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Simple Sam Steinway

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Yes, to all of the above.

My experience has been very good with this library and I agree with the comments above that it has a very beautiful tone and feel to it. The critical thing as is always the case for me is setting the velocity curve and response correctly. Once this is dialed in it will take you to some really glorious places.

Much more to come.
 
I have one bone to pick with this library being released:
I want y'all to forget about it completely so I can have it all to myself.
I have to admit that when I first came across this last week and bought a copy I thought "think I've just found an undiscovered gem here!" (I WAS about to post a thread about it and then saw this thread - promise!)
 
If this was sampled at Lyndhurst, is it fair to assume its the same Steinway sampled in HZP?

Good question... I have the HZP, and I was struck by how similar the wet HZP Room sound is in tone. The sampling is completely different, of course, which makes it hard to tell. And we don't know what mics were used in either case. And the end result is different, as a result. But it sure sounds more like a Hamburg than a NY, which puts it in the HZP camp.
 
Good question... I have the HZP, and I was struck by how similar the wet HZP Room sound is in tone. The sampling is completely different, of course, which makes it hard to tell. And we don't know what mics were used in either case. And the end result is different, as a result. But it sure sounds more like a Hamburg than a NY, which puts it in the HZP camp.

definitely, and, it seems HZP sampled the in house piano at Lyndhurst so unless simple Sam brought in their own piano it stands to reason its the same instrument.
I really like HZP and it seems like this instrument would give me just what I find lacking in HZP which is a more uniformly intimate and subtle sound.
 
Watching the video, you can hear Garth mention they used a Hamburg Model D for the session. Also there is a very quick glimpse of a microphone, that looks like it could be a Coles Ribbon.
I think they did a fantastic job capturing this.
There is a lot of nuance that is deeply embedded inside each preset that shows so much going on in the scripting and effects which I find very interesting in the best sort of way.
 

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definitely, and, it seems HZP sampled the in house piano at Lyndhurst so unless simple Sam brought in their own piano it stands to reason its the same instrument.
I really like HZP and it seems like this instrument would give me just what I find lacking in HZP which is a more uniformly intimate and subtle sound.
Yes, more intimate, subtle, and less manipulated than HZP, which I think of as a "scoring" piano more than a "playing" piano. HZP can be made to sound indistinguishable from a very, very good studio recording, certainly indistinguishable from a real recording on a lot of material. But it has a mush factor that is (thankfully) absent from this vst.

Fair to say (to my ears, at least) that this vst has more clarity than the HZP, more presence, more 20-20k, let's say, as opposed to 20-12k (exaggeration, but gets across what I mean). For this reason, I prefer this piano to the "usual suspects" as well (they that shall not be named, except to say that they are very, very expensive). It would be undignified in a forum such as this to name names, but the vsts to which I am referring, for all the money they cost, are all annoyingly alike in respect to a noticeable absence of the "12k-20k" figuratively speaking: over-engineered, in some odd way. What's the use of umpteen vel layers if the tone is, to put it politely, subdued.

I admit to thinking that in spite of all its well-known deficiencies, the HZP (which I've been using for years) had the best audible frequency range of all the suspects, but of course even in that respect it was not perfect. You could tell by comparing it to the very best (mostly modern) solo jazz and classical albums, say the more recent Jarrett stuff. (He's pretty particular, famously fussy. We know that from his concerts.)

But I can now hear the same difference relative to this vst, which is pretty remarkable. If anybody wants a more hyped sound, as opposed to dead-on accurate, many of the settings under "film" will do that. So there is flexibility, in spite of the limited mic perspectives. Note G5 near or at vel 79 needs to be adjusted down in my opinion, but that's hardly a substantive issue.
 
I'm really enjoying the Signature Grand for slow, sparse pieces, where you can hear the piano ring out in the Hall:



Yup... that's exactly my thought, as your demo shows in spades.

And there's just NO WAY (on God's good earth) that any set of ears will distinguish your cut from the same performance at a well-tuned Steinway recorded with state of the art microphones placed in exactly the right place relative to the piano (a very difficult thing to do, even for the pros.) You'll get different, for sure. But you won't get better in this material at least. That's my feeling.

How this vst might sound with dense material .... that should be interesting. But so good on this stuff, honestly.
 
Yup... that's exactly my thought, as your demo shows in spades.

And there's just NO WAY (on God's good earth) that any set of ears will distinguish your cut from the same performance at a well-tuned Steinway recorded with state of the art microphones placed in exactly the right place relative to the piano (a very difficult thing to do, even for the pros.) You'll get different, for sure. But you won't get better in this material at least. That's my feeling.

How this vst might sound with dense material .... that should be interesting. But so good on this stuff, honestly.

Agreed. And for $50, it's a steal. Just picked it up myself.
 
The tone of Signature Grand is very nice indeed. My biggest beef, however, is that the impulse based resonance feature is outdated. It reminds me of the very first Galaxy pianos that were released ages ago. This Kontakt script doesn't really resonate or ring out in a beautiful fashion. I wish SSS would look into a better resonance model/method. Another thing, the 'Response' knob is set at 12 o'clock (neutral?) for all presets. At first I didn't understand why this piano sounded so loud, aggressive and harsh compared to the demos. Dialling the knob all the way down to 'soft' makes it sound much better, and perhaps more importantly, way more playable. So far, I only like the first 'Classical' preset, all the others have too much compression, limiting or tape saturation. That being said, the room sound is beautiful, the release of the notes is incredible and very realistic (staccato is fun now). And yes, it's only $50!
 
So far, I only like the first 'Classical' preset, all the others have too much compression, limiting or tape saturation.
In addition to a much softer value for the Response parameter — which I agree is an instant improvement —, the default setting for the inserted Limiter is incomprehensibly wrong and damaging. Remove the Saturator, the Tape and definitely that aggressive Limiter out of the Insert-slots, or disable them, and all the patches immediately play and sound much better.
Bizarre choice to have those FX, with such extreme settings, in there.

_
 
In addition to a much softer value for the Response parameter — which I agree is an instant improvement —, the default setting for the inserted Limiter is incomprehensibly wrong and damaging. Remove the Saturator, the Tape and definitely that aggressive Limiter out of the Insert-slots, or disable them, and all the patches immediately play and sound much better.
Bizarre choice to have those FX, with such extreme settings, in there._
I could hear that limiting/compression going on but hadn't looked under the hood in Kontakt. Thought it was in the samples, so it's good to know they can be disabled. Thanks for the tip.
 
In addition to a much softer value for the Response parameter — which I agree is an instant improvement —, the default setting for the inserted Limiter is incomprehensibly wrong and damaging. Remove the Saturator, the Tape and definitely that aggressive Limiter out of the Insert-slots, or disable them, and all the patches immediately play and sound much better.
Bizarre choice to have those FX, with such extreme settings, in there.

_

That was the first thing I did, to see what FX were used, because going through the presets, I could hear some obvious distortion. It didn't help much but that was before I discovered the response dial knob was part of the problem. Will try to bypass the effects today but this time with the response knob set to soft.

BTW, how does Signature Grand compare to Xperimenta Due?
 
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