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UVI Austrian Grand


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Nice sounding demos. Can't always tell from a YouTube vid, but intriguing enough that for less than $50, I'll likely get it and see.

I like how most of the players doing the video are playing with taste and dynamics, as opposed to NAMM Show demos. :laugh:

Austrian Grand

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I was reminded about this recently via a Facebook algorithm that thinks I"m a potential UVI customer. Well, I guess Zuck is right! Sounds great. This one is also included in their Key Suite bundle - so waiting for a sale on that gigantic collection might be worth it if you don"t already own Spectrasonic"s Keyscape.

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I bought it earlier today. After some initial testing/tweaking, I definitely don't like it as well as Ravenscroft.

 

If I could return it, I definitely would.

 

It seems from the demos that it would be great to have that sound on hand if you're looking for something chunkier, less earthy than Ravenscroft. What turned you off?

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I bought it earlier today. After some initial testing/tweaking, I definitely don't like it as well as Ravenscroft.

 

If I could return it, I definitely would.

 

It seems from the demos that it would be great to have that sound on hand if you're looking for something chunkier, less earthy than Ravenscroft. What turned you off?

 

1. Lack of sustain and singing upper-mid register compared to Ravenscroft.

2. The lounder velocity layers have a strange, metallic quality.

3. The different mic perspectives sound decent individually, but sound phasey/wrong together.

 

I wanted to scratch a $50-75 virtual piano itch. It was down to this and Cinematic Studio Piano. The Austrian Grand sounds very little like its demos. I think I chose poorly.

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Just back in after a long day of outside work. It looks like davinwv just saved me $50!

Should we meet some day, first beer's on me. :laugh:

 

It would be a great pleasure to have a beer with you, Steve! I'd love to make that happen the next time I'm in Nashville.

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I forget the resolution of the query, but didn't someone clarify that this is not a new library, but rather an extraction of one of the pianos in a UVI keyboard suite, that had not yet been released on its own?

 

Not saying whether that's good or bad in terms of quality; just that people should check first to make sure they don't already have it, before buying it. I've made that mistake before myself!

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I bought it earlier today. After some initial testing/tweaking, I definitely don't like it as well as Ravenscroft.

 

If I could return it, I definitely would.

 

I had similar misgivings when I got it as part of the upgraded Keysuite Acoustic bundle last year, but have changed my opinion. My advice is to spend some more time tweaking it and optimising it to your keyboard. Bumping the mid & high dials of the built in EQ helps, and the UVI engine has a limiter which can be inserted under the hood which brings up the body of the tone more. I've found the UVI pianos are a little fussy with getting the best from them compared to Kontakt based pianos. Have you checked out these demos?:

 

 

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Also meant to mention: I've found the default release setting in the ASDR controls to be way too short resulting in an unnatural truncated sound on note releases.Try a setting around 1.8 to 1.9. Also the sympathetic resonance control is set a little high by default for my taste:

 

https://www.uvi.net/img/cms/austrian-grand/PP_AUSTRIAN_GRAND_GUI_MICS.jpg

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Also meant to mention: I've found the default release setting in the ASDR controls to be way too short resulting in an unnatural truncated sound on note releases.Try a setting around 1.8 to 1.9. Also the sympathetic resonance control is set a little high by default for my taste:

 

https://www.uvi.net/img/cms/austrian-grand/PP_AUSTRIAN_GRAND_GUI_MICS.jpg

 

Thanks for the info/insight. I watched those YouTube videos prior to purchase, and they definitely helped sell me Austrian Grand.

 

I would love to load your tweaked preset on my system as a starting point for my edits. Do you have any place to upload your *.UVIWS file? If not, I can make a folder on my Google Drive.

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You guys are never happy are you? I must be some kind of freak. I found a piano I liked and stuck with it, many years ago (NI New York). Late last year NI had a 50% off sale so I grabbed the Grandeur. I'm perfectly content with it but actually find the old NY a little better suited for live gigs â it has more clarity in the mids. I have messed with EQ a lot too. You could say the Grandeur is "richer" in the mids and indeed it sounds better at home in my cans and on a recording. Also, the top end sings a lot more than the NY (that was actually the reason I got the Grandeur).

 

In any case, I'm sure there are other pianos out there I would love, but I don't have the disposable income to "buy and try" -- obviously you can't return piano software whose sound winds up not working out. Youtube and Soundcloud demos tell one small piece of the story - the sound that hits the listener's ear. Not the way the piano responds to the velocity information you're sending it. In my case, I considered it a two-way street: I found a controller I liked, stuck with it, started playing the piano, then spent time tweaking velocity curves, keyboard sensitivity, and eq settings to arrive at something I can call my instrument. Buying a different piano VI and plugging it into my existing setup seems like a crapshoot - I'd be tweaking again, and why go through that if I'm generally happy with what I already have? I know I might be missing out but I feel my time is better spent on working on my piano playing, not my piano! Of course a film composer or producer would want an arsenal of different pianos in order to have a larger timbral pallete to work with, but otherwise I can't help thinking it's a search for a kind of "holy grail" that a player imagines will transform his or her playing. If something like that exists in piano-VI land, please let me know!

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You guys are never happy are you? I must be some kind of freak. I found a piano I liked and stuck with it, many years ago (NI New York). Late last year NI had a 50% off sale so I grabbed the Grandeur. I'm perfectly content with it but actually find the old NY a little better suited for live gigs â it has more clarity in the mids. I have messed with EQ a lot too. You could say the Grandeur is "richer" in the mids and indeed it sounds better at home in my cans and on a recording. Also, the top end sings a lot more than the NY (that was actually the reason I got the Grandeur).

 

In any case, I'm sure there are other pianos out there I would love, but I don't have the disposabe income to "buy and try" -- obviously you can't return piano software whose sound winds up not working out. Youtube and Soundcloud demos tell one small piece of the story - the sound that hits the listener's ear. Not the way the piano responds to the velocity information you're sending it. In my case, I considered it a two-way street: I found a controller I liked, stuck with it, started playing the piano, then spent time tweaking velocity curves, keyboard sensitivity, and eq settings to arrive at something I can call my instrument. Buying a different piano VI and plugging it into my existing setup seems like a crapshoot - I'd be tweaking again, and why go through that if I'm generally happy with what I already have? I know I might be missing out but I feel my time is better spent on working on my piano playing, not my piano! Of course a film composer or producer would want an arsenal of different pianos in order to have a larger timbral pallete to work with, but otherwise I can't help thinking it's a search for a kind of "holy grail" that a player imagines will transform his or her playing. If something like that exists in piano-VI land, please let me know!

 

I've been content with the Ravenscroft 275 since I bought it shortly after its release, but every now and then, I can't resist adding a new piano to my collection, especially when they are on sale. I'm likely to do so again when Cinematic Studio Piano is discounted.

 

Before I got Ravenscroft, I was still using the Standard version of the Garritan Authorized Steinway, so I do stick with what works. That doesn't mean that I don't try something new every few years.

 

Hopefully, some of pianoproducer's tweaks will make the Austrian Grand useable.

 

Oh, and I much rather would be playing/tracking than tweaking. That's why I asked for pianoproducer's preset file - haha!

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Oh, and I much rather would be playing/tracking than tweaking. That's why I asked for pianoproducer's preset file - haha!

Of course if pianoproducer uses a different controller than yours, if his velocity curve settings are more matched to his playing, if he favors a mellower or brighter sound than you, etc. etc. then the preset may not work for you. Or maybe it will.

 

I did a fair amount of tweaking early on. Once I had things feeling good I left my settings alone and haven't changed much in the last few years. I was actually happy that my piano VIs gave me the opportunity to tweak so much - I wonder if any hardware DP has the same # of parameters that a piano VI like NI's Grandeur has. In effect you're "custom-designing" a piano to fit your kind of playing. Horowitz had his Steinway shipped to all his gigs. Herbie has his Fazioli. And I have my plastic Roland A800 and Grandeur for all my gigs! (well, all my potential gigs right now!). :laugh:

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Oh, and I much rather would be playing/tracking than tweaking. That's why I asked for pianoproducer's preset file - haha!

Of course if pianoproducer uses a different controller than yours, if his velocity curve settings are more matched to his playing, if he favors a mellower or brighter sound than you, etc. etc. then the preset may not work for you. Or maybe it will.

 

I did a fair amount of tweaking early on. Once I had things feeling good I left my settings alone and haven't changed much in the last few years. I was actually happy that my piano VIs gave me the opportunity to tweak so much - I wonder if any hardware DP has the same # of parameters that a piano VI like NI's Grandeur has. In effect you're "custom-designing" a piano to fit your kind of playing. Horowitz had his Steinway shipped to all his gigs. Herbie has his Fazioli. And I have my plastic Roland A800 and Grandeur for all my gigs! (well, all my potential gigs right now!). :laugh:

 

I understand all of that. I'm just looking for a starting point that might save me some time/work. I'm not a noob. I've been playing keys professionally (albeit not on your level of gig) for 30+ years and playing live and in the studio exclusively with software instruments since 2008, so I get it. But I am a much better player than an audio/mix engineer, so I focus on that.

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Sorry, didn't mean to imply you were any kind of noob! Actually you sound like someone I can relate to given our similar experiences and interests with software instruments. I've always had a techno-dweeb side, starting with building my own Heathkit amps as a teenager and running a home studio. I also remember my sense of accomplishent when I wrote a few lines of BASIC on my Atari ST and successfully requested a program dump from my Akai S900! I enjoy tweaking things. Loading a preset only takes a few seconds and of course you can adjust from there if you have to. I hope you get things dialed in more to your liking with that UVI piano.
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Sorry, didn't mean to imply you were any kind of noob! Actually you sound like someone I can relate to given our similar experiences and interests with software instruments. I've always had a techno-dweeb side, starting with building my own Heathkit amps as a teenager and running a home studio. I also remember my sense of accomplishent when I wrote a few lines of BASIC on my Atari ST and successfully requested a program dump from my Akai S900! I enjoy tweaking things. Loading a preset only takes a few seconds and of course you can adjust from there if you have to. I hope you get things dialed in more to your liking with that UVI piano.

 

No worries, man - all good! Let's get back on topic :).

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Also meant to mention: I've found the default release setting in the ASDR controls to be way too short resulting in an unnatural truncated sound on note releases.Try a setting around 1.8 to 1.9. Also the sympathetic resonance control is set a little high by default for my taste:

 

https://www.uvi.net/img/cms/austrian-grand/PP_AUSTRIAN_GRAND_GUI_MICS.jpg

 

Thanks for the info/insight. I watched those YouTube videos prior to purchase, and they definitely helped sell me Austrian Grand.

 

I would love to load your tweaked preset on my system as a starting point for my edits. Do you have any place to upload your *.UVIWS file? If not, I can make a folder on my Google Drive.

 

Happy to share it to your Google Drive. The .uviws preset file is 22.6MB. You can PM me a link to the folder for the upload.

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Also meant to mention: I've found the default release setting in the ASDR controls to be way too short resulting in an unnatural truncated sound on note releases.Try a setting around 1.8 to 1.9. Also the sympathetic resonance control is set a little high by default for my taste:

 

https://www.uvi.net/img/cms/austrian-grand/PP_AUSTRIAN_GRAND_GUI_MICS.jpg

 

Thanks for the info/insight. I watched those YouTube videos prior to purchase, and they definitely helped sell me Austrian Grand.

 

I would love to load your tweaked preset on my system as a starting point for my edits. Do you have any place to upload your *.UVIWS file? If not, I can make a folder on my Google Drive.

 

Happy to share it to your Google Drive. The .uviws preset file is 22.6MB. You can PM me a link to the folder for the upload.

 

Thanks very much. Link sent via PM!

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  • 1 month later...

I thought I try something keys from UVI so got this Austrian Grand. I assume it's a Bosendorfer? I didn't really read the specs or the manual. It's an interesting library. I'm pretty sure most people won't like the stock presets out of the box. If anything, I found them rather confusing a bit. NI pianos are always safe. You install them and play like you had them for years. I was kind of expecting the same of this 3 to 4 gig library, but that wasn't the case at all. It's like they tried to make the acoustic presets sound processed! Once you turn off some of the FX and change the settings, you get a much better sound. It's definitely playable and has its own unique character but I doubt it'll be anyone's go-to piano.

 

Here's a short demo using a heavily tweaked preset called 'Romantic Piano ....if I remember correctly.

 

 

www.youtube.com/c/InTheMixReviews
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I thought I try something keys from UVI so got this Austrian Grand. I assume it's a Bosendorfer? I didn't really read the specs or the manual. It's an interesting library. I'm pretty sure most people won't like the stock presets out of the box. If anything, I found them rather confusing a bit. NI pianos are always safe. You install them and play like you had them for years. I was kind of expecting the same of this 3 to 4 gig library, but that wasn't the case at all. It's like they tried to make the acoustic presets sound processed! Once you turn off some of the FX and change the settings, you get a much better sound. It's definitely playable and has its own unique character but I doubt it'll be anyone's go-to piano.

 

Here's a short demo using a heavily tweaked preset called 'Romantic Piano ....if I remember correctly.

 

 

Nice playing! Care to share that preset file?

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  • 1 month later...

I'm really liking the sound of Austrian Grand apart from the F# above middle C (described that way because: Yamaha!).

 

That one note sounds like I'm hitting it harder than the rest. No other VSTi or the Forte's onboard sound exhibit this.

 

But apart from that I like the rawness of the sound. The metallic zing that others don't like is something I do like.

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I remember there's a reverb that contributes to that metallic sounding character. I couldn't stand it so I turned it off.

 

This is not the reverb. I actually quite like the metallic sound at high velocities. It's just that this one note stands out. I have to remember to play it with less force to keep the sound even.

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I thinks it"s great to have a Grand Piano from each Country.

I"ve got strings from each city, so why not pianos too.

 

Recently bought Tokyo to bolster my Hollywood, Berlin, London, New York, etc.

Somebody told me they all sound different but my ears aren"t that good I guessâ¦

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