Hi,

I'm looking for a new piano library to record a wide range of styles from classical, jazz, pop to cinematic. I currently own the following libraries :-

-Embertone: Walker 1955 Concert D
-Simple Sam: Signature Grand
-NI: Alicia Keys, The Gentleman, The Giant, The Grandeur, The Maverick, Una Corda
-Sonicouture: The Hammersmith Free edition
-Orange Tree Samples: Rosewood Grand
-Modartt: Pianoteq 7 Pro

Of these libraries that I own my favourites are the Simple Sam Signature Grand and Embertone Walker 1955. However, there are a few things I'm not keen on these libraries :-

-Embertone: Walker 1955 Concert D - The overall sound is a little lifeless. Weak low end
-Simple Sam: Signature Grand - Noisy Samples. Weak playability

Ideally I'd like something that can offer the best of both worlds that gives me a lot of tone customization. I've had a quick look around and I like the demos of NI Noire, CineSamples CinePiano, Sonicouture Hammersmith Pro.

What would you recommend?

Have you tried Keyscape?

I haven't tried Keyscape because of its price.

UPDATE -

I've just picked up Noire as someone was selling it at a really great price!
I have to say on the brief amount of time playing it I am really enjoying this piano a lot.
The basic pure tone is with a lovely richness, clarity and great body and offers a different sound to any of the libraries I currently have. However, the amount of control you have over customizing the tone is way beyond any of my other libraries with the exception being PianoTeq. This allows me to get a very wide range of tones even before you start adding the Particles Engine!
I do find Noire less lifeless than Embertone Walker 1955 and the samples definitely have less noise than the Simple Sam Signature Grand.
Looking forward to trying out Noire on a few projects over the next few weeks

I picked up Woodchester last summer. I really like it. its different from the others and really good.

DickieFunk,

Its impossible to deduce what you have in mind and what kind of tone, you would be satisfied with, cos these things are based on culture, and your own personal experience, and personal preferences.

There are however a couple of objective things that are somewhat easier to, dare I use the word, measure, evaluate, be confident about, in comparing piano sample based libraries.

1. Obviously Cost - and from the tone of your initial request, you are definitely thrifty and value for money is key.

2. Opportunity to hear these sample libraries played by others, and preferably by a good number of demonstrators, so you can reduce your risk of buyer regret and the potential for feeling bad about your purchase. This is especially important in today's world, cos with software and data based products, predominantly, the sale is final, and unlike a hardware keyboard, you cannot return the product. (well there are a few exceptions - see below).

3. Reputation - Its a bit difficult for a large number of people (and I do not here include "paid" endorsers and celebrities, but ordinary folk who have not been paid to promote a product, and their genuine feedback is relatively unbiased - partly why you ask this question on GS.

4. Product Reliability - how stable is the product or the sample engine such as Kontakt used by the product, and what is the likelihood that any bugs will be fixed.

5. Playability - In your case as an accomplished musician, I assume you will be playing these samples and recording them into your projects or live on stage, rather than looking at a score to create the MIDI, so it would be really important to have the velocity mapping between your keyboard and the sample layers in the library, well adjusted to each other. Generally the sample libraries with more layers, do much better to enable a seamless timbre transition between low velocity and high velocity, and where you are able to also make adjustments to this velocity mapping, to better suit your controller keyboard, the genre of music, you wish to create, as well as your own personal touch preferences - which sometimes changes over time as you become familiar with the sample library, this ease of velocity mapping adjustment is an important usability feature, that can be compared.

6. The sound - how well were the samples captured, free of undesired noise, and what effort has been made to provide decent sounding pre-made microphone mixes, so that you can be up and running from day one, or are also able to have a good number of microphone positions captured, that allow you to mix your own custom sound, that best fits each of your projects, purposes. I mention this cos you speak of the need to have a single piano or set of pianos which can adapt. A lot of this ability to adapt the sound of a piano, revolves around the availability of multiple microphone positions, which the end user can tweak, to taste. This bonus is both a potential advantage, as well as a potential nightmare in the hands of those who really have limited skills in mixing, cos with great power comes the need for great responsibility. Some tools are the opposite of Noire, which you have since acquired, which has no additional microphone positions, and only a choice of a normal and a felt set of samples, which may just be what you need, if you like the sound and can use some of its other controls to achieve what you have in mind. The microphones and recording chain used, have an important contribution to the sound, and any ambience controls provided, such as algorithmic or convolution based reverb, will also add their own flavour to the dish.

When it comes to the sound of a sampled library, one has to think of context, and by this, I mean the age of the piano, cos piano sound has significantly changed as more modern methods have been developed over time. For example if one wants a Steinway D sound, there is not one, but a variety of tones, depending on the time of manufacture. A 1905 Steinway will not sound the same as the similar model manufactured in 1990. A Yamaha will not sound the same as a Steinway or a Bosendorfer.

Are you seeking a grand sound or an intimate sound like an upright?, do you want lots of ambience or very little? Tuning and consistency of tone - do you want a perfectly tuned piano, or one with a few quirks left in, to avoid it sounding like a machine? The beauty of any man made instrument is that it is not perfect, and these imperfections make it sound even more natural and authentic to the ear.

I give an example, in pop music you probably want a perfectly tuned even temperament, low dynamic range kind of tone that will punch through and compete well with all other sounds. In jazz, you may prefer a more rounded tone with less attack, and more sustain or less sustain, according to the kind of tone you have in mind for the piece.

As an example there is a stunning really unique piano tone on this recording, which is absolutely perfect for the piece, a genuine Steinway
D, but this would not be suitable for some kinds of music, with its amazing rounded minimally percussive tone. By the way this is one recording/video that stuns be every time I hear it, music from another world, outside of what is considered popular but its amazingly good music and musicianship/recording and mixing.



Classical music would need something a bit more dynamic and percussive

Next would be trad jazz,

On the other side of the piano tone spectrum would be highly percussive tones, used by people like Joe Sample, Chick Corea, Hiromi.

And on the really percussive other side would be the kind of pianos used by Elton John, or Coldplay, where its all attack and less sustain.

This is already a long post, and I still have many thoughts unspoken, so I'll follow up in the next post

Part 2

Dickiefunk, I hate to preach to the converted, as you are a seasoned musician, but I think you must define, for your self at least, what kind of tone you need, and thankfully unlike real acoustic pianos, many of the sampled pianos today, provide additional features to, within limits, alter the tone somewhat, so you are not stuck with one tone and the same library can support a variety of intentions.

But you must define the median of the tone you have in mind. What manufacturer, ideally model, from what age? At least narrow it down to some range, then pick the one you prefer the most. The more research and direction you have in mind, the higher your chances of finding something that will be value for money, maybe even for a lifetime. In a similar manner to purchasing a real piano or a digital stage piano, research, research, trial, recommendations, and ideally no impulse buying, cos unless there are time constraints, as in this case I sense there is, better to buy once and buy right. We have all done the impulse purchase, especially when tempted by a low budget constraint/too good to lose price, and regretted it.

The good thing is that today, we have youtube, and there are a good variety of accomplished players, with different styles and different gear - such as different controllers, and their own sensibility and whatever the constraints of their monitoring environment and personal preferences, that when you see the same piano demoed by four or five different people, and some of these are pretty exhaustive reviews, you get a good sense of preview of each piano. I suggest rather then GS, which has difficult to decipher verbal opinions, that cannot be translated into anything sonic, the following Youtube channels, are some of the better sources for getting an independent view of a good number of piano libraries

1. Merriam Music

2. Simeon Amburgey

3. Gamma1734

There are others, but I highly recommend these. A good thumb through of their many piano reviews and demonstrations, should help you eliminate the sounds you definitely do not want, and narrow down to the sounds you do want, and based on further audition, you come to a conclusion.

The advantage of these three reviewers is that you will find they have at various times, reviewed the same piano products, so from a triangulation of their reviews, which are pretty frank and insightful, as well as the audio of their playing, you get a really good fix on what you can expect the piano to achieve for you, if you bought it yourself.

I would also add, I think when it comes to certain kinds of opinions and reviews, especially of something that is better heard than described, Youtube tops the bill. Its so much better to hear the audio for yourself.

One other advantage of the Youtube reviews, is that the audio from the virtual piano is recorded digitally directly into the recording, and with only a bit of degradation by Youtube's audio compression algorithm, you get a pretty close impression of exactly how these samples will sound in whatever listening environment you listen to Youtube on, so if you hear these over your well known to you - studio monitors, you can be sure that's how they will sound when you play them yourself, no surprises.

Must stop here and break the rest of this to a Part 3. Next post.

Part 3

Dickiefunk.. Ok we have established that there are methods to reduce the risk of purchasing something that you will regret buying, and improve the chances that what you purchase will be suitable for you.

A few of the sampled piano libraries allow you to demo them 100% fully functional, before you buy.

The two I am aware of are :

1. Waves Rhapsody (and the other electroacoustic pianos from Waves have this same feature, but we are focussing obviously on acoustic pianos here) - with a 7 day demo license - you can install using Waves Central, and fully demo Waves Rhapsody which is a sampled Fazioli, and see what you think of it.

2. At the top end of the scale, the most expensive piano libraries in the world, from Vienna Symphonic Library. You may be able to obtain a demo license which lasts at least a week, so please contact them and explore this possibility. You will need to purchase a hardware dongle - a USB key (or if you already have a dongle for a Steinberg product, that will be all you need). A new dongle is about £20 or less, including postage. And hopefully if you can obtain a demo license there are at least 6 well sampled pianos from VSL, which you may request to demo.

One of the final issues with piano libraries, which I have already mentioned is proper matching of MIDI velocities from your keyboard controller to the sample layers in the product.

With a digital piano, there is a greater opportunity to improve this matching, since the keybed and samples are provided by the same manufacturer, and developed together as part of the same product.

With samples, they have no clue what kind of controller you are using, and what your finger strength is. The wild wild west. This mismatch is responsible for the vast majority of issues with sampled libraries.

For most piano sampled libraries, there is no way to set the velocity mapping independently, so that every time you call up the piano, you do not have to again set this mapping when you use it in another project. Sure the mapping is saved in whatever DAW project you used it in, but this becomes difficult to transfer to another project, unless you use intermediaries such as saved presets in your DAW.

I have been using an amazing freeware tool, which is available for Windows and Mac, called PizMidi - google it, and download the most recent version, which comes from 2012. Within this collection is an excellent MIDI plugin which you place before your piano plugin, called MidiCurve, and with this you can set your preferred MIDI velocity mapping curve, and save this as presets, for each piano library, independently of whatever mapping tools are provided in each library.

The advantage of this is rather than have different methods of adjusting MIDI mapping, across various piano libraries, you use just one, which you become most familiar with, and better at using, and the same skillset is applied to ALL your piano libraries, typically you create one preset for each library, the 1st time you use it, and then call up that preset in MidiCurve the next time you need it.

Please remember to back up the MidiCurve presets, so you do not have to go through the pain of setting velocities, in the event you have to reinstall your computer.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/pizmidi/downloads

Best wishes, happy piano sample hunting.

Part 4

Dickiefunk. My closing thoughts.

In my experience, buying cheap, which I have had to, in my case cos piano playing was an emerging potential, as I became more confident and skilled as a piano player, was the only way to go. I did not have formal music education on piano, or a piano teacher, but did have a few years of music theory and violin practice, and played violin occasionally in orchestras, so I was not a total ignoramus, in music. So with piano, not having the chops, I was timid in my investments, cos I did not know how far my abilities would go. Many of my piano libraries are under 100 dollars, each. That's fine for a hobbyist.

But as my skills and aspirations and abilities and intentions have improved/expanded, and I am much better able to setup sampled pianos to play authentically, I have since revived my thoughts on piano investments.

Its impossible to buy every piano library, for most of us, and some are not worth purchasing, cos they were not well made.

Here are the pianos I would choose if I needed a good collection.

1. Start off with something basic and simple and inexpensive. And something I would not cry over if in the long term, I had acquired better libraries.

In this category, I would place the following.

Free Sampled libraries, such as the ones that are bundled with products such as Logic, and any other free sampled libraries. There's an amazing one - free included with SoundPaint.

2. Inexpensive paid libraries like Waves Rhapsody and the budget products from Production Voices, all of these are very well sampled, and the only challenge is a limited number of microphone positions, so especially with Production Voices budget products, a bit of externally applied splosh(reverb) is advised. You may also want to have a look at some of the products offered by AcousticSamples.

3. Products in the $100 price bracket such as Noire by Native Instruments. I however do not think any other piano from Native Instruments is worth the effort unless you are looking for a tone with a rather constricted limited use character tone, not one that is as versatile as Noire definitely is.

4. Some speak very well of Garritan CFX, your mileage may vary - listen to the many demos on Youtube. For those needing a really cut through sound, with prominent attacks - the Synthogy Ivory pianos occupy a unique niche, I do not think there will ever be another piano library set with the same approach, and this sound can help diversify a piano set of tones. Not to everyone's taste, but definitely one cannot fault the quality of these samples - definitely well sampled - both the Garritan and the Synthogy pianos.

5. I definitely think one or two pianos from VSL are a must have, these are very well sampled, and are the Rolls Royce Phantoms of the virtual piano opera. As a gigging musician, expensive they are, and even for the hobbyist, I think these are well worth the investment, even if it may take a while to save up for them. Think of these as tools, investments, that will yield a good return over many, many years.

6. After all the bread and butter piano sounds would come the character pianos, vintage, uprights, and the wacky, tick tack, etc. Here you will consider products such as from Imperfect Samples, Cinesamples - Piano in Blue, and the many relatively few vintage/upright pianos out there. Speciality pianos like ViLabs Ravenscroft, which is not a bread and butter piano tone, and for those with a bit more money to spend, eventually adding Keyscape to add some highly produced acoustic and electric sounds to the mix. I'd class this final category as the boutique pianos, and in here I'd place things like all the pianos from Spitfire, including the Hanz Zimmer piano. Definitely these are not the kinds of pianos that most people would use in every day composition or practice, but they have their place in modern evocative music.

We are spoiled for choice, and it is a battle to resist spending more.

In general, the more recent the piano library, the better it has been sampled, with caveats of course, but that general trend is the norm, primarily due to competition and a wider user base/market for sampled pianos. For example it would not be advised to go and pick up one of the old Galaxy pianos, cos sampling has moved on quite a bit since that time.

Here endeth the tome.

Hi OK1,

Wow what a very in depth and comprehensive reply. Yes I fully agree with all your points

I am definitely enjoying NI’s Noire. I love the base tone and overall tweakability that this library has. You can go from a pretty pristine clean tone to something with loads of character. Noire feels great to play as well. I would have loved to have some more mic positions with this library but I can get some good results with a decent reverb.

I am used to Steinway and Yamaha pianos and am mainly playing Yamaha pianos most days where I work. As you said, even the sound of exactly the same piano model can vary depending on their age and where they were manufactured. My favourite piano I played at a concert was a Steinway Model D which was beautiful. I have a feeling this is the piano I’m after. I mainly record classical, jazz, gospel and pop and love a really rich piano sound with nice depth of bass, clear midrange without sounding boxy/honky and sparkling highs without sounding thin and harsh. I also like having the option of close and intimate sounds and a great sounding room/hall.

I am finding the Embertone Walker 1955 quite dead sounding despite the variety of room mics. The low end lacks depth, the mids sound quite boxy.
The Simple Sam Signature Grand has a good base sound but lacks velocity layers, has poor playability and whilst the room sounds excellent, the samples are noisy.
Noire has a good base sound which is great for intimate music but I would love another mic perspective for a more open and alive sound for classical music. I also, would have liked Una Corda samples. The demos on the NI site sound great though and I love the sound of the jazz demo track.

I am quite intrigued by the CineSamples CinePianio as this has a great sounding room. I also like the demos of the Sonicouture Hammersmith Pro but I have the free version and whilst it is good, I prefer Noire. However, the Pro version has a lot more features and mic perspectives so could be interesting.
I am going to look into these libraries more.

Thought I’d post an update of where I’m at.

I recently updated Pianoteq to v8 and I’m really enjoying playing this piano a lot. The Steinways are my favourites (particularly the Steinway B). I am very impressed with how much Pianoteq is improving and what Modartt are achieving from such a tiny file using modelling!
There are a couple of other fairly recently new products that I’ve been impressed with the online demos which are

Production Voices 300 Grand
VSL Synchron Fazioli

Both of these libraries sound great and if I were to buy a new library, it would be between these two. There is an update planned for 300 Grand which will add higher sample rate versions (24 bit vs 16bit) along with some extra features/tweaks which should improve this library even more but will potentially double the size of this library.
However, I’ve actually started using Pianoteq 8 instead of Noire and Walker Concert D in my most recent work and if Modarrt keep making the same progress with their acoustic pianos as they have in the past two main versions I’m not sure I will need sample libraries anymore!? I’m already not sure if I can justify the cost and file size of either Production Voices 300 Grand or the VSL Synchron Fazioli!? It kinda makes sense to invest in the Pianoteq eco-system as the product is in constant development and is continuously improving in sound, playability and features.

Pianoteq 8 is a huge improvement over Pianoteq 7.
I noticed it immediately. It's not a subtle difference.

I can finally get a Yamaha piano in Pianoteq 8 that
sounds almost indistinguishable from my real
Yamaha Disklavier grand.

I'd say your search is over.

Thought I’d post a quick update after using my current piano libraries for around a year.
Pianoteq is a definite improvement over v7 but it’s still not quite there for solo piano work. I’ve gone back to using Noire for this but I’m not 100% satisfied with the sound of this library. I tend to find it sounds slightly lifeless despite experimenting with various settings. I really wish Noire had a couple more mic perspectives and Una Corda because I would stick with this library but due to not having these and the general sound sounding a little flat, I am looking for another library.
I have tried the VSL CFX and Fazioli and whilst these are very good, they didn’t quite have the sound I am after. The libraries I’m interested in are

Synthogy Ivory 3
Production Voices 300 Grand
IK Pianoverse

Ivory 3 is appealing due to its new RGB engine and massive amount of velocity layers plus midi 2.0 support. There are some good demos on YouTube the demonstrate some of Ivory 3’s potential and overall the overall sound is more alive than Noire. However, there isn’t a demo for this library and no return policy if not happy. Also, it’s hard to tell how much hiss/noise there is in the samples as there are no demos showing lots of notes played with the pedal down and left to ring out.

Production Voices 300 Grand has so much potential but there are a few issues that need sorting. Firstly, there higher register of notes is out of balance with the lower register. Secondly, there is a fair amount of hiss in the samples compared to a lot of other libraries. Thirdly, there was meant to be higher quality bit and sample rate versions of this library released but they never materialised for various reasons. Also, some users mentioned that there wasn’t enough variety of tone throughout the velocity layers but not sure if this is true. One user has released a patch to fix the balance between the higher and lower register and another user has successfully de-noised the samples without causing any artefacts to the original tone but I don’t feel confident to do this myself.
If Production Voices did release an official update to fix these issues at 24bit 48khz or 96khz sample rate I would probably go for this one. However, as it stands, I don’t consider it a finished product yet.

The demos of the Pianoverse Steinway and Yamaha grands sound surprisingly good. However, these libraries have less velocity layers than quite a few of the top piano libraries. Also, there isn’t any sympathetic string resonance and I’m not sure about Una Corda. I’ve also read some users found there was noticeable hiss in the sample tails?

Nice update! Of the pianos I don't already have, I'm still most curious about Ivory III... seems like a really great option, and people rave about the Ivory II models. I'm also interested in the Pearl Concert Grand (Yamaha C7) from Impact Soundworks, I almost got it during the holiday sales but I'd already bought more than enough new toys. Maybe next time around.

Regarding the IK Pianoverse instruments, I haven't tried them firsthand but I've read about intonation issues in the upper registers! Hopefully those are either overblown or get sorted out. They seem well-implemented otherwise, and IK frequently does good sales.

Lately, these are the top four pianos I've been enjoying for daily practice:

Keyscape C7 (still winds up in most tracks I send out to clients)
Garritan CFX (probably my favorite for practice)
Soniccouture Hammersmith Pro (my favorite Steinway out of what I have at the moment, I enjoy practicing with it and I've sent one track with it to a client)
Skybox "Hammers and Waves" C6 (a REALLY nice sleeper of a piano, underrated! Have used this one for some clients too)

I want to like Pianoteq 8 but for me it's not quite there yet. My main piano has been Synthogy American Concert D, and I've warmed up to Garritan CFX as an alternative.

I've conceded that sampled pianos can be only so good. Rather than adding more of them, I'll stay use what I have and possibly jump into a future Pianoteq update. Small data footprint and expressiveness of modeling are appealing.

Sky

If you have Kontakt try Sampletekk when on super sale. I really like it and a maven swears by it. I have the White and TVBO ones that I actually blend….

I've got a few of these and they can indeed be very good! My favorite of his is the "small grand" for Halion Sonic, that's a REALLY nice instrument, for my taste.

I do have to say, Richard, I think you'd really like Keyscape and I'd highly recommend you consider it... you and I seem to share pretty similar taste and interests, genre/style-wise, and I've gotten more use out of Keyscape than any other virtual instrument I own by a wide margin. It honestly helps me make money every single week, it basically always wins in the mix. That goes for the C7, Rhodes, and Wurli models, and I get a ton of use out of the digital Roland models as well. The price of admission is a distant memory for me at this point and it's served me so very, very well!

Pianoteq majorly revised the sound recently with 8.2 - I posted some samples in certain threads but you can always get the latest 8.2 and up demo to try.

Modartt releases Pianoteq 8

Piano request: can someone record this using a MIDI file for a shootout?

The re-voiced v8.2 samples you've posted seem an improvement since I auditioned back in November. Snagging that sale price would be nice - Perhaps I'll watch for the next sale and jump in. I'm actually surprised by the Steinway samples; my favorites in v8.0 are Steingraeber, Bechstein and Petrof in that order.

Thanks,
Sky

UAD Ravel. One of the best I've played yet. Try the demo.

Reviving this in case you haven't tried the Pianoteq Kawai model. They have a 280VC as well. I do like the Kawai.

Thank you dikrek. Several months ago I jumped in and have since added both 280VC and Kawai. I agree the SK-EX is a standout.

While I somewhat favor sampled vs modeled, Pianoteq 8 checks a lot of boxes for me. Its small footprint is excellent; I launch the standalone player in seconds and capture ideas as MIDI. This immediacy has somewhat covered my need for a stage piano in the studio. The Pianoteq models work well in a mix and are decent for solo playing imho.

Moving forward I'll use both Pianoteq and one good sampled piano e.g Garritan CFX or Ivory 3 American D.

Sky

I always increase the condition slider a bit, makes the models more alive. Just in case you haven't tried that.

Pianoteq is amazing. It's replaced all my sample libs.

Firstly, some general settings that can be applied to nearly all Pianoteq models to eliminate the perfect “McPiano” syndrome.  Set the condition slider to around 0.47 (0.18 is more accurate) and set the octave spread to about 1.18.
For the spectrum profile of the Steinway D models specifically, set the second harmonic to -4.3 and the third harmonic to +0.6.  This really gets the Steinway sound profile as I hear it in my mind's imagination.   (h/t Merriam Music).
For hammer hardness I use 0.3, 0.81, 1.57.

enjoy


M