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

[fmr]

OK, here is my work with the Rachmaninoff Prelude. As promised I also post a link to the MIDI file, for anyone who wants to try it and render some other files with the libraries owned. As previously, I only used stock programs, AS IS; without any added FX. The difference in volumes from one file to another are inherent to the libraries themselves. Beware that this file pushes the resonance and sound capabilities of the piano to the extreme. Again, this is still a WIP, and my own "interpretation" of the Prelude.

I start with the modeled or hybrid pianos, and then go to the sampled ones.

Rachmaninoff Prelude Arturia Piano-V
Rachmaninoff Prelude Moddart Pianoteq
Rachmaninoff Prelude TP Atlantis
Rachmaninoff Prelude TP Diamond
Rachmaninoff Prelude NI New York
Rachmaninoff Prelude NI Vienna
Rachmaninoff Prelude NI The Giant
Rachmaninoff Prelude NI The Grandeur
Rachmaninoff Prelude XLN Studio Grand
Rachmaninoff Prelude UVI Fazioli
Rachmaninoff Prelude UVI Steinway
Rachmaninoff Prelude UVI Yamaha

And here is the MIDI file, for those interested: Rachmaninoff Prelude MIDI

I look forward to hear your comments

[Ingonator]

My favorite of the 10 demo MIDI files i used is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata mvt.1 so here is only this one played with the 7 different pianos i used (those are also included in the full list of demos at page 6 of this thread and in the OP):

Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_IS Fazioli Ebony Piano
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_XLN Studio Grand
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_Alicia's Keys
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_The Grandeur
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_TruePianos Atlantis
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_Piano V
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_Garritan Steinway Basic

This is one of the tracks where the darker sound of the Imperfect Samples Fazioli Ebony Basic sounds really nice IMO. Alicia's Keys, The Grandeur and Piano V IMO sound nice too with this track.
For my taste the remaining 3 pianos are maybe a bit to "aggressive" for this one.

I just got the Imperfect Samples Fazioli Basic for some days now and i have not experimented using it with an EQ yet. Will try to do that soon. Also further editing teh velovity response with in the edit page of the Kontakt instrument could make sense (i alraedy started with that in the current demo).

[lolilol1975]

Thank you and good choice of music, as the Rachma prelude spans all the dynamics of the piano.
I listened to them all, trying to adjust volume with a loundness meter on my iPhone.

Arturia: compared to the others, the sound quality is a bit dark and muffled, something that was already audible but less obvious in previous comparisons. I feel like the resonance of the low notes is exaggerated and it's detrimental to the clarity of the sound. OTOH, the notes are much better articulated than all the NI pianos, I feel like I hear a real piano recording instead of a mechanical MIDI piano, and didn't feel bored while listening to the piece til the end.

NI NY (Steinway I presume): much louder and clearer sound quality, but it's completely robotic sounding compared to Arturia, the notes are unnaturally detached. Plus there is a nasty spring resonance in the series of loud chords.

NI The Giant I hear a spring resonance as well, but less pronounced than with NI NY

NI The Grandeur the sound is less bright than the Giant and the NY, also a bit less mechanical, but still more than Arturia.

NI Vienna Same comment as with all the other NI samples. Clear but really mechanical sound, with the same nasty resonance. Didn't bother to listen to the end.

Pianoteq the chords sound "too perfect". Best dynamics of all so far. Seems to sit in between NI samples and Arturia, with a clear sound and more "human" playing than the samples.

TP Atlantis much better articulation than the NI samples. Seems there is some round robin here as there are imperfect chords, humanizing the play. Good job.

TP Diamond same commments as for TP Atlantis. Good sounding lib.

XLN Studio Grand As with the NI samples, clear, a bit mechanical sound, but showing more nuances. Not bad at all.

UVI Fazioli darker sounding, but with some character. The chords are mechanical and quite boring, and also display a resonance, which is more bearable than the NI one, because the sound is less bright. Still not fantastic.

UVI Steinway pretty much the same comments as the UVI Fazioli

UVI Yamaha idem. The 3 UVI pianos sound a bit too similar.

In conclusion, and this is surprising, but it appears that physically modelled give much more natural rendering than samples, not sound quality wise, but articulations wise, i.e the playing sounds more human than the samples. I didn't even know that TP was modeling, and my remarks support this conclusion.

[Ingonator]

Arturia: compared to the others, the sound quality is a bit dark and muffled, something that was already audible but less obvious in previous comparisons. I feel like the resonance of the low notes is exaggerated and it's detrimental to the clarity of the sound. OTOH, the notes are much better articulated than all the NI pianos, I feel like I hear a real piano recording instead of a mechanical MIDI piano, and didn't feel bored while listening to the piece til the end.

In Arturia Piano V the resonance is adjusted with the "Soundboard" parameter. In the grand pinao presets this is usually quite high (around 0.75 of maximum 1.00). If needed this could be reduced to get less resonance.

There is also another grand piano model included in Piano V called "Intimate Grand" that sound diffrent to the "Concert Grand" model. A "Pop Grand" model is included too wit ha "Soundboard" value below 0.50 so with less resonance. The hammer hardness in teh Pop Grand is a bit too high IMO so this parameter should be reduced there.

With higher amount of Unison detune you could get a more "chorused" Piano sound.

Also the differnt mic position presets could result in a different sound, not toforegt the built-in EQ.

You could adjust the lid to 3 different positions (open, half, closed) which could make a HUGE differnce to the sound. There is also a lid open/closed feature in NI The Grandeur and some otehr NI + Galaxy pianos (besides a lot of other tweakable parameters). most of the newer NI pianos were done by Galaxy so they have comparable controls to their own libraries.

Personally i just started tweaking Arturia Piano V but i think i could get even better and/or different sounds from it than used in my demos.

[lolilol1975]

Interestingly, I consistently prefered the modelled pianos. Not for the sound quality itself, but for the fact they sound more human while the sampled libraries gave a robotic performance.

edit: in the Moonlight sonata, the TruePianos sounds robotic as well, it seems that it doesn't reproduces pianissimi correctly, like Alicia's Keys for instance. Arturia performs well here as well, making it the most versatile of all.

[fmr]

Arturia: compared to the others, the sound quality is a bit dark and muffled, something that was already audible but less obvious in previous comparisons. I feel like the resonance of the low notes is exaggerated and it's detrimental to the clarity of the sound. OTOH, the notes are much better articulated than all the NI pianos, I feel like I hear a real piano recording instead of a mechanical MIDI piano, and didn't feel bored while listening to the piece til the end.

Pianoteq the chords sound "too perfect". Best dynamics of all so far. Seems to sit in between NI samples and Arturia, with a clear sound and more "human" playing than the samples.

TP Atlantis much better articulation than the NI samples. Seems there is some round robin here as there are imperfect chords, humanizing the play. Good job.

TP Diamond same commments as for TP Atlantis. Good sounding lib.

Thanks for your comprehensive comments Regarding the Arturia, bear in mind this patch isn't even a patch - it's the template for the Concert Grand, therefore, pretty much all the parameters are at their default values. We can say it's the naked model. Now that I have some references, I will try to tune the model to see if it can approcah maybe True Pianos or Pianoteq.

Regarding these two, I completely agree with you. The dynamics of Pianoteq are impressive, and the expressiveness we can get out of any of the modeled (or hybrid, in the case of True Pianos) piano cannot be surpassed by any sample library, IMO, no matter how well made they are. I am glad that True Pianos still holds so well after all these years. It came out a little later than NI Akoustik Pianos (whose libraries were later incorporated in Komplete as New York, Vienna, Berlin and Upright). Being involved as a tester in the creation of True Pianos, I feel really proud to see it performing so well.

NI NY (Steinway I presume): much louder and clearer sound quality, but it's completely robotic sounding compared to Arturia, the notes are unnaturally detached. Plus there is a nasty spring resonance in the series of loud chords.

NI The Giant I hear a spring resonance as well, but less pronounced than with NI NY

NI The Grandeur the sound is less bright than the Giant and the NY, also a bit less mechanical, but still more than Arturia.

NI Vienna Same comment as with all the other NI samples. Clear but really mechanical sound, with the same nasty resonance. Didn't bother to listen to the end.

The New York and Vienna are really old libraries, and therefore, don't include the latest scripting capabilities of Kontakt. That said, they still have their place, as I think I showed with this demos. The Grandeur is, from the lates NI pianos, the only one that really stands up. I feel a little disappointed with The Maverick, and the others are not Grands.

I look forward to try the Una Corda, for which I read some good references, buit again, it's not an all round piano. The Giant has some great basses, but lack some overall balance, IMO. Regarding the mechanical aspect, I don't know if there is any sample library that can get rid of that, but I am convinced that the future lies in PM or hybrid approach, and not in multiple layes, lots of mic positions, EQing, whatever.

XLN Studio Grand As with the NI samples, clear, a bit mechanical sound, but showing more nuances. Not bad at all.

The XLN piano has been a pleasant surprise for me. And for the price I got it, it was a real steal

UVI Fazioli darker sounding, but with some character. The chords are mechanical and quite boring, and also display a resonance, which is more bearable than the NI one, because the sound is less bright. Still not fantastic.
UVI Steinway pretty much the same comments as the UVI Fazioli
UVI Yamaha idem. The 3 UVI pianos sound a bit too similar.

The UVI pianos were somehow a disappintment to me. I noticed several artifacts in the sample mapping. Usually, UVI makes great sample instruments and this was a surprise to me. I will report the issues to them, to see if they can come up with a fix. The sound is not bad, especially the Fazioli, my favourite of the three.

In conclusion, and this is surprising, but it appears that physically modelled give much more natural rendering than samples, not sound quality wise, but articulations wise, i.e the playing sounds more human than the samples. I didn't even know that TP was modeling, and my remarks support this conclusion.

As I said, I also think that PM is the way to go in what concerns the virtual piano. And this is a changing of mind, as I was sceptical until quite recently.

[Ingonator]

I just got the Imperfect Samples Fazioli Ebony Basic some days ago and in some of my demos it indeed sounded a bit "dark" which for some other tracks is nice. This could be best noticed at lower velocity values. This does not mean that the overall sound is bad at all.

Anyway i just t started tweaking with an EQ and the most important areas there seem to be bossting at around 2-3 kHz and 5000-6000 KHz. At the moment i use around 2500 Hz and 5700 Hz for boosting with quite good results where at 2500 kHz it gives the biggest differnces when boosting. The highs at 9-10 kHz do not make such a big difference.

The basic sound of the library seems to be great and wit ha little EQ tweaking this could get much more versatile tahn it is with the raw sound. Anyway as alraedy mentioned with some tracks the darker sound of the raw library seems to fit too.

Another way with this library could be to change teh velocity response with either the velocity curce or adjusting the velocity distrubution of the samples which is not linear or evenly distributed in this library.

[fmr]

Another way with this library could be to change teh velocity response with either the velocity curce or adjusting the velocity distrubution of the samples which is not linear or evenly distributed in this library.

In other words, your are sayinbg this library is not well built Maybe the author should have asked a pianist to play it, and give some advice.

[Ingonator]

Another way with this library could be to change teh velocity response with either the velocity curce or adjusting the velocity distrubution of the samples which is not linear or evenly distributed in this library.

In other words, your are sayinbg this library is not well built

Well, for certain tracks it seems to work better than for others and i try to find how to make it better usable for all kinds of tracks. This includes both using an EQ and the velocity response where adjusting the curve in the advanced edit windows is the more simple task.

I found that the veocity response actually allows to easily reach a more mellow sound when playing it in realtime.
Due to having used the library for only around 4 days now and having spent time on those comparion demos it is quite obvious that i did not find the perfect way to use this so far.

Anyway for finding the difference to other pianos and also within differnt kinds of tracks my demos did a good job for me. I did not just do them to post them here but also for myself. This also includes decisons to focus more on certain libraries/plugin compared to others.

[lolilol1975]

BTW, I follow Twitch, and there is a couple of piano players there. I think one very (very) good player said he was using Ivory II with his keyboard (according to him, the best piano he could find), and it has always sounded perfectly natural. This is interesting, because I believe it is sample based.

[Ingonator]

While based on my demos certain pianos are great for specific tracks i think it is quite obvious that i could not really go wrong with using both The Grandeur and XLN Studio Grand.
Those two seem to be great starting points while later it is possible to use other pianos like e.g. Alicia's Keys or the Imperfect Samples Fazioli for trackes where they fit better (e.g. more "intimate" tracks).
With using an EQ the situation is slightly differnt anyway while for the direct comparison using no EQ seemed to be better.
The Grandeur seeme to fit quite good for both the more aggressive sounding and the more intimate tracks.
The fact that i like The Grandeur is not new as also posted in the dedicated thread for this piano. It also has lots of tweaking options to change the overall sound.

Concerning Arturia Piano V it is interesting to tweak it further and i think it is still possible to get an even better sound from it than used for my demos.

[Ingonator]

BTW, I follow Twitch, and there is a couple of piano players there. I think one very (very) good player said he was using Ivory II with his keyboard (according to him, the best piano he could find), and it has always sounded perfectly natural. This is interesting, because I believe it is sample based.

This is mentioned for the Ivory II Italian at the official website:

Up to 18 discrete velocity layers with Sample Interpolation Technology for ultra-smooth velocity and note transitions

FWIW NI The Grandeur uses 18 velocity layers too (+ 9 layers for the Release AFAIK). In my demos using The Grandeur i did not really find problems concerning velocity switching.

[Ingonator]

Having a closer look at the advanced settings in NI The Grandeur could be really worth it. Quiet a lot of options there. Concerning tweakability within a limited range it does not seem to be very far from a modeled piano.

This is a demo how i had posted it previously:
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_The Grandeur

This is the same changing the "Dynamic Range" parameter from the center more to the left (not too much) and also increasing the resonance to maximum in the "Tonal Depth" section (was around 65% in the other demo above).
Here is a demo with the changes:
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_The Grandeur_Dynamic Range

The demos above used a "Color" setting above the center so a "harder" value.
Here is teh previous demo using a Color value below the center (= "softer"):
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata mvt.1_The Grandeur_Softer Color

For this specific more "intimate" track that setting maybe fits even better than the harder one.

The Grandeur and some other newer NI pianos were created in cooperation with Galaxy Instruments (actually most of the work liek sampling, scripting etc. seemed to be done by them..) and their own instruments (e.g. Galaxy Vintage D") seem to have comparable or similar parameters for tweaking. The GUI of their own instruments also seems to look comparable.

[fmr]

BTW, I follow Twitch, and there is a couple of piano players there. I think one very (very) good player said he was using Ivory II with his keyboard (according to him, the best piano he could find), and it has always sounded perfectly natural. This is interesting, because I believe it is sample based.

Ivory has always been regarded as one of the best sampled pianos collections out there. If someone here has some, it would be great if they could render them playing the Rachmaninoff Prelude, for comparison.

[Ingonator]

Just found a demo of Grand Illusion by Jordan Rudess at the page for VI Labs True Keys Italian Grand:
https://www.vilabsaudio.com/index.php?_ ... lian-grand

This is the track on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/vilabs/grand-ill ... lian-grand

The MIDI file is available in this thread:
http://www.jordanrudess.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6689

Seems to be nice for testing pianos and also for both checking and further tweaking my Imprfect Samples Fazioli Basic (the Italian Grand is a Fazioli too).

UPDATE:
Here is a quick rendering of the MIDI file using Imperfect Samples Fazioli Ebony Basic with some tweaking using an EQ (Waves Renaissance EQ):
Jordan Rudess - Grand Illusion_IS Fazioli Ebony Piano_with EQ

The low end was not changed by the EQ, this is the "raw" bass sound. FWIW the EQ tweaking is not based on direct comparison with the original demo yet.

The same demo without any EQ added:
Jordan Rudess - Grand Illusion_IS Fazioli Ebony Piano_no EQ

The Imperfect Samples Fazioli could sound quite differnt based on which velocity is used which is quite nice.
At lower velocities it could sound quite dark (especially without an EQ) while it could sound bright at higher ones. For the specific track posted here it also sems to work nicely without any EQ added.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:

A piano version of "Space Oddity" i found, again rendered with teh Imperfect Samples Fezioli Ebony Basic (EQ added):
Space Oddity_IS Fazioli Ebony Piano_with EQ
RIP, David Bowie...

The sound in this track is quite different while it is the same piano with the same EQ settings as in the previous demo above. That'S also due to having mostly medium and/or lower velocities in this track oposing to the other one. The character of te track coudl be chnaged by increasing teh velocity for all notes which could be easily done (and i had alraedy done that with some demos i poted here).

This i the same demo with the velocity value for all notes increased:
Space Oddity_IS Fazioli Ebony Piano_EQ + increased velocity

Again no changes to the low end with the EQ, this is the "raw" bass sound of the library.