Pianoteq doesn't sound realistic, period. I trust my ears. That thing is a disaster in the mid registers. Grainy fake attacks, impossible to ignore if you have good ears (as opposed to delusional ears).

I'm sick and tired of everyone being empathetic with their criticism of Pianoteq just because they don't want to hurt the Pianoteq fans feelings.

 

Well, I like pianoteq for practise and playing more than most sample libraries but the tone is not "there" yet. It sounds a little like a synth, so for composing or making tracks I use good samples like Embertone Walker 1955 instead. I'm just speaking about the pianos, I never really tried the other instruments, excluding the harpsichords. The harpsichords are the best for me, I still haven't found a better sample based harpsichord.

But playability and half pedal is great in Pianoteq (like Fowly said earlier).

 

What's not "there" for you? I just don't understand. You can mic the piano however you want and edit any aspect of the piano that you want to get the sound you need.

 

I think Pianoteq is great, but I have to say that it sometimes sounds a bit like a synthesizer...but not in a bad way...I mean, imagine a piano standing right in front of you in a room; it will always sound different from the best VST piano in the world...as soon as a sound comes out of speakers or headphones, it's no longer “real”...
An instrument that is physically present will always sound more impressive.
I have to say that Pianoteq is absolutely brilliant for me and my style of music. I don't come from a classical music background, but mainly make hip hop, trap, and reggaeton with a Balkan influence.
With EQ, reverb, and tricks, you can use Pianoteq to shape almost any piano sound that you would get from other sample-based VSTs... yes, I also hear something synth-like in the midrange, but I like it.

 

ah crap, I bought Pianoteq 6 stage years ago and just recently paid for the upgrade to 8... Is 9 enough of an improvement to justify paying yet again? I still just use stage and don't need a piano for playing live or anything, just concerning sound quality/realism. thx!

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2025 at 4:12 AM

If it is anything close to what you say, is it also probably easily identifiable as Pianoteq? It is like $400 or $900 depending on the bundle.

For me, that would obviously be the foundations for an album called Songs in the Key of Warez.

 

I'm not recording classical music, so I don't need a perfect piano sound. I have experimented with Nebula FRFR speakers and some VST like Stereolab, and the Pianoteq sound would be quite interesting for the stuff I do. For some people, high quality piano sounds are actually unusable, although I do like the sound of Noire

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2025 at 8:06 AM

With all due respect to all people here ‘loving’ Pianoteq and thinking this is the only piano they will ever need and are ready to dump all their Kontakt libraries? I think most of them don’t really know how a real piano sounds and feels? Sure Pianoteq sounds like a piano and it might be very convincing to most people.
But really, when you compare it to some of the best Kontakt sample libraries available like Embertone - Walker 1955 Concert D, VILabs - ModernD, Soniccouture - The Hammersmith Pro, etc. Pianoteq is clearly (still) not near this league!

During my lifetime I’ve played probably like 100 or maybe even 150 different pianos. And I’ve been fortunate to be able to also play premium concert grands like Bosendorfer, Bechstein, Steinway and Fazioli. So I know a little bit about how a piano should sound?

The problem with Pianoteq today, while gradually getting better, still is this:
The midrange, say from c3 to c5, sounds reasonably ok, but still a little ‘boxy’ so not really great. But the lower mids and lows don’t sound very convincing and are missing the sound of a body like any acoustic piano should have. It somehow sounds two dimensional. There's just no soul behind there. Also from c5 and up it starts to sound like a ‘toy’ piano. On the highest octave you can hardly hear the ‘wood noise’ which is essential on these keys, only a ‘synthesized’ toy key noise that should pass for wood.

The thing also is: Whatever preset (piano brand) you chose? They all have this same character I described above. So regardless if you chose a Steinway or a Bechstein, they all have this character or flaw or how you wish to call it?

Please don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying Pianoteq is totally trash. I’m just saying that it’s a good work in progress, but still far from replacing sample libraries. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to an authentic piano sound. The better sample libraries are still the ones that come closest to the real thing.

But…..When it comes to instant playability, easy on storage, ram and even cpu, and loadtimes? It’s actually one of my favorites to start out with when starting a sketch in my daw! Also the quick adjustments to like ‘Condition’ so the state and tuning and the quick ‘Mics & Mics’ settings are really great.

So as a basic ‘goto’ piano without being bothered about how the end mix should sound, Pianoteq is great and easy to work with. But as the sound is still currently, I would never use it in a final production. Because to me it still sounds too artificial and maybe also too recognizable as a typical synthetic ‘Pianoteq’ piano.

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2025 at 5:24 AM

for me it was a real labor to find a decent patch...there was a good Steinway in the FXP preset
the most important thing for my type of music is the quality of the sympatheiic resonance, for this
i still use my go to Art Vista Virtual Grand 3
good luck

 

A bit OT, but since many people talk good about Embertone's 1955 Concert D...
Do guys you know if the releases in sister site work correctly? (discarding the complete edition) I've read that the script has bugs or similar.

 

> Why use any other piano library now that Pianoteq 9 Pro has been released?

For starters, it hasn't been released on Mac, so that's one major reason...

 

Pianoteq 9 is great, and I hear nothing synthy about it at all. Which is good for me, cause I can play it and love the sound, and hear a real sounding piano. I hear people saying it sounds synthy, and I cant figure out at all how anyone can hear that. Then I learned about people ears, basically if you get your ears tested you can find out people will have a harder time to hear frequencys and its different for everyone, so maybe theirs a cut in people hearing which makes pianoteq sound synthy to others because of the frequencies they lack in the ear.

 

Honestly I do think that the stock presets can leave a lot to be desired, but once you mess with the unison, condition and sympathetic resonance sliders you can get it sounding perfectly realistic very quickly. Imo they really need to hire some genuine sound designers to come up with some more natural defaults. The Steinways are the worst offenders of this and the Bechstein's are some of the best out of the box. It's also hard to compare with Kontakt libraries as essentially all of them have some level of compression, reverb and other FX where as Pianoteq presets tend to start out very very dry. Naturally this plays to Pianoteq's disadcantage in an air immediate comparison. Of course, it's all taste tho, I think every piano library/modelling has its place much like every different model of piano does in real life.

 

Never got along with Pianoteq. I like my piano with character and imperfections. No pun intended but someone here a while ago suggested Imperfect Samples piano libraries, I checked them out and never looked back. I don't need anything else.

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2025 at 10:45 PM

There's a slider for that ;)

 

There are 2 libs I always go back to and love playing with: Garritan CFX Concert Grand and Keyscape. They have become almost my only pianos. With Pianoteq I can say that there are 3, but there is no way I will remove those two!

 

I disagree, respectfully. I can't make a concert Bosendorfer sound as good as a concert pianist can, and that's not the Bosendorfer's fault. But I can probably make Alicia's Keys sound as good as he can. He's not used to playing a MIDI controller. He's not used to the way sampled instruments respond. I'm sure he can get there pretty quickly, but I'll never get to where he is on a concert Bosendorfer, which unquestionably has more "sonic authenticity" since it's a real piano. But under my fingers, it may be more than I can handle, and I can handle Pianoverse or Garritan or Alicia's Keys.

I'm not saying Pianoteq doesn't sound amazing when I play single notes and simple chords, but when I play the way I normally play my S88 Mk3, it just doesn't come alive. And I'm happy if you want to blame my lack of technique. It really doesn't matter why, but it's just not better in my hands. And no amount of processing is going to change that. I'd have to really learn how to modify the way I play in order to produce results I can already get from sampled instruments.

For whatever reason, Pianoteq always sounds like...well, it sounds like Pianoteq. Just my 2 cents.

 

People won't like this but I think the reason some people say Pianoteq 9 still doesn't sound good comes down to the individual and how they play. Pianoteq has infinite velocity essentially, and infinite variability. You can customize it however you want, and you can even have an extremely dry piano sound. It's for all these reasons that I think it may not sound as good as one would expect if they're just an amateur keyboardist. Other sampled pianos will be more forgiving because their dynamic range is limited, they have less velocity layers per note compared to the full 127 (and higher probably assuming Modartt supports MIDI 2.0 on compatible devices) velocity range that pianoteq creates. Additionally, because Pianoteq is so detailed in its simulation, you also need a proper, fully weighted midi keyboard to play it as it was meant to be played; like a real life piano.

I suggest people listen to players such as this guy (linked below,) who is classically trained and very skilled. He makes Pianoteq 9 sound as real as any real piano in real life. I just think people have a hard bias towards sampled pianos, because it's mostly all they know, and they feel that just because it is actually recordings of the real piano, that it will automatically sound better. And I don't think they will ever be convinced, to be honest. In a sense it discredits all the work Modartt has done to perfect their Piano models, because otherwise Steinway, Bechstein, Kawai, Bosendorfer etc. would not want to put their official stamp on these physical models. In a way this is somewhat similar to people who criticize guitar amp models for not sounding like the real thing. At some point, you just have to let go of the cope and admit that yes, it does sound like a real piano. And you should also recognize that outside of real life experience playing a Steinway or other brand of piano, you are already hearing the pianos fully processed with EQ, compression, subtle harmonic saturation from the mic preamps themselves, reverbs, and also tape warmth as well. Pianoteq does none of this, you are getting a piano sound that is much more unadulterated than most if any Kontakt Library out there.

Not even the EQ in pianoteq is the same as the EQ on your DAW, for example. The EQ in pianoteq works on the actual physical model of the piano itself, altering the harmonic response of the strings and soundboard. If you turn up the high end, the strings and soundboard sound brighter physically, rather than simply having an EQ plugin applied after everything like you would do to an audio file. The same thing happens with the reverb as well, but in a different context. All the reverbs are actually mathematical models themselves, and when you use the reverb, it works in concert with how you set up the mics on the piano itself. So you can actually set up extra mics far away from the piano to function as room mics would in the real world. Both of these things I didn't even realize myself until just a week ago, which goes to show the lengths that Modartt went to achieve the most realistic non sampled based piano simulation money can buy. All the way from the physical properties of the strings, the soundboard, and then to the sounds of the microphones, and the space they're placed in. Nothing comes close.

 

Last edited: Nov 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM

I don't think that's true at all. It also could be vise versa that people who think that pianoteq doesn't sound a litte synthetic lack the frequencies to hear it. But I don't think at all it's about hearing qualities and more like a matter of taste. As an Example I like The Hammersmith or Imperfect Samples less than Pianoteq and Garritan and Embertone Walker Grand are better for me than Pianoteq , a lot of people would disagree because the taste is different.

 

Yes, and this is because Pianoteq is unadulterated, it reveals everything, every imperfection. Additionally, you will ideally need to be playing on a fully weighted midi keyboard, and on top of this you will need to create or find the proper velocity curve for your specific midi keyboard to use on the plugin. You can even adjust the curve of the note off, too, and even the curve of your sustain pedal (assuming it has continuous velocity.) As I said in my previous post, sampled instruments are inherently more forgiving because their dynamic range and amount of velocity layers per note are limited, even if you have 30 layers per note like Keyscape does. And then to add to this you are getting a sound that is already pre-processed whereas pianoteq is much more unprocessed than any other Sampled piano. If you want it to sound more "like a record" or more produced, you will have to add your own plugins afterwards. But if you are already a skilled piano player who has played many real pianos in real life, you will very much enjoy this plugin I believe. However I am not a professional player and I still enjoy it very much because I understand what Modartt is trying to do here. People just aren't used to hearing a more unadulterated piano tone outside of real life so it will sound weird or uncanny to some.