Piano VSTs with weird high overtone feedback
I don't really know how to fully articulate the problem it's so odd, but I will try.
I have tried to record a piano part the past couple days, first using noire, then grandeur, now Alicia's Keys all with the same problem. I am plying an Eb chord above middle C, and there is a sharp high overtone ring that happens that almost sounds like feedback. It only happens on that chord and specifically when I play the Eb. I noticed when I played the recording back on my monitors, it happens in my headphones as well. It does not happen in any other range or chord. it appears a little with g minor with the Bb as the third, and Eb in second inversion with that Bb as the bass (below middle C), but the root position Eb chord above middle C triggers it. It is very loud to the point that its almost painful if I am playing consecutive Eb chords with the pedal down.
No other VSTs have behaved like this, I switched to an upright piano model like the gentleman and I did not notice. It is oddly only the concert grand style pianos. does anyone know what this harmonic feedback like trigger could be???
Comments
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this is a small example, with some weird distortion.
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It might be an eq boosting those tones. Also a reverb can resonate like that. Do you have any other effects going that the instrument goes thru before you hear it. If not, I would look for something that you're not aware of. It could also be your hearing, There's a sine sweep in the users library, you can run that and see if certain tones sound loud. Try the sine sweep and see what happens. It's available here> https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/13971/
I play piano too and not to get off the subject but you might like FM12's sympathetic resonance for sampled piano's. If you blend it well, it can add a lot of color to the resonance, my piano really sounds sterile and bland without it running. Well, let me know if you find something, my ears do that sometimes when I have fluid in the ears. Hopefully that's not the problem. https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/15333/For my piano I like the last patch in the sympathetic resonance.
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thanks for the answer!!
I will definitely check out the test. I don’t have any effects on the channel but maybe there is something within the VST in the eq or room settings?? Did you get a chance to hear my short example? I should have included it with the post but I left it in a comment right below!
thanks for the piano suggestions and techniques! I too find myself really wanting more out of somewhat sterile piano sound! Tech has come far but I still am missing a lot of life in them! FM12 is something you add on the channel with the piano on it? I don’t know much about ways to add realism but that sounds like something worth looking into!0 -
I listened to the piano, it sounds balanced for the most part, you keep playing the same high note. Is that the loud one? It sound like it has your playing it louder. I think the sine sweep has a slow speed on it, you might run that while playing the loud notes on the piano and see if the volume jumps on both of them in that area. Just make sure there are no effects on the sweep. It constantly drops in volume as it sweeps but it will still jump in volume is some filter is boosting that area. Um Fm12 is a VSTI, not a VST, so it's not an affect. I usually put in on another track and run it parallel to the piano so it needs to receive the same midi as the piano. That makes it easy to blend in. I usually just copy the midi part for the piano onto FM12's track. My daw won't let me send midi from one track to another so I have to do it that way. There's a sound sample in the users library. The first sound is fm12 playing some standard fm sounding piano, the second one is a sampled piano with it blended in. I run it a very low sample rate like 12k and it's ok when your using it for sympathetic resonance. There's not much high frequency content in it and you can get 40 voices without much cpu. So you haven't found any effects yet that could make your piano loud in those areas yet. Seems like some effect is on, maybe it's in kontakt's reverb or eq settings. Somethings gotta be doing it, I take it you turned you speakers off when you tried it with headphones. Try the sweep with the headphones it should be a smooth fade out as it rises in frequency, that one also has a pink noise source the drops in volume, I use that to check the balance of headphones and speakers. You might insert it where your piano is just to see if it does the same thing. If it does, there's probably some plugin in your audio chain. Divide and conquer, something will pop up.
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thank you for listening! it is not so much a balance issue, but that weird feedback I am getting with the Eb. I am purposefully repeating it and voicing it louder to activate the ring! its not so much an amplitude or specific frequency response, but more the sharp feedback overtone. It is a little hard to hear it at quiet volumes but I would say it sticks out when listening at normal levels, very apparent in monitors or headphones. It is odd, I actually first noticed it while tracking in headphones, so that leads me to believe its not a monitor problem. I then listened to it in the car and on my phone confirming it was within the session not the playback. I did a test session where I only have a stereo piano instrument track with the piano inserted, No processing or plugins leading ,e to believe it is the instrument itself. @Jeremy_NI any thoughts? its weird it only happens on some piano vsts and not others.
thanks for your Fm12 explanation! I will very much enjoy experimenting with some of the guidelines you gave! I will do some more tests on my end and try to figure out where that feedback is coming from!
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I was under the impression all of your piano's did this. If it's only on certain one's, it's most likely the sample itself. That usually happens when the hammer felts are worn too deep and when the hammer bounces off the piano string it scrapes the string and produces overtones. Some notes do, some don't, those that do have the hammer hit where the harmonic is on the string. You would think a sampled piano would at least have new hammers. What your describing is the sound piano's make with broken or cracked sound boards and poorly maintained hammers. If it's only one string, they may have used that same string for three notes. Nothing worse that a poorly sampled instrument. lol Have fun
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I agree with Studio - most likely to be the samples. If you can't edit the instrument (no spanner in the top LH corner) there's nothing you can do.
My Clavinova (CLP480) has a similar problem - a couple of notes with a different resonance from the rest. Not immediately apparent, but obvious after playing for a few weeks. Unfortunately you can't edit individual notes on this machine.
If you have got the magic spanner however you can probably fix it. First listen to the raw samples in the Wave Editor to check that they are actually responsible for the resonance. Then do a spectral analysis of the samples - if your DAW can't do this, Blue Cat Audio do a VST (Freqanalyst) which will give you a spectral audio graph you can compare with other nearby notes. (e.g. the Spitfire Audio clarinet has one single nasty metallic-sounding note which you can easily see on the graph is due to greater prominence of the 3rd harmonic (12th) compared with the other notes.)
If you can identify the frequency of the unwanted resonance, a simple notch filter should fix it.
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thank both of you for your insight!! This is helpful for me to learn! I am still really new to a lot of this VST stuff. All that makes sense to me, especially when you have the metallic sound with the prominent 3rd harmonic. One more question, if it’s the sample, why does this happen on grandeur and Alicia’s keys both on the Eb above middle C? Is it Odd that two VSTs have the same weird frequency/distortion problem? I could see one but both having the same feedback on the same note, what are the odds?
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Recorded with the same mic? Interestingly, each Spitfire clarinet sample is supposed to have been recorded with 3 separate microphones in different positions, close, ambient, etc. And all 3 samples of that particular note have the same resonance problem.
Maybe some expert will be able to tell us whether even the best microphones always inevitably have their own resonant frequency.
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Same note on both of them huh. Well, perhaps both keyboards use the same samples. Is Grandeur made by the same company, if so they may have used the same samples. Can you make a recording of the same note on both pianos. There is something else it could be, I'd have to look it up but there are several undamped strings on the top octaves of many pianos. It's possible the Eb note stimulates those open strings. That's what sympathetic resonance is. Lower notes do that too when the sustain pedal lifts the dampers off the strings. It might be what it is, I'll have to remember that if I ever sample a piano. I prefer pianos with the same overtones on each note for most things. I played on a tack piano once, at first I thought my ears were playing tricks on me. Then I opened it up and there were tacks stuck into the hammers. lol I think ragtime music or something out of the roaring 20s' used tack piano's.
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I tried to play around with this note and the piano libraries you mention. I don't notice any issue but I assume it's because I'm not really a piano player. The weird thing is that it seems to be an issue on several piano libraries that have been produced at different points in time. I've also tried disabling the reverb in all of them. Have you tried that too? Does the resonace/distortion also happen when not using the sustain pedal?
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I was looking around under the hood and thought the same! I disabled all the reverbs and stereo width and anything I could think of that would be causing some frequency clash. I also reinstalled it a couple times but those didn’t seem to work. It happens as a single note without the sustain pedal or with a chord, but the sustain and extra harmonic content definitely seem to make the metallic ring (I don’t know what else to really call it) more pronounced.
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Have you listened to the raw samples in the Wave Editor?
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I captured this on the piano track with the Alicia's Keys NI VST (the one with the frequency ring). I am still fairly new to this. I know what I am looking at, but not exactly what I am looking for to explain it! sorry if its not what you asked!
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Boy Nick, that is loaded with harmonics. It's most likely the way the piano sounds. I think every instrument has it's ups and downs when you think about it. I have a bass guitar and the Db is dead. When I play it the whole body vibrates. I think that means the body is reflecting out of phase harmonics right back into the string. I also have a Guild semi hollow body guitar with a dead spot. I think you should ask the piano manufacturer if that can happen. The good thing is the piano strings are sampled individually and it should be possible to use the strings adjacent to it for the sample. Just detune the exchanged sample. I think you said there were a few notes around it that did the same thing. Chances are those are using the same sample just detuned. You should be able to go into the Kontakt forum and get some guidance on how to do that. From the looks of that sample it probably sticks out like a soar thumb. As bad as it is, I wouldn't attempt to eq the sample itself, too much work but swapping samples might be easy as pie. Can you tell us if the same sample is used for two or three notes?
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