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First piano VST - Ravenscroft 275


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Wow! My primary piano sound for a few years now has come from a Roland Integra (or the PX5S, which is my gigging board that"s been standing in as a studio board for too long at this point).

 

It"s fine, but for a lot of stuff I"ve been doing, it"s just been more convenient to midi into the computer and keep it all in the DAW without sending midi back out to the Integra. So I"ve been using Logic"s stock pianos a lot in the last month or so.

 

I"ve got a big project coming up (basically, recording a musical for streaming, along with tracks to facilitate remote rehearsing and filming), and thought I"d treat myself.

 

Wow! I had no idea how much I disliked my current sound until I started playing with the Ravenscroft. It"s just so 'alive' sounding, with clear and real-feeling tone all across the instrument. I quick dialed in one or two sounds that I like, and spent a bunch of hours this morning just playing.

 

I know I"ve read countless conversations here and other places about whether or not people like this piano, Pianoteq, and a bunch of others. I"m sure they all have their differences, but from what I was coming from, the Ravenscroft feels like a holy grail of piano sound.

 

I expect I"ll fire up the laptop to run this even if I"m just practicing, which is not something I usually would want to do: 'as few power switches as possible between me and playing' is my typical motto.

 

For $140, I"m kicking myself for not taking the plunge sooner.

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I'm glad this one hits the right spot for you. Piano is so intimate, its hard to gauge one subjective aspect against another in the software realm. You do have to be there, as with the real thing. I'll give Ravenscroft a serious listen, based on your experience so far. I greatly appreciate Logic, but piano is definitely an area that calls for a 3rd-party option. I bought Strum to get past the static stock guitars & its worked beautifully. I'm leaning towards Pianoteq, as PM synths are treating me very well. I had to veer off and buy a different tool recently, but this will help my piano pondering.

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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Agree, I've been using Ravenscroft ever since it was released. It has not been updated and it does not need to be. imo the best standard acoustic piano available for iOS

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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OK..... so how / where do I get it?

Ludwig van Beethoven:  “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

My Rig: Yamaha MOXF8 (used mostly for acoustic piano voices); Motion Sound KP-612SX & SL-512.

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Ravenscroft is still my favorite and my go to piano 99 out of a hundred times. It's just so well done and so versatile.

 

I completely agree. I have a few others (NI Grandeur and Noire, SC Hammersmith, Keyscape, etc.), but I almost always end up using the Ravenscroft, regardless of what genre I'm working on. It just works!

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Count me in as a lover of the Ravenscroft 275. I think it was Mr. Nathan that made me aware of it, and thanks for that. Over the past couple years I"ve checked out, or demoed, other pianos but never felt the need to buy any of them.

My only complaint is the host it uses - the UVI workstation. Not my favorite piece of software.

Professional musician = great source of poverty.

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My only complaint is the host it uses - the UVI workstation. Not my favorite piece of software.

Agreed. I find that I rarely launch it as a result. However I do have the 275 in a couple of Mainstage patches.

Yamaha P515 & CK88, Pianoteq, Mainstage, iOS, assorted other stuff.

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It was my primary piano for several years. It's still one of the better ones. I only moved on, once VSL started coming out with the most deeply sampled pianos ever recorded. And there's no price comparison, so I still label Ravenscroft one of the best buys on the market. It's a very versatile model as well, easily taking on the personality of a Fazioli or a Steinway. It works well in every genre I threw at it. Nice mic mixing options and extra features regarding re-pedaling etc. as well.

 

And yes, I'm not a fan of UVI Workstation overall, or anything other than VSL's offerings and Kontakt, as I have been unsuccessful in finding as easy a way of mapping controllers and the like. But the Ravenscroft interface pretty much mitigates any issues with basic stuff not being part of the core view in most UVI based libraries.

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The iOS version is really nice and a great sound to have with you on your iPad.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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The iOS version is really nice and a great sound to have with you on your iPad.

 

yes this is the one I was talking about Joe...

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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Ravenscroft is still my favorite and my go to piano 99 out of a hundred times. It's just so well done and so versatile.

Hey Steve, I find the tone more suited to classical...do you use any additional plug ins on it to get it to "bite" a little more for country/pop/rock? Or do you just use as is? close mic setting? Thanks!

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Hey Steve, I find the tone more suited to classical...do you use any additional plug ins on it to get it to "bite" a little more for country/pop/rock? Or do you just use as is? close mic setting? Thanks!

 

It's rare for me not to use plugs on any "in the box" instrument I own. Ravenscroft is no exception. Typically I use either a Neve eq from UAD or the E27 from PSP first, then I almost always add a touch of PSP's Pianoverb II, and then follow with something like the Schepps channel from Waves, PSP's Infinistrip, or an SSL or Neve channel, and I dial in final tweaks depending on the song. Maybe some compression for Rock, none for soft ballads. I'll add eq tweaks there (also song dependent, and according to the other tones from other players as the song takes shape).

 

My only complaint is the host it uses - the UVI workstation. Not my favorite piece of software.

 

I need someone to explain this to me, I read it here all the time, but I honestly don't get how it affects one's evaluation of a Virtual instrument. I don't particularly care for Kontakt, but it doesn't get in my way when I want to play Resonator, Session Horns or Arpology. I don't particularly care for the EW Play engine either, but when I want Platinum Strings or a Gypsy accordion, I just load my preferred instrument and play. How does UVI player get in the way w/Ravenscroft? Admittedly, I'm not playing live in clubs or theaters, so maybe there are things I don't understand, but for me, when I want a piano sound, I arm UVI. load Ravenscroft, choose my preferred user preset and start playing.

 

I still can't understand the populism around such a product, I suppose people find the adjusting fun, but it's too far away from a usable instrument for me to fancy, from the demos and usage I've heard.

 

Once again Theo, you leave me speechless. I have literally been setting up for sessions, and producers/engineers (having heard me warm up with it) come out and say "Can we use that instead? It sounds much better than the Studio's piano".

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Love the Ravenscroft 275! It's my go-to software piano, and hasn't become earworn yet. Like how sensitive and adaptable it is, and coupled with my suite of EQ and effects apps it's quite a musical chameleon. Once I try customizing some of the V-pianos in the Fantom there may be some comparable tones to use, but for now the Ravenscroft is it. Almost tempted to pick up the iPad version and take it live.

'Someday, we'll look back on these days and laugh; likely a maniacal laugh from our padded cells, but a laugh nonetheless' - Mr. Boffo.

 

We need a barfing cat emoticon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Steve -

The reason I don"t like the UVI Workstation is - it does not remember all the parameters when I load a saved preset. No matter what I do it always has a bypassed reverb in the fx rack. It does not load a reverb I put in the aux buss. Every piano that has more than one mic setting, is not playable when recalled. You have to click on the name and then it will load key maps. I have one preset that loads correctly (still with a bypassed reverb) and I"ll always start with that. I"ve talked with UVI about this and they told me to talk to VI Labs. I"ve tried switching to older versions and back to latest version - still trouble with saving/loading presets. Not a major show-stopper, but a minor PITA .

Professional musician = great source of poverty.

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An extra bit of advice on PSP Pianoverb, which I still use even on the VSL pianos. Think of this as more of a string resonance enhancer than a traditional room reverb; it really helps bring a 3D sound to the piano itself, making it more "real" sounding and less like a "recording". I still use a spatial reverb during the mix, as a traditional aux send. PSP Pianoverb II gets used at the track production level. A miracle of a plug-in (like most of PSP's products). It can take some time to tweak it just right, listening within the context of the mix, but that's only because I'm a perfectionist.

 

As for a more aggressive sound for Ravenscroft for rock, I think usually what people mean by this is a more prominent note attack, which generally means focusing a bit more on the close mics, but as I prefer a high ratio of close mics even for jazz and classical, I'm not sure if I did anything all that different for rock tracks in that regard. I think I simply used different EQ downstream, like what Steve Nathan suggests.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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Other than size, Is the file the same quality on all devices/

Other than size, Is the file the same quality on all devices?

 

The full version has a lot more samples to complete the simulation of a real piano. The iOS version seems to use some of the same samples, just not all of them.

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While I like the iOS version, compared to the VST it's lacking in more customizization options, so the ability to make it sound differently is only thru its 3band eq and timbre knobs. And the reverb stinks, unusable, though I suppose it's not that hard to patch in a decent reverb thru AUM or whatever.

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While I like the iOS version, compared to the VST it's lacking in more customizization options, so the ability to make it sound differently is only thru its 3band eq and timbre knobs. And the reverb stinks, unusable, though I suppose it's not that hard to patch in a decent reverb thru AUM or whatever.

 

Try it using IFX Rack ;)https://ifxrack.com/ Beeewdifuull!! (haha that's an Oz thing :D )

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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Unless you like a certain IMO rather perverted sound element strife for taking on the sonic picture incessantly, I don't get it why the bit whiny, dynamically rather imaginationless tone of this plugin/program should be praised above so many (maybe big) sample set based offerings. I listened to some of the main web page demos on a very good DAC on my trusted mid sized bi amped monitors and cannot but conclude the main faults that make me put many sound programs aside are the main reason I don't feel terribly excited about this 44.1kHz sampled piano: no sample reconstruction error compensation, no stable spatial dimension recognition on any chord, and nothing to make me feel tone couplings in chords have been properly prepared, or resonances in the instrument can respond lie any regular piano. I wanted to try out a demo with another high standard audio interface, maybe at a pro 96kHz sample rate on my big monitoring system, which I suspected would not make me suddenly change my mind, but there's no demo version.

 

I've had fun playing some (by now) medium large sampled instrument libraries, so I understand it can be nice to play some notes and hear the magic of a piano tone you like, but making a musical instrument requires some more for my taste. It isn't that expensive so I guess that's alright.

 

TV

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I've been thinking about picking up the Ravenscroft 275 VST while it's on sale. I have the iOS version and it's okay. Is there a big difference in sound quality and playability in the VST version. I have some of the Sampletek pianos and the Waves Grand Rhapsody and would like to add a high quality piano. Not sure whether to get it or wait and get something else like the Garriton CFX or Ivory.

 

 

 

JC

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Not sure whether to get it or wait and get something else like the Garriton CFX or Ivory.

 

I don't own the IOS version so I can't offer a comparison, but FWIW, I took Ivory II off my hard drive.

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Always tough to get a gauge on these sample sets when it comes to demos vs actual playing. I ended up purchasing The Grandeur recently because I loved how the demos sounded, but playing it feels a little lackluster. Maybe I need to spend some time tweaking things, I don't know. I remember checking out Ravencroft as well and not being particularly blown away sound-wise, but since it's getting so much praise here I'm thinking it's worth another look. It's really too bad there's no way to test how these sample sets feel in terms of playing without purchasing them. I'd be willing to spend the time downloading a demo version just so can test drive it.

 

Piano in Blue is one I really like. If they included more velocity layers, it would be perfect.

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