Pop Upright Piano

[pipedr]

Does anyone have experience with the XLN audio Yamaha U3 piano or the Cinesamples Abbey Road Upright?

I'm considering purchasing one of these, but I already have NI's 1908 upright, The Gentleman.

The Abbey Road uprights sound good, and it's cool to have a piano that the Beatles used, but only 4 velocity layers and modeled sustain pedal down sounds, unlike some of the other premium piano libraries. Would this be a downgrade from NI The Gentleman?
(it's on sale for 35% off)

I like the sound of the U3--Pianoteq has one, too. I wish I could choose to buy just that one, but they only sell it as an add-on. Would Pianoteq's U3 be superior to the XLN Audio one?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I have the Cinesamples Abbey Road Uprights and I'm a huge Beatles fan (and the Zombies, and Elliott Smith, who all used these actual pianos) but that is a very disappointing library. It has a few big problems IMO:

1. There's a lot of time before the note onset and it varies from note to note. This means some notes have more latency than other resulting in what sounds like sloppy playing. I contacted the developers, and they said they wanted to capture the mechanical noises of the pianos before a note was struck, but understood that the additional latency may not be desirable which is why they added the onset control knob. The problem with the onset control is the variability in the note onset times at the sample level. For example one sample may have 3ms of noise, ,and another may have 9ms (this could be within the same note). Without editing every sample individually, you can't get every note to start at the transient.

2. The pianos weren't tuned. So, ok, these are character pianos, yes. There should be some tuning issues between the individual strings, yes. These are historical pianos, yes. The center frequencies shouldn'nt be so far off. You can tune a piano so each note choruses, while the center frequencies of the note being about right. Wasn't done here. They could've even done this at the sample level by adjusting the tuning in Kontakt if they didn't want to mess with the original pianos, but did not.

3. The velocity mapping is TERRIBLE. Perhaps my biggest issue. Will some notes pop out more than others on an old piano? Yes. Is that's what happened here? No. When you edit the Kontakt mapping, you can see that they just evenly distributed the recorded samples evenly across the range of the keyboard. So every single key might have a new velocity layer every 19 velocity steps across the entire range of the piano, regardless of how hard the note was actually hit in the recording process. So some quiet velocities have much harder hits than the notes next to them, but the middle velocities could have the opposite issue. Then multiply that across all the notes of the keyboard and it results in a sloppy sound.

When I reached out the response was basically to the effect of, 'we weren't allowed to actually sample or tune the pianos, it was all done in-house at Abbey Road and we were just given the samples to edit and release.' So, while Cinesamples may not have had any control over the sampling, they could have at least done a better job on the editing of the samples by fixing the tuning, trimming the note starts, and doing a better job with sample selection and velocity mapping. Instead, it looks [to me] like they ran a script to cut up and map samples automatically, threw a GUI on top of it, and called it a day.

It's one of the only products I've truly regretted purchasing, and I've avoided Cinesamples products entirely because of it. When they responded they indicated there were no plans to update the product but it could happen at some time (which sounds like a no). I certainly haven't seen any notice of updates to it. I actually started to personally edit the start times of the samples, and was hoping to find someone to help with the tuning but it's a huge job and one I don't have the time nor patience for. Such a shame. Those pianos could've been a great product.

Now, just to be entirely honest about it: the pianos themselves sound great. It's really the "Lady Madonna" piano or the Elliott Smith "In the Lost and Found" piano or the Zombies "Care of Cell 44" (hell, all of Oddessey and Oracle) piano sounds. Other libraries don't sonud like that at all. Just from a historical perspective, those pianos deserved a better sampling and editing job than this product offers.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Also, the 8Dio 1901 Upright is on sale right now for 40% off. Just jumped on that one myself.

[CGR]

I have the Addictive Keys Modern Upright and find it really flexible in shaping the tone & character, and also very even and responsive under the fingers. Many parameters to tweak, and really covers a lot of the upright piano stuff I need, sits really well in a mix and sounds very convincing/authentic. I prefer it to The Gentleman, which I also own but use less often (the pedal down sound doesn't 'open up' like it does on the AK Modern Upright).

Addictive Keys Modern Upright won't get you the Abbey Roads Upright sound, but I'd suggest it would cover more applications, given it can be a well tuned & voiced quality modern upright, but also morph into a vintage, chorusey, detuned upright suitable for more 'character' type uses. Very light on computer resources too. FWIW, sounds more convincing to my ears than the Pianoteq U3

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

If you don't need/want a ton of microphone options, don't forget about the Synthogy Ivory Uprights. For pop music, they're probably what I'd recommend. You've got the clean modern Yamaha, which would work for Jazz, Pop, and R&B, there's the vintage upright for cleaner/classic sounds, the bar room upright for when you want something out of tune and chorusy, and a tack piano. It's not inexpensive and I think you need an iLok, but it's a very solid library. I just wish they offered multiple microphones with the ability to mix them.

After spending a few hours tonight with the 1901 Upright from 8DIO, I'm very happy with it. If I were compaing it to the Ivory pianos it's somewhere between the Vintage and the Bar Room uprights. On the darker side, but with a bit of chorusing in some notes. Lots of microphone options, and because of that, it can be very flexible. That said, if I want to use more than 2 microphones at a time, I'm going to need an SSD. The voice count goes through the roof very quickly due to all the samples. There's a great sounding "Mix" microphone position that I'll use for now, but an SSD is definitely in the cards. Great sounding library. At the current 40% off, it's a good bargain. At the regular price, $200 is just too much for one upright.

[CGR]

How does the 8dio 1901 upright feel at the keyboard? Any inconsistencies, velocity jumps? I have the 8dio 1928, 1969 & 1971 pianos, and find them somewhat uneven and a little 'touchy' to play.

[pipedr]

Thanks for the persoective! I was also looking at the 8dio upright, and liked its tone and all the mics in the demo. They only have the classical demos, though. Can this piano get bright enough to work in a pop setting?

[CGR]

If you're looking for a really bright pop piano that will cut through, consider Adam Monroe's Upright Piano:
http://adammonroemusic.com/upright-pian ... o-vst.html
The demos of 'The Entertainer' by Scott Joplin and 'Imagine' by John Lennon (the Theremin sound he also uses is a bit off-putting!) are an accurate idea of it's sound. Could be a good (and much cheaper) alternative for you if you're looking at the Cinesamples Abbey Roads pianos.

Very bright and wiry - so much so that I find myself applying a Low Pass filter around 3.5 - 4K to take the edge off it. 2 x stereo mic positions (Small Diaphram Condensers + Ribbon Mics) and pretty decent velocity range (10 layers). Runs really well within Logic for me as an AU plugin.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

How does the 8dio 1901 upright feel at the keyboard? Any inconsistencies, velocity jumps? I have the 8dio 1928, 1969 & 1971 pianos, and find them somewhat uneven and a little 'touchy' to play.

It's still very new to me and I'm an intermediate piano player on a good day, mostly playing chords, but I haven't noticed anything offenseive in the response. In fact, doing some chromatic scales up the piano show that it's pretty consistent in terms of velocity, at least in the middle ranges. Some notes may have some more chorusing due to some tuning differences between the individual strings than other notes, especially around middle C, but I'd expect that in this type of library (old upright). The E above middle C is very chorused and pops out a bit for that reason. The nice thing though is that the library isn't locked down, so if it bothers you, could create a version of the piano where you stretch the Eb up or F down by a half step and clean up the bum note.

[CGR]

Sounds promising - thanks for your reply. I really like the open, resonating tone of the 8dio pianos. A lot of other sampled pianos don't have proper full-length pedal down samples like 8dio (many developers sample the resonances separately and morph them into the pedal up samples. Works well for re-pedalling but sounds a little fake and not as realistic).

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Sounds promising - thanks for your reply. I really like the open, resonating tone of the 8dio pianos. A lot of other sampled pianos don't have proper full-length pedal down samples like 8dio (many developers sample the resonances separately and morph them into the pedal up samples. Works well for re-pedalling but sounds a little fake and not as realistic).

If you have a file you want run through it just to hear it in context, I may be able to do a render for you sometime this week. Shoot me a PM if so.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for the persoective! I was also looking at the 8dio upright, and liked its tone and all the mics in the demo. They only have the classical demos, though. Can this piano get bright enough to work in a pop setting?

The 8DIO 1901 is definitely not a bright piano, especially at middle velocities, but it opens up quite a bit as you get into higher velocity ranges. That said, it's not going to sound like a Yamaha U3. If that's what you want, I'd really look at the Ivory Upright's "Modern Upright" which is a great sounding Yamha U3 or even a grand piano. When you think "pop piano" it's usually a Yamaha C7 or Steinway D. If you want modern, bright, upright piano, I think Yamaha U3. I wouldn't try to fit a sample library of a hundred year old upright into a modern context unless your idea of "pop" includes bands like Radiohead, or other bands that might use a murkier piano sound. I just loaded up the Yamaha U3 from Ivory, and it sounds great. Very clean, very bright, velocity is super consistent and tuning is spot on throughout.

This thread also reminds me that I have Addictive Keys on a DVD-ROM somewhere and completely forgot. Never even installed it on my newest DAW. I remember thinking it was pretty good, with lots of microphones, but wasn't super deeply sampled. Gotta dig that up and revist it.

Weird thing is, I have an upright Wurlitzer console piano that I occasionally mic but I still have all these libraries. In fact, now that the temperature has changed, it's time to call the tuner. One day I'll suck it up and get a used U2 or U3 to replace the Wurlitzer.

[CGR]

Thanks for your 8dio Upright MIDI file render offer. I have so many sampled pianos I think I need to resist this one and make use of what I have! Cheers.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for your 8dio Upright MIDI file render offer. I have so many sampled pianos I think I need to resist this one and make use of what I have! Cheers.

I wish I was so strong!

[CGR]

You may not be saying that to me in the final hours of their 40% off sale! :/