OT Evolution Rosewood Grand

[Breeze]

To the people who have the Orange Tree Rosewood Grand, or just got it in the group buy, and have other libs to compare them with: So? What do you think?

I already have NI's pianos, as well as Truepianos and a few SampleTekk ones including their TBO C7: does this piano really bring something new to the table?

The demos sound compelling, but I find sampled pianos are very much like real pianos: it's only after you sit and play them for a bit that you can establish how they feel and perform and how that translates into how they sound.

Thanks for some feedback... hopefully before the OT sale ends...

[musicdoc]

Just bought this a couple days ago and just had a chance to play it for just a few minutes. Initial impression is just not my cup of tea. Kind of like a sing song quality to it. Bass seems to respond a little funny on my weighted action controller (yamaha). Will have to play some more just don't have time now. I like the way that repedaling is supported -that might be a first for Kontakt.

I may change my mind once I have a chance to personalize it a bit.

I have Greg's electric, acoustic guitars as well as the cherry bass and love them.

[don1thedon]

Did you see eDrummists response over here?
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... &start=195

FTR I've been in a similar situation about ERG but got of the fence in the GB, too soon for any opinion yet

[Lode_Runner]

Since the Group Buy I now have Evolution Rosewood, Alicia's Keys, 8Dio 1928 Legacy, Piano in Blue, Imperfect Samples Steinway and Sons Walnut, Addictive Keys and the Native Instruments Berlin/NY/Vienna/Upright collection. I play with a Kawai MP9500 (88 Weighted Keys). I'm very amateur at playing piano, so you'll need to take my impressions with a heavy grain of salt.

I find the Rosewood to be the best of all the ones I have for dynamic playing, it just really seems to manage the transition from soft to loud better than the others. As I've said on another thread I've found some of them just seem to lack soft samples altogether, no matter how much I adjust the velocity curve, while others might do soft very nicely but then require really hammering the keys before you can get the loud samples (which it then jumps into), or they seem to not have enough velocity layers so that you can really feel the jumps between layers. It's possible that all these issues may be to do with my setup, MIDI controller, etc and that with some more work on velocity curve tweaking that I may get much better results. With the Rosewood it just seems to play very expressively responding to my touch more organically and I haven't needed to adjust the velocity curve at all. Of the ones I have the next best one at soft-loud playing would be Alicia's Keys.

In terms of timbre, well it's a Yamaha C7, so the Steinway libraries probably do 'beautiful and cinematic' better, although the Rosewood would still work in these contexts. I prefer the 1928 Legacy (once I've dialed out some of the reverb) for cinematic timbre, the Imperfect Samples one for antique woody tone, and will still turn to Piano in Blue (with a little high mid boosting) when I want something to sound like an old film or vintage jazz recording. But I think the Rosewood will come into its own better in a mix (haven't had it long enough to try it, but to me it sounds like it may be less of a space-hog than a Steinway), and due to it's playability I think it's going to become my "go to" piano for just playing (still early days for me though, so can't say for certain). I just can't find anything wrong with it.

[eDrummist]

...and will still turn to Piano in Blue (with some high mid boosting) when I want something to sound like an old film or vintage jazz recording. But I think the Rosewood will come into its own better in a mix (haven't had it long enough to try it, but to me it sounds like it may be less of a space-hog), and due to it's playability I think it's going to become my "go to" piano for just playing (still early days for me though, so can't say for certain). I just can't find anything wrong with it.

I just wanted to chime in with a small observation. I've seen a number of threads at various forums praising the scripting for CineSamples' Piano in Blue, but I don't those folks realize that our own GregJazz, otherwise known as Greg Schlaepfer, the Principal of Orange Tree Samples, wrote that script. He actually wrote a script to fix issues with another dev's piano library I own that I mentioned (without using a name) in my long post comparing Evolution Rosewood Grand to other sampled pianos (and specifically other C7s) that was linked to in this thread. It's amazing how significant of a difference great scripting can mean to a piano library.

[musicdoc]

Well, I have to say that I'm liking the piano a bit more. Apparently I had two things going on. Looks like I was missing a bunch of samples even thought the rar files showed the right amount of info there. I redownloaded a few questionable ones, and instantly better -no more errors in loading too.

The second issue for me is the default piano sound. It has a weird ringing at G3 (C3 is middle C for me) Try playing some chords and stuff on the bottom and them hitting the G3 with it -instant weird feedback overtone thing going on. I tried this on studio headphones too so it is not my studio. (which is treated)

The other presets that I tried did NOT exhibit this behavior so its probably just that preset. Anyways, I'm starting to get some good sounds out of this. It does thick sound quite well, and mixing between the different mics is nice.

I think that with the extensive programming that has gone into this, you should be able to cover quite a few bases for different styles of piano whether modern or classic.

[Breeze]

Just a quick note to thank you guys for all the feedback here and in the OT thread. I caved and got this piano yesterday, but I've been buried in work so I haven't had the chance to really dig deeply into it.

My initial reaction wasn't positive because I felt there was an unusual build up of resonances in the mids when I played there and kept the pedal down; however it's the first time the tone of a sampled piano made me sense the wood of the instrument; there's something very warm and alive about it compared to my other libs. I'll have to really explore it and use it in context to make a proper assessment.

I'm glad OT pushed the contest by a week because between this and the flute, I think I have just the vehicle...