Ivory and other piano samples

[Rockitman]

Can somebody tell briefly explain "softsynths" or "gigasamples" to me?

It sounds as if the best acoustic piano sounds are found here. Better than anybody's onboard sounds. I have a S90 that I am ready to sell and buy either a P250 or a RD700SX, because all I play is classical. I need the action these two boards offer plus the most realistic AP sound I can get.

Can I use either of these boards to play these giga samples? I do have a screaming gaming PC rig and power is not a problem. Does one play these samples from a PC or are they downloaded to the board?

[Dave Horne]

First, I think you would be happy with the internal acoustic piano samples in the P250 or the RD700SX.

 

Second, you could easily use a midi cable (or USB cable?) to trigger the giga samples that would reside on your personal computer's hard drive. You might have to buy a cable adaptor to midi up your stage piano to your sound card, but it would be very easy. I believe my P250 has a USB port so I probably wouldn't even need that midi cable. At any rate, it's very doable. (It's in its case at the moment.)

[Sven Golly]

Google is your friend.

[Rockitman]

So I could even do this with my S90?

I currently USB my S90 to my PC and like to play midi files from my PC on the S90. It's a great way to learn new pieces as I can slow down tempo, turn off left hand or right hand, etc, on my software that I use, SQ01.

 

I hear all this talk of Ivory's samples, still only available for MAC right? Are Ivory's grand piano samples a cut above the onboard P250?

 

Is this kind of thing expensive?

 

How much hard drive storage typically does one need?

[Dave Horne]

Go play a P250 or a RD700SX through headphones. If you still feel the sound is lacking then go spend your money for a software based sample. I am content with my P250 and I"m a pretty demanding guy. Before I bought the P250 I used an Akai S5000 sampler loaded with Wm. Coakley's Perfect Piano Vol. 3. Had I bought a stage piano years ago I would have saved myself a lot of money.

 

If you really want to go first class consider buying the Yamaha GranTouch (since you wrote that you are a classical pianist). You would have a real grand piano action and an excellent piano sample. The drawback of the GranTouch - it's a one trick pony; it just does piano.

 

Also, __no__ stage piano, none, will truly satisfy your need for a real piano action - they are all too light. The folks here who complain that an electric piano's action is too heavy do not have a clue and have obviously not spent any time on acoustic grands.

 

I would advise spending some time here before you purchase anything. You might want to spend some time searching since these topics have been covered to death. Had I done that years ago I would have never bought a sampler and just bought a stage piano. I was under the impression that in order to have a great piano sample you had to have a sampler; I was wrong. The samples in the P250 and the RD700SX are probably less than 35 megs - and they both sound excellent. Who says samples have to be larger to be better.

 

There are folks here who rave about the Promega 3 - check that out as well. Spend some time searching the archives.

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by Rockitman:

Are Ivory's grand piano samples a cut above the onboard P250?

I think so...

 

IIRC, the P250's CFIIIs piano sample is somewhere between 20 and 25 MB in size, and is three velocity layers deep. Each of Ivory's three pianos are around 10 GB (give or take a GB) and have several more velocity layers (IIRC, the Bosendorfer has something like eight velocity layers. Also, I believe every note is sampled for Ivory...not sure if that's the case for the P250.

 

All that being said - math is one thing and taste is another, and the P250's piano sample is excellent. In the end, you'll need to listen to both and decide for yourself what's right for you.

 

dB

[fisheye]

If you're just playing at home, the large software samples can be a joy to play, they let you think you are in a great concert hall playing a great concert grand. For live, most don't cut it really, they are often too far off. The Yamaha of Ivory might be recorded close enough for that.

 

I find that most ofen, softsamples are best used for classical playing.

 

Yes, you can trigger those samples with your S90 and a USB midi-interface. Most samples cost around 200$. But you'll need a sampler, which can be expensive, though the NI Kompakt player is affordable at 200$. That won't you give the latest convolution and sympatic resonance effects though, but they aren't essential to have a nice sound.

 

Google a bit on Ivory Synthogy, Post musical instruments, Sampletekk White Grand, etc.

Composers in the film/tv industrie seem to be fully turned towards software samples, while most live players (like you'll find here) usually prefer hardware like the P250 or whatever.

 

A forum about samples where you'll find mostly tv-composers is Northern Sounds .

 

Happy searching.

[MusicaL]

I have Ivory, Bardstown Bosendorfer, and the White Grand by Sampletekk. IMHO Ivory is the best sampled piano of these three. The Bardstown Bose is also very playable.

 

From what I've read, Ivory may very well be the best sampled piano on the market currently. I can't say, because I don't have every sample piano on the market.

 

As for Digital Pianos, I've played the p250 and the p120, and the Roland RDsx's. I am partial to Yamaha sounds although I quite like the Rd700sx's keybed. As far as action, I find that the Yamaha P series are as close as you can get to an acoustic piano action. For an all around Digital Piano, the P250 is very good, but I also like the Electric Piano sample in the P120 (I know you play classical, but I threw in this part about the EP in the P120 free of charge).

 

aL

[Worra]

Originally posted by Rockitman:

Can somebody tell briefly explain "softsynths" or "gigasamples" to me?

It sounds as if the best acoustic piano sounds are found here. Better than anybody's onboard sounds. I have a S90 that I am ready to sell and buy either a P250 or a RD700SX, because all I play is classical. I need the action these two boards offer plus the most realistic AP sound I can get.

Can I use either of these boards to play these giga samples? I do have a screaming gaming PC rig and power is not a problem. Does one play these samples from a PC or are they downloaded to the board?

Hi.

 

Softsynths are software synthesizers and/or samplers that are supposed to run on a computer, Gigasamples are the input files in a software sampler called Gigastudio.

If you buy a digital piano, you will get a dedicated system that you know always will function well. A softsynth/sampler will work well if you don't load more then your system, at a given point, will handle.

 

On the other hand, with a softsynth/sampler you often get a better chance in tweaking the sounds. You need to learn a bit about how samplers work to do that, but if you take that time, you will find that this can be a very powerful tool. Not everyone wants to do this though.

 

Another advantage with certain software samplers is that they can handle extremely large samplesets due to their possibility to stream from disc. Digital pianos rely on RAM or EPROM, which is faster but also smaller.

Is bigger better? Can be, but doesn't have to!

 

For example, the pianos that my company produces are about as large as they get. In many retrospects, they are the largest on the market.

 

Normal standard for us is to have 16 recorded velocity samples pedal down, 16 pedal up and 16 release samples giving 48 actual samples per recorded note.

This gives IMHO, an outstanding performance when it comes to dynamic and seamless transitions between pp and ff.

Does this automatically make the piano sound good?

Well, actually, no.

See, this is something subjective. If you like the sound of the piano, then it's a good sampled piano - for you!

In my opinion, you can't say that a certain sampled piano IS the best sampled piano. You can simply state that in this production, and with my taste, this or this sampled piano suits my purposes at this given moment.

 

I, as a sample producer always have a goal when I go about to record a piano, (or other instrument for that matter).

As for the White Grand, I wanted to make a piano that would work well in a mix, without too much tweaking. It was made from my subjective opinions on how such a piano should sound and I'm happy.

That doesn't mean that everybody else must think the same.

 

The good thing about the sampled piano world today is that there are so many out there. Most of them are recorded in a technical excellent way and priced very moderately, so you have a lot of choices!

[LithoJazzoSphere]

A bit of info about comparisons to Ivory. For Dream Theater's latest album, Octavarium, they A/Bed a Yamaha C-7 with Ivory, Jordan Rudess wound up using Ivory for all the piano parts, as it sounded much better.

[fisheye]

Originally posted by LithoJazzoSphere:

A bit of info about comparisons to Ivory. For Dream Theater's latest album, Octavarium, they A/Bed a Yamaha C-7 with Ivory, Jordan Rudess wound up using Ivory for all the piano parts, as it sounded much better.

Please, allow me to be sceptical. Either they didn't know how to mike that C7 well (which is difficult), or they have a contract with Ilio. Or the C7 was in a bad condition.

 

Otherwise, I can't believe the software is better than the real thing. As far as I now, Ivory doesn't model all the complexities of an acoustic piano, so I'd use a real one everytime in the studio, if the recording-engineer is capable enough.