Yes, I am very sorry for being so late - I saw the promotion mail myself the night before yesterday, then I made a quick decision yesterday to go for it, and then I spent a while playing around with the new features ... and then I got the bright idea that there could be more people interested in this deal.
I have been thinking of upgrading for a while, but the price seemed a bit over the top to me before. You can still discuss whether it is wise to pay twice as much in order to get an extension of the functions in the Stage version. Well, after some tweaking and adjusting I do not regret my upgrade. It is real fun to be able to move around microphones and resize the whole piano, which are two of the new features you get here. Still, I believe you have to work quite a lot before you can fully use all these new features. I have no idea how to work with some of the sliders ...
I am quite sure the promotion will come back, they usually do ... or there is a new release on its way.
As a short conclusion so far: if you want Pianoteq just as a "toy" for your own pleasure, then the Stage version is just perfect. If you want to publish some of your recordings on the Internet, for example, then the Standard version is really interesting as it offers so many more parameters to work with. You can always try the demo ...
When it comes to live performances, there is no doubt that acoustic pianos still are superior. But when it comes to recordings, I'd say that virtual pianos like Pianoteq now are amazingly close to the real thing, and it is SO much easier to handle. I think it is very helpful to me to hear my own playing in different settings - from a distance, from the "audience", in different rooms, on different pianos and even at different tempi. That gives me a lot of new perspectives.
Pianoteq discount