Best Piano Kontakt3/16/2021
Since I posted that YT-clip earlier in this thread, I should probably mention that that piano is great, but doesnt sound quite as good as that clip, out of the box.It has been processed with the Tracks Black 76 Compressor and Waves L3 UltraMaximizer (adaptive limiter) according to the guy who made it.Not a Kontakt library of course, but that doesnt seem to be as important a requirement now as it was when you started the thread.Roughly (very roughly, that is), sampled pianos can be divided into two categories.
![]() ![]() At the one end, you have the libraries that hope to bring you the sound and playability of a neutral-sounding, well-recorded high-quality instrument. A handful of sampled pianos do just that, but instruments in this category are also known for lacking somewhat in personality. Which is, I guess, the price that needs to be paid in order to get that pristine-sounding versatility of theirs. And at the other hand, you have the so-called character instruments: pianos of a somewhat more limited stylistic range and scope, but with a distinct musical personality which, if that personality happens to fit the music youre using these pianos for, will sound more convincing and right than just about anything else. Assuming were limiting ourselves to virtual choices of course.) For some reason however, many of these character instruments are nowhere near as playable as the ones in the first category. Playable in the sense that, if youre a serious pianist of some experience and you sit down at your keyboard, you want your instrument to respond more or less as youd expect a piano to do, right And you want that to happen in every octave and across the entire dynamic range. Well, I dont know of any character piano that scores very highly in this respect. Pity, but thats how it is. Not all the ones in the first category deserve top marks for playability either, though. The Hammersmith, for one, comes to mind.) Very unplayable, for example under my hands anyway, are the instruments from ImperfectSamples and 8dio. Not saying these are bad libraries they can, in the right context, be the best of all choices, but theyre just not very playable as pianos.) It all depends on what you want of course, if youre a two-finger player whose piano-abilities and -requirements dont stretch beyond some dreamy Thomas Newman-esque phrases over a carpet of slow-moving strings, playability neednt perhaps be high on your list of important considerations. But if youre an accomplished player who needs an instrument that serves and obeys hisher trained and dexterous hands well in a multitude of genres and styles, you might wanna reflect for a moment on the playability of whatever sampled instrument you have your eyes set on. If youre an accomplished player, I dont need to tell you all of this of course, as youd already know.) The Ivory American D definitely falls in the first category (in fact it may even be the best example of that category): cleanly sampled, decent sound, versatile timbre, satisfyingly playable, but with a tendency of always sounding a bit polite, generic and personality-challenged. It feels at home in just about any style or genre (assuming you as a player can take it there), its reliable and it also mixes well with other soundsinstruments (something which is rarely mentioned when discussing virtual pianos and also an aspect where, in my opinion, modeled pianos tend to disappoint). My personal favourite in that first category however, and by quite some distance, is the Galaxy VintageD. Picking a favourite in the second category the character pianos seems utterly pointless to me as these pianos all need a more specific musical style or context to shine. All of them. When, for instance, Soundirons Emotional Piano works, it is simply without competition. And the same is true of the Piano In Blue and all the others. That last sentence was written less in jest than you might think. If youre serious about your piano work and happen to be active in a lot of different genres and styles, and if youre blessed or perhaps cursed is the better word here with a discerning ear which demands timbre that matches the musical content, youll quickly discover that one, or two, or even five or six piano libraries are barely enough to offer satisfying solutions for all the situations youll find yourself in. Limiting myself to sampled pianos, my recommendation would be: two from the first category, three or four from the second. I am sure many of the manufacturers probably embellish the sound when doing demos.
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