MODARTT Pianoteq 8 Standard Edition Virtual Instrument Software Reviews

A pleasure to play with practically no latency, great sound, decent price & lot's of tweek options. Perfect for studio work. Actually FUN to play.

Pianoteq is a fantastic piano sim. Have a number of libraries but this and Ravenscroft 275 are all I reach for. If I'd purchased this first, it'd probably be the only one I own.

If you're just starting out or only want to use presets as they ship, buy the cheaper "stage" edition and upgrade later. That said, this edition is absolutely worth the cost and the learning curve isn't steep at all if you're used to working with synths.

Very good sounding piano sounds and lots of options to tweak the sound to your liking.Would recomend for anyone looking for real sounding piano.

The Technology behind it with the new version 7 software looks very promising.

It is very difficult to get that "Steinway" sound whether it be the New York Model or the German Model.
If you have heard actual recordings of those real pianos you would know what I am referring to.

Samples these days are not going through a processing of a chain of 7 high-end plugins and using 2 reverbs or more rather than just 1 or IR's along with getting engineered with a chain of engineering plugins.
To do that with those thousands of samples might take a few hundred years especially with 1200 samples per note from the Vienna Imperial. Remind me in a few hundred years to check back on them to see their progress.

So it is up to "us" the users/consumers to use multiple plugins to achieve the sound that we are looking for or at least what we are hearing from great recordings of a real Steinway.

Each Piano Library, in any format, can be improved upon.

The Ravenscroft 275 sounds to me like a "midi" piano with added reverb and 1 velocity.
The higher notes sound good with their "hall" like reverb. The low-mids and low notes however need some loving care to fix. But overall it should sound good in a rock track.

A good piano that actually has "velocity" that you can "hear" is the Impact Soundworks Pearl Concert Grand v2.4. It does need some EQ adjustments as every sample has not been "tweaked" but it will give you way better results as far as velocity layering goes.

In all sampled pianos that I've heard its always the low-mids(anywhere from middle C downwards) and the low notes that really need to be clean and polished.

As far as the Modartt Pianoteq version 7, Modartt has definately stepped up their game and this product is starting to shine.

Enjoy and have a nice day!! :)

Monster Piano Player

I know we all have subjective views, but to give Pianoteq 1 star is just silly.

Pianoteq was a good idea when it came out 15 years ago, a virtual piano that didn't rely on a ton of computer disk space and heavy resource usage like the high-end sampled virtual pianos of the time. At no point in its history did Pianoteq ever sound great, but it did provide a good deal of expressiveness and was an improvement over most electric keyboard built-in sounds of the mid 2000s.

Today we have so many great choices when it comes to virtual pianos, and Pianoteq just does not measure up audibly. I've been fortunate enough to perform on a variety of real world-class pianos, and Pianoteq sounds nothing like any of them (or any other real piano I've played for that matter). I've tried tweaking the sound every way possible and I cannot make it sound close to passable. It has an unpleasant "metal" sound, particularly in the middle register. Play a bass note at high volume and you'll think someone took a wrench and whacked it against a garage door spring.

All that said, I do occasionally include Pianoteq in my practice regimen. One of its selling points is its expressiveness, and I do agree it does provide a good deal of that, as well as a huge amount of tweakability to the sound profile and effects it can produce. But how much tweaking I've done, the sound that comes out is not something I would ever consider using in a recording or live performance.

If you have a low-end computer or laptop that can't reliably deal with a modern fully-sampled virtual piano and are just looking for something to practice with and don't mind Pianoteq's high price tag, it may fit the bill. Look elsewhere, however, for a virtual piano that sounds like an actual real-life piano.

I've tried every piano software that claims to have been sampled or modeled after a Steinway and this one is the least accurate of all. The signature Steinway tone you except to hear is not there at all. It's extremely bright and digital sounding, as if you're playing a digital keyboard, regardless of how many hours spent tweaking the sound. If you know how a Steinway sounds and want to emulate one, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by getting this software. Don't waste your money.