KVR Audio

No name · Post by **No name** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:14 am

Hello everyone, I d/l that free piano Soundfont. I am looking for the most realistic sound from a piano library/sample, I looked at Steinberg's The Grand but I wondered if anyone had any problems with it? Also, if anyone knows of any demos or any songs or demo MP3's of the sound? Thanks a bunch!

reggaemylitis · Post by **reggaemylitis** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:20 am

it´s unusable on my machine. athlon xp 1700+ , 512mb ddr266, epox 8kha+ , win xp sp2. hoontech dsp2000 c-port. sold itright away. crackles and dropouts everywhere.
i bought garritan personal orchestra instead and use the piano from there.

by the way. it says everywhere if you research a bit on the grand that you really need a top notch cpu and lots of ram also to use it properly.

Blank_Frank · Post by **Blank_Frank** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:37 am

Slightly O/T, but I've got to admit I'm quite excited by the impending release of Synthogy Ivory for PC, having read the review in Sound-on-Sound this month. No idea what the CPU or memory requirements will be (or when it will be released) but it looks like a better product than The Grand...

http://www.synthogy.com/pages/ivory.html

olepro · Post by **olepro** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:43 am

On my mashine, p4 2.4 ghz and one gig ram The Grand is working perfectly and i don't se it as a cpu hog.

But a lot of ram is allways a good idea no less than one gig.

anopenscroll · Post by **anopenscroll** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:54 pm

Make sure you have 768MB - 1Gig of RAM.

No name · Post by **No name** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:39 pm

Thanks everyone, I'll consider my options in the future. I'm buying totally new everything!

No name · Post by **No name** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:36 pm

One more thing, and I hope i'm not being a bother to anyone. I'm sort of planning what to buy, reading reviews and everything, but I've come to sort of a conflict. I have read that alot of interfaces have latency problems, I was gonna buy Cubase System 4 because it just seems finaicially logical (though there really is no such thing as that when it comes to music equipment!) but I don't want to if I could buy a good soundcard that has very low latency. I really just wanna buy one, which should I get? I know Cubase System 4 has midi capabilities, has audio I/O and SPFID and all, comes with Cubase SE, and some other programs to get you started, I just don't know what to go for! Anyone own System 4, or could help me out? Thanks!

P.S. So dreadful planning a project studio!

Stupid American Pig · Post by **Stupid American Pig** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 8:13 pm

I think that there are plenty of great options when putting together a home studio and most cards today have good if not great low latency drivers. If you want cheap, look into the emu cards or maudio audiophile 2496.(among others) The cubase system 4 Im sure will do the trick, but ther emay be a more cost effective route...

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:06 pm

I wouldn't consider The Grand a CPU hog. But having some more RAM and a fast memory subsystem (FSB, CPU cache etc.) is certainly a good idea. Also a not to slow HD shouldn't hurt...

It runs just perfect on my system (So939 Athlon-64 3000+ and 1GB of RAM)...

kybernaut

digitaldoom · Post by **digitaldoom** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:21 pm

The Grand ran like crap on my system as well...

Pentium 4, 2.26
1GB RAM

Midiworks · Post by **Midiworks** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:27 pm

A few years back I was running Gigasampler 1.6 (or so, guess 97/98 )
on my P2 350mhz, 128mb ram.
Loaded were not only tons of Akai stuff but also the
1.2 gb EastWest Steinway Piano.
Everything was running smooth like a nice wet dream.

Edit: And you could switch faster through 100s of patches,
then any hardwaresynth did !

And now they tell you, you need 1gb ram and 2ghz/up to play a piano ?
Is'nt there someone fooling us users ?
Think about it !

r_harms · Post by **r_harms** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:22 pm

I have Steinberg's virtual instrument collection and it comes with a 'lite' version of the Grand.

I have a 3 GHZ machine with 512 MB ram and the Grand 'lite' sounds OK with my latency set to around 5ms. The problem is there is quite a sizable delay between a key press and when the sound starts to play. My guess would be around 30-40ms. It seems sluggish. I don't have this problem with any other vst's. I have tried the low quality setting to try to reduce the sample footprint but the delay is the same.

I'm waiting for Ivory!

Good luck,

Richard

anopenscroll · Post by **anopenscroll** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:33 pm

Gigastudio is still THE best in using resources for sampling... Grand is wrapped a VST however, and is not a sample set.

trmupstage · Post by **trmupstage** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:42 am

The Grand is going to need a lot of memory and a pretty fast computer. I don'y have any problems with it on a P4 3GHZ with 2GB of ram, but my system is over-kill for most people. I think the biggest thing memory. Anything under 1GB is not going to give good results. I'm using an M-audio Delta 1010 and I can get latency down to 64 samples, rock solid. I only use that setting while tracking a VSTi. I found that 128 samples works pretty well too. Anything higher than that throws me off in my playing (which doesn't take much).

Other than that, The Grand has a nice sound that doesn't really have much character. It's very even in tone across the keyboard. It seems a bit dull compared to many sample libraries, but a little EQ helps a lot.

tom

Jules2000 · Post by **Jules2000** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 1:27 am

If you want to check out the sound of different pianos:

http://www.purgatorycreek.com

The Grand is called "Wizoo - The Grand".

Should I expect Steinberg's The Grand to be a CPU hog?