> They often sound like they just got a midi file of the score and played it back through a piece of software. I'd say it's more than likely they did play the

> They often sound like they just got a midi file of the score and played it back through a piece of software. I'd say it's more than likely they did play the piece themselves, just it's often done by individual piano players that don't really know how to record piano digitally effectively. They're pianists, not sound engineers, after all. Often you'll find recordings of the default piano patch built into their digital pianos, or you'll see them using low quality VSTs or good ones that they simply don't know how to get the best results out of. Hell, even if they're recording a real piano, they often don't have the best spaces, the best equipment, or even really know what they're doing. There's a lot of bad recordings done in good spaces as well. A sort of glimpse into recording piano from a wonderful pianist, Nahre Sol, can be found on her youtube channel [1]. It's really hard to get right, even if you're an excellent pianist because ultimately, recording engineering is an entirely different field of expertise. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzSef7k-BKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzSef7k-BKs As far as filtering out the low quality stuff... is there even a reasonable way to do that? It seems wholly subjective. You could probably create a filter for recording labels that are known to put out good classical music recordings like Deutsche Grammophon and the like if you only want professionally recorded music.