The piano-- Can you hear an odd quivering sound on the chords? It's like bad loops vibrating - what's going on there?--- I recommend you audition the jazz piano in JABB - I think it sounds much better than this.

 
Thanks for the feedback, Randy. That piano "quivering" is what MP3 encoding is doing - you can hear it in the horns, too. It's crystal clear and smooth coming out of SONAR at 24 bits (and I guarantee TruePianos beats the pants off of the JABB piano in all respects ). I always hear some of this with low bit-rate MP3s, but this is definitely the worst ever; I think there's some weird interaction between Pow-r dither and the LAME encoder, possibly exacerbated by the higher-than usual level of reverb I put on this mix.
 
I usually export to 16-bit WAV first, check that agianst the Master and then encode to MP3 with Fraunhofer in CoolEdit, but I was in a hurry, and just exported straight to MP3 from SONAR.
 
I'm checking it out now, and hope to have a cleaner version up soon.
 

I couldn't get the 128kbps MP3 to sound any better no matter what I tried. The dithered 44.1kHz x 16-bit export nulls to inaudibility with the Master bus but the difference signal with the MP3 is just full of warbly trash.
 
I'll check out Box, or shell out for the Soundclick upgrade. In the meantime, a 320kbps MP3 file is available here temporarily (my personal Comcast website that I occasionally use for simple file-sharing):
 
http://home.comcast.net/~davebaay/
 
 
 
 

I must say I'm a bit disappointed by True Pianos here. I've seen a YouTube demo on it where it DOES sound better than JABB's piano, but it seems to lack something here.

 
John, thanks for the compliment on the composition - glad you liked it. Here are few more thoughts on synth piano quality:
 
The MIDI for the piano part on this was recorded a long time ago, using a hardware synth, so the dynamics, articulation and use of sustain are not tailored to TruePianos. Also, although it doesn't make a huge difference in the sound quality, the piano part was 100% quantized, which I don't often do anymore (it's entirely possible I recorded this before Cakewalk offered percentage quantize - it's that old!). If nothing else, quantizing detracts subtley from the overall realisim, especially of chords that would often be "rolled' slightly in actual performance. If I keep working on this, the next version will have a new piano part, played live with minimal editing.
 
There's a solo piano piece on my Soundclick page called 'wakenings that shows off TruePianos to better effect. It was recorded with the demo before I bought it. This is a piece by Randy Newman from the movie Awakenings. I found out later it's actually called Dexter's Tune. If you like, I can re-render it with JABB for you to hear the difference, but...
 
... my main problem with the JABB piano isn't about the sound per se, but about playability. I just can't be happy playing a piano that has only two velocity layers. The switch point is just too jarring. It might not be as audible in a mix, and you can try to stay below it (or edit your track after the fact to lower velocities), but you'll never get a satisfying playing experience or a really nuanced performance from a sample piano with only two layers, and a dynamic range as narrow as JABB's (it really is shockingly narrow compared to anything else I know of).
 
One of the things I like about TruePianos is that, because it's at least partially modelled, it has a very smooth, predictable response to dynamics, both in the way it changes loudness and timbre. If a piano isn't modelled, it takes a lot of velocity layers to get this kind of smoothness.
 
And finally, I mentioned before that I had other problems with the JABB piano. My other main issue with it is that instead of having separate pedal-up, pedal-down, and release samples (or some sort of modeling to simulate pedal-down resonances and release damping) as do most dedicated pianos synths (and even some not-so-dedicated, like Dim Pro), JABB seems to make do with a set of pedal-down samples, which make individual notes way too resonant. And the way they've implemented damping on release sounds very un-natural, like a simple (and too short) amplitude fade is being applied with no filter envelope to complement it, and nothing to simulate soundboard resonance after the string is stopped. And they damp even the high notes that should be left to ring a on a real piano.
 
So... this is not meant to be a diatribe. Just giving some additional explanation for my strong preference for TruePianos (or NI Akoustik, or maybe even Dim Pro) over JABB's Steinway, expecially as a solo instument for real-time playing.
 
 
 

Time best spent now would be layering some serious controllers on the brass, and you'll be in business.

 
Making some progress. Got the velocities translated to a CC1 events for each note, and interpolated to the correct range so at least the notes have similar dynamics to the sounds I originally monitored while recording. This gives me a good starting point for drawing curves on the longer notes.
 
But I'm not big on "drawing" my music, so I'm either going to have to learn to ride the Mod Wheel as I play, or get a breath controller, which I should have done a couple decades ago when I first thought about it... I could 'a' been an expert by now

The velocity layers on the JABB Steinway are more pronounced in the ARIA version versus the prior Kontakt version.  I don't think the virtual layers converted properly in the ARIA version.  I believe the original version had 5 layers with some being virtual layers with filtering to smooth the transition between the 2 recorded layers.

That would definitely explain some things.

haydn12


Just playing sounds back in JABB will not give you a true representation of what the library can do.   Make sure you read the manual and learn how to use the controllers for the sounds.  This will make the sounds come to life.  The majority of the demos on the Garritan website are a true representation on what the library can do.  Most of the demos have some added reverb but not much else.

The main thing with this library is that you have to use the controllers to bring the sounds to life or it will sound static.

This library is a steal at $79 especially when you consider that just a couple years ago it was $249. 

Jim

I agree that the sounds have to be tweeked with the proper controllers to sound realistic! This library is a quality library for the money! Someday I'll post a Henry Mancini score "Dreamsville" that I recorded using the JABB and East West Quantum Leap French Horns, added my live guitar track. I think it sounds very close to the original score! Played it for a friend of mine who's a Mancini guru and she though it was really good!