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I just finished downloading and installing the new Pettinhouse
"Acoustic Guitar" library.

Awesome. Hands down the best sounding sampled acoustic steel string
guitar I have ever heard. Called up the "Acoustic Finger"
patch, hit the low E - I was sold instantly. Actually, more than that -
I was floored. I'm not sure what guitar was sampled, but it sounds very much like a Taylor, recorded with great mics and mic preamps. Definitely sounds recorded and not "direct". Andrea claims it was recorded at
24 bit/96khz, and it definitely sounds like it. It's very bright, so if you're seeking an aged, darker sound this might not be the acoustic
for you. That said, it's always easier to remove high frequencies
with EQ than it is to add highs that aren't there to begin with.

The library contains a fingered guitar, picked guitar, and
strummed guitar. I highly recommend this...Andrea has come up with
another winner (and the rest of his guitar libraries are just as
good). 99 bucks.

http://www.pettinhouse.com

Thanks for the heads-up -- I was going to give this a pass, having recently bought the Taylor libraries from Lyrical Distortion, which I haven't had a chance to work deeply with yet.

Now I'll know to take the time to download and try the demo.

I own a Taylor auditorium model. I'll probably know instantly which model he sampled.

Thanks for the headsup David!

I just listened to the strum, plectrum, and fingerpick demos, and they're very impressive in terms of the details and nuances of multiple articulations on several strings and how the harmonics and sustains interact.

The consensus on vi-control seems to be that this is now the best acoustic guitar library from a player's perspective as well as sound-wise, but that RealGuitar may still prove useful when one needs some sort of auto-strum interpretation of basic close-chord playing.

mhschmieder wrote:I was going to give this a pass, having recently bought the Taylor libraries from Lyrical Distortion, which I haven't had a chance to work deeply with yet.

Do you really think they are likely to be comparable? I've bought numerous of the $10 extravaganza guitars from Lyrical Distortion and none of them are very playable in Kontakt. There seems to be something wrong with the scripting or something on all those guitars.

The freebie Pettinhouse guitars, on the other hand, play like a charm in Kontakt. So I have a lot more faith that this acoustic guitar product will be of much better quality than those LD ones.

mhschmieder wrote:I own a Taylor auditorium model. I'll probably know instantly which model he sampled.

Are you serious? I've been trying to convince myself that getting a great acoustic guitar sound is more about the attitude and skill of the player and that the actual "tone" of a guitar has less to do with it (mostly because I don't want to spend $2000-$3000 on a Taylor guitar at the moment). But if you think there is enough difference between the models that you could tell them apart, then maybe I shouldn't be short-changing myself in the tone department.

I wish I had a studio full of guitars.
But at least I have a few.

I have the Taylor guitars from Lyrical Distortion, and all I can say is
I'm glad they were just 10 bucks apiece, because compared to Pettinhouse
(and even RealGuitar), that's about what they're worth. The LD guitars sound
"masked" and very "16-bit", and don't respond that well to playing.

I have until now relied on RealGuitar for my acoustic steel tracks, but
Pettinhouse will be taking over from here on out. It's absolutely the
king of sampled acoustic steel guitars, to my ears. The only possible
drawback is that it's just the one guitar, whatever that guitar is. I
have a Taylor 610, and I'm very familiar with the Taylor sound, and the
Pettinhouse sounds "Taylor-ish" to me. But for all I know, it could be a Gibson Dove or a new Takamine...I doubt it's a Guild, because those have
a distinctive darker tone.

Well, I'm sold. No regrets on the LD stuff -- especially the rare stuff. But I'm glad I was cautious on the guitar and bass stuff from them.

Zed, my needs are a bit different from most people's, as my primary interest in acoustic guitar is Celtic music, which calls for the type of tone that the Taylor Auditorium series delivers, and which will also be well-served by the new Pettinhouse library.

Oh, don't forget that the $69 introductory offer for prior Pettinhouse customers is only good through 6 December!

I didn't buy the Classic Guitar as I already have Vienna Instruments for that, and remain confused about the relationship of the Cavaquinho library to that (is it a subset, or a larger and more detailed version of the "Little Guitar" that comes with Classic Guitar?).

Also, the pricing, discounts, and combined offers relating to either of those options confused me (also their expiry dates), and as Andria says to write him for special two-fer deals, I'll probably do exactly that and place my faith in his Classic Guitar library at the same time.

Classical/Nylon guitars vary considerably in tone, and of course different contexts such as Gypsy music and Flamenco don't necessarily benefit from the same qualities as traditional Classical playing. So I think it can be advantageous to have multiple nylon guitar libraries.

I totally agree--sounds great. Purchased it last night.

I own a lot of guitar VIs/libraries, and this is definitely the most realistic acoustic steel sound to my ears, and have tons of experience with premium acoustic guitars to know what real sounds like.

Of course nothing sounds as realistic as a real acoustic guitar properly mic'd, but the whole point behind a VI is to quickly get the work done and keep things in MIDI without messing with mic setup and worrying that the phone will ring or my kids will start screaming at each other in the other room and an entire take has to be re-recorded.

I like RealGuitar's interface and MIDI control, and the strumming 'engine' is the best I've ever used---but the sound quality of the samples themselves is truly lacking, even with EQ/Altiverb added. I just can't get solo parts to sound realistic enough.

Sergey from musiclab says that 'MIDI out' will be implemented in an upcoming update to the AU version of RG. It's currently VST only.
So once that's available we DP users will have more interesting options.

just ordered,this seems like a great library.
edited :
a user on VI-control said you can trigger PAG sounds with Real Guitar 2(enable MIDI send)Cubase user
just read the previous post by Charles,so it's not AU capable yet? bummer
if it works as well as he says this could be a great way to make RG sound better.
I hope they update this for AU ASAP!!

kgdrum wrote:just ordered,this seems like a great library.
edited :
a user on VI-control said you can trigger PAG sounds with Real Guitar 2(enable MIDI send)Cubase user
just read the previous post by Charles,so it's not AU capable yet? bummer
if it works as well as he says this could be a great way to make RG sound better.
I hope they update this for AU ASAP!!

RealGuitar is AU. Has been for a long time. Otherwise it wouldn't work in DP.

Pettinhouse Acoustic Guitar has to run inside Kontakt 2,3 or 4. You cannot run it as a standalone.

Yes, it is easy to export any of the RealGuitar MIDI files onto a desktop, then re-import those back into DP and use them to trigger PAG. However, those MIDI files are optimized for RealGuitar and its mapping, they do not take into account how PAG is mapped. So they may or may not work very well.

David Polich wrote:RealGuitar is AU. Has been for a long time. Otherwise it wouldn't work in DP.

I meant to say that the MIDI out feature of RG is currently in the VST version only---to be added [hopefully soon] to the AU version.
Sorry for any confusion.

my bad,of course RG is AU,what I was trying to say is MIDI send function does not seem to be available in RG AU.
Please correct me if I am mistaken but I can't find this feature.

charlesparente wrote:I totally agree--sounds great. Purchased it last night.

Me, too. Thank you for the very good recommendation.

I've been using Realguitar since it first launched. And Realstrat, too. Realguitar is great program but the sound of PAG just blew me away.

Cool! Heading to buy it now!

kgdrum wrote:my bad,of course RG is AU,what I was trying to say is MIDI send function does not seem to be available in RG AU.
Please correct me if I am mistaken but I can't find this feature.

Correct, it doesn't work as an AU.