Glyn Barnes

sgotr


What do you guys think about the Harpsichord it's 12.00 and the sale price would be 6.00

Not sure about the Sampletekk one but If you want Harpsichords check out http://sonimusicae.free.fr/blanchet1-en.html and http://sonimusicae.free.fr/petititalien-en.html They are even cheaper and sound pretty good. Grab the House Organ while you are there too.

Thanks Glyn btw that House Organ is sweet with reverb

How does it compare in volume to the bundled Kontakt pianos? Kontakt libraries generally tend to conservative with the amount of headroom, usually leaving a good 12db or more. It sounds like you're having to push it into the top velocity layers to match the volume from your other sources.

If it's in a SONAR track, the volume will be set by CC7, which by default is limited to -12db, but that can be configured to taste. Click on the wrench, then on "instrument options", go to the Controller tab to change it.

bitflipper

How does it compare in volume to the bundled Kontakt pianos? Kontakt libraries generally tend to conservative with the amount of headroom, usually leaving a good 12db or more. It sounds like you're having to push it into the top velocity layers to match the volume from your other sources.

If it's in a SONAR track, the volume will be set by CC7, which by default is limited to -12db, but that can be configured to taste. Click on the wrench, then on "instrument options", go to the Controller tab to change it.

I compared Old Lady to the Kontakt factory library Concert Grand. As expected, the Concert Grand increases in volume linearly from the lowest velocity layer to the highest. Old Lady is inconsistent: In the lowest velocity it’s louder than Concert Grand, as the velocity increases it gets softer than Concert Grand, then louder again. Something else I noticed with Old Lady: in nearly every velocity layer, as it plays through the scale, the volume decreases noticeably as it plays from the lower notes to the higher notes, while Concert Grand volume remains consistent throughout the scale on each layer.

Concerning the CC7 volume, I checked each test instrument: Vertikal Pop and Old Lady are already set to +12dB. NI Upright Piano and Concert Grand are set to -6dB.

Per just sent me an updated nki for Vertikal Pop which sounds and plays much better than the purchased ones. This one is quite usable.  I’ll ask him what changes he made to it. I have to add, hats off to Per. He’s been very helpful in trying to resolve these problems.

I have, however, noticed that on my keyboard it is virtually impossible to activate the lowest velocity level (1-10). Makes me wonder if that many velocity layers are really needed, if there is some point of diminishing returns. Or if they should be arrayed differently, so that there are more layers within the range where most players spend most of their time.

With the problems I've had, I've been wondering that myself.

Curiously, the Old Lady should be much more precise than most because the sampled piano was outfitted with a computer-controlled player that could hit each key with 1,000 precise velocity levels. This should have made it easy to map the layers with great precision.

The mistake, I suspect, is that the velocity layers are uniformly distributed from min to max. Human players probably spend most of their time in the middle third of them and only rarely go all the way to the maximum or spend any time down at the lightest layers. Consequently, only a subset of the available velocity layers actually get used.

The whole idea of increasing the number of layers is to make the transition from one to the next more transparent, to better emulate the natural continuum of an acoustic instrument. How the layers are mapped would seem to be as crucial as the layers themselves.

As SmokeyJ alludes above, these libraries come with alternate mappings. The Old Lady includes 17 nki and nkm files, including the Kontakt 2 version. Some of these are meant to be lighter-weight versions with fewer samples, but some appear to be for alternate tonalities, as suggested by their names (e.g. "old lady bright saturation.nkm").

While experimenting with the Old Lady, I discovered that I could tweak the tone after the performance by using the velocity offset slider in the MIDI track. Since I tend to play with a heavy hand, biasing the velocity downward had the effect of softening the sound and making it more Steinway-ish.

As a result of this, I intend to experiment with some alternate mappings and see if I can improve the feel and playability of the instrument. Before doing that, I need to spend more time with the stock map and get used to its character. Plus it's a good excuse to just sit and play.

Just heard back from Per. Regarding the updated nki he sent me, he said he changed the ratio for the velocity so the most quiet notes played a bit louder and he also tweaked the release samples a bit.

And now it's time to finally go through those Kontakt tutorials that have been collecting dust on my hard drive...

jma

(I almost went with Rain but I noticed it's only 16 bit.)

Don't let that stop you. A properly recorded and dithered 16-bit sample will sound as good as it's 24-bit counterpart, for most purposes. Samples used to be delivered in 16-bit format to control distribution size, loading time, system load, etc... then when native 24-bit became popular it was a format option... now 24-bit is standard. Plus the original Gigasampler 1.x/2.x didn't support 24-bit files, and rain piano is that old... In any case, most, if not all, of those higher-end 16-bit libs from the first half of the decade were recorded 24-bit and dithered to 16-bit using pro gear.
 
If the demo sounds good to you, go for it...

keith

JMA, which version of Kontakt are you using? I have Old Lady on a machine with version 1.5 through 4, so I could see if there's something obvious going on...

Kontakt 4, but it's now a moot point. Per offered to let me swap Old Lady for the Black Grand, which I've just downloaded and I'm much happier with it. And thanks for the info on the 16 bit samples. I guess bigger isn't always better!

The multi works great here keith.  Not sure about the individual programs yet.