Of course it's fair...they are all piano samples of which I can take my pick for my recordings.  It's just that's how it worked out, this is what I have and it'll have to do. Poor me, I have to settle with Ivory II.

If True Pianos wants to put out a cheaper version of their good stuff, I can't help that. Maybe they should have included the good version with Sonar...??

I've already spent my wad on Ivory II, as it came highly recommended to me. The samples sounded great, I got a great introductory price on it, and that's what I got. Complaining about it would be like complaining about owning a Les Paul.

slartabartfast

  I think this may belong in the piano chunkin' thread. We are only shootin' em in here.

That really doesn't look very safe. lol

I have to agree with the OP on this, I loaded up Giga Boesendorfer 290 (yes I still use g-player/64 A LOT!!!) and the 4Front Sapphire, vs. IvoryII...

Like he said True Pianos is LOUDER...(I went into the module and turned down the output) I also tried as best possible to match the dB of each piano (I would be interested in knowing how the coders determine unity on these samples but don't really want to research it)...

IvoryII (which is friggin huge) really does sound more realistic...

They are all good...giga was a little thin but had more "wood-character"...

True pianos is completely usable as well...

Really...whadda we got to complain about they all sound great.

Yep, they all sound very good and are all usuable. If I didn't have Ivory II, I could easily get by with the included True Piano's version or the East West Steinway B just as well.

Test Result, Ivory II sound better than Korg Krome 88. The Ivory II Steinway is 18 level Velocity (20plus gig) vs 8 level of the Krome (2.8). But in a gig, I doubt the audience would know the difference. I am going to try Konrad's EQ tip on the Ivory. And I use the Steinway and Yamaha sound often but not much of the Bosendofer.

The only time I ever had to worry about a Steinway v.s a Yamaha was when I was about to heli-lift a 12 footer onto the roof of a building in downtown Johannesburg for none other than Fourplay's Bob James. Sadly, the flights got delayed so I "only" got to record Harvey Mason doing three drum solo's to the beat of peak-time traffic. He called the TV audience onto the stage and made them sing and clap - and voila, the show was a hit! What a day it was!

I'm quite fond of 8DIO Legacy 1928 grand piano, it has a very "moody" sound though but very beautiful.

http://8dio.com/?btp_prod..legacy-1928-grand-piano

Here is a heads up - Sampletekk have a half price sale starting 1st nov. (there is currently a pre sale for existing customers)

The merits of the various pianos have been discussed a length several times in the Software forum. Old lady, Emperor and Rain generally getting the most favorable comments. I like vertical Pop and Estonia too. All these will be available for $25 each and well worth it even if you have other options.

The down side is they need a full version of Kontakt, but NKI are provided for use as far back as Kontakt 2.

The New SampleTekk Black however has a fancy interface to take advantage of more advanced Kontakt features and is licenced to run on the free Kontakt 5 player. This will set you back $50 in the sale

 Thanks for that info Glyn. I want to pick up a few more of those SampleTekk Pianos. I bought several from what Bit and OldPal were saying about them. I was not discouraged at either the prices or the sounds of these pianos.

 These are older sampled pianos but good samples are good samples I don't care who you are or when they were sampled. They play just fine in my Kontakt5. It helps to have several different pianos in your toolbox IMO. One doesn't usually cover all the bases.