Ivory for home practice

[Brad Gregg]

I'm looking for a good practice solution for home for the numerous times I can't use my acoustic piano to practice on. I have a Triton Extreme 88, which isn't a bad board but the piano sound is lacking. I was considering using Ivory, running on my MacBook Pro, using GarageBand as a platform. I would probably also buy a Glyph FireWire drive to use to store the samples. The Triton would be the controller. My principal concern is getting a convincing sound/tactile response for practicing classical repertoire.

 

Does this sound like a reasonable solution?

 

Thanks in advance,

Brad

[matted stump]

I'd be more worried about the action of the board. Does it serve well in that regard? If so, then is there some trial download of Ivory that you can try to see how well it responds to your controller?

[Moonglow]

I'd be more worried about the action of the board. Does it serve well in that regard? If so, then is there some trial download of Ivory that you can try to see how well it responds to your controller?

+1

 

If you dig the action/responsiveness of your controller in terms of it being representative of classical piano it sounds like an excellent idea.

[Brad Gregg]

I'd be more worried about the action of the board. Does it serve well in that regard? If so, then is there some trial download of Ivory that you can try to see how well it responds to your controller?

+1

 

If you dig the action/responsiveness of your controller in terms of it being representative of classical piano it sounds like an excellent idea.

 

I think it's hard to judge the action/responsiveness of a controller divorced from the actual sound you're controlling. In my experience, if a sound is really great and inspiring, I tend to perceive the controller as better, both in terms of action and response. The Triton keyboard feel isn't the greatest in the world, but it's at least as good as, say, the Korg SG-1D that I played for years.

 

Unfortunately, so far as I'm aware, there's no downloadable demo for Ivory, and no stores in my area seem to have it in stock, which makes an in-person demo kinda tough to arrange.

 

Brad

[K K]

Ideally make sure you can create custom velocity maps on the controller and/or on the digital piano source (I've never used Ivory or Triton so I don't know).

 

Otherwise using predefined velocity maps might not give you the response you're looking for when you'll combine both systems.

[SilverDragonSoun]

I'd be more worried about the action of the board. Does it serve well in that regard? If so, then is there some trial download of Ivory that you can try to see how well it responds to your controller?

+1

 

If you dig the action/responsiveness of your controller in terms of it being representative of classical piano it sounds like an excellent idea.

 

 

I think it's hard to judge the action/responsiveness of a controller divorced from the actual sound you're controlling. In my experience, if a sound is really great and inspiring, I tend to perceive the controller as better, both in terms of action and response. The Triton keyboard feel isn't the greatest in the world, but it's at least as good as, say, the Korg SG-1D that I played for years.

 

Unfortunately, so far as I'm aware, there's no downloadable demo for Ivory, and no stores in my area seem to have it in stock, which makes an in-person demo kinda tough to arrange.

 

Brad

 

 

 

While I would disagree about the sound making the action feel better to me, I respect your opinion and if that works for you then great. I also think its important to keep in mind that many things can affect the action of the keyboard your playing. Your stand, height from the floor, your bench/chair ect. If you like the action on your Triton, then that's all that matters. As for finding a demo to download I couldn't find one doing a quick search. I did find alot of demos that you could listen to Ivory but no playable demos.

[Mark Schmieder]

It would be really nice if they did have a demo, so those of us with underpowered systems could verify whether it works for rendering (vs. in real-time). In the noisy NAMM environment, my statement that I can't buy Ivory due to having an 800 MHz G4 iMac was unfortunately taken as an insult vs. a simple comment. I might have gotten a more receptive ear if I had inquired about making a demo available. There are a lot of reasons other than "just" monetary why I will continue to hold off upgrading my Mac (my EARLIEST target at this point is September 2007, after Leopard is released).

[7notemode]

I use an iBook G4/GarageBand/Ivory/Firewire Raid Hard Drive/Roland 700SX and it works like a charm. I will be changing to the new replacement model for the Kawai MP8 coming out soon. If you are interested in classical music, you should try the high end kawai action, AWA pro action. It is very conducive to classical.

[Mark Schmieder]

Hmm, I found the MP4 (or whichever was the next model down) to have a somewhat rubbery action (well, that's from memory -- I would have to consult my notes and/or search this forum for my previous posted comments), but am always open-minded about future Kawai keybeds as each one is very different from the last. I don't like the Kawai sound and nothing will change that, but they do include most of the necessary synth controller features on their digital pianos (unlike the other manufacturers), so the MP series remains a viable choice as overall controller. And some of the other sounds could do in a pinch.

 

Thanks for the info on Ivory working on a G4 iBook. I notice inconsistent system requirements from many manufacturers, depending on whether you visit their main page, a reseller page, a news item page for a software update, etc. I think sometimes manufacturers post their recommended system as the minimum requirement. I tend to take the minimum requirements quite literally, as I know for a fact that I can't run Arturia ARP 2600V and a few other soft synths whose published recommendations exceed my system specs (I have tried the respective demos).

 

I am of course a bit torn about the immediacy of my need for Ivory, as I hope to buy the GEM DRAKE technology in some form factor fairly soon, and suspect that I will prefer it to Ivory even for rendering pre-recorded MIDI tracks. But I am also trying to avoid having to re-track too much material over and over again during incremental upgrades this year.

 

Recently I have wasted a lot of time re-tracking piano parts from the brash Steinway samples in MOTU Symphonic Instrument (which themselves were re-tracked from Yamaha Motif workstation samples), to the disappointing NI Akoustik that came with my Komplete 4 upgrade. Akoustik is extremely problematic in the upper registers, and I spoke to them at NAMM about this but they didn't "get it". Some early users (probably those using synth-action controllers) complained that the upper registers were too loud, so they pulled it back considerably. The point is that even if I record to MIDI vs. direct/live, and then reassign upper register velocities to 127 and lower-register velocities to 64 (as an experiment only, of course), the upper register is still barely audible (yet it is NOT dropping the notes, as I initially thought to be the case). It was recommended that I load the samples into Kontakt and re-map them, but I don't have time for that (in terms of priorities).

 

In Akoustik's favour, the upright is quite usable in certain rock contexts where Ivory, GEM, and other solutions might not blend as well as one would like, and makes for a nice alternative to the "Yamaha" solution for pop/rock. Similarly with the Bechstein, which has radically different character from the Steinway. So I think the basic sample sets are quite good, but they just need to tweak it some so that they aren't penalising the more serious users just to satisfy the hobbyists.

 

As Ivory only overlaps Akoustik with the Steinway sample set, even if Akoustik is improved later this year, I still see Ivory (plus the marvelous Fazioli expansion) in my plans. That is, unless I upgrade my computer to one whose CPU can handle the physically modeled Pianoteq :-). I need to attempt another demo download of that, as I didn't have much time to work with the first trial download.

[Brad Gregg]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts.

[DanS]

I use a Yamaha S80 to trigger pianos from Gigastudio. Works well, and the weighted keys give a definite authenticity to the whole experience.

[Clifton]

As Ivory only overlaps Akoustik with the Steinway sample set, even if Akoustik is improved later this year, I still see Ivory (plus the marvelous Fazioli expansion) in my plans. That is, unless I upgrade my computer to one whose CPU can handle the physically modeled Pianoteq :-). I need to attempt another demo download of that, as I didn't have much time to work with the first trial download.

 

I think you'll find a 20gb sample-based piano instrument will be more resource demanding than the relatively tiny PianoTeq, even CPU wise.

And personally, I didn't like PianoTeq once I tried it on 88 keys, just didn't sound convincing. The expressiveness is very nice though, I think the sound will catch up someday.

[Mark Schmieder]

"Someday" might be next week. Version 2 is out on 4 April but will be previewed at MusikMesse this week. Quite a few new features, tweaked modeling, etc. Go to their website for details. I saw the announcement today at sonicstate.com.

 

I'm going to re-download their trial demo tonight if their website allows that (some companies keep track of whether you've already tried their demo, which is annoying as I often see a demo period expire before I've even found time to try the demo). They have a recommendation to bump the sample rate down to 22 kHz to accomodate weaker processors.

[Joe Muscara]

"Someday" might be next week. Version 2 is out on 6 April but will be previewed at MusikMesse this week. uite a few new features, tweaked modeling, etc.

 

At first, I thought you were talking about Ivory, not PianoTeq...

[Clifton]

"Someday" might be next week. Version 2 is out on 4 April but will be previewed at MusikMesse this week. Quite a few new features, tweaked modeling, etc. Go to their website for details. I saw the announcement today at sonicstate.com.

 

I'm going to re-download their trial demo tonight if their website allows that (some companies keep track of whether you've already tried their demo, which is annoying as I often see a demo period expire before I've even found time to try the demo). They have a recommendation to bump the sample rate down to 22 kHz to accomodate weaker processors.

 

Oooh. Thanks for the heads-up. I just wonder how 'tweaked' the modeling is. Certainly work a second look now.

 

And I think the CPU-hog-factor on PianoTeq is pretty good, on my pos 1.3Ghz laptop I found I could run it full blast up to about 16 notes, this is without any other plugins running simultaneously, mind you.

[Joe Muscara]

Referring back to the original question, I've used Ivory thru GarageBand and in stand-alone mode on my Core Duo MacBook controlled by my RS-4073 (CDP-100 in disguise) and I think it works great. Ivory has lots of settings you can tweak to make it work the way you want, but I've left it mostly at defaults.

 

As far as a downloadable demo, Ivory is 40 GB, and you need 11 GB free to install the smallest instrument, the Yamaha C7. Ain't no way they're going to make 11 GB available to download, so their next option would be to cut it down. What would you cut down that would make the size smaller yet show you how good, and deep, this program is? I can't think of anything. Cut the number of layers? If you heard the difference between pp and ff in Ivory, you'd know that would be an injustice. Limit it to a number of octaves? But some people want to hear how the top octaves sound, sometimes in sampled pianos they are harsh, and I'm sure others want to hear how the bass octaves sound. etc.

 

I wanted to hear how Ivory sounded before I bought it, I wanted to play it, but couldn't find anywhere that had it installed. I ended up taking the plunge and buying it based on word of mouth and the samples on their web site. I am happy with it.

[Mark Schmieder]

Good point, Joe. Not much we could do with just the middle "C" sample :-). It's easy to not think these things through logically. I am currently evaluating some orchestral sample libraries from small sample sets that are made for evaluation. That can't really be done with a piano, as the samples are much larger in general.

 

I tried downloading the Pianoteq demo last night but it failed to download regardless of which browser I used on OS X. maybe because it knows I've done it before. I'll try again when the post the update on 4 April. It's only a week away and I don't have to make my piano decision for another two weeks.

[Brad Gregg]

If anyone's interested, I wound up buying Ivory, and I'm really knocked out with how good it sounds after spending just a few hours with it this afternoon. After giving myself a few minutes with it, it's very easy to imagine playing a real piano. I'll be spending some time tweaking the velocity response to maximize this, but I'm very happy with the results so far.

 

Thanks to everyone for their input.

 

Brad

[Joe Muscara]

Brad,

 

One thing I've discovered about Ivory - the more you play, the more you hear. Details constantly come out and they're just amazing.

 

Congrats on your purchase and enjoy!