Here is a long winded critique of SampleTekk's Black for Kontakt 5.
I played around last night with the new Black and was generally impressed. The new GUI allows for tailoring the tone of this Steinway D based instrument. It is intuitive in that most users will know what reverb, eq, velocity do. For me, this new GUI makes this SampleTekk instrument much more usable and capable of getting the tone, ambiance and resonance for example. I could dial in with ease a warm and gentle piano, or a bright powerful and clear rock piano in seconds.
Velocity Section--It was very easy to adjust the velocity curve to my taste (three curve options) and then dial up or down the velocity sensitivity knob to fit both my finger pressure, my midi keyboard (M-Audio ES88-- not the most sensitive model) and even adjust it for the particular song. So if I am playing a gentle piece, I can dial back slightly to help get that just right; if it is a rock mix, you can dial it up to make sure the tone is forceful. This is very helpful for those of us who are not the best pianists.
EQ Section—This is a simple three knob eq, one band EQ. One controls the frequency (20-20k), one controls the Q (from a sharp peak to a more gentle curve), one band for gain. I used the more gentle curve and with just a little gain boast, could turn this Steinway tone into a much more bright, edgy instrument, or by focusing the frequency toward a lower midrange, can make this Steinway tone warmer, darker.
Pedals—there are three pedals (sustain, sustenuto, una Corda) all which have midi learn. I just used the sustain pedal, but the options are there, as well as a button that allows half pedaling.
Reverb—there are three knobs—one for pre-delay, one for size, one for amount. There is also a picture which has the type of reverb. At first, I could not figure out how to change the reverb type (I should have read the manual first). Eventually I found that by click/hold & drag, I could drag the picture up or down and this rolled up or down through the reverb types. There is a gold plate, a room, a digitial and one or two others. I was surprised at the limited number of types here. I expected the choice of different concert halls, cathedral, clubs, etc. I was also surprised that the room reverb was very subtle even with the amount and size dialed up. The digital reverb, however, can be dramatic and create a wash if desired. Another surprise was that by dialing up or down the size of the reverb I would get a an annoying zipper sound. BTW, I have an I7 2600 CPU with 16gigs of ram so this is not CPU or RAM related.
Voicing-Intellisave—this button allows you to save CPU resources if needed. I did not try it.
Body Section—Here there are three controls. One is for “shimmer” which is SampleTekks term for string resonance. One is for “sympathetic resonance” which dials in the amount of resonance yo get when you play and hold a chord with the left hand, and play a melody over the top of it with the right hand. This control sets the amount of resonance heard on the unplayed, undamped strings. Finally there is a control dial for room ambiance. When dialed to the left, there is no room, just a close mic'ing effect. When dialed to the right, there is more room ambiance. With all these controls the effect is subtle and nuanced., not dramatic.
Noise—There are two dials for adjusting the amount of hammer noise and pedal noise. These are nice for solo piano work where you might want to hear the sound of the hammer release or the pedal release. The effect can be none or dialed up where it is very noticeable.
What's missing? Well I was surprised that there were no pop-up widows or hover type windows over the dials when they were adjusted. So there was no way of knowing the specific amount from let's say 1-100 or in decibels or the frequency that was being selected. I could not know what frequency I was selecting on the EQ or what amount of pre-delay in milleseconds in Reverb, or the amount of gain in either decibels or from 1-127, or the amount of resonance from 1-100 was dialed up. The absence of having some kind of numeric hover or popup window meant that there was no way of dialing in that exact amount the next time I used it. This is a feature that needs to be update. BTW, it is one that is found on the some competitors' products like NI's NY Grand for example, which has a similar GUI.
Overall the tone and the simplicity of the GUI makes this instrument a versatile and very tweakable Steinway Grand, and the total download is only 1.29Gigs. It is easy to get a warm tone with some room ambiance, or to dial in an aggressive brighter close mic'ed sound that will cut through a mix. My immediate and initial impression was that it was nice and that I was glad I purchased it; there was no buy remorse with this one, especially with a discount price less than $50. This could easily be a default piano for some if only because it is so versatile and easy to tweak. SampleTekk has moved forward with this new GUI and an easily adjustable tone pallet. They do need to update the dials/knobs so that they reveal precise decible/numeric amounts so that the user knows the exact value that is being selected. Per and his crew need to bring this new GUI system to their other instruments.
post edited by cecelius2 - 2012/06/28 18:05:00