VI Labs: Modern U Review

CyberGene That being said it’s an upright sound and I prefer Garritan CFX for those commercial-grade polished grand piano recordings 😉

Yeah, I prefer the full bass response of VSL's Bösenderfer Imperial over the diminished bass of the Modern U upright sound, but in terms of realism, I give the Modern U the advantage because it doesn't have to reproduce the massive power of a concert grand (which is hard/impossible) to do with speakers. However, reproducing the realism of an upright can be more convincing with good speakers.

God Bless,
David

To all of you out there, better pianists than me (easy feat, so nothing to brag about😊): are there technical characteristics (pedaling, staccato, light notes, ???) that are better captured in the Modern U compared to garritan cfx or synchron engine?

My turn to share experience.

Use case: play in the headphones, as similar as it gets to the actual upright I'm sitting in front of (Petrof P118).

Mission almost accomplished. It's of course a totally different instrument, but sounds like an upright. In my memory, U3 was like a whole lot bigger and much more powerful, but probably it's not fair to compare an instrument to its recording played over the headphones.

Here my settings, should anyone be interested:

Velocity curve is the default one, just the bend on the gain response is set to 0.1

Cheers

Mike

vagfilm

I also own the Garritan CFX, but it's a huge grand, not really comparable to Modern U.

Sitting in front of an upright, a captured upright feels more real in all regards😀

Garritan CFX sounds too funny, to play scales and the whole theoretical stuff on, couldn't stop laughing, so switched to Modern U.

MHirsch My turn to share experience.

That's a very nice mic combination. The mono mic along with the -1 timbre shift really tones down the brightness and shimmer in the upper range, which I've always felt was a little too much.

I've never experimented the the mono mic and I'm really liking your settings. Thank you for sharing.

God Bless,
David

David B That's a very nice mic combination. The mono mic along with the -1 timbre shift really tones down the brightness and shimmer in the upper range, which I've always felt was a little too much.

Ohh, that’s also my main gripe which I tried to fix with the EQ. I didn’t even try the timbre shift because I intuitively thought it would be something weird. I’ll definitely try it. What does it do exactly? Is there a user manual, I couldn’t find one.

CyberGene intuitively thought it would be something weird

Hello,

Same here, but now I might give that shift another chance too.

If I am not mistaken, such a shift setting on many piano VSTis means picking the next-higher or next-lower (or a distance of more keys depending on the +/- number set) key's samples and then re-pitching those to the actually played key's pitch. Which I see as more artificiality introduced and therefore I initially steered clear of it. But who knows, maybe it works differently in Modern U (and/or the underlying method of the UVI Workstation).

I believe there is no user manual. There is a very elaborate description on the Modern U product page, I reckon (VI Labs thinks) that doubles as a manual.

Cheers and happy playing,

HZ

Maybe this helps a bit with settings

https://www.vilabsaudio.com/download/True%20Keys%20Manual%20V1.pdf

CyberGene Scriabin

Hello,

Just listened to your recording. As a "self-taught pianist" you should pat yourself on the back a little more! 👏

And, doesn't it sound lovely and realistic? Wonderful. I'd like to see a screenshot of the settings you used there. Your recording also shows (near the end) that the bass/tenor regions have more difficulty resolving the chords in such a way that the individual notes in the chords keep standing their own ground. This is something I also ran into playing Modern U. But -- I should add -- on real-world uprights that usually is just like that, so I don't mean to point out a fault here.

Cheers and have a good weekend,

HZ

HZPiano
Thanks for the nice words!

The final few chords I played with the sordino samples assigned to the soft pedal which is why it’s not very distinct but in all fairness Scriabin just put a lot of notes in a low register which is a tricky situation for any piano.

I’ll share my multi and also screenshots.

CyberGene The final few chords I played with the sordino samples assigned to the soft pedal which is why it’s not very distinct but in all fairness Scriabin just put a lot of notes in a low register which is a tricky situation for any piano.

Ah, I see!

Cheers,

HZ

David B

Well, I can explain my choice 😀

Main mic is the player one, kinda makes sense if you sit in front of a piano:

"This is the most natural mic setup in the library and really does emulate the experience of sitting at this piano, with just the right balance of direct and room detail along with a natural stereo image. This is the go-to classical mic."

Then you definitely want to hear the soundboard:

"A unique perspective away from the hammers capturing only the piano's soundboard up close with a wide image, the tone is warm and immersive, a bit 'woody' with a broader hammer attack."

The mono one sounds very important:

"Positioned just above the action front and center, this mic captures everything, the warmth and detail all with a modern edge."

As for timbre, I've seen a description of what it does somewhere, so turned it a bit down.

And eliminated the pedal noise, that's really disturbing, the piano has to be in a very bad shape to make noises like that…

CyberGene

What does it do exactly?

Timbre Shift: Shifts the timbre by pitching samples upon playback, resulting in a warmer sound with negative values and a brighter sound with higher values. Interesting results, especially suitable for soft playing.

Found it here.

The interesting thing about timbre shift with VSL is that you lose notes on the piano depending on which direction you shift in. For example, -1 will drop the highest C, -2 will drop the highest C and B, etc. That's why I never use it with VSL products. However, zero notes are dropped with the way VILabs has implemented it.

I really don't understand what's happening with timbre shift. It obviously changes the tone color, but other than that, I can't say what's going on. It's definitely better implemented with VILab's software.

God bless,
David

Weird. I hoped the terminology would be the same…

Another timbre related blog.

David B CyberGene decided to record something with the Modern U.

Very beautiful song and nicely played.

Yes, I listened to it more carefully and it's wonderful. I understand one does never like his or her own voice, but it's not sloppy at all!

David B In my limited experience, it seems to me that there wouldn't be much difference playing the Modern U compared to an actual Yamaha U3.

I never played a real modern Yamaha U-something. The sound of this U is very different from any other upright that I've owned or played. Well, I guess because most of them were not modern 🤣

My take on the instrument is that it's nice to have a variation, but it's not something that I'd long to have (or buy) per se. Simply my opinion, obviously!

Hello,

So, triggered by everyone's Modern U posts of this Saturday, I just spent one or two hours tweaking my settings -- which I hadn't done for a long time now. What I found today is:

• Listening closely, the timbre setting definitely shifts samples from neighboring keys (in half-tone steps), re-pitching them. It is definitely not for me, it becomes subtly but surely weird/artificial. The quality of the samples falls apart somehow.
• I never used the tone knob before, but now think that one proves useful, carefully applying it in the minus direction. In return, I brought back the Bend knobs from left -35/right +35 to -21/+21 respectively. That brings back some timbre variation/liveliness that I already started missing, while the tone knob still attenuates the harsher edges a bit.
• I tried the player and mono mics (separately as well as combined) again (meanwhile keeping the soundboard mics) but I find them strangely introducing distance, the opposite of what I would look for intimately playing an upright piano. So those are not for me. I went back to having the soundboard mics on my lower 4 speakers and the two pairs of close mics together on my upper two speakers. To my taste, this is as "player" as it gets 🙂.

Cheers and happy tuning-to-taste,

HZ

CyberGene

Hi,

I also haven't found a manual for the Modern U.

But the Help in the interface is pretty good.

First click the "i" icon. Then with that window open, click the text of the item of interest.

Jane: let me be the first to welcome you to the Clacking community... Here the discussions go a bit deeper than in PianoWorld, and your expertise is a wonderful addition. There are a bunch of us around (me included) that bought the Modern U in the last couple of days.

Jane Welcome! And thanks for the great advice regarding the embedded hints in the Modern U interface. Basically it answers my need for a user manual.