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The ABF World Cup Piano App Competition - Grand Final [WINNER ANNOUNCED !!]
For all piano (apps) lovers, here is the last round for the 3 contenders regarded as the best sounding piano apps :
- Ravenscroft 275
- Ivory American D
- Pure Piano
For this last round, we will listen to an Italian Polka by Rachmaninov, transcribed and performed by Vyacheslav Gryaznov and recorded on a Diskklavier in Yamaha's XP MIDI format (1024 velocity levels).
This brilliant piece features fast staccato passages in the high register as well as legato in the medium and occasional bass notes.
The 3 versions have been rendered so that sonic results have been equalized as much as possible regarding overall loudness, frequency content and reverb. The 3 versions are given in random order and app names are hidden (for now).
To get a precise ranking, I propose to give each app a mark of between 1 and 3 points.
If you like all 3 pianos equally, give 3 pts to each. If you dislike all of them, give each 1 pt.*
But please assess every piano. Elsewise, it could be difficult to calculate a valid result.
(*obviously, there is no point in voting if you can't discern at least 2 of the 3 pianos)
At the end of the poll (in about one week), I will unveil the names and give the average mark of each piano app.
Comments
Damn there sure are some good pianos to choose from now for solo playing.
All of these are better than most digital pianos... but you have to play them for a while
before you notice that they just don't sound real.
These have moments when it sounds like the piano is breathing... is that pedal noises being
exaggerated by the reverb? You have to listen for anything that doesn't sound like a vibrating string and you'll probably hear it. The samples are so clean you can hear it.
Damn, I ranked exactly as the majority. I guess this isn’t so subjective after all.
Can you hear that soft rumble sound in the mix? Is that the pedal mechanics rumbling
in the reverb?
No, I listened again and could not hear what you perceived. I did notice the absence of sympathetic resonance, I think.
It's a little subjective I think, but overall I think there is a definition of what a "good" piano sounds like that is universal to most poeple. After all you can easily here if it's out of tune or a honkey tonk.
Interesting, I'm not agreeing with the majority on no. 2. I'm working on a video comparing those three in features etc. for casual piano players. So I'm pretty sure that I can tell with one it witch by now, but let's see. Video will be ready in a few days, my dishwasher disturbed the recording yesterday. Unbelievable how loud those things can be on a recording.
It is subjective to an extent. It's also interesting actually playing them on a decent piano keybed in terms of the 'live' response you get from them. I had a play around with Ravenscroft and Pure this way. Ultimately I came to a conclusion that they were both very pleasant to play. All preferences were nuanced and really depended on the style being played as to which I preferred. I worked with the presets although I'm sure with enough tweaking of the settings it would be possible to get them extremely close. Either way it's great to have some decent sounding pianos at our disposal.
Indeed, on piano #1, I can hear at the very beginning a resonance or sustain noise. But I can’t comment for the while. Knowing the names of the apps, this could give hints and bias the votes...
I am waiting for this video. It will be surely interesting !
Yes, here we are only assessing each piano sound-wise.
But the pleasure to play, the response of the piano creating the sound in real-time under your fingers is also crucial. For me, it counts for 50% of the requirements.
By the way, I contacted e-instruments this weekend to give them my feedback and they are very kind and have a great support. I think they really listened to what I had to tell and, if I understood well, they are likely to add new features in the future, in response to their users feedback.
The MIDI file being used does an excellent job of putting these "show horses" through their
paces. This guy, Vyacheslav Gryaznov, can really play with precision and nuance. I should Google for more details:
@McD, yes, a great performance of a difficult piece. It’s amazing what ten fingers can do in the right hands. 😉😎
While we wait for enough votes... here's all 3 pianos mixed together. There should be a subtle "chorus" effect when you do this... can you hear it?
If SoundCloud makes me eat any more cookies I'll weight 600 lbs.
Those Russians sure can write, huh?
For anyone still bored check out piano wars #1.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/20334/the-piano-poll/p1
Yeah, I have had the same idea 😆
Stacking 3 pianos together...
The result is a bit... blurred, but not uninteresting.
Yes, a bit of a mush, @McD and @Paulo164 . Still, this is pretty wonderful stuff for the humble iPad. 95% of listeners, myself included (maybe... there’s always something a little homemade with iOS... which I like) could not distinguish it from a studio recording. That’s progress!
Also I noticed none of the pianos got hung up on the fast passages like in Paulo’s first test. Something was amiss.
That is a puzzle. There are a lot of fast passages in this "road race" of a piece.
I used Garage Band to make my recording after @Paulo164 send me the a project to render the "Korg Ivory American D"... Garage Band is pretty cool but I don't think it let's to export
MIDI you make... there's was something weird about it that I have forgotten.
I hope more people vote so we can see the results.
I think all of these sound very good with this MIDI file, but I gave a slight edge to #3.
Yes... #3 is taking home the trophy for sure, IMHO. Unless someone games the system with new accounts. Thankfully none of these apps a Trump branded. He gamed the Fortune magazine list of richest men according to Michael Cohen's book using an IT specialist from Liberty University to provide "votes". Then he gamed the IT specialist by not paying for the services.
😄 that’s just pathetic
The stretch from around 0:30 was most illuminating for me. There’s a certain sweetness to #3 unmatched by the others. I voted with the majority. Thanks @McD.
1- no, too plinky yet too distant, give it a 1
2- nice, sweet high notes, give it a 2
3- more reverb than the others will give it an edge in the competition, loud high notes early in the piece sound artificial, overall I like the tone very much, give it a 2
I think sweet sums it up nicely. I suspect sweet in a piano is a nice clean and rich mid- range tone. Excess highs make for brilliance and excess lows can show power but excess middle spectrum is pleasant and warm or sweet.
I started it but @Paulo164 finished it with this amazing MIDI performance. He collects classical MIDI's and has an excellent ear for piano fidelity. I've learned a lot in this process and enjoy the collaboration and community of piano music lovers.
@Paulo164 did you get this from this site? Looks useful for getting nice midi files:
https://yamahaden.com/midi-files/advanced-search/14269
Can those xp files be played in any midi file player etc or do they need some special system of their own?
Quite possibly as they correspond to tenuto markings on the piece where the pianist is likely pedalling. In any event they don’t sound realistic. Perhaps you could check the midi for CC 64?
Yes, Yamahaden collects MIDI files in XP format (a Yamaha proprietary format encoded on 1024 velocity levels), hand-picked by Yamaha themselves to showcase their Disklavier technology.
XP format is encoded on 1024 velocity levels (ie. 10 bit, so somewhere between the 128 levels of 7-bit standard MIDI and the 16384 levels of the 14-bit High-Res MIDI). Thus it is much more detailed than the standard MIDI, provided that sensors are accurate enough to reject the noise error under 1 bit of precision.
Regarding file import, I just dragged and dropped the MIDI file inside a GarageBand track (you have to import it before from within a GB menu but it's very easy).
However, as I import these MIDI XP files in GB, I don't know if GB maintains this accuracy or truncate it from 10-bit to 7-bit precision. To verify this, we would need to route GB MIDI output to a specialized MIDI monitoring tool.
Maybe other DAWs behave differently.
I passed the Garage Band file into Logic, exported the MiDI file and moved it to my iPad. I loaded the midi into Atom 2 and scanned it midi out with Midi Spy and did not detect any CC’s but I recall MIDI Spy not showing CC’s before. I need to download midi wrench but I’m out and about for the first time in over a year after vaccine. I’ll check later... need to Google CC=64 and Tenuto
Ok 64 is the sustain pedal which I’d expect is in use. MIDI Spy should show them... weird.
I hacked up a midi logger in Mozaic and it also doesn’t display any CC data.
Or find the source here: https://piano-e-competition.com/midi_2009.asp#H (scroll a screenful up to catch Gryaznov).
The Rachmaninov link goes to a Midi file. Or download ZIP archives for Standard Midi and Yamaha XP Disklavier formats.
@Paulo164: Do you have an instrument that can play the Yamaha XP MIDI file format?
No, unfortunately...
Except Disklavier, I don’t know which keyboard can nowadays. I think keyboard makers that want to achieve higher resolution lean toward high-res MIDI format.
However, I sincerely doubt that 16384 levels can be faithfully rendered unless sensors be very expensive. Who knows if high-res MIDI keyboards just capture standard velocity-levels then upscale into high-res format without adding any real details ?