Virtual Schimmel & Splendid 256 Mb... anybody out there?

[ThePianoMan]

Hi all.

After Maestro Concert Grand and SJ Orchestra are back again ( BIG thanks to Spe3d-Audioshots ), I'd like to revive this fine pianos.
As for the Schimmel, just to clean out any doubt about legal issues and so on, Realprosounds made this piano free and available from their site, as published here:
http://fr.audiofanzine.com/news/index,i ... 11753.html

No info about Splendid ...

In another thread Sascha Frank said to have the Schimmel.
Hope Spe3d is not yet tired to hear from me, ... So, why wait?
But - first of all - I'd like to hear from you all if these pianos are worth the effort we're asking to Spe3d.
Thanks to everybody.

[pljones]

Schimmel V5.0 Gigasample I have, 227,919,544 bytes. No accompanying literature. The French site, from my limited understanding, didn't actually state any licence terms.

Splendid (splendid_136.sf2 138,147,666 bytes) I'm sure I picked up from a link here not that long ago.

[McLilith]

The 72 MB version of the Splendid Grand can be found here:

Splendid Grand Download Page

I'm a little skeptical about these people, because while they admit that the original Splendid Grand was created by Akai, they don't actually say that Akai gave them permission to convert the samples to SF2 format and then redistribute them to the public. Perhaps Akai doesn't mind, but it would be nice if these people clarified the legal status of these samples.

The original Splendid Grand was offered on the Akai FTP site, and was offered in an Akai sampler format. The original file size for the "full version" was about 250MB, and there were actually two sample sets. I believe one set was close mic'ed, and the other set had some room ambience incorporated into the sample set. The 72MB SF2 version available at the website listed above, would be the "lite version" of the Splendid Grand.

I don't know of anyone currently offering the full version of the Splendid Grand for download. The Akai FTP server is no longer open to the general public, as far as I know.


take care,
McLilith

[pljones]

They're also selling a CD of the full AKAI sampleset:
http://www.soundcreationsinc.com/tech/s ... ction.html
"Original Splendid Grand samples ©AKAI Professional. All Rights Reserved." And their CD is just a service... now I don't know if AKAI had made the original samples available but the "All Rights Reserved" bit generally means "all rights reserved", including the right to redistribute in other formats as a service.

Hmm, I'm left wondering where I got mine from: I don't think I'd have touched it with that comment (and it doesn't appear to be available for download at Sound Creations). Once upon a time, I promised myself I'd write down the urls for any sample libraries I downloaded and make sure I'd kept the relevant documentation... /sigh/

[steveholt]

The 136Mb set was available from that site back last year. I have it and it is reasonably playable. It would be a petty if it were not legal.

Steve

[Patrice Brousseau]

The 136Mb set was available from that site back last year. I have it and it is reasonably playable. It would be a petty if it were not legal.

Steve

There was also a short period where a 256Mb special version was available. This was last year, I think...

[McLilith]

The full original version was freely downloadable from the Akai FTP server for quite awhile. It's possible that the people who are offering Splendid Grand "as a service" might have assumed that since Akai didn't charge money for the download, and didn't password-protect the files on the Akai FTP server, that they were released into public domain, or something similar. Unfortunately, there were no documents on the Akai FTP server which would have confirmed any such notion. The files were simply on sitting on the FTP server with hardly any documentation at all. On that FTP site, I never saw any mention of permissions granted, or restrictions imposed by Akai, with regard to the samples. Of course, that doesn't mean that the public is automatically free to do anything they want with the files.

I wish Akai would publish a statement to clear up what rights they had granted the public with regard to these samples. Does anyone want to write Akai about this?


take care,
McLilith

[databass]

Someone tried the EMPEROR & OLD LADY concert grand piano?

the free demo (for Kontakt and Halion) seems to extracts 1 GB .. of 24 bits/48kHz samples-files

but i don't know how good is it

cheers

[pljones]

The two PMI freebies aren't that usable, IMO. They've been rather unsympathetically chopped out of even larger samplesets, from what I could tell. As demos, though, they do work: you can tell how well they sampled the instruments represented (and that's pretty well!). (I just don't need that many pianos and the free complete ones around pretty much satisfy me.)