- Product: Pianet T
- Developer: Martinic
- Version: 1.0.4
- Format: VST, VST3, AAX, CLAP, AU
- Requirements: Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.9 or later
- Source: https://www.martinic.com/en/products/pianet-t
This is the new Martinic Pianet T, and it’s a genuinely beautiful-sounding instrument, though there are things about it worth liking and a few things worth being unsure about.
Starting with the practical stuff: this is the VST3 version, and it doesn’t give you anything like a real preset browser — you just click through presets one at a time up top. Saved a handful as DAW presets to get back to them more easily. There’s also a fairly basic resize option you can pick when installing the plugin, but it would obviously be nicer to have that resize control from directly inside the DAW.
There are some really nice, especially soft, sounds in here. But when I think Pianet, I also want access to some of the harsher, more forward tones — and what’s missing entirely is any kind of velocity sensitivity control, though I’m getting ahead of myself there.
They call the Pianet an electromechanical piano. It has reeds that get excited by suction pads — the pads snap loose, the reed gets set in motion, and that’s the sound. Martinic modeled both the pickup and the acoustic character of the instrument, and layering those two gives you a decent range, from a fairly traditional electric-piano tone through to something sparklier, almost DX-style.
Going in, I’d actually expected something more aggressive — closer to what you’d get out of a harsher Hohner Pianet model. But if you know your Pianets, this is simply a different model, and it’s easy to demonstrate with Pianoteq, since I’ve got their Pianet demos on hand too. Pianoteq has a Pianet N, which looks to be the same thing as the Hohner contact Pianet, and a Pianet T, which is meant to be the same instrument as the one Martinic’s plugin is modeling here. Putting the two side by side, there’s an immediate, noticeable lack of detail in the Martinic version compared to Pianoteq’s — so many small mechanical noises in the Pianoteq one that just aren’t present here. Tried pulling some of that out through the settings tab — a bit more pluck, a bit more of the unplucked sound — and there was noticeably more reverb baked into the Pianoteq patch too. It’s night and day between them. The thing is, I don’t actually know what a real Pianet sounds like, so I can’t say which one is more authentic. I do know I like the Martinic one better.
There are controls over the harmonics too, and I was hoping to pull a bit more brightness out through those. Worth noting the tuning isn’t set to standard equal temperament by default — it ships on a vintage tuning, though you can switch it over to equal temperament.
Genuinely fun to play, but there are moments where the nuance in velocity response just isn’t there. It feels like not every key responds to velocity the same way — one note lets me reach a noticeably higher, sharper velocity ceiling than one particular neighboring G, which tops out a lot lower than the max I can get elsewhere. It’s not that every note sounds identical — there’s real variation across the range — it’s more that the variation isn’t consistent, which makes it a little odd to play sometimes.
For another comparison point: a preset from AIR’s Velvet, which a lot of people probably already own. That gets you more of the hardness that’s missing from the Martinic version. But overall, I’d still say the Martinic one sounds nicer, especially on the softer notes — noticeably better there. There’s also a “Model T” option in the same rough price range as a close competitor worth a quick listen.
Honest disclosure: I love this plugin. I didn’t even clock going in that it was a Pianet emulation — I just assumed it was some random vintage electric piano — and it has a genuinely distinct sound and feel compared to every other Pianet I tried against it. It’s hard to compare directly to the Pianoteq version, which has more features and probably sits closer to how a real Pianet actually sounds, but as an instrument to actually sit down and play, this one’s nicer.
Tried to make it shine anyway, even with some of these issues — the playability quirks, no real preset browser, and the overall sound maybe not quite matching something like Pianoteq (which is fine, there’s room for that gap to exist). Built a quick track: went with the bright Pianet preset, switched over to the modern equal-temperament tuning, layered in a Martinic bass sound underneath — comes out nice and organ-y, genuinely cool combination. Adding a room reverb onto the Martinic Pianet also pulls it a bit closer to that quality I liked in the Pianoteq version.
So what does that add up to? The Pianet T is a nice instrument to make music with — chill, easygoing — but the velocity limitation showed up again while putting this little beat together. Reaching for anything more aggressive is genuinely difficult to find in here, and a bit more velocity sensitivity would go a long way. I still don’t know how the real hardware actually felt to play. All I know is this plugin leaves me feeling a bit limited.