Bosendorfer 290 Or Ivory?

[jazkeys]

Hi!

 

I've been using East/West's Bosendorfer 290 for a while and really like it; however, I'm wondering if it might make sense for me to get Ivory (which already has a 290 PLUS Steinway and Yamaha) in order to have more flexibility. Also, East/West's 290 is 24-bit, while Ivory is 32-bit. My setup is as follows:

 

17" 1.5GHz PowerBook 1.5GB RAM (soon to be 2GB), FireWire 400 and 800 drives

Digital Performer 4.5

AudioDesk

Bosendorfer 290

Drumkit From Hell Superior

Moog Modular V

CS-80V

Absynth

B4

Elektrik Piano

Stylus RMX

GarageBand

Sound Studio

Finale 2005

MOTU 828mkII

Kurzweil PC2X w/Orchestra ROM

Evolution MK-449C (GREAT for B4!)

 

So I'm wondering if anyone out there has done an A/B comparison between East/West's 290 and Synthology's 290, and am (like many people here) eager to get a real-world user's review of Ivory. If it makes sense to switch, I'll have a beautiful copy of East/West's 290 for sale!

 

Thanks in advance for you help.

[fisheye]

Originally posted by jazkeys:

East/West's 290 is 24-bit, while Ivory is 32-bit.

There is no soundcard that could make a difference between 24 and 32 bit and your ears can't hear the difference too, so Ivory could just as well have been 24 bit. Appendix B of the Echo Indigo soundcard manual ( pdf here ) has some nice explanation of this.

 

Can't help you with your decision though, since I don't have Ivory or East West's 290.

[JeffLearman]

Actually, an advantage of 32-bit could be that it takes less CPU time, because there's no need to convert from 24-bit fixed to 32-bit float before doing waveform processing (like pitch adjustment, convolutions, etc.)

 

Just a thought. I don't know whether it would actually matter, or whether fetching the extra byte per sample would offset the benefit of not needing the format conversion.

[steadyb]

I got a chance to really check out and play Ivory last week in San Diego down at Pro Sound and Music, and it is by far the best sounding and playing sampled piano I have ever played.

 

It's stunning.

[Zeke Smith.]

Ivory's great, and I'm running it with no problems on a nearly identical Powerbook/MOTU setup (same processor, same RAM, DP4.5, only difference is an 896 instead of an 828).

 

I can't speak to the library you're already using, but I will say that I'm using Ivory's Steinway and Yamaha libraries a lot more than the Bosendorfer. Which is more a preference thing, because I've spent most of my real piano recording time behind Steinway B's and D's and Yamaha C5's and C7's.

 

With Ivory, I feel precious little reason to mic up a piano for recording any more, unless it was a really great piano in a really great room, and on a really exposed track. The only thing that doesn't ring true is that I'm banging away on a MIDI keyboard (Motif ES8) and the sound is coming out of speakers. That's it, and that's stuff I don't think any electronic emulation will get past.

[fisheye]

Originally posted by learjeff:

Actually, an advantage of 32-bit could be that it takes less CPU time, because there's no need to convert from 24-bit fixed to 32-bit float before doing waveform processing (like pitch adjustment, convolutions, etc.)

 

Just a thought. I don't know whether it would actually matter, or whether fetching the extra byte per sample would offset the benefit of not needing the format conversion.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that too, but I guess all the dsp (sample interpolation, sustain resonance, ambience, eq, etc) makes a 24 to 32 bits conversion not really matter anymore in terms of time-complexity. I'd say the 1/3 extra drain on the harddrive is actually much more substantial.

 

Wouldn't it be just a marketing trick for people thinking 32 bits makes a sound-difference to 24 bits?