Mastering Piano

[ÜberTriangle]

This is a stupid question but
How to make piano sound better? I mean all that EQing and compression business. What plugins should I use? Are there other "go to" effects that would make piano sound better?

I am a complete noob in this, sorry.

[soultensionbenjamin]

i use a little plugin called piano one to give me a really good sounding piano

http://www.supremepiano.com/product/piano1.html

[Versilaryan]

I wouldn't recommend compressing a piano unless you have a REALLY terrible recording. Piano's one of those things that just sounds a lot better the more organic you can make it sound.

Any old EQ parametric will work. Your DAW probably came with one. If not, EasyQ is a good one. Highpass the extreme lows away, and then use the EQ to identify frequencies you don't want in the sound, and cut away at them. Really basic EQing.

It's best not to try to force a piano to sound good unless you absolutely have to. If you're using MIDI, just get better samples. If not, try to get a better recording.

[ph00tbag]

Honestly, I treat piano similarly to how I treat voice, just without the de-essing and without the limiting, since piano has a more manageable dynamic range. Basically, make it one of the loudest things in your mix. Everything else can be compressed, and EQ'd, and messed around with a lot, but piano has a big frequency range, so EQ isn't as helpful, and it's dynamic range interacts with its intonation, so compressing it makes it sound bad.

I'd say cut everything below the lowest low, and only cut higher frequencies if the piano is actively crowding out something else in the mix. Like Versilaryan said, only compress if it's absolutely necessary. Finally, have the piano peak somewhere between -6 and -7 dB, depending on what style of music you're making.