Ableton Forum

Let's have it fellas. What's the best grand piano sampler out there and why?

A grand piano I believe. It just sounds realistic.

Ambioun - Techno Man wrote:A grand piano I believe. It just sounds realistic.

yeah... as long as you've got an acousticly treated recital room and a few grand to spend on mics

i'm planning to treat myself to a decent sofrware piano module.
from the reviews that i have seen the choice seems to be between ivory and akoustic, i'm thinking of ruling out akoustic because of the silly spelling.

opinions of existing users would be most appreciated.

i got a real piano from a church a few month ago ,i paid £50 for it ,
you can have any vst you want it will not reproduce the quality of a real piano ,even if the room is not acousticaly treated .

Sure there's nothing like a real piano. But it is hard to record. So unless you have the room and the mics, a sampled piano is probably the way to go. The question is how picky you are and how much else you've got going on in your mix.

I'm considering a piano VSTi myself - but I've also used the free Splendid soundfont. If I remember correctly it comes in both 72mb and 256mb flavors (or is that another one...?). There has been demos on a few music mags - something like a 3gb Bösendorfer or whatever. With limited velocity layers, no release velocity and so forth. But still... Compare that to what was available only a few years ago!

Oh, well... I could use a few pointers myself!

Cheers,
Mikael

another advantage of the vst version is that you can take it with you on the bus (:

All of these piano libraies sound ok inside a recording, because that's what they are- recordings of an actual piano. This is fine for people who want to get a pinao sound on their tracks, and don't want the hassle of mics/space constraints, etc.

It is another matter entirely for those who want to use them for live solo performance or even just to practice at home. The shortcomings are obvious for all of the libraries I have tested.

So while you may not be able to tell the difference between a sample and a real piano litsning to recordings, you sure can while you are playing them.

All depends on what you need it for.

Ivory sounds really good and I really like it. The East West Bosendorfer 290 is a really good option as well.

Well I've always preferred the sound of my piano over samples. But who records piano in audio? Is it even practical? Coldplay or anyone else i would imagine uses midi. Am I wrong? I'd like to try a vsti for strictly recording purposes.

Synthogy Ivory. 10 velocity levels per key, release samples, soft-pedal samples, modelling of sympathetic resonance, almost every parameter can be tweaked (e.g. proportion of hammer noise), 40GB library (Bosendörfer, Steinway and Yamaha).

Simply breathtaking. Previous version had 8 velocity levels. I thought it was unbeatable... but the extra 2 velocity levels really make a difference.

See this earlier thread too...

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ight=ivory

-Rick

silly me - i just posted my reply on the wrong thread.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28274