I'm somewhat disappointed with the Piano's that come with Platinum and Rapture Pro and Z3TA+2 ... looking for a large Grand sound.  Any suggestions?
 
Cheers, Rob.

I think you will get a better answer here rather than the Cakewalk Instruments area. Do you have a budget?

Ah ok, thank you.  My budget is cost less than what I can buy a used good condition grand piano for :)
 
Cheers, Rob.

I really like Soniccouture's Hammersmith Grand. These guys make excellent sampled instruments.

http://www.soniccouture.c...n/g49-the-hammersmith/

I am assuming you don't own the full version of Kontakt which would exclude some I would suggest. The new Native Instruments Pianos are very good and will run without needing a full Kontakt licence.
 
You get two quite different grands and an upright. They can also be bought individualy, but the bundle is a better deal.
 

Thanks for the input ... I was actually looking at Komplete 10 Ultimate crossgrade, but not sure what qualifies for crossgrade?  Assuming it will integrate with 64bit Sonar?
 
Rob.
 
 

I like the grand pianos in EZ Keys and Addictive Keys.  And you don't need Kontakt for either.

Same goes for Pianoteq, with their highly tweakable D4 (Steinway), K2 and Bluthner. No samples, but 40 MB (yes!) of physical modeling. Pianoteq 5 Standard is on sale at 30% off. If you prefer samples, have a look at Sampletekk's grand pianos (as they're half price now during their annual summer sale). Many of them are for Kontakt, EXS24 and HALion. As for Kontakt, also look into ProductionVoices, they have some fine grands, regularly on sale. The new Pearl grand is 20% off at ImpactSoundworks and SonicCouture's Hammersmith is 30% off at BestService. There are many other choices, I just gave you those on sale.

Edit: if you prefer to spend less, Pianoteq's Stage version is on sale at DontCrack, the Standard version at Modartt.

Once you have Kontakt, there are a virtually (see what I did there?) unlimited number of sampled piano libraries available. Many are very good, many are quite good, and there is also a lot of junk. You'll have to listen carefully to demos to find the right tones for your style. I highly recommend Sampletek's libraries as a good starting point. They sound great and are somewhat more affordable than the giant libraries.
 
If you don't want to go the Kontakt route, I also highly recommend Ivory II. Great pianos.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Wow, lots of great feedback, thank you!
 
 I'll get busy looking and hopefully listening to some of these choices.
 
On the KOMPLETE 10 vs. KOMPLETE 10 Ultimate ... are the good samples/instruments living in "Ultimate" or can I found something nice in the standard verison of KOMPLETE 10?
 
Cheers, Rob.