Quantum Leap Piano or Ivory for use with Sonar? QLP is on sale.

I know this has been covered often on different forums including here, but I wanted to ask my Sonar colleagues which you recommend for use in Sonar (X1): Quantum Leap Piano or Ivory and why?  I trust your experience and opinions.
I recently bought EZKeys which is great for creativity but I know I need a better Piano vst to use as the end product when I drag the midi files from EZKeys into Sonar. From what I have read there are really two quality collections to consider: Quantum Leap Pianos and Ivory. I have been toying with the purchase of a better Piano vst ever since EZKeys was introduced, but thought I would wait for a good sale to come along. So today I got an email from audiomidi that has Quantum Leap Pianos for $247 for the next 2 weeks (Sweetwater also has it for $247). To be honest, I had been seriously leaning toward purchasing Ivory which runs $319 at GC, but with their frequent 15% discounts, it would eventually be $271 at some time in the future. Thus, for all practical purposes Quantum Leap Pianos and Ivory are in the same price range, and both seemingly are high quality products. I tried the demos of TruePianos but it is not being considered.

I have read that Quantum Leap Pianos (QLP) is a huge memory hog which would not be an issue for solo piano use; however, I intend on using it in Jazz mixes with other memory hogs--Superior Drummer/EZDrummer (Jazz & Roots kits), Trillian, Kontakt (for Kirk Hunter Strings and Vintage Organs) plus either QLP or Ivory. I have a fairly fast DAW with decent memory, so this might not be an issue. I have also heard that QLP is not as friendly for using as a replacement piano vst for for midi parts already recorded, and that it does not sit in the mix as well as Ivory, and that it is more difficult to play. Having read all this on other forums, I thought I really needed to ask members here on this forum as you use Sonar and many of these higher end synths: So.....

which do you recommend for purchase for use with Sonar: Quantum Leap Pianos or Ivory?

I used to think Ivory was the last word in piano libraries. Truth is, you can do just as well with less-expensive alternatives. 

Since you have Kontakt, you also have an excellent piano library source available to you: Sampletekk. They even have a sale going on at the moment.
I have two Sampletekk pianos: The Old Lady and The Emperor. Bought them on sale for $25 each (less than the price of the iLok Ivory's gonna make you buy). They are both superb pianos. The former (a 1912 Steinway) is mellower and good for piano-heavy ballads and classical music, the latter (a Bosendorfer) is brighter and well-suited for rock 'n roll. They also have a great upright piano that I haven't gotten round to buying yet, called Rain. A very nice rock 'n roll piano, that one.


If I mis-read what you wrote and you don't have Kontakt, consider Alicia's Keys. 99 bucks, runs in the free Kontakt player. It's a Yamaha, which isn't everyone's cup o' tea, but Yamahas do cut through a busy rock/pop mix where a Steinway just gets lost.

bitflipper


I used to think Ivory was the last word in piano libraries. Truth is, you can do just as well with less-expensive alternatives. 

Since you have Kontakt, you also have an excellent piano library source available to you: Sampletekk. They even have a sale going on at the moment.
I have two Sampletekk pianos: The Old Lady and The Emperor. Bought them on sale for $25 each (less than the price of the iLok Ivory's gonna make you buy). They are both superb pianos. The former (a 1912 Steinway) is mellower and good for piano-heavy ballads and classical music, the latter (a Bosendorfer) is brighter and well-suited for rock 'n roll. They also have a great upright piano that I haven't gotten round to buying yet, called Rain. A very nice rock 'n roll piano, that one.


If I mis-read what you wrote and you don't have Kontakt, consider Alicia's Keys. 99 bucks, runs in the free Kontakt player. It's a Yamaha, which isn't everyone's cup o' tea, but Yamahas do cut through a busy rock/pop mix where a Steinway just gets lost.

Thanks bitflipper!  I had looked at Sampletekk but their low prices scared me off as I really wanted to get a first rate product.  Yes, I have Kontakt but rarely use their pianos--I think I use their NY studio model if that is what it is called.  Since I know you don't recommend rubbish and you think about how instruments sit in a mix, I am headed over to their site right now for a closer look. 

Heavens to Murgatroyd! The Quantum leap uses " over 68,000 samples from 35 double-layer DVDs".

So I checked out Sampletekk Acoustic pianos some more; listened to a variety of their demos.  Wow!  25% off of very reasonable prices already.  I took this opportunity and grabbed the Emperor and the Old Lady, and then I grabbed a Yamaha C7--that was only $112.50 for all three.  I know that they are a little old, sampled about 10 years ago, but I figure they will be better than TruePianos, and I will have more options to choose among to help the pianos sit in the mix correctly.  I had forgotten one of the "truths" about Kontakt--it is a great sampler for third party samples.  

I will still probably pick up Ivory II down the road when I get a good coupon, but for this price it was a "no-brainer".

bitflipper

If you'da been patient, Sampletekk has run 50%-off sales in the past. I think they did it twice last year, iirc. They've also done deals where repeat customers got another 10% off. But they are truly bargains, even at non-sale prices,  which range from $50 to $200.

Yes, I realized that your price was cheaper, but I did not know how often they had sales, and the price at 25% off was still good.  Now i am on their mailing list, so perhaps I will get a couple of other pianos when they do have that 50% sale.  Nevertheless, Thank you for this lead, I do not regret this purchase at all!

Beginning to regret now.  After downloading all night, I installed the sampletekk pianos.  When I go to pull them up in Kontakt, I get missing samples warnings.  I have seen this before with third party, so I let it search for the missing samples, but they are not to be found.  This happens on all three products.  If I click on an nki file in the folder (which normally will launch Kontakt), I get an error message that says this file is for a more up to date version of Kontakt.  I am running Kontakt 4.4.2.  I finally got a few sounds out of the Emperor and the Old Lady, but half of the samples seem to be missing, missing notes, missing velocities.  So i sent an email to Sampletekk to see what is wrong.  They do not have a support page so i hope I will get some help.  Given your and Bit's high praise for these products I really want them to work.  But I have been pulling what's left of my hair out tring to get these sampletekk pianos to work.

craigfowler


Don't be anxious - at least not yet!

I've had great support from Per when I've needed it, and he's been very helpful when the fault is all my own (e.g., I ordered Gigastudio > Kontakt products).

Have you tried a variety of different nki files or opening it within Kontakt rather than explorer? It's really bizarre to get that 'new version needed' message for a product that's a decade old!

It'll be worth the wait, but I totally get your frustration!

Yes, i have tried almost every .nki file from within Kontakt.  I placed the library within the larger folder of Kontakt libraires like I have done for many other 3rd party plugs.  It recognizes them, has their name in the Kontakt's own drop down library on the browser, and lists all the nki and nkm files, but when it goes to load I get nothing but missing samples.  So, I redownloaded one of the three again, reinstalled and it does the same nonsense.  I have tried to open from within Kontakt and from outside but get the same failures.  It looks like only 1/2 of the samples are there when I look in the sample folder and see only a handfull of different velocities of samples.  I wonder if there were supposed to be multiple download rar files for each product--I only got 1 dowload rar file for each product.  I am getting too tired to keep a fresh look.  I will redownload over the night and hopefully hear something from per in the morning.

Got an email from Per at Sampletekk; he pointed me directly to the additional downloads that I had missed (in more than one way).  My fault! My own fault, my own maximum fault! He even pointed out that in the email it refers to these extra downloads.  Yes, there it was, in that email, the link that I needed to those extra downloads.  My error, my fault, my own oversight indeed.  The email could have been a little better worded, a little clearer, but yes it was there, and I have no excuse not to read every last line.

So I got the rest of The Old Lady and she does sound warm and nice indeed.  Now to download the rest of the Emperor and the Yamaha C7.  

Don't feel bad, Wayne, that procedure threw me for a loop the first time, too. Eventually, I resorted to that time-honored sage advice: "when all else fails, read the instructions".

Most third-party Kontakt library vendors would benefit from having a proper installer. I have over 30 third-party libraries, and perhaps half of them had some kind of weirdness during installation. I'd end up with empty or duplicate folders, sample folders nested 3 deep, and nki's that were looking in an absolute path for samples. I suspect sample library developers are recordists first and technologists second.