Imperial Grand

Sound Magic Imperial Grand Review

I am a Piano Music teacher and am extremely fussy when it comes to all piano's, not only Virtual ones and I could not wait to put the Imperial Grand to the test and through its paces... well within 20 minutes I was sold out and forgot that I was playing on a "Virtual Grand"

My first impression of Sound Magic Imperial Grand is that it is very expressive, rich, realistic sonically, responsive and I immediately enjoyed the dark rich tones of this Piano. The bass response of this piano is also modeled correctly and is not "muddy".

After 5 weeks of playing, testing and testing and testing I found this Grand Piano to be stable reliable and definitely my "go to" piano. I teach and play on different Upright and Grand Pianos and I do own the Native Instruments Acoustic Piano set, True Piano's Amber set supplied with my Sonar 8.5 Producer, and I have Grand Pianos on my Yamaha Motif Es so this baby was up against stiff competition!!!

My testing system is a Duel core Intel 3mhz, 4gb ram, Windows Xp, Sonar 8.5 producer

When I compose on a piano and the sound is not right I lose my creative flow immediately, but with this Grand I played for hours and hours and thoroughly enjoyed it! Some sound examples will follow soon!

The Unique Artificial Assistant Intelligence Tool was very interesting to work with and I found it to be very easy and intuitive to understand and I had my personal Piano setting done in 5 Minutes. The manual is well written and easy to follow and understand.

The Revolutionary HD Velocity Layers is a specialized technique to capture every nuances of expressive playing and I can truly say that it caught every single detail of my playing with perfect accuracy, which to me is the most important aspect of any piano even Acoustic ones.

The GUI was a pleasure to work with as it is clearly defined and has explanatory notes that explains what the purpose and functionality is of every dial and setting. To set the piano was also easy and quick for me as I am very particular over the sound that I prefer when I play. The dials worked smoothly without any glitches or quirks.

What was a big plus factor was the reverb settings, which I found to be very effective and realistic sounding!

Overall Comments:

This is a beautifully Hybrid modeled - Sampled based Virtual Grand Piano, compared to other Virtual Pianos it has a tiny installation footprint. It was easy to setup and clearly documented. I had found my preferred sound settings with 5 minutes and it is stable and reliable, It was compared to my other Virtual Grand Piano's but I found myself always going back to the Imperial Grand for it's rich, dark, expressive tones and I can honestly say that.... I love it!!!!

It is also much, much more worth than it's selling price of €99!

I can highly recommend it!!!

Regards, Winston Hulley aka TB4CRead Review