KVR Audio

bigcat1969 · Post by **bigcat1969** » Sat Oct 01, 2016 7:17 am

Technically I shouldn't have, but since there are several Kontakt versions out there already, I did the Maestro for Kontakt. Its 7th on this list.
http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/2 ... ments.html

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sat Oct 01, 2016 7:27 am

bigcat1969 wrote:Technically I shouldn't have, but since there are several Kontakt versions out there already, I did the Maestro for Kontakt. Its 7th on this list.
http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/2 ... ments.html

Thanks for the link. There seems to be a whole collection of Pianos at the website. Will try to check ASAP and then add some of those to the list.

UPDATE:
Just added The Salamandr Piano, The Summer Piano and The Maestro Concert Grand to the list.

I checked someof those Pianos shortly and so far my favorites are The Maestro and THE Salamander. Those also seem to be tzhe biggesr libraries i checked from those so far (The Salamander is around 1.2 GB).
The compresed file for the Addictive Keys Studio Grand (= Steinway Model D) has a comparable size and for that size it seems to sound great (and the Addictive Keys plugin allows a lot of tweaking).

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:37 pm

Ingonator wrote:
Ingonator wrote:It looks like Bechstein will release their own Kontakt based Piano librtary soon:
http://www.kvraudio.com/news/c-bechstei ... -1st-34738

The new "Bechstein Digital" website only shows a logo and a date so far:
http://www.bechstein-digital.com/

Very interesting as libraries done by actual hardware piano developers, especially well known like Bechstein, seem to be VERY rare (if there are any so far).
The new "Bechstein Digital" website with the new Kontakt library by Bechstein seems to work now:
https://www.bechstein-digital.com/en/
more details: https://www.bechstein-digital.com/en/details/

The "C. Bechstein Digital Grand" seems to be based on a Bechstein D 282 concert grand.
The size seems to be around 25 GB and it has 26 velocity layers.

The price with is 249€ so at the higher end for piano libraries.

I also added this to teh list at the OP now.

There is also an overview video for the new Bechstein library:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gZ9TgMee4

stevej. · Post by **stevej.** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 3:39 am

Amazing list.
Nice

bigcat1969 · Post by **bigcat1969** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:38 am

Thanks for the adds. I was unlazy one week and tightened the Salamander up. Hopefully Mr. HolmFeel will forgive me. It seems more responsive now. The Summer is interesting in that it has true pedal up and down samples which is rare in freebies. The Iowa is surprisingly popular. A bit noisy and all of three velocity layers but it has life to it. EDM chaps seem to love it.

I agree on Addictive Keys, must go reregister after Win 10 updated itself. Really nice sound, I think the Sampletekk chap sampled the pianos for them and he is good! Lots of mic positions.

Arguably the weirdest piano ever and proof I cannot spell... Probably too bizarre for the list though.
http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/2 ... piano.html

lolilol1975 · Post by **lolilol1975** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 9:01 am

I think that the 127 values of MIDI are a bit limited to transcribe the possible inflexions of real instruments.

It's more than time to update MIDI and increase that number to 1024.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 9:15 am

lolilol1975 wrote:I think that the 127 values of MIDI are a bit limited to transcribe the possible inflexions of real instruments.

It's more than time to update MIDI and increase that number to 1024.

I agree. Its also time to update the byte so that larger numbers can be stored in MIDI messages. In future all bytes should be 11 bits, not 8.

subterfuge · Post by **subterfuge** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 12:17 pm

Unless I missed it earlier, a pretty good free grand to add is Ivy Audio Piano in 162. It's a Steinway Model B and available in Kontakt (full version), SFZ and Korg Kronos formats.
http://ivyaudio.com/Piano-in-162

Great collection going on, thanks for the effort. But with hundreds of possible libraries and seeing there's only one or two (?) actual piano emulation instruments in this list, it belongs to the Sample libraries forum instead?

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 12:57 pm

subterfuge wrote: Great collection going on, thanks for the effort. But with hundreds of possible libraries and seeing there's only one or two (?) actual piano emulation instruments in this list, it belongs to the Sample libraries forum instead?

Arturia Piano V is pure modeling and TruePianos uses mostly modeling and small samples (i guess for the Attack part).

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 1:13 pm

subterfuge wrote:Unless I missed it earlier, a pretty good free grand to add is Ivy Audio Piano in 162. It's a Steinway Model B and available in Kontakt (full version), SFZ and Korg Kronos formats.
http://ivyaudio.com/Piano-in-162

Just added this to the list. BTW the freeware pianos in the list got "freeware" added in bold letters.

Gamma-UT · Post by **Gamma-UT** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 1:40 pm

lolilol1975 wrote:I think that the 127 values of MIDI are a bit limited to transcribe the possible inflexions of real instruments.

It's more than time to update MIDI and increase that number to 1024.

http://dev.midi.org/techspecs/ca31.pdf

Pianoteq recognises CC88+NoteOn messages I believe. Not many keyboards send it though. The VAX77 was one of them.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 02, 2016 9:39 pm

Fleer wrote:Thanks for the list, Ingo.
More importantly, Wavesfactory launches Freddie Mercury's Fazioli next month, and the demo sounds promising.

Just found a teaser video for the upcoming Wavesfactory Mercury Piano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHAiED3xQtY

Due to a Gearslutz thread the release seems to be around November 1st:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-pro ... ios-4.html

The track from the video at Soundcloud (there seem to be more tracks from the Mercury Piano but no playlist yet):
https://soundcloud.com/wavesfactory/lik ... -by-blakus

So far there do not seem to be demos that are actually based on music by Freddie or Queen.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 10:59 am

Ingonator wrote:
Ingonator wrote:
Ingonator wrote:It looks like Bechstein will release their own Kontakt based Piano librtary soon:
http://www.kvraudio.com/news/c-bechstei ... -1st-34738

The new "Bechstein Digital" website only shows a logo and a date so far:
http://www.bechstein-digital.com/

Very interesting as libraries done by actual hardware piano developers, especially well known like Bechstein, seem to be VERY rare (if there are any so far).
The new "Bechstein Digital" website with the new Kontakt library by Bechstein seems to work now:
https://www.bechstein-digital.com/en/
more details: https://www.bechstein-digital.com/en/details/

The "C. Bechstein Digital Grand" seems to be based on a Bechstein D 282 concert grand.
The size seems to be around 25 GB and it has 26 velocity layers.

The price with is 249€ so at the higher end for piano libraries.

I also added this to teh list at the OP now.
There is also an overview video for the new Bechstein library:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gZ9TgMee4

Looks like the new Bechstein Piano library is actually available for purchase now (did not seem to be rthe case at the weekend):
https://www.bechstein-digital.com/buy-digital-grand-ni/

Price is 249 € incl. VAT. For 99 € more you receive an additional USB3 SSD drive.

Concerning Tax i also found this:
"Choose your currency below, TAX for your country is calculated on checkout."

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:58 am

I was interested in teh Fazioli pianos now, also due to the upcoming Wavesfactory Mercury. Anyway teh size of that libray seems to be a bit too big for my needs.

So i was searching for an approach to teh Fazioli pianos that had a good combination of sound, HD size and also price.

Yesterday evening I finally decided to buy te Imperfect Samples Fazioli Ebony Grand Basic version for around 55 € incl. VAT. I found some discussions wit big problems of the deleivery in the past but this seems to be handled by Fastspring now and i got teh dowload links etc. immediately. There does not seem to be a real copy protectio nbesides soem random audio watermarks in some of the WAV files (at least this is mentioned in the manual).
Especially the Basic version is quite limited in terms of features and only includes one microphone position while it seems to be possible to upgrade to teh bigger versions later. Also the Kontakt GUI is very limited in tems of features, the round robin version actually only has 3 controls including that for round robin on/off.
FWIW the size of te samples seems to be around 7 GB (with 8 velocity layers), even for the Basic version while the bigger versions seem to be quite huge in terms of size.
The biggest "Extreme" version of the piano seems to have 160+ GB size and up to 127 velocity layers (and includes all possible mic positions). Besides the size the biggest version is multiple time more expensive than the Basic version (currently around 300 GBP = 340 €) so one of the most expensive libraries around.
The upgrade to the next higher version is directly available in the shop.

Anyway besides the limitations, especially in the Basic version, this piano library simply sounds fantastic IMO. It seems to be perfectly playable without tweaking and i did also not use an EQ for this yet. Also depending on the velocity this could sound very warm and beautiful but also more "aggressive" at higher velocity.
What i found compared to other libraries i used is that even at lower or medium velocity this is still really playable where other libraries are maybe too silent or too loud and that without adjusting a velocity curve (which is not included in the controls BTW).
So this is a píano that finally seems to sound great "out of the box" without having to tweak it a lot before it sounds like you want it to.

The company name contains "Imperfect" and this also seems to be how they craeate their sample libraries. Where others try to sample everything perfect (in both sound and velocity) they seem to try to add imperfections. For those used to more "clean" libraries this might be strange or sound "wrong" so this approach is maybe not for everyone.

When i heard certain comments that compared the basic sound of the Fazioli to others like e.g. Steinway etc. i first thought this would not be my kind of sound but somehow this seemed to be wrong. I expected this to sound really bright and/or harsh while actually it could sound really warm and mellow, also depending on how you play it. Alrady while listening to some audio demos of a Fazioli, especially teh ebony Concert Grand, i foudn that soe of the comments about Fazioli in general could not be 100% true.
The more bright stuff is possible too with higher velocoity and/or in higher octaves.
REally seems to be quite differnt to otehr libraries i own like e.g. Addictive Keys Studio Grand, Alicia's Keys or NI The Grandeur.
Maybe it's just the Ebony library that is different, i don't know. I have not played a real Fazioli or other libraries based on it yet. Anyway Fafzioli pianos seem to get more and more polular along professional musicians. Steinways and also Yamahas (especially the Model D and C7) still seem to be super popular as both real pianos and sample libraries (as you coudl also see in my list in the OP).
as the Fazioli Ebony Basic seems to eb teh cheapest available Fazioli livrary and it already seems to sounds great i expect the more expensive and bigger ones to just sound incredible.

kvaca · Post by **kvaca** » Wed Oct 05, 2016 10:07 am

Im sorry if it was mentioned before, but curious to know it there also exist sampled piano with these specs:
1-at lest 3 velocities for attack samples
2-at least 3 velocities for release samples
3-at least 3 time based release samples for all velocities
4-at least 3 round robins for all samples
5-realistic pedalling
6-preferable setup is AB with omnis in close distance /dry sound/
7-preferable piano is Yamaha or Steinway

So far I have had a major problem with point 3 and 4, partially with 5
I somebody knows answer, please share...

Acoustic Grand Piano libraries/emulations: An Overview (audio demos of some pianos added)