Good stuff for sure.

Tell me, is this attached track a real piano or a synth?

Fuge by Bach performed by Zanna Noe 2005

The Piano Patches in Reason 2.5 NN19/XT sound great to me personally. I have tried the Cakewalk TTS synth and a few others, but Reason Acoustic Sampler sounds jus blew me away. If you got Reason, jus give it a shot if u want to.

Cant really comment on the ones the gurus here are recommending, i havent tried them yet myself. Its your decision finally though.

Here you go Michael:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.asp?m=553268

Would you please post the link for the piano soundfont again? Thanks.

Bosendorfer 290 has a great sound but you better have a fast machine because it chews up the machine on the better settings. Since my old 2ghz Chip isn't getting it done with the newer software so I'm looking to buy a new computer of the shelf andf expand the memory. Any suggestions?

ORIGINAL: michael japan

well gosh everyone-the one Jonas put up is much fuller than the big guy. Which just goes to show that bigger is not always better. I won't go into comparisons of all the other pianos, but I did compare it to the PMI Steinway D Classic and I will now erase both the 16 layer Steinway and the 1GB guy I just downloaded. Love your ears Jonas. Got any rhodes or wurlitzers? I have a real good rhodes that I posted some time back but I would like to have one with tremolo in the interface (I have lounge lizard and EVP 73-but the other one I have is fuller.)

Well said that bigger is not always better. It's funny, I have a few faves for piano (a sonic synth 1 steinway preset) and epiano (MDA ePiano) that are technically unipressive but that play well for my rock ballad style and sit perfectly in my mixes. I'm not talking solo playing here or a three piece jazz album so these are not "recommendations" for this thread, just an observation that technically inferior sounds can be "perfect" for some.

When I pull out some of the "big gun" sampled piano's to "improve" my mix, I almost always switch back to my familiar "old shoe" sounds.

ORIGINAL: jsaras

HERE is the best piano soundfont I've encountered anywhere. The price is right

Not bad.
Sounds Like a Steinway. Fat on the bottom, hollow in the middle, bright on top.
I found 1 bad loop point ... G#4, medium velocity, clicks if you hold it down long enough.
and the pedal down sustain is a bit on the unreal side.

Do you know of any way to edit these sound fonts?
With some modulation on the sustain it could be really good.

I tried converting it to .gig but both CDXtract and Translator have different problems with this one.


Steve

Well, I'm kinda collecting them now, what with GPO and these free downloads. I can see this becoming a compulsion, if I'm not careful!

I still like very much my original purchase, which was the 'LE' dry sample set from PMI of their Bosendorfer 290. This is just a sample set - - WAV files - no player - and I got it in Kontakt format to play through Kompakt (i.e there are NKI instrument definitions that bind the samples together).

It is pretty cheap, about a hundred bucks, I think. There are two LE sets you can purchase, wet and dry. The wet samples are too wet, the dry ones have just enough ambience to breathe nicely, you won't normally want to put any reverb on them.

Now, Michiel Post is a bit of a perfectionist so the samples are 24 bit recorded at 48KHz. This is overkill, so to bring the CPU load RIGHT down, I ran them through the (free) R8Brain sample convertor and produced a new set of 16 bit 44.1KHz samples, which I then simply had the NKI instrument definition point at in place of the original set (just move the originals away and load the NKI; it'll **** at you and ask where the samples went, just point to the new ones, and off you go, then re-save the NKI).

(I really cannot audibly tell the difference between these and the original samples, by the way.).

This gives me a very low overhead piano that plays back using DFD disk streaming under Kompakt and only uses a small amount of CPU - I have a T40 laptop (Pentium M 1.5G) with 1G Ram, and that's plenty of oomph. I don't get pops or clicks, ever.

The B290 is very cleanly and quietly recorded and works very well live, IMHO, and it's inspiring to play when you're just fooling around, too.

I don't know how well this would work as a VST using a hardware device like the MUSE receptor, but in theory this is the gigging musician's perfect solution. Although I did use the laptop live last gig, and it didn't let me down - but I have a GM master keyboard to fall back on, I wouldn't have the courage to try a totally computer-based setup. I work with the damned things as a professional software developer and there's just too much to go wrong. Unless you had TWO laptops, or something. Naw, it's just too scary....

ORIGINAL: dreamkeeper

I found 1 bad loop point ... G#4, medium velocity, clicks if you hold it down long enough.

What sampler do you use? I cannot hear the click with Kontakt 1.5. Actually the loop points are very well set on these samples imho.

FYI: I set crossfades between low and medium velocity to get smoother transitions. Don't crossfade below E1 though or you'll get phasing. Small overlap for headphone use and bigger overlap for monitor use, the latter resulting in slightly brighter sound at lower velocities.

Oh, and many thanks to jsaras for sharing. Love this one!

werner

I just loaded the .sf2 up quickly in VSampler.
I didn't make any changes to it.

Steve

ORIGINAL: stephenlnoe

Good stuff for sure.

Not recorded at Pearson's on a Nordiska by any chance?

Howard

Man that Jordan Adams is a great player for only 8 years old!! Thanks for the link.
Max Arwood

I just picked up this new piano and think its pretty nice sounding http://www.artvista.net/Virtual_Grand_Piano.html

It goes for $99 until the end of today.

Ok, this is the last soft piano I am buying, I am drawing a line in the sand. Must save for a new compressor.

http://www.postpiano.com/products/prod_iteminfo.php?id=157&subCat=OLD+LADY

Hi,

Downloaded Jsaras free piano soundfont and really enjoy the sound, but there is a faint clicking sound on hammer strikes. I am using free Sfz player, Sonar 3 Studio and I only have 512MB RAM. Are any of these the culprits?

Max

It does sound quite realistic, but as a professional piano tuner-technician, I find the slightly out-of-tune unisons bothersome.
- LW