Pianoteq is very impressive. It doesn't sound quite as good as a real piano 'live' but it sounds better than most real pianos when recorded.

I have another interesting setup at home that I'll do a blog post on one of these days that works extremely well with Pianoteq and other virtual pianos, costs peanuts and gives you some amazing capabilities. Stay tuned! (pun intended ;) ).

Pianoteq models pianos very accurately, but in my opinion, it doesn't reproduce the effect of using the best condenser mics and the talent of pro audio engineers.

Top-of-the-line sampled piano VSTs may lack the dynamic range and versatility of Pianoteq, or its ability to reproduce sympathetic resonance and partial pedaling, but they at least capture not only a great piano but also the added effect of pro mics mixed/recorded by pros in a pro studio.

It's a matter of time, really. They are doing some pretty impressive modeling there sooner or later the difference between that and reality will be on the level of gold-plated plugs for your stereo.

Yeah... and I'd also add that a pro could make Pianotek 7 sound awesome.

I'm not an audio engineer, so I just use Abbey Road's Yamaha VST - its default settings sound great, no extra work for me.

I'm really eager to see if I can replicate the Raspberry Pi setup with Pianoteq!

https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8302

That would make that one of the highest quality and cheapest digital pianos available.

Inspiring, thank you!

You are so right on this, it's an incredible piece of software and easily my favourite sounding piano emulation VST.

The best part is the download is really, really small, compared to the multi-gigabyte sampled solution.

My favourite hardware solution is the Roland series of modelling, I currently use an RD88 [0], which sounds great, and is really good for practice (and it has built in speakers which is a handy addition), and it's small!

The FP series is also good and less expensive.

[0] https://www.roland.com/au/products/rd-88/

Is there decent open source examples of physical piano modeling ?

Pianoteq makes mathematical modelling of pianos. I think of it some what like raytracing is for graphics, but sound tracing is for a piano.

Pianoteq is very good!

I've been on the search for the perfect Piano VST forever and I absolutely found it with Pianoteq 7.

Unlike all the other ones I've tried where I get ear fatigue after a few minutes due to some issue I can never consciously identify, with Pianoteq I can play for HOURS.

Not trying to shill for them, honest. I just really really like it.

I've found the same with all of the digital pianos except for the Yamaha I ended up buying and if not for that one I would have probably not embarked on this project at all, I really hate it when the sound isn't right. Now it still doesn't feel right (especially not when you hit a bass note), but I can live with that and with headphones on at least I don't irritate everybody else here.

But the most fun in practicing is on the real piano.

Damn, that's really cool!

Also, thanks for showing me that YT channel. That soothing voice and the clean style alone makes it worth a subscribe, heh.

Does anyone know how this compares to Spectronic's Keyscape?