How to reduce the Steinway D-274 harshness ?

[SamFromOttawa]

hi everyone i'm a brand new Synchron piano user and this is my first post.

First of all i'm not a musician by any stretch of the imagination, playing Piano is just something that i enjoy doing when i have free time, and the best acoustic piano i've ever played was a public Yamaha babygrand so take everything i'm going to say with a grain of salt. (also i've never heard a Steinway in person, only through videos and audio recordings)

But that being said i've been trying the Synchron Steinway D-274 for about 2 days know and my only issue with it is the sharpness/harshness of the mid to high register, when playing softly it doesn't seem to be present but not even playing in ff just playing in f or right below that it becomes really brittle/pingy it starts having this metallic quality that is really unpleasant to my ear, i should also mention that i'm going after a player perspective so i'm using either the condenser or ribbon with a little bit of room mic for color, when soloing the mid 1 mic for example that harshness is almost completely gone so i assume it has to do with the condenser/ribbon/tube being very close to the hammers.

Now to what i tried doing to fix it, 

First thing that seem to get rid of that is reducing the midi sensitivity to -15 to -20 but the issue with that is that it's not fixing the problem but hiding it because when looking at the very useful velocity curve what it's doing is just making it harder to get to the f and ff range which get's rid of that harshness because it's like you're playing softer, and i like to be in the ff register when really digging in so the midi sensitivity isn't a solution for me

Second thing that is the Obvious solution here is EQ, now thanks to some EQ on the Condenser mic i've managed to get rid of that metallic cold harshness by adding a high shelf cut of the highs starting around 3.25k with -10db, to my ear it also gets rid of some presence which i don't like but i can live with, but i don't know if i'm going about this the absolute best way, i guess using the 4th band with a peak EQ cut on the right frequency would be better but my ear is not good enough to find that frequency, which is why i'm writing this to all the much more experienced people on this forum.

what are your methods for making the Steinway sample sound less cold and metallic when played close to the f to ff range, how do you make it more warm and mellow without sacrifing too much presence, i remember seing a video of guy that had EQued the hammer hit frequency from each key individually but i can't find that video again..

also it would be probably helpful for me to show you the kind of sound i'm working towards for your suggestions to be easier, 

if you skip to minute 1:30  you can hear how even when he digs into the keys it never sounds cold/metallic, i'm also curious to know what mic combination would be the best to achive a similar sound.

Anyway sorry for the long post, and thank you for any suggestions you may have !

[buz1984]

You might be after the delay control.  The samples are well aligned but playing everything stacked does have a certain kind of punchy/resonant character.  If you move mics apart it not only creates space but reveals aspects of the tone.  The downside of messing with delay - potential phase issues, which will manifest differently across the range of the instrument.  But if you do it carefully (you can solo mics which are close together) it seems an essential part of the process.

Also did you try Smooth Attack?  No idea what it does but it seems kind of magical around 10-20%

[SamFromOttawa]

hey thanks for your input, i based my preset around the Player factory preset so it already had the delay set and i do agree that having them all stacked would be an issue but i'm only using the Condenser and Mid or Condenser and Room with the factory delays so i don't think that's an issue, i also already have Smooth Attack at 20% it's subtle but nice, although if you read the description it says that it only affects the attack for low velocities which is not where my issue lies, so far the EQ i described in my first post has gotten me 85% of the way there i just wish i could optimize it more so that i don't loose too much brightness

[buz1984]

Ah sorry.  That was the main thing that helped me but sounds like you have that sorted.  

Hmm since nobody else replied, have you tried instead using a dynamic EQ on that frequency range?  A few dB seems to take the edge off and of course you don't lose as much presence.  Not a perfect solution but effective for sure.

[SamFromOttawa]

I ended up messing around with the EQ for a whole day and i found one that works really well to give the Steinway some warmth and mellowness without losing too much presence, the high shelf eq i tried first cut too much presence for my liking and it made the piano sound a little muffled so after a lot of trial and error i found that a Peak eq cut at 9k is the magic number, then you can change the GAIN/Q controls to choose how mellow you want it to sound, at the moment i'm running -11.5 gain and around 0.70 to 0.90 Q, i'll try to attach screen shots of both my old and new Eq if i can figure out how to do it on this post so that people can try them. 

[murphy761]

@SamFromOttawa said:

I ended up messing around with the EQ for a whole day and i found one that works really well to give the Steinway some warmth and mellowness without losing too much presence, the high shelf eq i tried first cut too much presence for my liking and it made the piano sound a little muffled so after a lot of trial and error i found that a Peak eq cut at 9k is the magic number, then you can change the GAIN/Q controls to choose how mellow you want it to sound, at the moment i'm running -11.5 gain and around 0.70 to 0.90 Q, i'll try to attach screen shots of both my old and new Eq if i can figure out how to do it on this post so that people can try them. 

 

Hi there. I'm doing something similar, EQ-wise. The middle up to ~C5 is always pretty bonky and strident. I think we're basically employing a de-esser effect. The other places these pianos need help is ~250 Hz and 700 Hz. It's all pretty manageable, including deactivating the close "condenser" mic and pulling the most distant "room" mics way down, using only the UAD Console to insert a plate reverb to keep the processing load outside of Synchron, VEP7, and the DAW.  What I can't fix is a few unisons that were out of tune when they were sampled.

[Olivier W.]

Hi,

i Would no change the EQ. But the velocity map. Seems that robot capture to much FF /FFF velocity layers. Seems to have well equal velocity capture between keys, but not behave like a pianist finger.

(if i compare with a lot of hamburg Steinway i've tried)

With default velocity curve, when i play PP , I ear Mf, et Mf ->FF

So the best is to Try this velocity Fix, (The idea of the Robot was fine, but not calibrated like a human player)  :

Regards,

Olivier F.

Inside velocity file you can copy/past this too :

{

    "data": "[[0.0,1.0],[0.232742,0.757794],[0.485207,0.652278],[0.769231,0.479616],[0.879684,0.326139],[1.0,0.0]]",

    "id": "velocityMap"

}

Velocity-D-274-FIX.velmap.zip-1696492684335-00sml.zip

D-274U0020StandaloneU0020VSLU0020PlayerU0020optimised.vsynpreset.zip-1696492684335-3wo47.zip

[MikeR1154]

Seems like you've found a solution that works, but here are a few other options.

Stephen Limbaugh posted a preset in the Synchron Pianos User Patches sticky thread that I believe includes some per-note EQ to reduce the hammer noise on the Condenser mic. It should be at the end of the first page of that thread, Posted on Fri, Oct 11 2019 03:17.

I don't use the preset as a whole, but I usually copy his settings for the Condenser mic. There are a few notes that still have fairly pronounced hammer noise and could presumably use additional tweaking of the EQ, but I don't use Condenser enough to bother attempting improvements.

Similarly, taking the per-mic EQ from the Intimate preset can be useful (and otherwise applying Player settings).

Of course the easiest way to remove that harsh, metallic hammer noise is to get the Full version and use Ribbon and/or Tube instead of Condenser.

[Boy]

@SamFromOttawa said:

hi everyone i'm a brand new Synchron piano user and this is my first post.

First of all i'm not a musician by any stretch of the imagination, playing Piano is just something that i enjoy doing when i have free time, and the best acoustic piano i've ever played was a public Yamaha babygrand so take everything i'm going to say with a grain of salt. (also i've never heard a Steinway in person, only through videos and audio recordings)

But that being said i've been trying the Synchron Steinway D-274 for about 2 days know and my only issue with it is the sharpness/harshness of the mid to high register, when playing softly it doesn't seem to be present but not even playing in ff just playing in f or right below that it becomes really brittle/pingy it starts having this metallic quality that is really unpleasant to my ear, i should also mention that i'm going after a player perspective so i'm using either the condenser or ribbon with a little bit of room mic for color, when soloing the mid 1 mic for example that harshness is almost completely gone so i assume it has to do with the condenser/ribbon/tube being very close to the hammers.

Now to what i tried doing to fix it, 

First thing that seem to get rid of that is reducing the midi sensitivity to -15 to -20 but the issue with that is that it's not fixing the problem but hiding it because when looking at the very useful velocity curve what it's doing is just making it harder to get to the f and ff range which get's rid of that harshness because it's like you're playing softer, and i like to be in the ff register when really digging in so the midi sensitivity isn't a solution for me

Second thing that is the Obvious solution here is EQ, now thanks to some EQ on the Condenser mic i've managed to get rid of that metallic cold harshness by adding a high shelf cut of the highs starting around 3.25k with -10db, to my ear it also gets rid of some presence which i don't like but i can live with, but i don't know if i'm going about this the absolute best way, i guess using the 4th band with a peak EQ cut on the right frequency would be better but my ear is not good enough to find that frequency, which is why i'm writing this to all the much more experienced people on this forum.

what are your methods for making the Steinway sample sound less cold and metallic when played close to the f to ff range, how do you make it more warm and mellow without sacrifing too much presence, i remember seing a video of guy that had EQued the hammer hit frequency from each key individually but i can't find that video again..

also it would be probably helpful for me to show you the kind of sound i'm working towards for your suggestions to be easier, 

if you skip to minute 1:30  you can hear how even when he digs into the keys it never sounds cold/metallic, i'm also curious to know what mic combination would be the best to achive a similar sound.

Anyway sorry for the long post, and thank you for any suggestions you may have !

The EQ you adjust for each mic affects all 88 keys, and while you've fixed the harsh mid and high register, it's also undercutting the brightness of the low register too. Did you know you can go to the Edit page to set the EQ for individual keys? You can also use ctrl or shift to select multiple keys that you wish to adjust at once.

[Andreas8420]

Hi!

We highly encourage everyone to experiment with the available tools on the EDIT tab of Synchron Pianos Player.

- Velocity Curve Editor
- Dynamic Range
- Midi Sensitivity

Everyone is using a different master keyboard and prefers a different feeling. Choice of music style and a human's preference also plays a part in this. Save your desired velocity curves or the entire instrument as user presets to have them at your fingertip.

Best regards,
Andreas

[Rafa Ferreira]

I felt the same. Definitively, it's about velocities.

Try this, just a few clicks away:

My velocity map