I currently own an E-5000 Ultra Sampler with 128MB RAM and an 8.4GB IDE internal hard-disk. I recently bought the Ultimate Piano CD-ROM from EastWest since I read in some reviews that it has one of the best piano sounds (SOS Review). It has a Fazioli, a Steinway, and a Bosendorfer. However, when I loaded and played it, none of them sounded any better than my ROLAND XP-50 Nice Piano patch, and I felt disappointed. I always thought sampler sounds would be better. They were not as expressive as the XP-50. In fact, I did not come close to feeling I was using a real piano. Did I miss something or can somebody else confirm this?

Thanks.

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Anthony

Hmmm...I haven't heard the roland patch, but my gut instinct is that you better check your equipment. Are you using an amp? Active monitors? Headphones? Is there something in between like a mixer? A lot of cheap equipment will negate the money you spent on the sampler. Cheap equipment will filter out highs and lows (especially lows).

If you still can't hear the subtle differences (hammer action, bass resonance) you may consider getting your hearing tested. If you have gone to lots of rock concerts or played in bands, you're in a high risk group to lose your hearing and you'll lose the highs and lows first...another source of filtering.

Digiboy,

Thanks for the reply. I thought this forum seldom gets any replies.

What I particularly didn't like in the Ultimate Piano CD's are two things:

1) Very short decay of samples (even at 96 MB samples). When I press a key and hold the sustain pedal, tones fade very quickly. The ROLAND acoustic pianos have longer sustains.

2) The dynamic volume range in velocity/touch response is small. Thus, when I play in pianisimmo, I feel like I am still playing in mp. Thus, I felt I could not be as expressive. The range is more like from mp to ff and yet, the corresponding attack/volume I get in response to how hard I hit the keys do not match.

Does this mean I need to do some tweaking? I thought that if I bought a CD-ROM version, all I need to do is load-and-play?

Anthony

You probably want to do some tweaking - velocity response curve (make certain it doesn't have too much fall off), sensitivity (make it a little less sensitive so your pp is pp)

The sustain may be a little trickier to get to sound good. It depends on the library. You can try adding delay, and that may do the trick, but you may have to really tweak the sound to get it to sound the way you want. Good luck!

Well, I thought of something else that could be at fault - your controller. Have you experienced decent ranges coming from your controller, because it might not send the right information to the box. (I assume you are playing live and not using a sequencer).

And the library could just suck. But I hope not, for your sake.

I have an E4x Turbo (non-ultra). Picked up the Grand Gold Pianos disk from NorthStar Productions. 128mb,96mb, and 32 mb samples. 9ft STeinway, 7'6" & 6' Yamaha.

Four layers of samples that are velocity switched. Pretty well done. I like it quite a bit accept for one thing. The trails on the decays have a lot of quantiztion noise. I don't know if this is a fault of the E4's DACs or the Samples themselves. Maybe a little of both. Although I only hear it playing solo piano in headphones. Put it in any kind of a mix and it's not an issue.

Regards,

Jason