Realsamples has released Grand Piano (Erard Pianoforte), a new piano library that is part of the "Edition Beurmann", its series of instruments out of the historical keyboard instrument collection of Professor Andreas E. Beurmann.

This historical piano, built in London in 1837, offers a lithe, charming and warm yet present sound far from your usual piano suspects, full of character, breathing and dripping with life. It was captured with 32 velocity layers of each note for great dynamics, feel and pure piano sound and the release sounds of each key were recorded in 8 variations. The samples were recorded in 192 khz/24 bits resolution, employing vintage Neumann TLM-170 microphones through Crane Song preamps and Universal Audio 2192 converters.

Presets are available for all common sample formats including HAlion, Kontakt, EXS24, Independence, MachFive, Reason NN-XT, VSampler3 and GigaStudio (16 velocity layers due to format restrictions), amongst others.

The sample library is available in 44.1/48 khz, 96 khz and 192 khz resolution, starting at $119.95.

In addition to the samples, the Grand Piano library contains an essay in German from Professor Andreas E. Beurmann himself, explaining both the historical and musical background of the instrument.