Piano

I first used this piano about 18 months ago when I was starting out with Cubasis. I knew nothing about samplers, romplers or humplers so used it in my first composition because it was all I could lay my hands on. At the time I thought it sounded like crap - shallow, tinny, no facility for expression - and I don't think it actually sounds anything like as rich as the subsequent VST pianos I've tried.

However... I have come to love this little plugin. Partly because I nurture a silly romantic astonishment that a piece of software that you could fit on a floppy disc can contain all the notes right across the length of my keyboard, and partly because it just somehow seems to have a goshdarn character all of its own.

As long as you're not intending to make a feature of it, mda piano can work in even the most sophisticated of mixes, and its numerous editable features only enhance its usefulness.

Of all the free pianos I've tried this is definately a favourite. 4Front is the weirdest, EVM Grand Piano is the most lifeless, but mda piano is a firm fave.

Don't think of it as a rich palette, for making broad-brush authentic creations, but as a cheap retractable pencil for making sketches and maybe filling in some detail.

Interface: idiosyncratic.
Features: plenty
Documentation: none available, none needed
Presets: useful
Support: unescessary
Value for money: definately!
Stability: complete

As Orange Juice once sang: 'You'll always have a place in my heart...'Read Review

the interface is rather easy to move around, with only a handful of sliders.. i like this- its ugly but functional.

i liked the decay/release and hardness factors you can apply to the sound.. it has enough features to really mold what you want..

however the sound, well it sounds like a piano- but IMO it doesnt really have a lot of character to it.. it sounds very thin and tiny to me.

i normally use, instead.. a small, free soundfont in place of this piano (converted from an impulse tracker multisampled instrument which was sampled from an alesis synth). Nothing is as good as the real thing, but i have free soundfonts that (to me) sound much better than this vsti.

i would say, since its free, no one has anything to lose by trying mda piano, but it just doesnt fit the bill for me..

different strokes for different folks, i guess.. :)Read Review

There is nothing like a real piano, this is so important in our western music that is impossible to be completely satisfied with synths or samplers.

But we have some standard in electronic music with "not so real" piano emulations that have become familiar and fashion with musician and listeners, think of Roland U20/220 and P330, Korg M1, all Kurzweil, some EMAX and AKAY s1000 etc.
Now MDA sets a new standard, i have recognized it in some late dance hits. It sounds so good, surprisingly for it's 1,2 meg (in mac), that i have completely dropped my big, hundreds meg, halion/akay pianos. As in all good real istruments emulation the samples are not the only aspect to care, the fundamental thing is to reproduce the dynamic response and the articulation of the source and MDApiano has got them. The user interface could be more nice and clear, but i do not care too much, with these few controls it is easy to learn. MDApiano could be a great value also if MDA decides to sell it instead of giving it free!!!Read Review

A very simple to use VSTi that does exactly what the name suggests. There aren't huge numbers of presets, but who need them for a piano? There are enough parameters to tweak for a bit of variation, such as 'hardness' and 'muffle' and flat or sharp tuning, so you can get a good-ish reproduction of pedal use and timbres, and nobody would need a manual with this thing - it's too straight-forward to need one.

It sounds better than any S+S workstation piano sounds I've ever played with (including the famous Korg M1 - which was excellent, but only suited certain styles IMO), and can be used in almost any mix or style. It can't compete with a full sampler, but for most people it will be perfectly good enough, and only true orchestral types will complain about the sound.

Add a little reverb and it will cover over any imperfections you might hear (not that I had any complaints with the dry sound anyway). Considering it's free, it is an amazing VSTi, and competes with most of the piano rack modules that came out a few years ago.

It's very reliable and you'll barely register any CPU useage, so no need to save power and record to audio.

I've always wanted a decent piano sound and can't get it on any of my hardware synths, but never considered it worth the several hundred bucks to buy a module. This fills the gap perfectly.

Everybody needs a piano at some stage, and this is it. I scored a few points off it for features and presets, but really that's irrelevant, as it is a piano - if you need envelopes and filters, then put it through some plug-ins to make it un-piano-like (?) but why would you want to?

Simple, reliable, uncluttered, clean and a VERY good emulation of a piano - it does everything it should.Read Review

About all this logic audio users who complain about crashes .... fruity loops never crashes.

anyway ...great plugin this mda piano, simple in use but a bit tin. When used with pianoverb you can create a good clasic piano with the preset : "concert piano" that sounds much more realistic and fatter (if you can speak of fat with a piano sound :-))

anyway ...want a more realistic piano ...buy a steinway (if you can affort it) This is a good vst alternative.Read Review

A really good plugin that deson't deserve the complaints labeled at it.
Pro - extremely low CPU usage, ease of use, quality of sounds

Con - small no of presets. (But it is a Piano emulation, it really doesn't need that may presets)

Just download it ad try it, it really is good at what it is meant to do.Read Review

Hehe, I'm listening to some stuff on CD done a while ago with this free VSTi, and it's hard to believe how good it sounds.

I've heard plenty of real piano in my life, even owned one. Remember that the vast majority of piano in the world isn't Paderewski on a Boesendorfer, but your uncle on an old upright.

It's an "in the mix" type of tool, I don't think Glenn Gould would have been satisfied with the solo sound, LOL. I've used it in two contexts- "old 78rpm vinyl" effect and a kind of planky jazz-restaurant piano, and it was just plain good in these settings.

It's excellent for sketches because it's so straightforward and low CPU, with some ingenuity it's really first class for retro touches, and there are probably some brilliant kids out there who've gotten a pretty decent modern piano sound out of it in recordings, LOL.

Unless they're really, really good, "good" piano samples are pure kitsch. This isn't pretending to be a piano with a gigabyte of samples, it is just what it is and achieves some surprising results.

This is a classic VSTi, the kind of thing that makes the whole virtual/internet music thing so cool.



Read Review

An excellent free VSTi which really does what it says in the name; emulates pianos. While the sounds cannot compare to a huge multisampled monster, they sound quite natural and with a bit of inventive mastering, they fit well in a mix.

While it has to lose some points on the manual score, it doesn't really have one, you don't need one. It is so simple to use.Read Review

It's a free piano, which sounds much, much better than I thought it would.

In the context of a mix, with a couple of well-chosen FX, it can work well.

On balance, it's a nice thing to get for free.Read Review

A good sounding acoustic piano with enough tweakability to make it useful in lots of different mixes.

The sound is good quality. Having any control over it is a bonus. Since it's free the mda Piano is worth your time grabbing. I use other samples, I have highly detailed multisampled pianos that are better but not by much.

Pros: great value for money, good sounding with just enough sound editing to make it useful beyond it's modest design
Cons: noneRead Review

This Piano blows a lot of commercial piano stuff away. Uses nearly no CPU and it's free! I love it, Thank you, Paul!Read Review

Those who bemoan the sound quality of this VSTi aren't getting it, I think. Think of mdaPiano as not a virtual piano in the way that those old boring, in tune, but still unconvincing "MIDI piano" samples are. Think of it as more of a piano toolkit, of sorts. You could spend months searching the web for a funky old "real" piano sound in sample format and never find it--mdaPiano gives you a chance to create the sound you want, or something damn close to it. If you want an awesome Bosendorfer sound, get a Gigasampler. But I wanted a scruffy old Nicky Hopkins-style piano sound (think "Sympathy for the Devil") for a song, nailed it within minutes on mdaPiano, and the results rocked like hell in a way no "Grahnd Piahno" sample ever could. It also inspired me to heights of piano arrangement I never thought I was capable of. Ilove this instrument, it's up there with the B4 and Pro52 in its awesomeness IMHO--and it's FREE! God bless you, mda!Read Review

When I record piano in my music, this vsti is my #1 choice.

When you are in search for a concertpiano, this may not be what you looking for (altough some reverb does the trick very well).

I want old and dirty sounding piano's and for that MDA piano is absolutely a must (free!) download. With the muffle/hardness function you can make mda piano sound 'dusty' and with another function it sounds like a piano that's not been tuned for a while.
Try the preset 'broken piano' and you'll know what I mean :)

I think it's also great to actually hear the strokes from the hammer hitting the pianosnares in some presets.Read Review

Come on, there are Soundfonts out there sounding a million times better than this. Looks ugly, sounds like a Cristmas-mall-piano. Proberly OK for people that never tried a "real" piano. The concept's good, but that's not enough to call this a piano. I dont think we need a sub-megabyte piano, when RAM is cheaper than it cost to download this "thing"

Go for something else. Spend a little money on a piano. Nobody has yet emulated a good piano. Use samples or Soundfonts.Read Review