Amber Piano in x1 Essentials

I thought I heard that TruePianos' "Amber" was an instrument available in X1 Essentials but I just looked and there's no mention of it.

Any ideas?

thanks

ok, thanks.

I'm using a demo of it at the moment - Diamond module - which seems pretty good.

I wrote to the company before I joined up here and asked them if they would sell me the software with just the one piano; as in the demo, but they said they couldn't split it as a full package to register.

I'll keep up with the demo until I can either find something else or afford the full version.

Does anyone use a different piano module?

mudgel

It used to be available as an elite Pack from the cakewalk site at a reduced price.

I'll have a look at the thanks.

Just got myself Addictive Drums from XLN audio at Sweetwater for $99 (£64) a real bargain!


EDIT: I checked that out mudgel and it's only possible if you're a Sonar owner and I've not yet made the plunge, but I'm looking into X1 Essentials.

I checked out some other threads here and came up with these:

Best price: Garritan steinway
Best Piano overall: Quantum Leap.
Good ones: Galaxy II, Sonivox.

"Old Lady" (Steinway) and "Emperor" (Bosendorfer) samples. Time it right, and you can pick them up for $25 each

NI Akoustic Piano

Art Vista Grand

Alicia keys

It'll take me a bit of time to look through them.

Thanks for chipping in subtlearts. I've had a listen to your site over the last few days, and consequently, I would rate your oppinions on pianos as pretty high. That's some lovely music and sound you have there.

What's the actual piano you're using - on Nullius in Verba 1 for example? nullius in verba - "don't take anyones word for it" Nice title; I just had to look that up.  :)

I can't entertain the high end options, but the NI split and the Pianissimo sound interesting - I'm sure I tried the Pianissimo a couple of years ago I think, but everything was a lot more complex for me then with the whole DAW thing so I didn't get on with it for some reason? I'll have another look.

Thanks

edjay

Thanks for chipping in subtlearts. I've had a listen to your site over the last few days, and consequently, I would rate your oppinions on pianos as pretty high. That's some lovely music and sound you have there. 

well thank you kindly! I'm glad you enjoyed it... 

What's the actual piano you're using - on Nullius in Verba 1 for example? 

That would be a Hamburg Steinway. The real kind I mean. That was recorded in concert (fully improvised, Keith Jarrett style) at the Philip T. Young recital hall at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. It was recorded with a really strange big AKG stereo mic, kind of like one of those headmount mics except that it didn't look anything like a head. Well, a human head anyway. I thought it came out quite nicely!

However, I've used lots of different sampled pianos over the years as well, along with my own lovely little Urbas & Reisshauer baby grand, made in Dresden in the early 1920's...

nullius in verba - "don't take anyones word for it" Nice title; I just had to look that up.  :) 

... it was the motto of the Royal Society of London, the first international compendium of scientific knowledge. I got it from 'The Discoverers' by Daniel Boorstin. Great book. 

I can't entertain the high end options, but the NI split and the Pianissimo sound interesting - I'm sure I tried the Pianissimo a couple of years ago I think, but everything was a lot more complex for me then with the whole DAW thing so I didn't get on with it for some reason? I'll have another look.

Again, I thought it was pretty good considering price and sample size. Definitely a useful one for live performance, if a hardware option (or the real thing) is not available... 

Thanks 

no trouble! Thanks again for the kind words about the music... 

tobias

Thanks, I can see that now I'm a bit more familiar with the site.

I've had problems with Pianissimo again? It keeps saying that it can't load the samples and I have to reload the application - which I've done once.

I'll give it another default install as perhaps it's objecting to my chioce of destination folders?

I see what's been said about the TruePianos being a "brittle" sound next to the Pianissimo which is a lot richer - horse for courses.

konradh

Note that most real-life acoustic pianos don't sound as good as most mid-priced virtual ones.....

LOL.... the digital facts of life.    .....and there's less chance of them killing you when they fall out upper storey windows.

I had a look and listen to the Ivories, but the other £acts of life....

I got the pianissimo up and working: I let it install to it's default and then moved the .dll into my own VST folder. I'll spend a bit of time and see where I get to with it.

Thanks everyone

EDIT: downloading the trial of Pianoteq pLay for a look.

subtlearts


....the physics of real sound in a real instrument in a real room are still orders of magnitude more complex, organic, subtle and cool.

I agree.

It would probably help if I could play too! :)

I think that as my mixes are improving in clarity, it becomes obvious that some of the instruments I've been using to learn to create in a DAW are less than stellar. When I listen to the "in-a-closet" mixes from 8 or 10 months ago, I can see that then, it was just an overall sound with my vocal and trumpet on top and it didn't really matter. Now, it's actually starting to sound like a band so every instrument is important my "ears" can be annoyingly critcal.

Already the Pianissimo has a strange tone to it. Not worry, at least I won't have trouble carrying it into the next room on my flash-drive.  :-/

Sorry Jsaras, I didn't like it as sson as I heard the higher notes.

The Pianoteq Play only plays for 20 mins as a demo so I'll give it a miss.

I seem to have got the Pinaissimo sounding a bit better so perhaps just a bit more time is needed.

Thanks

If I had just one piano library, it definitely wouldn't be TruePianos Amber. There are just too many better ones out there.

The best ones are Kontakt libraries. After you get past the initial expense of Kontakt itself, there are a lot of inexpensive options. Check out the Sampletekk pianos, there are a bunch of them (my favorite is called "Old Lady", a 1923 Steinway for 50 bucks).

One of the best deals around at the moment is Alicia's Keys for a hundred bucks, if you're after a more pop-ish sound rather than a classic grand piano. It's a Yamaha; if you've ever played a real Yamaha piano you know what to expect.

Here's an excellent youtube video that compares a few piano libraries. It's in two parts: Part One, Part Two.

subtlearts

... you'll find the Piano Collection 2. Unfortunately there's no playable demo, but there's a whole lot of piano in there for the money and some of what's in the sample track sounds quite decent. 

Hey thanks, that looks and sounds pretty good.

I had decided on Pianissimo, but when I filled out all the usual stuff for the purchase, at the last button, they decided to try and charge me another £14 that they hadn't told me I was opting for. Well, with me being painfully short of money - hence the the great piano deliberation - I decided to email them a few choice words instead. They did admit that it was at least constructive feedback, and after several emails, promptly blamed it on their cash collecting software from a company Digital River. They did however offer me a discount coupon which I thanked them for and said I may use in a few weeks.

This is another interesting idea though: Have I got it right, you get a free sample player and the piano collection costs $50 - that's roughly £30 at the present exchange which sounds great - you can then use the piano sounds as an ordinary VST.

I've been busy with other things for as many days as I can remember; including Samplitude, which I can't afford, but that's given me a good insight into CD and MP3 compiling/indexing and the insertion of ISRC's/wave editors etc.

I've got a couple of threads up at the moment to do with Sonar and Windows 7 and quad core CPU's and stuff. (I found a Home Premium unused original DVD for £40! I sent the cheque today) I'm hoping X1 Essentials/Win 7/ Piano will be in place in the next couple of weeks, then I can spend a couple of months bedding myself in and shifting my songs and music......again.

That was a good reminder, thanks Sublearts!

EDIT: Decided to sign up and download and have a look.

As I mentioned on another thread, Pianoteq Play is also very good for only $99.

I use a lot of piano out front and in solos, so Ivory II Grand Pianos was well worth the $319 to me and its Steinway is breathtaking.  That said, a lot of people, including my singer and very musical wife, can't tell the difference between Ivory, Amber, or several others.  I can absolutely hear the difference, but admit that there are diminishing returns.

edjay

I had decided on Pianissimo, but when I filled out all the usual stuff for the purchase, at the last button, they decided to try and charge me another £14 that they hadn't told me I was opting for. Well, with me being painfully short of money - hence the the great piano deliberation - I decided to email them a few choice words instead. They did admit that it was at least constructive feedback, and after several emails, promptly blamed it on their cash collecting software from a company Digital River. They did however offer me a discount coupon which I thanked them for and said I may use in a few weeks. 

that sounds annoying... several of the 'cheap' payment processors end up being really annoying for the customer, which strikes me as a really bad idea. Save money on your payment processor by forcing unwanted spam offers on your customers. Then watch and see if they ever buy stuff from you again! Fun stuff! Anyway, glad they took responsibility for it and ponied up with a discount coupon. 

This is another interesting idea though: Have I got it right, you get a free sample player and the piano collection costs $50 - that's roughly £30 at the present exchange which sounds great - you can then use the piano sounds as an ordinary VST.

... EDIT: Decided to sign up and download and have a look. 

I take it you meant downloading the free SampleTank player? That's a good idea anyway, as even the free library it ships with is pretty good, though limited. (Incidentally, this applies also to the free Komplete Players from NI and the free Alchemy Player from Camel audio... and several others. You can flesh out a pretty sophisticated rig by adding these together!)


Anyway I should make it clear that I don't have the Piano Collection and can't vouch for it; and that it would appear that their 'premium' level grand is only 3 velocity layers, which doesn't stack up all that well against the 10 or more that most of the A-list libraries offer. However, it may well still sound great - I have the SampleTank L library and the grand that comes with that is only 14 meg and sounds decent, though a bit one-dimensional. I wouldn't use it for solo work but it might be just the thing in a mix... so I think it's reasonable to assume that the one in the Pianos Collection, which weighs in at a somewhat more respectable 152 MB (still not in the gigabyte range of premium libs, but still) would be noticeably better...

I somehow erased my reply there??

I'll post it again:

I see what you mean but I was trying to keep the sophistication to a minimum, that sounds again like an awful lot of time not actually doing any music. I'll give the IK a try and see.

Great tips though, thanks.