Comment by stefanha
13 hours ago
Have you checked out Pianoteq? It is physical modeling and sounds incredible. It even runs on a RaspberryPi of you want.
When it comes to real instruments, Roland ships physical modeling in some of their instruments. They are a mainstream company.
So I think physical modeling is there but harder to get right than recording samples of piano keys being pressed. The results can be been convincing and it's nice that it requires little memory compared to sample based techniques.
I recall seeing a audio technician test some of the modern VSTs and it seemed extremely impressive to me as an amateur.
It's to the point where you virtually put microphones around the virtual instrument and it behaves (according to the person who does it for a living) creates an intuitively correct sound.
Edit: and to be clear this was a demo from before the LLM times so it's something built the traditional way.