Virtual Pianos

ploy · Post by **ploy** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 6:16 pm

due to i´m an emotional slave to the wonderful sound of piano i went into playing it myself. but like too often, the more you fall into something and the more you love about, the more your approach is raising.

the pianos given with the reason (both samplers) don´t fit at all anymore, and i have my doubts on what may be out there freeware-based (you know it by the plug-ins...). therefore, two options came out to be left: steinbergs the grand or native instruments akoustik piano. both of them aren´t too expensive for a buy if they´re really good, but that´s exactly the question: how much´s the difference in quality compared to what´s out there as integrated or additional samples, and what´s the main differences between the two programs?

thanks in advance!

mimesis · Post by **mimesis** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:48 am

well- Akoustik piano sounds incredible. !!!!!!! And supposedly easy to use. Not sure about the grand...

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 11:16 am

I use The Grand right now, but I think I will probably be upgrading to Akoustic Piano shortly. It just flat out sounds better IMO, though I hate to support NI.

Shoma · Post by **Shoma** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 12:06 pm

Ive heard both Akoustik and The Grand...the grand sounds more warm and natural, imo.

Bu the winner would be Ivory ..for mac only

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 12:58 pm

Yeah, I wish Ivory was PC too.

amo · Post by **amo** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:14 pm

Hi,
check that link, it says: windows soon:
http://www.ilio.com/synthogy/ivory/

Cheers,
amo

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:04 pm

It's been "windows soon" for ages now though....

donnydonny · Post by **donnydonny** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:44 pm

http://www.hattrixx.co.uk/showpage.asp?pID=1122507690

"The Ultimate Dance Piano"

robojam · Post by **robojam** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:28 pm

I'm really amazed that neither of the big guns in the virtual piano game have made it to bittorrents yet. That's usually a sign that they're great pieces of software, but no one seems to have bitten yet...

Shoma · Post by **Shoma** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:38 pm

robojam wrote:I'm really amazed that neither of the big guns in the virtual piano game have made it to bittorrents yet. That's usually a sign that they're great pieces of software, but no one seems to have bitten yet...

:phear:

Sartori · Post by **Sartori** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:01 pm

I like The Grand, personally. Nice and simple interface, and relatively small in terms of size (less than 1.5Gb) which might be an issue.

buzzcock · Post by **buzzcock** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 7:53 pm

Trying to buy a virtual piano stinks. There's nowhere you can actually try them out! Here in NYC I've been to the big music stores and none of them have any of these libraries intalled to demo. And since they are sample libraries, you can't download "demo versions" like with other virtual instruments. I'm finding it hard to swallow that I'll have to spend hundreds of dollars on something un-returnable, that I may end up hating. (been though that aready with cubase & logic)

Akoustik Piano has some of the worst mp3 samples I have ever heard, and Ivory's seem a little "masked" or "distant".

If anyone has either of these and could post a mp3 sample with the spacial parameters set to the most "performer perspective" setting, I would be forever in your debt.

Alternately, if someone knows a place in the New York area where I can try one of these things out for myself, that would be great too.

Spacerboy · Post by **Spacerboy** » Wed Oct 26, 2005 11:53 am

Hi,

I would like to make my statement to this point as well:

I tested "The Grand" and i listened to the samples of NIs " Akoustic Piano".
Both sound OK but still far away from a real piano!! And I am even not a pianist.
In my opinion the older Nemesys "1GB Acoustic Grand with Resonance Model" sound by far the best in the lower in the middle and in the higher keys!

Check out the mp3 demo here: http://www.tascamgiga.com/sounds/gpiano.html

By the way, listening to the above mentioned Synthogy - i think this is the ultimate! and its for pc available now!
spacy

rick · Post by **rick** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 4:12 am

There is only one that cuts the mustard: Synthogy Ivory.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 001#204001

-Rick

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 8:45 am

i just bought ivory and i'm knoked out by it, ive not practiced so much in years.

i was tempted by akoustic but was put off by some negative reviews i read on the web complaining that the dynamics are a bit uneven.

i was a bit unconvinced by some of the mp3 demos on the synthogy site, but the ravel piece played on the steinway sold it to me. most of the demos have too much reverb, which is not how you hear a piano when you play it at home. with the reverb turned of and the stereo width set around 50% the illusion of playing a real piano is much stronger.

but be warned, it is a resource hog. it like to be installed on its own drive, so you need to budget for that, and at 640Mb you have less than the minimum system requirement.

take the minimum requirement seriously, it really is a minimum.

having said that, it is fair to say that synthogy are totally open about this. to quote from the manual,

"every system, no matter how meticulously optimized, will be limited by one of these three things - CPU/bus speed - hard drive speed - RAM ... you'll hit one of these when pushing ivory on any computer ."

the progrm is very configurable though, so you can taylor it to your system and still get excellent results, just don't expect to play the 10 layer bosendorfer, with release and soft pedal samples... yet... it gives you something to look forward to, next time you upgrade your laptop, and the six layer samples sound amazing anyway, even without the release samples. also if you render or feeze a track you can go for the maximum quality every time.

but don't let me put you off, it is a brilliant piece of work, well worth upgrading for.

Virtual Pianos

Virtual Pianos

Seconded...