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Piano World Cup, Resume

tjatja
edited July 2018 in General App Discussion

As the Piano World Cup from https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/26407/the-piano-poll-part-2-with-new-samples was won by the Salamander C5 as contained in Auria Pro, I tried to contact Alexander Holm, who created the samples, but I did not get a reply so far.

Worth noting, that his library is at 1.8 GB for the 48/24 version and 1.1 GB for the 44/16 version which is included in Auria Pro.

I repeat some information from the Finale topic:

The Salamander Grand Piano is a large detailed piano by Alexander Holm with 15 velocity layers (16 originally) and long samples.

https://rytmenpinne.wordpress.com/sounds-and-such/salamander-grandpiano

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

At https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u there is a modified version, which is not the same as the original or Aura Pro. Instead it is slightly smaller and could be used in bs-16i

Comments

  • For the statistics look here:

    https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27341/piano-world-cup-the-statistics

    @McDtracy and @LinearLineman are going to add some valuable thoughts and ideas.

  • SOME TECHNICAL DETAILS:

    LAYERS and VELOCITY MAPPING

    Here's what I know about velocity. The midi spec ties a velocity value from 0-127 to every note. So a keyboard app would map some ranges it detects to values between 0-127. A velocity map in the App would align these input velocity numbers with 2 things:

    a sample from a specific layer (softest to hardest)

    layer 1 - velocities from 1-10
    layer 2 - velocites from 11-20
    etc.

    then output that sample with an adjustment in volume to smooth out the jumps from 10 to 21 for example.

    The layers allow the tone of the piano at various volumes to come through increasing the realism BUT they increase the overall sample size (13GB Clossus with 24 layers).

    SAMPLING FIDELITY:

    Samples can be capture in 16, 24 or bits and at 41K, 44K or 96Khz. Colossus is 24-bit at 96Khz. It's a better recording essentially.

    CPU, RAM RESOURCES and DISK STREAMING:

    Larger samples at 96Khz consume a lot more CPU to process. To be processed the sample must be in RAM. Disk streaming means the application loads up enough sound to start any note at any volume. After a note it invoked the additional portion of that sample is brought up from the disk. Somewhere in the IOS hardware there's a buffer getting filled with sound to be played. Miss the update to that buffer for any reason and the audio gets a jump from some value to zero. That is a speaker that is effectively being asked to relocate at the speed of light... not gonna happen. It's going to make an ugly crackle while the buffer starts sending out smoother numeric sequences again that sound like music repeating at some set of combined frequencies.

    Colussus set it's specs on the most difficult set of attributes: 24-bits at 96Khz with 24 layers. It's using all the capabilities of the IOS platform and obviously does disk streaming to pull it off with a 13GB sample set. I also noticed that Colussus doesn't report all the RAM used in the IOS Storage report. The only way to see what it really uses since that report doesn't factor in a lot of app data is to delete the App and look at total RAM usage anf re-install which is an over night process and then check storage use to see the real amounts used. That's the 13GB number as I recall but I now have 6 Colussus IAP's so I ain't gonna check this again thanks.

    AU support. An AU may not work correctly with a DAW controlling the CPU and the AU App being coded to function as a standalone App. The devloper's will make sure the standalone app doesn't crackle but all bets are off with an AU getting the CPU's attention to load more sound before that buffer runs dry.

    NOTE: Auria Pro has a sampler that provides disk streaming and can load SF2, SFZ and ESX24 sample sets. There are wonderful, really large sample sets out there to add to this product. So, glad I bought it for sale at $25 and waited to add Cubasis for $25. They have unique capabilities. Auria Pro owns the buffer and the sampler working well together to keep the output buffer happy and users away from expensive bug reports.

    People want Korg and others to just slap an AU interface on their products and support the users satisfaction. Big companies usually won't take the risk of explaining that all AU's won't work all the time in all cases. It's not their fault. Supplying an AU must factor in the
    consequence of handing control to another App that's scheduling resources and keeping that output buffer full with wonderful planned sounds.

    POLYPHONY and LATENCY:

    We only have 10 fingers so 10 notes at a time should do it right? Wrong. Enter the missing "sustain pedal". Sustain lets the piano string resonate until that pedal is lifted.

    So, great piano apps can offer over 100 notes played in a stereo image (bass on the left and treble notes to the right) for additional realism. Most top end Piano Apps have MIDI Players in the product so a piano can play along with another piano with another piano... to the max polyphony. Some of the entrants in the Piano Poll were just throwing away NOTE events due to limited CPU resources or a lack of polyphony in the MIDI file player. The MIDI Clock never rests for the App to catch up. It just tells the app to make a specific note the next note using time stamps on every note. Miss a note's time stamp and just drop the event. No crackles... just missing chord tones or worse the melody. Still not sure what changed some G#'s to G natural on Contestant #19 (BeatHawk Acoustic). I think it got fixed.

    Colossus specs show 140 notes in stereo and 280 in mono.

    To feel real to the pianist the application has to be responsive. Less than 10 millisecond to be undetectable I think. That means the DAW has to output sound within 1/100th of second. Making that a priority over processing FX or mixing in other sounds to the output buffers.

    I keep sharing the Colossus specs because Crudebyte reports them. Ravenscroft is a bit more circumspect here. They report 883 MB of disk space and not much more technical detail. They solve the problem using a totally different focus: modeling a final sound using a base set of samples rather than the multi-Gigabytes of 24-bit @ 96Khz 24-layer audio wave files. I think the trade-off of pushing more work towards the CPU to use math models is the key to making the piano a good citizen in a DAW with all the other tracks you want to render, record or playback in that one set of output buffers in realtime.

    The Salamander sample set in Auria Pro is closer to the Crudebyte approach but the resource management is in the DAW's sampler. So, it sounds wonderful using great multi-GB wave files and has great tools in the DAW for EQ, Reverb, Compression and velocity mapping.

    "Piano in 162" Library I thought it was a finalist has these specs:

    5GB Sample Library in SFZ standard format (It's also available in Kontakt and Korg Kronos formats)

    It's a Steinway B and not a Yamaha C (Players will tend to prefer one or the other for personal use vs playing live in a combo). Similar to IOS uses in a solo context vs adding it to a complex mix.

    all notes have been sampled, for full duration

    NOTE: Salamander's Yamaha is recorded as A's, C's, Eb's and F#'s and all the other notes are shifted from these recordings at playback

    2 stereo mic positions (Close and Ambient "distant" in the room")

    five dynamic levels (layers?)

    two round robins: a simple way to let sample developers play back a different sampled version of the same sound each time you hit the same key, so that just like most acoustic instruments each note sounds slightly different for more realism

    a separate pedal on and off samples for a true to life sound with realistic sympathetic resonance

    Add in Auria doing Disk Streaming you've got a world class sounding piano. It's just not normalized in the SFZ format so you have to add a lot of compression to use it. The default Compressor in Auria Pro colors the sound too much so you need to upgrade the Compressor. I have my eye on the FabFilter Pro C 2 which just went "off sale". The AUv3 model will probably come out at the same $30 price.

    I try to be good but I always need more Apps...

  • An impressive summary, @McDtracy !
    Thanks for this.

    About the BeatHawk, that may well have been my mistake - i had several times problems with the AU and then initially used the IAA version, and later switched to AU again.
    The last version seemed to be right, but i cannot reproduce what happend.

    Did the Salamander not claim 16 layers in the original version, 15 in the biggest version from that Google site and 6 layers in the smaller versions?

  • A download site for the Salamander Library states 16 Velocity layers Sampled in minor thirds from the lowest A. Hammer noise releases chromatically sampled in only one layer. String resonance releases in minor thirds in three layers. Two AKG c414 microphones disposed in an AB position ~12cm above the strings.

    https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/3

    I think the spec's for the SoundFonts4U version which includes a complete General MIDI sound set as well in some cases mentions 15 layers. Maybe he threw one out to fit it into an iPad capable release.

  • FINAL THOUGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

    If you only want to add a great piano get the Ravenscroft 275 App. It's AUv3 capable and has great controls for EQ, Reverb, "Touch" (i.e. Velocity curves). It seems to hold up well in Cubasis or any AUv3 DAW host.

    Colossus shows AUv3 support but it crashes both Cubasis and Auria Pro consistently. It is great as a standalone piano app and has all the right controls including some rather obscure ones like dynamic Hermode tuning (which shifts the pitch on major 3rds in chords accordingly to make chords sound sweeter. An amazing app but a frustrating AUv3. If anyone has found work arounds for it as an AUv3 please comment here. Setting the latency way back just doesn't seem like the best way to make a great piano. But maybe that's useful for MIDI playback like this test featured. I created the Colussus Wave file for this test and ran the App using it's own MIDI player into a MacBook Pro using USB IDAM and recorded it using Logic Pro X on the Mac. Try as I may I could not create an IOS recording of a wave file just using IOS Apps. I only owned Auria Pro at the time... didn't think of testing GarageBand and now have Cubasis and it can't record the 13GB Colossus Concert Grand. It still didn't win against the Salamander to most of the listeners. To my ears the RC 275 and Colossus sound more like a real piano across all the dynamics of the Grieg. I also loved the Salamander and the "Piano in 162" for these reasons... realistic pianos at all volumes.
    The "Piano in 162" turns out to be a 5GB SFZ library available for free. But it takes the Lyra Sampler in Auria Pro to load it and there's a $50 cost to that so. RavensCroft 275 for $36 looks like a winner in more application cases: solo playing, mixes, etc.

    This has been a real hoot learning more and more about how these pianos get recorded and bring realism to the world of IOS music. Thanks again @tja.

  • Actually, i got a reply from Alexander Holm:

    haha :D nice! Yea I'm still reachable! I just came home from a 3 week sailing trip but yea, I love the fact that people use the piano I once created! I'm not very active on forums these days but I'll happily answer questions if you have any!

    Cheers!

    I was going to ask him about the way he recorded the Salamander, but it seems @McDtracy already found out lots of details.

    Any questions left?

  • edited July 2018

    Great... I would like to know which Sample Library features he choose to focus on since
    tradeoffs are required to balance Library Size with realism. His sample set held off all competitors in the Piano Poll. He must have made solid decisions on the technical approach and had a great piano to start with.

    Did you ever expect to see your work dominating on an iPad? The first iPad came out on April 3, 2010 around the time you recorded Salamander. All the focus was on desktop music. Now IOS can outperform the desktops of that year.

    How did Alexander arrive at the 7 decisions/tradeoffs made to control the overall Library size at under 2GB. Was that size his ultimate target due to computers of that time? Was a 4GB Music Computer the standard target for the library? Now the best iPad's have 4GB.
    With Disk Streaming the Salamander seems to work on 1GB iPads and iPhones.

    1. Specific Sample Notes: It's documented he choose A's, C's, Eb's and F#'s and all the other notes are shifted from these recordings at playback.

    2. How many five dynamic levels (layers?) made sense to him?

    3. Stereo and extra mic positions?

    4. Any round robins of note samples? so that each repeated note can sound different

    5. A separate pedal on and off samples sympathetic resonance

    6. Are multiple wave file options (bit-rate, bit-size) handled as sound file conversions of the best wave recordings @ 24-bit 96Khz?

    7. Is Disk Streaming required for such a large sample set? If not how much RAM do you think is needed to hold the Library?

    8. Newer samples are even recording the sustain pedal mechanical noise and hammer thuds. Have we gone too far adding more data to be processed?

  • AN OVERVIEW OF IOS PIANOS

    Perhaps the most successfully emulated instrument in iOS is the piano. It is surprising since the piano sound seems so complex but very good pianos have been modeled with very small footprints, less than a gb. Compare this with the 13 gbs of the mighty Colossus and you can begin to see the variety of instruments available in this category based on size alone. Prices range from $0 (ironically for the number one pick, Salamander) to $50 for the Colossus.

    Yet there are several other parameters worth paying close attention to. Sound quality is supreme, and in this area, if you are looking for realism you must consider string resonance, velocity layers, sample rates, mechanical effects like damper noise, pedal noise, etc.

    The next and equally important aspect is the playing "feel". This is controlled primarily by the ability to adjust the velocity curve to a place most comfortable for the player. Note that the first place Salamander lacks such an adjustment parameter.

    Finally, in terms of the instrument itself, is the ability to adjust the EQ to the players needs. Some pianos have this onboard with factory presets and user preset save capacity. Again, the winner, Salamander offers only five "brightness" presets. and no onboard EQ.

    In meeting one's expectations with a virtual piano it is important to understand all keyboard controllers are not equal and this will affect the sound and playing experience. The most authentic "piano" keyboards will have a hammer action, trisensor technology and the ability to interpret as many as 15-17 velocity layers. (salamander has 15). Final items are download times (Colossus takes 13 hours to download. Others vary based on size), Au availability, and probably some stuff I have forgotten to mention.

    My own personal favorite is still the Ravenscroft 275, for its high sample rate, relatively small footprint, string resonance, mechanical noises, velocity layers, onboard EQ, velocity curve, reverb, and the ability to save user presets. And it just sounds terrific. ------@LinearLineman

  • Regarding the velocity curve for the Salamander piano, has anyone tried adjusting the velocity tracking dial in Lyra?

  • @richardyot

    From the manual:

    „Velocity Tracking: Controls the degree to which the MIDI note velocity affects volume. By default this is set to have no effect since most samples use the velocity internally, but you can still adjust it for added effect. For example, you could set it so that pressing notes harder makes them play softer, simple by setting this parameter to a negative value.“

    Sounds interesting.

    I did not modify the default.

    Is there a way to check if the Grieg MIDI does contain velocity values at all?

  • Every midi note event has a velocity byte associated with that note from 0-127.

    onicos.com/staff/iz/formats/midi-event.html

    For example on Channel 1

    1st byte Function 2nd byte 3rd byte
    0x90 Chan 1 Note on Note Number (0-127) Note Velocity (0-127)
    0x80 Chan 1 Note off Note Number (0-127) Note Velocity (0-127)

    When the sampler renders the MIDI file it can use different samples for ranges of velocity.

    If you want to go crazy playing with MIDI effects you can also map different velocity ranges to different synth or app targets using something like Stream Byter. Play soft... get a nice pad. Play loud get a brass patch.

    Velocity events are typically mapped to loudness of the note relative to those around it.

    I'm going to have to get that Stream Byter AUv3 app to try pulling up the volume of the "Piano in 162" SFZ in Auria Pro. I put the Amazing Noises "Limiter" AUv3 on it and it does a nice job turning up the volume of that piano. It also has some nice settings for saturating the sound adding tube like distortion which makes a lovely piano sound for playing gently
    and soothingly. It can also be driven into distortion. A nice AUv3 App tool for $3.

  • Excuse my absence from this thread (and related thread according piano app competition)...
    It has been too much to focus on lalely; World Cup in soccer, Synthmaster One, Synth One (free), and now, Affinity Designer for iPad and the great update to Procreate (v.4.1)!
    I wish the days were longer and the nights shorter...

    I must agree that Salamander in Auria sounds terrific!

    Although I prefer Ravencroft 275 when sitting with my iPad Pro and my midi-controller Studiologic SL88 Studio...

    Thank’s guys for a nice job here!
    Love from Sweden!

  • Just wanted to mention @tja and all concerned that there is a Ravenscroft update at the App Store with a pedal noise fix
    ( volume slider added). How cool is that!

  • @LinearLineman said:
    Just wanted to mention @tja and all concerned that there is a Ravenscroft update at the App Store with a pedal noise fix
    ( volume slider added). How cool is that!

    Yep, great news :)

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