# Did a play-through of Native Instruments new Piano NOIRE



## ManchesterMusic

I think it sounds pretty damn stunning. They sampled Nils Frahm’s personal Yamaha CFX, both prepared with felt and unprepared. Check it out:


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## ism

Very nice. This would merit a Complete upgrade, once its included.


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## ism

Geoff - Here's a thought - I'd love to see one of your reviews (especially if it was the kind that starts with a composition) that explores the various pianos in this space - it Noir, the Olafur piano, maybe some of the Fractured Sound pianos, maybe the cinematique instuments pianos (which are nice, but arguably closer to a kind of sound design, as what isn't always clear from the demos is that they're not very deeply sampled at all)

I'm a fan of what you do with Una Corda already, so maybe not essential to include that. Because

a) I'd love to see what you compose with a pallet spanning multiple such pianos for one thing, and

b) for another, with all these amazing pianos, we're getting to the point where my traditional "just buy one of each" is being strained a bit, and

c) when you really go into these textures, there seems to be a genuine huge expressive space here. So any and attempts at spelunking it would be fun to watch.


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## Lemmi

I must say it again, great job Geoff Love the first minute of NOIRE playing without voice over! Nice one.

Cheers,
Stephan
__________________________
Galaxy Instruments
Galaxy-instruments.com
facebook.com/galaxyinstruments


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## artomatic

Yet another piano but I'm really diggin' this one too. Couldn't wait for it to go on sale...

Thanks for the review, Geoff!


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## whiskers

artomatic said:


> Yet another piano but I'm really diggin' this one too. Couldn't wait for it to go on sale...
> 
> Thanks for the review, Geoff!


Same. Fortunately I had a voucher.


@ManchesterMusic did you hit your hand with a hammer or something? What happened lol


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## whiskers

ism said:


> what isn't always clear from the demos is that they're not very deeply sampled at all


Curious what makes you say this? Or are you telling in general?


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## ism

whiskers said:


> Curious what makes you say this? Or are you telling in general?



The most obvious thing is that the total file size for ~5 pianos in the cinemtique instruments collection is ... from memory ... 700m or there abouts.

But also in playing them you feel the lack of dynamic layers. They’re have some very nice characterful sounds, but they would never be my goto acoustic pianos.


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## whiskers

ism said:


> The most obvious thing is that the total file size for ~5 pianos in the cinemtique instruments collection is ... from memory ... 700m or there abouts.
> 
> But also in playing them you feel the lack of dynamic layers. They’re have some very nice characterful sounds, but they would never be my goto acoustic pianos.


gotcha, I thought you meant this particular library.


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## germancomponist

I don't get it ... .


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## n9n9n9

so this is a pretty nice library. a lot of overlap with Una Corda, I think. The Felt instrument is more usable (for me) than the one with Una Corda, which had a very loud and present felt component where this is more subtle. Again, you really need to go deep and spend time with it, I think -- the presets are interesting on some level but they are so very, very mid-low heavy (at least for my tastes) that they kind of hurt my ears.

and... well, I don't want to be overly critical, maybe this is part of the instrument and I defer to others, but I notice some notes in the top two octaves that sound out of tune. Not a lot, but... I found it jarring. Could it be that they didn't tune the piano? I find that hard to believe.

The particles engine is interesting, though -- but it doesn't seem to have a MIDI out option or be able to sound on a separate output. I honestly can't see using it in a recording without the option to record it apart from the played notes. One could load two instances of the instrument, I guess, and have one all piano and one all particles, so it's not a complete miss in that.

I'd say it is a good value -- the plain grand sound has a great ambience, there are a lot of interesting reverb and output IR settings (as was the case with Una Corda) -- all in all I find myself preferring this to Una Corda (which I have used a lot.) I would be interested in some eq and comp advice from people that know better to get that overly thick low-mid frequency cleaned up.

But that said? This Sub mic thing is amazing. They bolted a big speaker to the bottom of the piano and used it as a mic. It is very fat and kind of astonishing. I think I like this part of the lib most of all.


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## n9n9n9

...anyone else find it interesting that Olafur Arnalds new record is full of a custom-coded auto accompany software very similar to this particle engine? I think that Nils and OA are good friends, so maybe that's where this came from.


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## ManchesterMusic

ism said:


> Geoff - Here's a thought - I'd love to see one of your reviews (especially if it was the kind that starts with a composition) that explores the various pianos in this space - it Noir, the Olafur piano, maybe some of the Fractured Sound pianos, maybe the cinematique instuments pianos (which are nice, but arguably closer to a kind of sound design, as what isn't always clear from the demos is that they're not very deeply sampled at all)
> 
> I'm a fan of what you do with Una Corda already, so maybe not essential to include that. Because
> 
> a) I'd love to see what you compose with a pallet spanning multiple such pianos for one thing, and
> 
> b) for another, with all these amazing pianos, we're getting to the point where my traditional "just buy one of each" is being strained a bit, and
> 
> c) when you really go into these textures, there seems to be a genuine huge expressive space here. So any and attempts at spelunking it would be fun to watch.


Oooooo this could be a cool video!


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## n9n9n9

i wouldn’t say that. the cloud generator is more than a random note generator, the piano has a lot of unusual stuff going on that makes it different than others (like the sub mic and the felt) and the IR for mics and and pres. it has $150 of new at least.


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## ManchesterMusic

artomatic said:


> Yet another piano but I'm really diggin' this one too. Couldn't wait for it to go on sale...
> 
> Thanks for the review, Geoff!


my pleasure!


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## ManchesterMusic

whiskers said:


> Same. Fortunately I had a voucher.
> 
> 
> @ManchesterMusic did you hit your hand with a hammer or something? What happened lol


Dude, I was chopping vegetables with a dull knife which slipped and sliced off half of the nail on my left index, and bruised the skin underneath. I took care of it but it got a little infected but now i'm almost back in the pink. Got those knives sharpened last week. Never again.


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## ism

ManchesterMusic said:


> Oooooo this could be a cool video!



Says that guy who always makes cool videos


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## whiskers

ManchesterMusic said:


> Dude, I was chopping vegetables with a dull knife which slipped and sliced off half of the nail on my left index, and bruised the skin underneath. I took care of it but it got a little infected but now i'm almost back in the pink. Got those knives sharpened last week. Never again.


Wow that's rough


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