PianoTeq 8 vs Casio PX-S7000. Steinway & Bechstein comparisons. Clickable Video Index in Description 

Keep in mind the main focus: BOTH the Casio & PianoTeq are played at their DEFAULT settings (no added reverb, EQ, etc). EITHER of these can be made to sound much, much better than the other with a few tweaks. This video is simply demonstrating what you get 'out of the box' without making any changes!

I don’t know about Steinway, but I studied for 7 years at Petrof. When I turned on Petorff in Pianoteq, I recognized all its features unmistakably. I have never heard such an accurate model anywhere. This certainly deserves respect, this is a mathematical miracle

Piano teq 8 was a little brighter but tinny while the casio was more full bodied and deeper sounding on every sample. They were close though.

Wow, that is a brillant comparison.

I don't know if any of them are "better" than the others, only "different". Real acoustic pianos are not identical to each other in sound qualities either. I am coming to appreciate how far Pianoteq has come, it's quite good, and not the "toy" I had once thought it was. I've had times when I actually preferred the Pianoteq over sampled sounds. (And I've been playing piano for over 50 years. I've played a lot of acoustic pianos, including concert grands.)

Chuck my opinion they both sound amazing, yet to me the Casio has a little fuller sound more depth 😊

I also have Pianoteq and find that Pianoteq is more responsive to velocity and with all the tweaking possibilities can sound as full bodied as you like

I did find the Pianoteq a bit ‘thinner’ than the Casio samples. I sell both at my store in Toronto and I wish the Casio on board speakers sounded better than they do, to give these samples more richness. I feel the Pianoteq with editing is much ‘richer’ sounding in a recording situation. Great for you to do this comparison Chuck.

Hi Chuck, Just want to wish you and family a merry Christmas and a awesome new year. About the pianos, love them both. With PT it's easy to tweak till you have a satisfying sound. I have many vsts and piano teq gets a lot of use. Updating to PT 8 is a go for me. For the 7000 its a bit of a stretch, but man oh man very tempting to say the least. Maybe the px s6000. Ah, very tempting.

Good comparisons. I own a Casio GP-310 and have Pianoteq. I find that I much prefer the Steinway and Bechstein in Pianoteq, over the samples in the Casio GP-310 (which I think are some of the same sample libraries as you've demo'd here). The Casio is still very good sounding, and it's just a personal preference, of course. However, when you couple the tone editing capabilities of Pianoteq, I find I can really tailor it to my tastes, perfectly, and I rarely use the in-built tones on my GP-310 any more.

Both impress

Nice vid, PianoManChuck! What are your impressions playing the PX-S7000 as midi controller?

It'd be interesting to know how many velocity layers have the Casio sampled pianos.

Thanks!

Both sound beautiful, but it seems like the Pianoteq is missing some tone in the mids and lows. I'd guess if you used the built-in EQ and brought up, say, everything under 500 Hz by a few dB, I bet it'd be a lot closer to the PX selections.

Interesting, Chuck. The Casio 7000 is an interesting package in an aesthetic sense but I hear that its keyboard has the pivot point on an unrealistic position for die hard acoustic piano players - so what's the attraction to you? As to modelling, a piano model started as a set of samples too ... the difference with "sample playing pianos" is in what happens next. As to the Pianoteq Steinway D sounding tinny rather than thin, does Pianoteq have microphone placement options? I know you went for "default" - and that's fine. And, it's clear that you route the Casio as MIDI into Pianoteq, so I presume that the audio comes from the computer running the Pianoteq app - which drives me to the question how the audio path between the two differed in the instrument to RU-vid zone for each.

Pianoteq is cool but in this particular video to me the casio sounds fuller and more rounded.

it'd make you think, how did Casio come up with the Bright version? Is it by tweaking its sample? (by passing through a "brighten" filter)... also by the way Chuck, the modeling can also be thought of as "decompressing"... like, when a photo taken by the smartphone is 5MB, it can be compressed to 200kb... how does it do it? One way is to think of a line in the photo, and then instead of storing all the pixels, try to simulate it by 256 coefficients in front of the sine and cosine, etc, so it may look something like 252 sin x + 387 cos x + 118 sin 2x + ... (it has been many years since I learned it so I forgot the exact form, and it seems you can also use e to power something to do it (where e is about 2.718, which is the natural logarithm base)... but this is the idea... so modeling can be done by the above, which is called Fourier Transform... so it is less of Algorithm but more like mathematically calculation to get the wave form desired. Some sampling does not compress the data so it is huge like 25GB... some compress it so that it is 4GB or even 400MB... modeling can be thought of as: compress it so much so that you are using 4MB of coefficients to re-create all notes

I think this is not a fair comparison because Pianoteq sounds best only after it has been calibrated to your keyboard. I have a MODX8 and I like the piano samples that it comes with, but since I calibrated Pianoteq to this keyboard, I only want to play it using Pianoteq 8. After calibration, it has a more authentic piano sound, but without calibration, my keyboard and Pianoteq sound dull.

Do you have a stock of the PX-S7000 in white? How soon will I receive it?

Casio Berlin version very impressive

They all sound good to me but, there's something weird about the mid harmonics of the samples vs the models. Those mid range samples create odd harmonics within the triad chords. Not really distortions but this sounds almost nasally to me. The "thinner" sounding PT8 models have almost no odd harmonics in the mid range, but lots at the bottom like the Casio. This seemed consistant in all the samples. If playing the casio solo, then filling the mid range harmonics space can be pleasant, and maybe necessary. In a live band situation or recording I can imagine things getting a bit muddy during certian playing styles.

I think that you can hear those strings sounding in real one

PianoTeq sounds compressed in all pianos.

Hi! I love the Casio S7000 and Pianoteq and trying to marry them as best I can. My burning question for you is 1. is pianoteq playing through the Casio speakers or through separate speakers/monitors? 2. If playing through the Casio’s speakers - how have you achieved this. The reason I ask is that I was overjoyed when it seemed that the Casio’s bluetooth module could take midi from pianoteq and play it through the Casio’s speakers but then all hopes were smashed by the horrible latency which makes it not a workable option. I then tried buying a Yamaha bluetooth module and connecting USB host to my ipad and Pianoteq sounds and works great through headphones but the option to play pianoteq audio through the Casio’s speakers are lost. I only get that option with the latency ridden Casio bluetooth module. Such a shame! I see Roland does nice looking bluetooth module but I’m afraid to buy it and be left with 3 expensive adaptors none of which work the way I wanted… Wish someone else has found the answer. I could of course add separate speakers/monitors but I just love the simplicity of playing through the Casio ones even if the sound quality takes a slight hit. I know the Casio speakers are capable of awesome sound as the stock sounds aren’t bad at all as you have demonstrated. Thanks and looking forward to your reply!

I am a fully convinced Pianoteq user. If there is any tendency to sound `thinner’, I would think it is due to PianoMan Chuck’s amplification / loudspeakers setup. Remind you that Pianoteq is used in many cinematic applications, etc. It will be impossible to acquire all those accolades from those music makers…! This test should be done in a more controlled manner, such as line out from Casino compared to line out from the sound card, all thru the same amplifier / loudspeakers.

Between these 2 Pianoteq quite obviously sounds better to me.

Pianoteq sounds cleaner.

PTQ8 as fun as it is to play with has still the same metallic dry sound . The Casio which is just a mid range DP beats it easily in this good comparison . Fuller sound, deeper bass. PTQ8 is simply a slightly revamped version of version 7.5 . At some stage Modarrt will have to completely rewrite it, as the current product cannot compete anymore with the top sampled software ( Garritan, VSL, NI Noire) . The only way to get a decent sound out of PTQ is to use it in a DAW with a good reverb and EQ or at a minimum use a good IR Impulse in the native interface which you can do now on version 8 but it is just a trick to disguise the pig;)

first

Okay this is going to be easy! PianoTeq8 is in my opinion, blatantly so superior to the Casio sound, you might describe the listener as numb, dumb auditorily and emotionally , shut down if you can’t hear the harmonics and the resonance of even Chuck’s first pick up note. PianoTeq8 sounds rich, melodious, full and blossoming to me, (as a $243,000 handbuilt 9 foot American or German should be) and the Casio’s sampled sound still has that clink, cluck, and pluck sound resident in it…… Casio without a doubt has made major and huge strides in sampling and with their affiliation with Bechstein for their new keyboard action in their slab keyboards. (I believe that’s who they’re consulting with) And they’ve also made great strides in their MSRP from the early days of $499 to now over $3000… Is that accurate Chuck, you should know you sell these?. Perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY-is, 95% (majority )of working pianists/keyboardists will not go the extra mile to build out a comprehensive system to capture and project the complete magnificence of what all the new sample packages and especially MODARTTS physically modeled pianos can produce. In my own journey, I’ve gone through 24 master keyboards, digital pianos and now have arrived at what will last me on any professional gig quite some time. A ROLAND A88 MK 2 controller with the RME Babyface Pro with 1.4 ms of latency at 48/32 bit.. And “4” I-loud MTM powered speakers. My laptop is basically a thunderbolt 4-- designed PC with 3 TB of storage. I run 2--MTMs in lateral mode above the piano (controller ) and 2 in portrait mode under the piano (A88mk2) firing up at my ears. I have multiple stereo audio output pairs I can send to the house, monitor wedge manager and to my own system and anybody else on stage… Folks the game has really-really changed. When Steinway America and Steinway Germany endorses and approves a physically modeled digital replication of their handbuilt $243,000 pianos, I would say you better pay attention and heads up. But as I said in paragraph 3, most people who claim their pianist/ keyboardists are way too comfortable sitting in Starbucks with their lattes, and listening to RU-vid tutorials like Chuck’s. And come way too quickly with their snarky comments either pro or criticism. I mean how would you even know besides what you hear through your cheap little earphones and $.89 iPad speakers how these programs “really” sound. You gotta get in there, fall down hard get up quick, skin your knees and elbows up a little if you really want to know how great this stuff really is. This means you’ve got to be really using it either in performance, in the studio, on the concert stage, in the practice room or in your living room but really going for it. So congratulations to MODARTTS PianoTeq8 geek squad of total brilliance and for lack of a better word Steinway and Sons humility to recognize, accept & endorse 21st century genius. Now we all need to become better comprehensive musicians and create compelling music to lift each other and our cultures up higher.