Hi, Animisha. Welcome to Pianoclack!
I do not love the sound of Pianoteq. But, I've made quite a satisfactory peace with it.
I've suspected that a great part of my ability to live with Ptq is that when playing, my focus is almost entirely on learning piano. I've been playing for 7 years now, without help of a teacher, and am realistically at about the RCM Levels 3-4. So, when I sit at the piano, I am easily consumed with developing the techniques necessary to perform the low intermediate level pieces I am confronted with, and not so much concerned about whether the sound is beautiful.
Along the way, I have tried two sampled VSTs. The UVI German Grand was a bust. Though it was tonally beautiful, it had no sustain, which caused me to play everything at a galloping pace to fill the voids between notes. I also have wrestled with Garritan CFX full. I have always found it too bright for my taste. At this moment, the only sampled piano I intend to try is Galaxy Vintage D, but will only do so when I find it on a deeply discounted sale.
With Ptq, I've had romances with the American Steinway D, the Petrof Mistral, and now, the Bechstein D280. I have now played the Bechstein for about 7 months continuously, and it is rarely a distraction. As long as I am not listening for faults, I do not experience faults. These Bechstein months have been productive in terms of me improving my piano playing, as a result.
In a recent thread, someone had kind words about the Petrof Mistral. This piqued my curiosity, so I went back and played it some more. In the process, I tried various adjustments to see if I could have a better experience with it than I had before. One very interesting change, designed to reduce/eliminate some of the high pitch unpleasantness, was to eliminate all microphones above the harp, and use microphones only below the piano. I am not yet finished with these experiments, but have heard enough to believe there might be some untapped potential beneath the piano.
As the preceding paragraph hints at, I feel like there is something wrong with Ptq's microphone system. I never get a pleasant experience when the Ptq microphones are utilized in any of the traditional ACOUSTIC piano microphone arrangements. I feel like Ptq has somehow, some way, gotten the microphone tech all wrong. So, I've been playing outside the box with the microphones. In fact, my current run of success with the Bechstein is due mainly to microphone placement. I started with a decision to mimic the "binaural" experience by using cardiod mics positioned where the pianist's head would be. Encouraged, I went further, and eventually ended up with microphones at the three corners of the piano, all facing in toward the center of the soundboard. The two mics at the pianist end are used in stereo, each with its own channel, with minimal crossing to the other's channel. The third mic, at the far end of the piano, is blended into the two other channels. Much of the nasal, or metallic, or otherwise described nastiness is gone. And, the piano does not sound as distant as it had in my previous configurations.
I suppose the next tweaking adventure will be implementing my "under the piano" microphone efforts with the Bechstein. I think the Bechstein is the best Ptq platform for tinkering because it seems to suffer the least of all from the oft experienced "distant" sound problem.
So, I am a fairly committed Ptq user, though not a 'lover'. I will be proceeding with it for the foreseeable future, at least until my Galaxy Vintage D arrives. And, I suspect I will purchase the next Ptq update.
