Why does my Roland RD600 sound better than any VST piano?

[Bonteburg]

Maybe the hardware piano sounds better because it's hardware - there's a magic to all those cinematic sounds coming out of that black box with a keyboard and a few buttons. There's a sense of wonder and empowerment.

It's so unlike instruments for use in a computer where you can see all the samples at directory level and velocity layers and loop points and tamper with them and truly understand the fakeness of it all.

You can't so easily blow away the smoke and shatter the mirrors inside a Roland keyboard.

[kmonkey]

I actually agree with the OP about hardware pianos. After I got my Kurzweil Pc3x it has blown pretty much every piano vst/sample library I've heard out of the water. A friend of mine owns a Roland RD700 and with a little tweaking the acoustic piano does the same.
I remember being stunned when I first heard the Fazioli grand in Colossus. I heard it recently again and now I think it's far from convincing.

Maybe little offtopic but still interested: I said few things about that in Spectrasonic Trillian thread. Yet people laughed at me. I am sure some of them (if not all) did not have chance to test hardware instruments properly.

It is ridiculous to have 50GB samples just for bass. I could understand if it was some Orchestra library...but..

While you can use any kurzweil/roland workhorse which will blow anything in that Trillian library. By (clever) using samples which are more ore less under one mb. Yes under one MB. Some spectrasonic employee asked what product can do that? Well IMHO any expanded JD-990 or XV-5080 or Kurzweil or Motif - whatever.

I don't know why is that and i am not interested for any HW vs SW debate (it's pointless) but to my ear almost any of these units can outperform software library in therms of musicality and character, yet they use (some of them can't even utilize more then:) about 256 MB to 16mb per library/expansion.

[longbongsilver]

It is ridiculous to have 50GB samples just for bass. I could understand if it was some Orchestra library...but..

While you can use any kurzweil/roland workhorse which will blow anything in that Trillian library. By (clever) using samples which are more ore less under one mb. Yes under one MB. Some spectrasonic employee asked what product can do that? Well IMHO any expanded JD-990 or XV-5080 *snip*

Didn't Eric Persing used to do sound programming for Roland?

[Electric Phase]

It is ridiculous to have 50GB samples just for bass. I could understand if it was some Orchestra library...but..

While you can use any kurzweil/roland workhorse which will blow anything in that Trillian library. By (clever) using samples which are more ore less under one mb. Yes under one MB. Some spectrasonic employee asked what product can do that? Well IMHO any expanded JD-990 or XV-5080 *snip*

Didn't Eric Persing used to do sound programming for Roland?

"In addition to being the Creative Director of Spectrasonics, Eric was a longtime consultant and the Chief Sound Designer for Roland Corporation Japan from 1984-2005, creating the key sounds for many popular Roland synthesizers, samplers, CD-ROMs, expansion boards, signal processors and groove devices - from the vintage Jupiter and JX series, to the legendary D-50, D-70, JD-800/990, R8, S-series samplers, JV-880/1080/2080, the Sound Canvas, JP-8000/8080, MC-505/909, The V-Drums, XV-5080, Fantom series, the V-Synth and many others."

http://www.spectrasonics.net/artists/epersing.php

[egbert]

[Vectorman]

I'm sure if sound designers for hardware keyboards back in the '90s could've had the freedom to use gigabytes worth of samples, they would have. I think the "economical" approach was probably driven more by financial/technological necessity than minimalist philosophy.

That said, anytime I want a piano with some balls that can cut through a mix, I still like the ILIO Platinum Rock Piano (which I converted from my old Kurzweil CD-ROM to Kontakt, where it weighs in at only about 128MB) better on the whole than the multi-gigabyte pianos I've tried. Especially in a busy mix, having the right overall sonic character can be more important than having umpteen velocity layers. It doesn't matter how expressive the piano is if it's wrong for your mix to begin with.

[longbongsilver]

Heh...so in a way, Eric & his company are competing against his old work.

Eh, what matters is the sound in the end. It'd be nice if the big libraries wouldn't take so long to load though...

[Gamma-UT]

Maybe the hardware piano sounds better because it's hardware - there's a magic to all those cinematic sounds coming out of that black box with a keyboard and a few buttons. There's a sense of wonder and empowerment.

It's so unlike instruments for use in a computer where you can see all the samples at directory level and velocity layers and loop points and tamper with them and truly understand the fakeness of it all.

You can't so easily blow away the smoke and shatter the mirrors inside a Roland keyboard.

There may be something to that but it might just be that the hardware instrument feels different under the fingers. For one thing, with access to the full range of the touch sensors underneath the keys, a stage piano like the RD600 can have a more sensitive response to velocity (and release velocity). It will (or should) have much lower latency than any computer setup given that the signal only has to get from key->sample engine->amp. The VST is receiving a more coarse-grained MIDI message over a serial cable, translated by a MIDI interface, passed up through a bunch of software layers into the sample engine and then, finally, back out through the audio system.

The latency might be low, but probably won't feel as instant at hitting a key (then again, nothing has low latency like a real piano). My ZR76 feels more playable with the built-in sounds but, in reality, I'll replace them in projects with other things. You have to EQ the Coakley piano in the Ensoniq keyboard a bit to make it sit right - some of the stripped down pianos can work better and I happen to like Pianoteq.

On the bass library thing, here's one line with no added articulations, just MIDI notes (with a bit of velocity editing that's common to all). Sample size ranges all the way from 3.5MB to Trillian's '3GB', although only about 200MB actually gets loaded at startup. The Live project that contains these four instruments - two Kontakt, one Kore pack, one Trillian - loads in 38 seconds. I haven't attempted to match volume on the instruments so the first one is a bit quiet - they were all played with the send at 0dB.

http://web.mac.com/chrismed/music/uprighttest2.mp3

[longbongsilver]

On the bass library thing, here's one line with no added articulations, just MIDI notes (with a bit of velocity editing that's common to all). Sample size ranges all the way from 3.5MB to Trillian's '3GB', although only about 200MB actually gets loaded at startup. The Live project that contains these four instruments - two Kontakt, one Kore pack, one Trillian - loads in 38 seconds. I haven't attempted to match volume on the instruments so the first one is a bit quiet - they were all played with the send at 0dB.

http://web.mac.com/chrismed/music/uprighttest2.mp3

Quality wise the 3rd & 4th parts are about even IMO. I know one of those two is Trilogy (the release noise sounds familiar), what's the other one?

[Gamma-UT]

On the bass library thing, here's one line with no added articulations, just MIDI notes (with a bit of velocity editing that's common to all). Sample size ranges all the way from 3.5MB to Trillian's '3GB', although only about 200MB actually gets loaded at startup. The Live project that contains these four instruments - two Kontakt, one Kore pack, one Trillian - loads in 38 seconds. I haven't attempted to match volume on the instruments so the first one is a bit quiet - they were all played with the send at 0dB.

http://web.mac.com/chrismed/music/uprighttest2.mp3

Quality wise the 3rd & 4th parts are about even IMO. I know one of those two is Trilogy (the release noise sounds familiar), what's the other one?

The libraries are Puremagnetik Upright, K4 Factory Upright Bass (this is the smallest sample set), the upright from Kore Essential Bass, and Trillian.

[longbongsilver]

Oh, you had them in order

[kmonkey]

It is ridiculous to have 50GB samples just for bass. I could understand if it was some Orchestra library...but..

While you can use any kurzweil/roland workhorse which will blow anything in that Trillian library. By (clever) using samples which are more ore less under one mb. Yes under one MB. Some spectrasonic employee asked what product can do that? Well IMHO any expanded JD-990 or XV-5080 *snip*

Didn't Eric Persing used to do sound programming for Roland?

Maybe but i am not talking about lack of sound design skills - what is your point?
My point there at that thread and in this one was that people (thus Eric Persing) should/could(and they do)do better or more clever sound programming. These old synths we are talking about can't load more then 512mb of content yet they sound way better then today 50gb library.

Instead of clever programming a lot of company are giving big numbers (i understand them) in products and people tend to think that if something is big it is automatically better(i don't understand this?). So today you have 50gb bass library which can kiss ass on 10. year old but better programmed Roland expansion.

[longbongsilver]

It is ridiculous to have 50GB samples just for bass. I could understand if it was some Orchestra library...but..

While you can use any kurzweil/roland workhorse which will blow anything in that Trillian library. By (clever) using samples which are more ore less under one mb. Yes under one MB. Some spectrasonic employee asked what product can do that? Well IMHO any expanded JD-990 or XV-5080 *snip*

Didn't Eric Persing used to do sound programming for Roland?

Maybe but i am not talking about lack of sound design skills - what is your point?

I just found it amusing that the examples given of hardware ROM boards that whoop Trillian in your opinion included boards the sound of which Eric is largely responsible for, that's all. Hence my following comment:

Heh...so in a way, Eric & his company are competing against his old work.

Agree with you on the size being ridiculous, btw.