# Design and Application of the BiVib Audio-Tactile Piano Sample Library
## 1 Introduction
When playing an acoustic piano, the performer is exposed to a variety of auditory, visual, somatosensory, and vibrotactile cues that combine and integrate to shape the pianist's perception-action loop. The present authors are involved in a long-term research collaboration around this topic, with a focus on two main aspects. The first one is the tactile feedback produced by keyboard vibrations that reach the pianist's fingers after keystrokes and remains active until key release. The second one is the auditory spatial information in the sound field radiated by the instrument at the performer's head position. Binaural piano tones are offered by a few audio plugin developers (e.g., Modart Pianoteq ([[https://www.pianoteq.com/](https://www.pianoteq.com/)]([https://www.pianoteq.com/](https://www.pianoteq.com/)))) and digital piano manufacturers (e.g., Yamaha Clavinova ([[https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/pianos/clavinova/](https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/pianos/clavinova/)]([https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/pianos/clavinova/](https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/pianos/clavinova/)))), but they have limited flexibility of use. Free binaural piano samples can be found, too, such as the \"binaural upright piano\" library, ([[https://www.michaelpichermusic.com/binaural-upright-piano](https://www.michaelpichermusic.com/binaural-upright-piano)]([https://www.michaelpichermusic.com/binaural-upright-piano](https://www.michaelpichermusic.com/binaural-upright-piano))) which however offers only three dynamic levels (as opposed to the ten levels provided by the present dataset). More generally concerning the presentation of audio-tactile piano tones, the existing literature is scarce and provides mixed if not contradictory results about the actual perceptibility and possible relevance of this multisensory information [8]. Specific discussions of these aspects have been provided in previously published studies, regarding both sound localization [30] and vibration perception [12] on the acoustic piano. As a notable result of these studies, a digital piano prototype was developed that reproduces various types of vibrations [20] including those generated by acoustic pianos as an unavoidable by-product of their sound production. Across the years, this research has resulted in the production of an extensive amount of experimental data, most of which resulting from highly accurate measurements with calibrated devices. In an effort to provide public access to such data, the authors of this paper present a dataset of audio-tactile piano samples organized as libraries of synchronized binaural sound and vibration signals. The dataset contains samples relative to all 88 tones, played at different dynamics on two instruments: a grand and an upright piano. A preliminary version was presented at a recent conference [31], and has now been updated by a new release containing additional upright piano sounds along with the binaural impulse responses of the room in which the same piano was recorded. In order to use this dataset, it is necessary to take into account the recording conditions and, on the user side, to take control of the rendering system in an effort to match the reproduction to the characteristics of the original recorded signals. For this reason, Section 2 describes the hardware/software recording setup and the organization of samples into libraries for the free version of a popular music software sampler. An explanation about how to reproduce the database is provided in Section 3. Section 4 suggests some applications of this library, based on the authors' past design experiences with multimodal piano samples, and on more experiences that are foreseen for future research.