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Update info for owners of the Pearl Concert Grand

Rudianos said:
It says a lot about a company and an owner for them to keep updating this years after the fact. Love it!
Click to expand...
+1 – From memory there were some issues with the Hall mics having white noise in numerous samples. Haven't checked but it appears to have been fixed given the files 'PEARL Concert Grand__24bit006.nkx' and .nkc have been replaced (totalling over 2GB).

Just had a quick play with the Close and Stage mics of the 2.4.2 update and remembered why I like this sampled piano so much – it has a three dimensional image and great presence to the tone.

One point to note: switching on the re-pedalling button disables the release samples. Not a huge deal, but I remember checking with Andrew Aversa at Impact Soundworks and he confirmed that this was due to a limitation of the scripting:

PEARL_GUI.png
 
CGR said:
+1 – From memory there were some issues with the Hall mics having white noise in numerous samples. Haven't checked but it appears to have been fixed given the files 'PEARL Concert Grand__24bit006.nkx' and .nkc have been replaced (totalling over 2GB).
Click to expand...
Not fixed.

Terrible noise on Hall NON sustain samples above velocity of 97.
Its beyond my mental capacity to understand how they don't see/hear this, I can only assume the developer doesn't use his own product.
 
Hendrixon said:
Not fixed.

Terrible noise on Hall NON sustain samples above velocity of 97.
Its beyond my mental capacity to understand how they don't see/hear this, I can only assume the developer doesn't use his own product.
Click to expand...
That’s disappointing. I’ve only used the close, pedal and stage mics so hadn’t realized the hall mics problem was still there.
 
Folks: I, along with the rest of our team, are acutely aware of this issue. We've commented publicly on it for years, we've said it in support tickets... we know.

We spend many tens of thousands of dollars in labor making free updates for our products. This year alone I believe we published over 40, including for products over a decade old. Money and time is not the issue.

The issue is that during the recording session, there was electrical noise that crept into the hall mic signal, increasing over the duration of the session. We've spent hundreds of hours (not an exaggeration) attempting every kind of noise removal imaginable to mitigate things and we've been unable to get a better result, which is why our general advice is to turn the hall mics down considerably.

The problem is that it's not just a little bit of noise, the noise is massively louder than the signal - because not only is there electrical noise, but these mics were something like 50 feet from the piano to begin with, which is already an incredibly high-noise-floor scenario.

As companies like iZotope, Acon Digital (etc) keep releasing updates to their noise reduction software we are going to keep trying to fix these samples.

But do keep in mind that the library is perfectly usable if you simply disable the hall mics or turn them down. The close, pedal, and stage mics are lovely and if you're missing the hall sound you can add a distant hall IR.
 
Andrew Aversa said:
Folks: I, along with the rest of our team, are acutely aware of this issue. We've commented publicly on it for years, we've said it in support tickets... we know.

We spend many tens of thousands of dollars in labor making free updates for our products. This year alone I believe we published over 40, including for products over a decade old. Money and time is not the issue.

The issue is that during the recording session, there was electrical noise that crept into the hall mic signal, increasing over the duration of the session. We've spent hundreds of hours (not an exaggeration) attempting every kind of noise removal imaginable to mitigate things and we've been unable to get a better result, which is why our general advice is to turn the hall mics down considerably.

The problem is that it's not just a little bit of noise, the noise is massively louder than the signal - because not only is there electrical noise, but these mics were something like 50 feet from the piano to begin with, which is already an incredibly high-noise-floor scenario.

As companies like iZotope, Acon Digital (etc) keep releasing updates to their noise reduction software we are going to keep trying to fix these samples.

But do keep in mind that the library is perfectly usable if you simply disable the hall mics or turn them down. The close, pedal, and stage mics are lovely and if you're missing the hall sound you can add a distant hall IR.
Click to expand...
I appreciate your engagement in this thread Andrew. Regardless of the Hall mics issue, Pearl Concert Grand is a superb sampled piano, which has continued to be refined and improved since it was released. Still very much a go-to for me.
 
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Mike McCarthy said:
Very nice Craig - sounds like real pedal-down resonance (unless I'm mistaken?).

How do you find the velocity layers - any bumps/jarring transitions?

Nice "bell" tone too - does she bite (in a good way) at higher velocities?
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Yes Mike, it has separate pedal down samples for each mic set. There are 8 velocity layers x 2 RR, so although modest compared to some other sampled pianos, they are mapped to velocity well and also chromatically sampled, so lots of variation in tone and a good dynamic range. The "bell" tone in the upper mids and treble is very appealing in this piano.

It can "bite" when pushed. Here's a Close + Pedal mic mix:
View attachment Pearl Concert Grand 2.4.2-Close-Pedal-FF Chords_01.mp3
 
I'd say the 8 velocity dynamic range for Pearl Concert Grand covers pp-p-mp-m-mf-f-ff-fff
 
love this piano, and the fact that the pre-attacks (as Craig calls them) have been preserved
 
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Andrew Aversa said:
The issue is that during the recording session, there was electrical noise that crept into the hall mic signal, increasing over the duration of the session. We've spent hundreds of hours (not an exaggeration) attempting every kind of noise removal imaginable to mitigate things and we've been unable to get a better result, which is why our general advice is to turn the hall mics down considerably.
Click to expand...
Andrew,

Really, thank you for clearing up what the real problem was/is.
I never seen any public mention of this before, and I followed the big thread about this issue back then.
Also, there is no mention of this on the product page for new customers... unless I miss it.

Anyway, your explanation is 100% acceptable, stuff can happen, not everything is salvageable.
I just wish it was communicated back then to save us all grief.

Side note to those that want to use the Hall mic:
Open another instance of Pearl and just limit the note on velocity to 96.

Really happy this was cleared up because I couldn't recommend this piano to others even though I love it. now with an asterisk I can.:)
 
Andrew Aversa said:
Folks: I, along with the rest of our team, are acutely aware of this issue. We've commented publicly on it for years, we've said it in support tickets... we know.

We spend many tens of thousands of dollars in labor making free updates for our products. This year alone I believe we published over 40, including for products over a decade old. Money and time is not the issue.

The issue is that during the recording session, there was electrical noise that crept into the hall mic signal, increasing over the duration of the session. We've spent hundreds of hours (not an exaggeration) attempting every kind of noise removal imaginable to mitigate things and we've been unable to get a better result, which is why our general advice is to turn the hall mics down considerably.

The problem is that it's not just a little bit of noise, the noise is massively louder than the signal - because not only is there electrical noise, but these mics were something like 50 feet from the piano to begin with, which is already an incredibly high-noise-floor scenario.

As companies like iZotope, Acon Digital (etc) keep releasing updates to their noise reduction software we are going to keep trying to fix these samples.

But do keep in mind that the library is perfectly usable if you simply disable the hall mics or turn them down. The close, pedal, and stage mics are lovely and if you're missing the hall sound you can add a distant hall IR.
Click to expand...
Andrew, this is a very interesting case! We could possible train a model specifically to separate piano from noise. Please send me a PM if this would be of interest.

Best,
Stian (Acon Digtal)
 
In response to the discussion about the hall mics here (I never used them before) I decided to test this out. I extracted one sample and have attached an mp3 showing first the original note with noise, and then a fixed version. So if people like it perhaps Andrew would be willing to allow a revised version. Let me know...
 

Attachments

  • PearlNoiseRemoval.mp3
    697 KB
So I stumble across this page after being fooled into buying this piano plugin. The developer puts out a product that they know has an issue and never mentions it anywhere on the website. Then comments on this page like "oh we tried ...sorry about that" type of an attitude. That is inexcusable. Not to mention some of the bass notes have been horribly sampled! Pretty much the whole octave of c2 to c3 sounds more like a bass guitar than a piano. This is such a shame as the rest of the piano has some fine sampling. If I wanted to have to tweak things and experiment there are plenty of other free plugins I can do that with. That is not what I payed money for though. So if you don't mind having to waste your time processing and tweaking things that shouldn't have to be tweaked then you will be ok, but I expect better than this. Time is too valuable to waste on creating "work arounds".
 
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