Synthogy has announced that it will introduce its next generation of Ivory piano products in 2010. Dubbed Ivory II, the powerful new custom engine for Synthogy's line of virtual pianos will provide new features, an all-new GUI, and further expanded piano sample sets to provide performers with more expressive detail than ever.

A host of new piano-related features have been added to the Ivory II engine. Principle among these is Sympathetic String Resonance, a sought after but elusive characteristic of real pianos that Synthogy approaches in a completely new and unique way to realize the true complexities and subtleties of sympathetic string excitation.

Ivory II also addresses Synthogy's most frequent customer requests with features like Half Pedaling, Lid Position, Pedal Noise, and Tuning Tables to deliver the most detail and control available in a virtual piano.

Additional features like Timbre Shifting, Parametric EQ, and new Synth Layer control offer powerful new sound sculpting capabilities for custom piano programming and sound design.

At the heart of Ivory II are the pianos. Each Ivory piano, in every Ivory product, has been further refined and developed to include more velocity levels (up to 18 per piano), more soft pedal samples, more release samples, with greater fidelity and refinement than ever before, to surpass Ivory's already esteemed playability.

"Ivory II represents the most significant design enhancement to Ivory's custom piano engine since its introduction," remarks Synthogy co-founder Joe Ierardi. "Thanks to improvements in computer technologies and drive capacities, we can finally put all of our innovations to work to give our customers a better-than-ever playing experience. After years in the making, we believe that Ivory II is a worthy successor to the legacy established by our original Ivory product, which set the course for all other virtual pianos to follow."

Synthogy's current products include: Ivory-Grand Pianos ($349), which features a Yamaha C7, Bösendorfer Imperial, and Steinway Model D grand piano, Ivory–Italian Grand ($169), and their most recent release Ivory–Upright Pianos ($299), which includes four vertical instruments spanning a wide range of sonic characteristics.

All Ivory products operate as stand-alone or as plug-ins within AU, VST and RTAS hosts on Mac OS X and Windows. The Ivory II upgrade will be offered on all three of Synthogy's existing products in the spring of 2010. Upgrades for existing customers will be offered, with details to be announced at a later date.