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Piano World Cup, Group D (resolved)
In continuation of https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/26407/the-piano-poll-part-2-with-new-samples
there seems to be a need to reduce the sheer amount of samples.
You can find Group A with results here: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27032/piano-world-cup-group-a-resolved
You can find Group B with results here: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27065/piano-world-cup-group-b-resolved
You can find Group C with results here: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27071/piano-world-cup-group-c-resolved
So, this is“Group D“ of Piano Samples, the last group:
19
27
32
40
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/74khrssb8nq9uxq/AAADpCTM5KwLtgJaKO3RcySza?dl=0
or
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/74khrssb8nq9uxq/AAADpCTM5KwLtgJaKO3RcySza?dl=1
The Poll:
https://doodle.com/poll/auzb523avkcesdhy
You can vote for just the best Sample from the group of 4, or the best 2 or 3 if you cannot decide.
But please do not vote for all 4 of them.
I decided to make this poll invisible for now, so you cannot be distracted by other people‘s votes.
If you hear problems like missing notes or crackles, i can only assume that this is a problem of the given App! It may need special handling to get better results, but this cannot be done in this competition.
An App that cannot easily be used to produce Audio from MIDI is just less capable in a production environment -> a problem of the given App!
Comments
I think, this will be the hardest group to decide ...
Voted. The thing I have found with all of these groups is that there are no “bad” sounds - they would all sound fine in a mix for the appropriate track. Some have markedly different characters though, and so would tend to suit different genres. Maybe there isn’t just “one piano to rule them all”!
You are certainly right.
But i think that the 2 best from each group realy are „better“ ... so those 8 Pianos belong to that „ruling class“
4 voters
Voted
Voted
i would respectfully disagree, it all depends on the criteria you are judging by ( ie: NOT instinct ) and of course an amount of subjective taste according to individuals prefered music styles etc etc. for instance, in group C, I spent a bit more time on assessing the recordings, left it and returned to it a few times with fresh ears. plus I tried to pick sections of the piece that were further on in to change perspective. personally I was listening for stereo placement of the low and high octaves , as it would be with a decent stereo recording under the lid of a piano rather than in a room and i was listening for how distinctly the low end strings and hi end could be discerned in that mix. I was relegating recordings that were obviously using nice reverbs to disguise the lack of tail on pedal off sounds.. though of course those might be a preference if you want low space or ram useage!
My blind choice, in the end, was the first recording, the sampletank Miro which only got two votes. second was the favourite and winner. the actual runner up sounded like MUD to my ears .. so it was a surprise outcome for me. I think i have consistently voted for so called losers up to now so I am becoming more convinced that the voting is very subjective and people, understandably, have ENTIRELY different tastes and uses for piano samples.. for me I want the most realistic to start with so I can apply my own fx, ambience and character.. others may want a shortcut to a nice sounding piano already in an acoustic space even though that is less flexible. it doesn't mean they are better just more useful in that context.
so in the end its not really a world cup as usually one hopes that each referee on the field is playing by the same rules.. i'm not sure that can ever be the case here..
very interesting experiment, so thanks TJA for taking the time to set it up.. i guess i better have a go at round D and see if i can keep up my losing streak!!!
not so easy now you have shortened the recordings
i was mainly using from aprox 3 mins 37secs in where it gets slower and easier to hear individual notes..
anyway.. voted ... COME ON YOU 19!!!!!!
@RockySmalls I did not shorten nothing. The samples should all be at 1 minute and 58 seconds. So i am not sure what we are talking about.
About your former posting, i will reply shortly.
Voted.
@RockySmalls. I appreciate what you are saying, and maybe you are right but I beg to differ. Under the conditions you apply
A Stradivarius could lose out to a much lesser instrument in, say, a Cajun fiddle off. Especially if you are a local used to hearing less than perfect violin playing and sound quality. In fact that fiddle, in that situation, is superior to the Strad, but no one would deny their lack of equivalency. Similarly with a piano, a perfectly tuned Bosendorfer will not stand up to a slightly out of tune upright for honky tonk playing. Still... Well, you see my point.
I guess we look to set standards of sonic fidelity. For me it is very simple to decide at least with 4 as opposed to 17 pianos. That was a strain. I look to hear a bass that is not muddy and has clarity of individual notes within chords. I gravitate toward a high end that is not tinny and a middle that is rich sounding. Mostly I want to hear clear notes without a lot of overriding resonance, that stand up on their own, and blend with others while maintaining their individual character. Of course there are listeners, such as @bigdawgsbite who apply much more stringent parameters. I am not sure why the capacity to produce all frequencies accurately does not necessarily indicate the best piano to our ears. Perhaps a group of parameters must be applied. Perhaps something about sound modeling is ultimately different from acoustic valuation.
Anyway, even in this context of music layering musicians, it still feels right to judge one or two the best, because, frankly, it is a lot of fun!
Yep, wasn't easy. Just had to give up and submit something
well, my view is that a perfectly tuned Bosendorfer can be recorded well or badly, indifferently or, indeed, just differently. We aren’t listening to pianos. we’re listening to recordings of pianos that are then being re-recorded yet again, a well recorded and sampled Upright would be my preference to a cludge job on the best Bosendorfer in the land.
but then I am not much of a footy fan..
you’re right, the ‘appropriate’ instrument for certain music will always be best. I’m not sure I am getting where you ‘beg to differ’ from me?. your criteria seem remarkably close to mine and yet its probable that you selected entirely different pianos ( err... sorry.. sample kits )
acoustically it is going to be well nigh impossible to reproduce accurate resonances from inside a piano for a chord when using samples, unless you somehow have every possible chord recorded and have an algorythm to play that recording when those notes and then you need to..... arrrrgggghhh... the complexities are never ending. even completely dry individual note sampling with impulse responses applied afterwards might not get anywhere near an authentic sound. I don’t think we can get what we would ideally desire, even an advanced attempt at physical modelling, when it comes to ios, might not be able to cheat the ears enough.
upshot is... I don’t personally think the best sample kits are getting through.. but I can’t think of a way that we could even establish which are truely great except in VERY specific circumstances , BUT I think, at least, that most of the really terrible ones are being eliminated..
in the end, i presume , the purpose of this exercise ( apart from the fun and discussion it generates ) is giving a vague guide to which apps are actually worth the money ( probably all of them given this is ios and they cost peanuts compared to the late 90s and 2000s options we had ).
I remain of the opinion that this is more of a talent show situation than a World Cup
actually I revise that opinion! in the world cup sometimes a good team will have an off day or hit circumstances that are not favourable to its particular style and be relegated.. so ..
see you at the semi final I’ll be the one with the REALLY annoying vuvuzela samples blasting out loud!!!
weird!! the previous ones ( at least group C ) seemed much longer,, hang on let me check.. yes, yr right they all come in at 19mb !! ? jeez, wonder if I was listening to the right clips?? that might explain why I am consistently making contrary choices!
no need to reply to what is fundamentally just my personal opinion or indeed me thinking out loud.. I don’t think it is possible to make foolproof test environments, scientists try all the time and the results are often debunked later on when someone like the amazing Randi works out how they can be skewed. I still think the end results will be helpful to a great many people.. even myself.. if the ‘top dog’ turns out to be relatively inexpensive and sounds good to my ears ( plus possibly au, fingers crossed ) I may well jump in there.
Well, @RockySmalls. It can get rather complicated. I only differ in that I think one can tell a better iOS piano from a worse in terms of a standard set of criteria. Maybe those criteria should have been laid out in this poll as to what it o look for in a great piano sound.
What we have here, I guess, is a vote of popular appeal as to what sounds better or worse.
Since my votes sync completely with the mob so far, then purchases of the pianos chosen here for first and second place should pleaseme... unless RC275 isn't one of them!
I made my first recording with the Ravenscroft last night. Unfortunately I have no sustain pedal where I am for the summer, but still it performed great to my ears and no crackling. Will post the piece when complete.
@LinearLineman . this Ravenscroft thing sounds like it could be a nice thing to have.. pondered it last week when it went on sale , alas I have pondered too long and it is back at 35 smackerz!
i will make do with routing midi to iaa korg gadget ivory grand for the moment.. not because i imagine its the best.. just a whim purchase and the only thing i have access to that might be ‘of a certain quality’ at the moment.. be interesting to see how it fares in the tournament? it’s not been knocked out yet has it? did it even qualify, being so sandboxed in Gadget?
exactly... better for yr ears? better for your wallet? better for yr sanity when setting up midi routing?? better velocity sensitivity for the subtle players amongst you??
it’s not an arguement that Cecil Taylor would ever have got into!
@RockySmalls, Nor Willie the Lion Smith, nor Thelonius Monk.... John Lewis, yes.
ah! John Lewis.. love the soundtrack to Odds Against Tomorrow ( and the film itself ) masterpiece of tense minimalism.
is he still around and rocking it in ios land??
ah no! left us 2001..
Both Ravenscroft and Ivory are still contained
We need some more votes in this last group
Could you check, what exactly you did hear at?
Voted! 🎹
10 voters:
6:5:3:3 sorted by number of votes.
Good enough to finish this?
Well... feeling impatient, I'd say yes, but let's wait another 8 hours (I'm gonna get some sleep)
We have closed previous groups with less people, but maybe we should wait a little bit more...
Winners for the knock-out rounds:
Piano 40: 6 votes
Piano 19: 5 votes
The winners stay anonymous for now.
Loosers:
Piano 27: 3 votes
Piano 32: 3 votes
The loosers were:
I can’t believe my two favorite teams lost! Totally overwhelmed! 😥
I went out and found that (Group C rejected) "Piano in 162" that I preferred over the others.
It turns out to be a free SFZ file. It's a huge sample (4GB download). I had to use BitTorrent to get it for free otherwise they wanted a $4 donation for a direct download which I'll pay if I use it going forward.
I added it to Auria Pro as another piano and it competes well against the other pianos there.
BUT IT"S VERY QUIET. I have to use a compressor on it to pull it up to the levels of the other
pianos in Auria Pro.
I don’t know the piano you mention, just listened to it in previous group, but the best piano soundfonts that I found are the ones in this website:
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
Some of them are pretty big, but they sound really good...
Thanks. I discovered that site when the creator of the biggest piano sample there
wrote here and mentioned his project. The 15-layer Yamaha C5 sample set.
This "Piano from 162" was recorded by a college student at Arizona State. It's pretty clean
and you get 2 pianos - one dry (called Close) and the other with reverb (called Ambient). I'll probably delete the reverb one and use a quality effect for that.
My personal favorite for solo playing is still the Colossus. But if I need extra RAM I use RC275 or the iGrand (which has held up pretty well over the years).