MOTUnation.com

Yo fellas

I need a good piano VI for pop/rock. No Rachmaninov, but solid sound quality and stability. Ivory? akoustik piano? tell me ...

G5 2x1.8 (June04), 1.5 Gig RAM, DP 4.6, OS 10.3.9

I'll put in a vote for ivory. The yamaha sample sounds like a great studio mic'd C7. I usually bump ther high end and suck out a little 500 Hz for the total pop sound. I'm very happy with it. Good Luck!!

Another vote to Ivory! with the new 1.5 update is perfect.
My main use is in pop/rock music...
The only problem I had was solved in about 16 hours (just reathorization after system update...)
sorry for my english

Another emphatic vote for Ivory!
Peace!

I like Ivory, too. I use it mainly for non-pop piano, the Bosendorfer. It is an excellent program and enables you to tweak many, many different parameters.

I really think it would be appropriate for nearly every style of music. If you can't find a real piano, of course, which simply sounds much, much better than any sampled piano, for reasons that are quite unfathomable, given the amount of effort and realism something like Ivory conveys.

We use Vintaudio's Yamaha C7 Ultimate Grand Piano with NI Kontakt 2.0 in a virtual rack. See http://www.vintaudio.com/. I will probably be buying NIs Akoustic Piano at some point. I haven't tried Ivory yet. The vintaudio C7 sounds great and is a good value. Check the demos on the website.
Good luck.

I haven't heard Ivory, though I have have heard great things about it.

I do have Akoustic Piano and I think it sounds pretty great....
Just recorded a woman singing with her husband playing piano through my Kurzweil Micropiano while also recording the MIDI, then sent it to the Akoustic pianos' Boesendorfer.... Clients were very impressed.

denne wrote:Yo fellas

I need a good piano VI for pop/rock. No Rachmaninov, but solid sound quality and stability. Ivory? akoustik piano? tell me ...

G5 2x1.8 (June04), 1.5 Gig RAM, DP 4.6, OS 10.3.9

I have Ivory version 1.0. I need to get the upgrade, because I think it addresses what I consider to be Ivory's chief weakness: Noise. Ivory is a noisy recording/sample. I'll give you a link, below, to a review I wrote about Akoustik Piano, which addresses that issue and compares it with Ivory.

It depends on what you want in a VI. I think it's great to have both, but I realize that not everyone wants to spend that much. I will say that Akoustik Piano will give you stellar results, faster, than Ivory. But if you are willing to tinker with velocity, effects, and all the other settings, you can achieve fantastic results with Ivory, too. I keep going back and forth between them for various purposes. Currently (I'm using Ivory 1.0, remember), I think Ivory's sound is amazing for quiet pieces. For a lot of motion, I use Akoustik Piano. Overall, I'm sold on Akoustik Piano. Also, it gives you a stand-alone piano for practicing. It's nice to be able to boot into a piano without having to set up Digital Performer with a track and all that. I also like Akoustik Piano's handling of velocities better, but Ivory's velocity curve is more adjustable.

If you want the realism of a piano--damper sounds as they release the strings, realistic sustain reverberation, key noises, etc., I think Akoustik Piano has the edge there, but only by a little. Also, I think AP's Unacorda beats Ivory's. But we're really splitting hairs here. If you just need a great piano sound, and you don't want to futz with it a lot, you can flip a coin between the two, and I'll guarantee you will be happy.

One other piano that is surprisingly good--but obviously not in the league of those other two--is the Steinway in MOTU's Symphonic Instrument. So, if you'd like a whole orchestral sample library for the cost of about what you'd pay for either of those piano samples, MOTU's SI is a valid way to go. The piano sounds great, but is not quite as well-recorded as either of the other two. Again, I'm splitting hairs. If your purpose is piano accompaniment, rather than solo piano, MOTU's SI will do the job.

By the way, I would rate the piano brands of all the VIs (very subjectively, of course) such that Steinway ends up having the best over-all sound. Boesendorfer and Bechstein come up with a close second place tie in Akoustik Piano, while the Boesendorfer is a clear second place in Ivory, followed by the Yamaha. That's a shame, really, as Yamaha pianos actually sound great in real life. They're just brighter than the other pianos, due to less internal noise in the string sound, and require a different miccing technique, which is obviously not the one they used in Ivory.

Here's a link to the review. You will find some spectrum analysis graphs that enable you to see visually the difference in the sound between Akoustik Piano and Ivory. You will also hear some examples of Akoustik Piano, and at least one example (by one of our buds here at Unicornation--Morpheo) compares the sound of the two instruments.

Shooshie

I just noticed that you are doing rock. I've done a lot of rock recording with actual pianos, and I like the sound of the Yamaha C7. Ivory is the only one that has that. But truly, any of the instruments is going to sound great for your purposes, and you'll probably be EQing it to your taste, anyway, so don't worry about changing pianos for a brighter or darker sound. Go for subtleties in the ringing, decay, and interplay of the harmonics. Also, look for the least noise. I've got to get Ivory 1.5 and compare the new noise levels with AP. For versions 1.0 on both sides, Akoustik Piano was clearly the winner. When Ivory 1.0 got really busy with a lot of open strings and fast moving notes, the noise buildup was unacceptable. That has surely changed now.


Shooshie

I would say : Plugsound 1 ••” not expensive and good sounds.

Thanks for all the info Shooshie - i'm also looking at piano VI options - they both sound delicious after listening to your examples and the ones on their website's.

If you do get the Ivory update I'd be interested to hear your comparisons with Akustik Piano....

Spikey Horse wrote:Thanks for all the info Shooshie - i'm also looking at piano VI options - they both sound delicious after listening to your examples and the ones on their website's.

If you do get the Ivory update I'd be interested to hear your comparisons with Akustik Piano....

I plan to review Ivory 1.5 when I get the upgrade.


Shooshie

Shoosie,

Beautifully written review. I'm wondering: What were you using to access una corda? Does your controller have two pedals, or where you using a mod wheel?

richardein wrote:Shoosie,

Beautifully written review. I'm wondering: What were you using to access una corda? Does your controller have two pedals, or where you using a mod wheel?

I use a second pedal. You can use a third pedal to access the Sostenuto (middle pedal). Unacorda is CC#67, and the Sostenuto pedal is CC#66, so you can use anything you want, really, but if you have other pedal jacks, that's the best way. The Kurzweil 2600 has 2 pedal jacks, and 4 footswitch jacks. No problem.

Thanks for the compliment, btw. There is a second part to that review, intended as a sidebar, which the site owner chose not to post. It explains a lot of basic background on virtual pianos in general--stuff most of us know, but maybe a detail or two that fill in the gaps for one person or another. If anyone wants to read it, I could post it here. It's about a page long. Maybe two.

Shooshie

thanks a zillion Shooshie. I think I'll get akoustik piano