Tips on Digital Piano Volume -how to?

[Michael Fogarty]

 Yes, so I am working on a song with a couple of instances of Omnisphere and other plug-ins. Decide to use my NI Gentleman piano. Somedays it might be Ivory or Ravenscroft. I have to pull all of the Omnisphere performances way down because the volumes of the pianos are so low in comparison. Of course, I can raise the volume with compression but then the piano to me sounds like metal. At low  or somewhat "normal" volume it sounds great and a pleasure to play, but at louder volumes brittle shall we say - harsh comes to mind..

When it comes time for mixing because I have brought the volumes down so low on all the Omnisphere tracks, when I export and look at the .wavs (stereo mixdown) in Sound Forge the overall level is about -29. What is everybody doing to combat this? The answer is not, "oh, it's 24bit so you don't have to worry. Just limit it or raise the volume of the overall mix." Limiting and enhancement sounds great on the pads and synths and basses and drums, but the piano suffers. 
 

[bitflipper]

My best theory is that it's unavoidable due to the extreme dynamic range of acoustic pianos. I can't think of any other acoustical instrument with as great a dynamic range, except maybe a pipe organ. I have experimentally determined the dynamic range of my best sampled Steinway at around 50 dB. 

As to how to address that wide a range in a mix, there's only one way I know of and that's compression. In particular, parallel compression so that you get both downward and upward compression.

 

 

 

 

[Michael Fogarty]

9 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I have experimentally determined the dynamic range of my best sampled Steinway at around 50 dB. 

hi old timer. think I've been seeing your name here for about 25 years if I recall right. What does that quote mean?

Thank you.

[Byron Dickens]

Piano is just like that. Even though it is a very dynamic instrument, it really isn't that loud.

Even banging on the keys, it will have a hard time keeping up with even a small guitar amp. And then it will sound like - well, like banging on the keys.

So really, you have to orchestrate around the piano, mix around it, compress the hell out of it or some combination of the three.

[bitflipper]

17 hours ago, Michael Fogarty said:

hi old timer. think I've been seeing your name here for about 25 years if I recall right. What does that quote mean?

Thank you.

Nah, only about 17 years.

My sig is the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem. I adopted it after a longwinded online argument over sample rates. It means you can argue about just about everything else, but the math isn't a matter of opinion.

[Michael Fogarty]

On 2/24/2021 at 4:18 PM, bdickens said:

Piano is just like that. Even though it is a very dynamic instrument, it really isn't that loud.

Even banging on the keys, it will have a hard time keeping up with even a small guitar amp. And then it will sound like - well, like banging on the keys.

So really, you have to orchestrate around the piano, mix around it, compress the hell out of it or some combination of the three.

this is an excellent answer, though I have had no success compressing the hell out of it. I get this perfect sounding mix using 2 instances of Omnisphere and other  VST's including's Scarbee's Rhodes. The mix is all sounding great but then I put a mastering plug on it like Izotope and all of a sudden the rest of the mix is beautiful and in your face but the  piano is metallic and sounds like hell in my personal opinion. I have experimented with various hi end reverbs but alas. This goes  for Synthogy  Ivory, Ravenscroft 275, and NI pianos. I will go back to the mix (one hour ambient) and set the piano how I like it with the mastering plug and add the other instruments and hope the client is happy with the volume with the overall volume.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Michael Fogarty
clarity

[Michael Fogarty]

On 2/25/2021 at 4:00 AM, bitflipper said:

Nah, only about 17 years.

My sig is the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem. I adopted it after a longwinded online argument over sample rates. It means you can argue about just about everything else, but the math isn't a matter of opinion.

I agree with that. And that's why I seek the help of scientists like yourself.

[bitflipper]

5 hours ago, Michael Fogarty said:

...I get this perfect sounding mix using 2 instances of Omnisphere and other  VST's including's Scarbee's Rhodes. The mix is all sounding great but then I put a mastering plug on it like Izotope and all of a sudden the rest of the mix is beautiful and in your face but the  piano is metallic and sounds like hell in my personal opinion. I have experimented with various hi end reverbs but alas. This goes  for Synthogy  Ivory, Ravenscroft 275, and NI pianos. I will go back to the mix (one hour ambient) and set the piano how I like it with the mastering plug and add the other instruments and hope the client is happy with the volume with the overall volume.

I have experienced this phenomenon often. Most of my composing is done on piano, so it'll usually be the first instrument I record. That piano track then serves as the framework for the song that will subsequently be built around it. And quite often the piano gradually sinks into the background as I go.

A lot of this comes down to frequency masking - the piano is a full-spectrum instrument and as such is prone to being masked by everything else because everything else overlaps with it, frequency-wise.

Consequently, one trick that I often employ is EQ automation. If the song has a piano intro, no EQ will be applied during that part. Later, as other instruments join in, I'll take a whole lot of bottom end off through automation. When the piano is alone, it needs to fill the entire spectrum. But as soon as a bass is added in, it no longer needs to hold down the low end and can be high-passed to give the bass its space. If the backing tracks are lush synth pads (I, too, rely on Omnisphere a lot for such things) that may call for the piano to be thinned even further. It may seem counter-intuitive to ruin the exquisite tone of an expensive piano library, but it's all about what the piano sounds like in context.

If the piano is vastly more important to the song than the pads or strings, consider thinning them instead. Many of Omnisphere's pads are very thick, designed to sound awesome on their own. But mixing is all about deciding which track owns which frequencies and carving out a spectral space for each instrument.

For similar reasons, panning is another trick I rely on. Because the piano is usually recorded in stereo, I like to use the Pan Knob plugin from Boz Digital Labs. Again, if the piano is featured at the beginning it will be panned center. But as I add strings and synths, I'll slowly pan the piano to one side and move whatever elements compete with it to the opposite side. In a particularly dense mix, I might even split the piano track into two tracks and make the first portion stereo and the latter parts mono. As a general rule, mono tracks are easier to mix and keep them distinct.

[marcL]

5 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Many of Omnisphere's pads are very thick, designed to sound awesome on their own.

This is not only an Omnisphere "problem". Many virtual instrument developers tend to make their "babies" sound full and thick to sound convincing on their own (e.g. also many drums plugins). But in a mix you have to cut their frequencies extremely to avoid masking! This makes it very difficult for beginners to use factory presets, because they are not aware of this trouble.

[Michael Fogarty]

thanks bitflipper and marled.