But projecting the trajectory of computer development over the past 60 years into the coming decades, it's clearly just a matter of time. We can't yet create an unlimited number of oscillators with today's consumer computers. I wonder if anybody then considered the possibility of what could be done with unlimited virtual oscillators created completely in software. It simultaneously demonstrated both the potential of synthesis as well as the enormity of the task. However, that experiment required no less than 80 oscillators and could play only one note. In the 60's, students at MIT replicated the sound of a grand piano so believable that when played behind a curtain alongside a real piano, audiences could not distinguish between them. I've always felt they were an interim solution. Remember that samples were born out of frustration with the limitations of even the most complex synthesizers, which ultimately offer only a small subset of the many variables that comprise a musical instrument's timbre and behavior. I believe that we will eventually abandon the idea of sampled instruments entirely, at least as they're approached today. Your ears and playing style and other preferences are probably what matters the most. I use AAS products, Pianoteq, but I also LOVE OrangeTree Sample's Evolution Rosewood Grand, as well as their guitars, flute, and well, everything else they make. I will never really understand the math, but I like the results. While I love both types of instruments more or less equally, modeled instruments also load more or less instantly and take very little room on your hard drive than sampled instruments. So if it's an excellent sample, it will sound excellent, but not as "real" as a great modeled instrument because you'll have more variety in the sound based on the player's actions at the moment. The math accounts for this and "predicts" the sound based on what the player is doing, whereas the sample is the sample, and other than loud or soft (to over-generalize) it will never sound different. The reason is that there are so many ways a player can articulate, with varying physical pressure, etc. I looked up the difference a while back, and one of the advantages that physical modeling has is that thru the mathematical algorithms you can have more variation in tone, expression, and many other audio results. And what I took away from all of this is, 1-You can learn something new every day and, 2-It pays to do research, even when you think you know it all! So I guess depending on the instrument many physically modeled programs do sound a lot better than their sampled counterparts.
Pianoteq 6 pan left right software#
But it's the most realistic sounding drum software I've heard. Superior Drummer 3 sounds excellent but it's 230 GB in size. I understand sampled instruments, you take microphones and record samples of each note or drum, and sample it a dozen times at different velocities and setups.īut the more realistic and the bigger variety of sounds you get from sampled instruments, the bigger the size of the program. I don't really understand what goes into creating a modeled instrument (lots of math involved). Also many of my sampled guitar plugins sound more realistic than their modeled counterparts.
I found that Superior Drummer 3, has much more realistic sounding drums than a modeled drum program. The modeled version of GG Audio's Blue3 is vastly superior to many sampled versions. But a side by side comparison with PianoTeq, left The Giant sounding muddy and unrealistic. My favorite go-to Piano plugin was NI's The Giant. physically modeled instruments" and was surprised to see how many people prefer modeled instruments over sampled. Modeled instruments also offer a much bigger variety of ways to adjust the sounds, from simple tonal adjustments to creating new and unique sounding instruments.Īnd secondly, I googled "sampled vs.
Pianoteq 6 pan left right trial#
But I downloaded the trial version of PianoTeq, which features not only acoustic pianos, but electric pianos, and a variety of other stringed instruments, like harps, and even Chromatic percussion instruments xylophones and steel pans. I didn't believe it at first because I always assumed that sampling instruments are actual sounds of a real instrument, and you can't get better than sampling the real thing. First, I read a comment that said PianoTeq (a modeled piano program) was much more realistic sounding than any of the dozen or so sampled piano plugins I currently own. Modeled Instruments: A personal revelationįile this under: You learn something new every day.įor the longest time I always thought that for the most part sampled instruments were superior to physically modeled instruments.