It seems as if this forum has slowed down lately. So I thought I would try to stimulate a little dialog by asking a question that is of great interest to me.

Making a really authentic piano sound must be extremely difficult because so many offerings don't even come close. Yet the piano is probably most often immitated instrument of all times.

I have a few really good giga piano's currently loaded in my Mediastation. My favorite being a Steinway B Grand Piano sample that is over 1.7 Gb in size.

What software program, VST, or sample do each of you think comes the closest to the real thing? Synthology's Ivory, NI's Acoustik, Steinberg's The Grand or a pure sample set?

Frank Rosenthal did I read somewhere that you had given a good review of the Bardstown Bosendorfer? If so do you still like it or have you found better?

Thanks in advance, I look forward to your responses.

Richard

Actually I am pretty satisfied whith what I am using a lot since 2001.
It is a sample cd called the "ultimate steinway" which is specially designed for Kurzweil K series.
Allthough relatively small samples (36,750K - 109,025K) due to the use of the Kurzweil technoligy these sound great.
There are some demo's on their website mentionned below, but are in mp3 and don't do real justice to the quality.

I realise you need the hardware I use (kurzweil K 2600) to make use of it, but I am very interested to know if the steinway's of Giga are as good as claimed and how about latency? Does the mediastation solve that?
I tried Giga some years ago thru software prgs for playing in real time, which was basicly impossible due to the unacceptable latency.
In fact any latency is unacceptable with playing in realtime! (not even 1ms!)
This is exactly the reason I sticked to hardware so far.
So how good the sample or software may be, my first concern is can I use it for real time playing?

Sorry to go off topic a bit...

Fred

http://pyramid-sound.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl/SID=1157148242.14614/page=steinway.htm

Fred, most (all) hardware based keyboards have higher latency then a good sampler and good sound card & associated drivers. In general, anything less than 10ms is not noticed by most people.

Richard, yes I still like and use Bardstowns Bosendorfer 290. I also like the Steinway B and D which come with Colossus and GPO.

Hi Richard,
for piano, I actually have a top of the line Clavinova ( no styles). I think I'm just so used to the sound of it.

I've found some reasonably good soundfonts that sound ok in a backing style, but do leave a bit to be desired for melody.
My favourite at the moment is a freebie 50mb Yamaha ( C7 grand?? I think) and the other is the sgm128 piano only about 8mb's but works reasonably well.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by richard_shiflet:
[B]

Just came across this one.
Very impressive!

Fred

http://www.pianoteq.com/

Thanks Fred,
I'm going to try the demo.

best wishes
Rikki

Haven't tried it but have seen good reviews of Ivory.
http://www.synthogy.com/pages/ivory.html

Fred… I am a long time admirer of Kurzweil as well as an owner of a couple of their products in the past, and I think that they have one of the best piano sounds of any “hardware” based keyboard. I listened to the demos on the link you provided and they sound very good, but still not approaching a good giga piano. But that is of course only my opinion.

You asked about the Steinway giga pianos, I have a Steinway B sample that is superb. I started this thread to see if I could find anything better. As to your question on latency I have noticed none. But I have answered this in more detail on your thread http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum43/HTML/000045.html. Also I checked out http://www.pianoteq.com that you mentioned. I have to say it is a very good modeled piano that would probably cut through in a mix well, but I think that I prefer sampled pianos for solos.

Frank… I remember reading a lot of good reviews on the Bardstown Bosendorfer 290. I will give those demos another listen. It is also good to know that Colossus and Garrington PO both have a good piano, as I have considered both for their orchestral sounds.

Rikki… I haven’t tried any of the soundfonts yet. I am looking for a sound for the lead instrument and also for piano solo’s so the smaller file size sounds probably won’t be the ones I need.

RobertG… Ivory has me very interested. I have listened to the demos just not ready to take the plunge $$$ yet. Its price of $349.00 is a lot of money when you are not sure. Has anyone here tried it yet? I would love to hear some first hand experiences. The Steinway sounds close to one of my giga pianos, but I really like the Yamaha C7! I don’t have a sample of the Yamaha C7 piano yet. I wish they had a demo version of their software I could try.

Thanks to everyone for their replies and let me know if you find better.

Richard

Hi Richard,
for lead , definately not. I'm just using them with OMB software for playing styles in realtime & for BIAB song playback.
Unfortunately there's not that many options available yet.
best wishes
Rikki