We explore the concept of gentle ensemble refinement and the proposed encoding of prior knowledge using three example systems of increasing complexity. We refine a continuous version of the double-well model presented in Ref. 10 and a simple polymer model based on the von Mises probability distribution presented in Ref. 33 using synthetic data. We also refine fully atomistic simulations of the pentapeptide Ala 5 in explicit solvent 10 using data from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. As a simple model system, we define the reference ensemble in terms of a continuous double-well potential given by