Software Eighty-Eights

Oct 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Charlie Otwell, Marshall Otwell, and Len Sasso

Sampled-piano virtual instruments and the computers that host them have come a long way. The world's best pianos have been recorded by outstanding engineers, and even laptops can handle direct-from-disk streaming of multigigabyte libraries. Most libraries now sample every note at several Velocity levels and offer separate release-resonance and sustain-pedal-down samples. We put six highly acclaimed packages through their paces and got some surprising and not-so-surprising results.

Our primary emphasis in evaluating these instruments was playability. In particular, we wanted to find out whether state-of-the-art samples and software, a high-quality MIDI keyboard, and a good studio sound system can reproduce the experience of playing a real piano, or at least come close. Technical specifications don't answer that question, and sampled pianos, even with limited specs, have already proven their worth in the studio and onstage, whether or not they're fun to play. We'll cover the features and the sound quality, but our story is in the playing.

Don't Sell Your Piano

Two of us, Charlie and Marshall, have spent years in the studio and onstage playing some of the world's best pianos and, unfortunately, some of the worst. We've also carted digital instruments around as an antidote to out-of-tune and unplayable lounge pianos. Based on our experience, we began this project with the preconception that no virtual instrument could replicate the experience of playing a truly fine piano, and that was born out by our tests. There's a reason a 9-foot Bösendorfer Imperial Grand costs hundreds of times and weighs thousands of times more.

Having said that, we did encounter a number of pleasant surprises. Chief among them was that with some tweaking and a willingness to suspend disbelief, we could have an enjoyable playing experience with any of the pianos we tested. As you'll see, some are clearly superior to the others, but they all have something to offer. And with MSRPs for the packages we tested ranging from $120 for Art Vista Virtual Grand Piano to $362 for Native Instruments Akoustik Piano, acquiring one or more of these pianos is not a major investment.

Capturing a concert grand piano in a sample library is a daunting task. Notes held until they die out may last for a long time, requiring huge amounts of memory. Released notes don't stop immediately; the resonances of all elements of the piano need to be accounted for. Each of a piano's three pedals has its own effect, and the pedals are often used in combination. Mechanical noises generated by the key and pedal actions are part of the overall sound. In short, there's a lot to capture, choices need to be made, and putting all the elements together is as much art as science. For an excellent account of what is involved, see “Ain't It Grand!” in the February 2003 issue of EM (available online at www.emusician.com). See the sidebar “Tech Talk” for a glossary of technical terms.

If you have a quality piano in your studio or living room, you won't be turning to your computer and MIDI controller for practice or pleasure. As Marshall said at one point, “If I had a piano in the other room, I'd be there.” But we all felt that when the real thing wasn't available, we'd be quite happy playing one of these instruments just for the fun of it. Gone is the fatigue associated with looped samples, synthesizer-style envelopes, and a limited number of key and Velocity zones. Furthermore, virtual pianos are a lot easier to record. Once incorporated in a mix, these pianos would be hard to distinguish from the real thing.

The Playing Field

In order to have a manageable and more or less level playing field, we limited ourselves to sampled pianos that come as self-contained virtual instruments. We excluded sample libraries, although presets from four of the six packages can also be loaded into the Native Instruments Kontakt 2.1 sampler. All of the instruments are provided as VST plug-ins for Mac OS X and Windows XP, with most also supporting AU, RTAS, and DXi plug-in formats. All but one of them — Synthogy Ivory — come as standalone instruments on both platforms, and a standalone version of Ivory should be available by the time you read this. (See the table “Essential Statistics” for a comparison of formats and other features.)

Three of the instruments have a generic user interface. The simplest, Art Vista Virtual Grand Piano, is powered by Native Instruments Kontakt Player. Best Service Galaxy Steinway 5.1 and EastWest Bösendorfer 290 use Native Instruments' more full-featured Kompakt as their playback engine. They range in price from $120 to $200, and each samples a single grand piano.

The remaining three instruments sample multiple pianos and have custom interfaces. Synthogy Ivory features a 9-foot Bösendorfer 290, a 9-foot Steinway Concert D, and a 7-foot Yamaha C7. For its Akoustik Piano, Native Instruments has sampled three 9-foot grands — a Bösendorfer 290, a Steinway Concert D, and a Bechstein D 280 — and for good measure, it has thrown in a Steingraeber und Soehne Vintage Upright 130. Steinberg sampled a Steinway and a Kawai piano for The Grand 2. These three packages range from $299 to $362, and in terms of price per piano, they're all bargains.

Choices, Choices, Choices

Sampled-virtual-instrument presets incorporate both sampler and synthesizer settings. Sampler settings include the number and spacing of Velocity layers, the relative level of pedal-up and pedal-down samples, and the amount of release resonance. Synthesizer settings cover filter, EQ, and effects parameters. Because we were assessing playability and looking for the most natural sound, we went for the driest, least synthesized settings in each case. We always started with a factory preset, disabled any effects, and made as few parameter adjustments as possible.

Our playing and listening environment was also kept simple. Our MIDI keyboard controller was a weighted-action 88-key Studio Logic SL-880 Pro. Our monitoring system consisted of JBL 4311 monitors powered by Parasound HCA-1201 mono amps. The sound system was fed directly from the audio interface — an RME Hammerfall Multiface with an HDSP PCI card. We ran all the software on a dual-processor 2 GHz Power Mac G5 with Mac OS X 10.4.4. For plug-in hosts, we used Ableton Live 5.0.3 and Apple Logic 7.2. We also used the standalone versions of the instruments.

The technical performance of all of the instruments exceeded our greatest expectations. On a few occasions, The Grand 2 and Galaxy Steinway failed to recognize their authorization, which required a reboot of the software. In many hours of intensive testing, we had a few crashes of Ableton Live, we rebooted OS X once, and we had to reinstall The Grand 2.

We started with extended sessions for each of the packages, devoting more time to the virtual instruments that sampled several pianos. We followed the individual sessions with sessions comparing like pianos: the three Bösendorfers and the three Steinway Concert Ds. Finally, we recorded some MIDI files in different styles and listened to them on each of the pianos. See the table “Style Guide” for our views on which pianos suit particular playing styles.

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