Piano VST

I'm really impressed from the sound samples of the VSL Synchrons! And what you've stated about having to tweak it have also heard about that & concerns me.
Own Ravenscroft 275 & Ivory Italian & Grand Piaons II so am wondering if it's worth it.

I have emotional cello and love it. Is emotional piano by the same group? I think they are both Kontakt.

I love PianoTeq personally.

Pianoteq 7. I'm sure gigantic sample libraries would be good too, I used Imperfect Pianos and Piano in blue, but Pianoteq is tiny, flexible and lively, and since it's not samples, it doesn't go to machinegun mode even when hammering single key repetitively. And I always detune it a bit, since I've never played a properly tuned concert grand piano, so it makes it more "real" to me.

I'm not a pianist.

I mostly use Garritan CFX for solo work, and am very happy with it. As a matter of fact I’ve just finished a piano album in a neo classical style, and have no issues* with using Garritan together with a 22 piece live orchestra, even when the piano is central in all the songs. It’s extremely good scripted, deeply sampled and the Abbey road room sounds like a million dollars. It’s definitely on the cleaner side, so some would probably say that it lacks character.

Other good ones in your list are Walker, very deeply sampled, sounds great and a vibtage Steinway with lots of character, but for most of my uses it sounds a bit too vintage.

VSL Steinway is the most deeply sampled of them all, but IMO has a lot of other issues, main one beeing a wierd dynamic response which makes it sound unnecessarily hard compared to te countless real Steinway D:s I’ve had the pleasure to play. That, combined with a lack of a real velocity curve in the plug-in, makes it too hard to control. The piano itself is extremely clean, and the mic chooses a bit cold to my ears, specially compared to the Garritan.

Noire is mostly useful for its felt samples and noise samples, in its normal mode it cannot keep up with the other alternatives and lacks dynamics.

*No issues in this context, means that the end result sounds amazing, and I have no issue with that, but getting there is sometimes difficult as it is with all samples pianos. It’s not the same as sitting in front of a nine foot masterpiece made of wood and metal,

At least Ravenscroft is on sale today for $129. The UVI workstation platform I believe has been updated after the original program. As to the samples - even though they might be some years ago, it was still at a time when great mics and converters were available. At any rate, it seems a lot easier to dial in than the VSL Synchron Steinway.

I would like to hear some more responses about the VSL Bosendorfer if anyone here has experience with it.

Addendum:

For VSL Synchron Steinway users or those interested, if you go to VSL forums, there are some samples and presets:

www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/m303320-Synchron-Pianos-User-Patches#post303320  (Need to login to download presets)

This is one example from youtube at that location.



It seems like this guy was able to tame it some.  

seond addendum   So, after playing around on the presets of VSL Synch Steinway - I finally gave up and went back to Ravenscroft - which frankly sounds so good.  But I have not tried the pianoteq which could be better.

I was in a session and Billy Noble was playing some piano…and I was like - dude - wtf is that. Sounded like he was sitting in front of a real one. It was Pianoteq - said you could make it sound just slightly untuned and it sounded completely real.

While I do agree with you, I have been fiddling around with the VSL Synchron Steinway for several years, and I thought I found some better presets from others, and frankly, I do think there is something else wrong with this library other than the midi velocities.  Perhaps the samples at lower levels were not properly captured.  A piano has a significantly different tone at lower levels.  I do not know this Steinway problem for sure, it is over my head.  Meanwhile, the Ravenscroft just got it very close just right out of the box, so to speak, and for those that do not have it, this is the perfect day to check it out, because it is a little less $$ than prior sales.

The reality is that pretty much all of this stuff is 1000x better than what you could get 15 years ago and even 10 years ago. I used to audition studios just to try out their pianos. That was the single top priority. Now it's a consideration but not even close to a deal breaker, that says it all.

XLN Addictive Pianos and Ivory II work well for me.

Thanks for posting this, man!

I picked up Pianoteq way back at Version 2, then upgraded to Version 3 when it became available. After a year or so of using it, I decided that I really hated the attack, and I could never dial it in to where it sounded right to my ear. I listened to every version when they released it, and it always sounded wrong in the attack to me. I had not even bothered to listen to the last couple versions (6 or 7), just assuming it was still a feature of the Pianoteq "sound." But watching some of that video you posted made me go to the Modartt site, and I was able to upgrade to Version 7 Standard for $39! And it sounds worlds better than the old 2/3 days. Wow. Looking forward to playing with this more. In the days ahead, I'll see if I can get it to sound as realistic as some of the sampled pianos out there, but for now, I'm stoked!