started looking for a better upright sound than that provided by the Kawai Novus NV10.
This year, and it's been a tough one, Pianoteq's NY Steinway D has been my go-to piano at home. I'm happy to be able to conclude 2021 with a recording:
https://youtu.be/y6rJvdodNfM
The NY Steinway D sure feels and sounds good to me. I enjoy the sense of being able to create something musically unique and musically pleasing with Pianoteq. It feels amazingly satisfying to play and it helps enhance my sense of musicality.
If there's a place to learn why and how I'm wrong on this topic, it's here... I'm a beginner and I want to learn, grow, and improve.
There are many reasons why I chose to start with Pianoteq and ultimately stuck with it. The free trial and user-friendly licensing system was the initial lure. Things like the built-in MIDI sequencer, incredible cross-platform support, and limitless musical possibilities, helped seal the deal. Pianoteq does so many things right.
My performance was captured on a Raspberry Pi 400. The magic is: Press the On switch and you're good to go. The Raspberry Pianoteq is a dedicated piano module, completely silent, and essentially invisible, exactly as a computer should be. Just play the piano.
Pianoteq is controlled directly from the Novus using a method similar to the N1X's native control interface -- press a key on the piano. I can also control it from an iPad. Modartt just shipped a JSON-RPC API for Pianoteq that opens up wondrous possibilities for new interfaces.
Ultimately, I don't want to play with a computer, I want to play piano. At most the only extra step should be to turn on the device. The Raspberry Pianoteq comfortably achieves this ideal.
PianoClack is where the Pianoteq wars are, right? 🙂
Happy New Year!