I just discovered this thread today (I'm more active on the MOTU-Mac mail list than this forum; I read the mail list everyday but always forget to check in with forums), and I guess everyone is all abuzz about MachFive 2 at the moment, so I hope this isn't already a dying thread. I skimmed most of the 10 screens full of comments on the other True Pianos thread, but not all, so apologies if I'm making points that have already been raised. Okay, disclaimer out of the way...
INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE
I downloaded the demo and installed it on a Mac G5 2x2 w/ DP 5.11 without a hitch. The True Pianos demo app seems to take up only about 68MB of disk space for the plugin and about 34MB for the stand alone app. According to Activity Monitor, my RAM usage increases by about 78MB when I instantiate True Pianos in DP. So, for a piano VI, this is obviously extremely economical when it comes to disk and RAM overhead!
With buffers on 128 on my G5 and no other tracks, plugins, etc. in use, just playing live, dense arpeggios up the keyboard make DP's Audio Performance meter jump to about 60-70%. Essentially, I can play as dense as I want and it never gets higher.
HOW DOES IT SOUND?
There are about 10 presets, with names like "Classical," "Rock," "Jazz," etc. I didn't find a lot of difference in sound between them other than a bit of EQ. Pop, Rock, Bright, and "Blues all sound bright, with Blues being the brightest and thinnest. Classical, Warm, and Ballet lean toward more warmth and body and all sound very similar, but with subtle timbral differences.
Overall I'd say True Pianos delivers a pleasantly realistic piano experience, much more than you might expect given its compact size. However, what it lacks compared to the better sampled pianos that I've tried is
timbral variation with velocity. True Pianos does not get brighter or duller as play harder or softer. It also lacks the "pedal down" ambient harp quality that you'll find on better sampled pianos, and things like damper and pedal noises.
CONCLUSIONS AND SPECULATION
What this sounds like to my ear is that they took samples of a piano at one velocity level (and maybe not even every note) and then they do the rest with modeling and synthesis. The result is quite playable, but this is not a piano I would reach for if I were looking for ultimate expression and realism. What it DOES offer is installation that takes seconds rather than hours, and nearly transparent RAM and disk demands. True Pianos offers a rewarding and quite playable piano that still manages to stack up well even in today's crowded virtual piano marketplace. It is impressive for a v. 1 instrument, but IMO, has some room for improvement. Playing dynamically feels tonally static for me. It reminds me of some the single layered sampled pianos I remember from the hardware sampler days. Even if they offered a simple velocity-controlled filter, it would help. The Sympathetic Resonance feature doesn't seem to do much, and neither do any of the other velocity or keyboard dynamic parameters (other than altering volume dynamics). They are off to an excellent start, and if they can bring in more timbral velocity dynamics and more harp resonance and simulated pedal behavior, and keep data size at these levels, we could someday be looking at a product that could be a viable replacement for big sample-based pianos like Ivory. FWIW, IMHO, YMMV, and all the usual disclaimers....
Babz
P.S. I'm assuming that the demo app is no different than the full version, other than being time limited. I suppose it's possible that the full paid version may offer more timbral velocity dynamics ... I wish it did!
