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Whoa. Piano Library Search Over.

PaulieDC

Too much gear, not enough composing. Oy vey.
I bought Kontakt and got their main pianos. I bought EW's Platinum Pianos. I got Emotional Piano and that's fine for what it is. I bought Alicia's keys, that's OK too, but Meh is the general concensus. Still no piano patch that makes me feel like I'm sitting at our grand in our church sanctuary. They're either metallic or muddy or just sound squashed. Almost gave up.

Then I gritted my teeth after much research and bought VSL's Synchron Steinway, $454 USD. For a piano patch, yikes. Just downloaded it. Game is over. This sounds so unbelievably better to my ears I'm going to play this every chance I can. The bass notes in octaves with your left hand are worth the price of admission. I made a preset of just the tube mic with some surround, and it's so crazy good. Having all the mic choices in your mixer is off the chart. The full version is the way to go. Wow. I'd sell my EW Pianos in a heartbeat if it was legal. Oh well, I'll toss them on my laptop... NO regrets on the Synchron price, and the sale is all month. Think about it. Again, wow.
 
No matter what, i've always been able to get better prices for VSL products at BestService, even with the discounts that VSL runs on their site.

For example, i can get the full version of the Steinway D now for $380 at BestService (after using my bitcoins and VSL user discount).
 
Where did you buy it from for 454$ ?
I used www.ilio.com simply because they take PayPal and I can select 6 months same as cash. That price should last all March, it’s a Synchron promotion.

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UPDATE: well, BestService takes paypal also but when I click the USA flag to load the page with USD prices, it shows $445, not $380. Looks like the user discounts and such worked in your favor!
 
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You actually paid good money for those? I have them in my composercloud plus subscription. I wouldnt buy them if they were $20. You have my condolences.
I did. It was one of those "early on" decisions where you are still clueless and you think it's the way to go. I did that with audio mixing a few years ago, the Waves plugins I use now are the few good ones and none of them were purchased in the beginning of the journey... those first plugins I thought I had to have now collect virtual dust. In fact, before I even heard of EastWest I thought the premiere string library was NI's Symphony Series, just based on the fact that the ads were so well done.

I should just start a thread about early-in-career purchases, titled "What On Earth Was I thinking?", lol.
 
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I did. It was one of those "early on" decisions where you are still clueless and you think it's the way to go. I did that with audio mixing a few years ago, the Waves plugins I use now are the few good ones and none of them were purchased in the beginning of the journey... those first plugins I thought I had to have now collect virtual dust. In fact, before I even heard of EastWest I thought the premiere string library was NI's Symphony Series, just based on the fact that the ads were so well done.

I should just start a thread about early-in-career purchases title "What On Earth Was I thinking?", lol.
We could make it into a confessional: "what in the world was I thinking..."
 
synchron stage -- as opposed to the silent stage? I haven't bought any VSL samples in a long time -- sorry!

I listened to a couple of demos on their website and I liked it.

How is the footprint / demanding-ness of the library? That's a lot of samples.
 
Well, I was really curious when clicking this thread what would be the holy piano grail to you, and to my surprise it is the same as mine. The only difference is that I’ve collected so many piano libraries over the years that it’s not even funny. But yeah, My search is over too. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably buy Pianoteq 9 in a few years and there are some special one trick pony libraries (in a good way) like Woodchester, Midnight grand, Felt piano, Una Corda etc. But what a relief, finally. It’s a “gamechanger” for me and I’m saying this, although I truly hate this overused marketing bs.

Edit: And don’t get me started on the VSL eLicencer insurance policy. The Synchron Steinway is worth the hassle.
 
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Edit: And don’t get me started on the VSL eLicencer insurance policy. The Synchron Steinway is worth the hassle.
I learned that this week. I bought the Steinway and created an eLicenser account. I was SO psyched to get started, and the software kept saying it can't find the eLicenser. Wait, what? I actually need a hardware usb stick in 2019? Talk about disappointing! Stupid me, I'm used to Native Access and iLok for EW just needing an account. And say what you want about Studio One, I get FIVE installs and just need a login. I was stunned that I couldn't download the Steinway I just bought, lol. I'm so green, good NIGHT, I had no clue. Thankfully Sweetwater got the Steinberg eLicenser to me in 3 days, hence, yesterday's post once I fired it up. Vienna Keys are hard to find but the two are the same I come to find.

I almost hate to ask this question, but I saw some posts about people buying the Key every two years. Why would you have to buy it again?
 
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How is the footprint / demanding-ness of the library? That's a lot of samples.
Pretty hefty, it's a 266GB folder once installed but you need room for the huge installer files while the process of knitting all together takes place. I had half of a 1TB NVMe drive available so it worked, and the installer asks you if you want to delete the install files which I did.

It's a bit of a CPU hog too but if you have at least an i7 with 4 cores/8 threads and a DAW that supports multicore, it'll survive fine. I was able to get crackling going when I hammered away Jerry Lee Lewis style with full chords doing 16th and 32nd note hits, in order to get the CPU to ramp up. I easily maxed CPU to 100% B-E-C-A-U-S-E stupid Studio One STILL isn't true multicore! So the DAW and the player said 100% CPU but that's because it was just one core getting hit... Task Manager showed the cumulative at 4%. So why did I build a 14-core machine for pete's sake? I don't want to switch but man, if that doesn't get fixed, Cubase is where I'm headed. Might as well, I'm now tied to a USB eLicenser. :mad:
 
I posted my personal Steinway preset (only one for now, idealized for the jazz project I am most focusing on, so I don't yet know if this patch will work well for classical), at VSL's forum a couple of months back, after their most recent update to the mappings and reactiveness of the library.

That was a lot of work, and my third rev altogether. I think I'm done with that patch for now; it has served me well.

I then used Lessons Learned to do a similar preset for the Yamaha, more oriented towards rock/pop, and it has worked well in the three songs I have tried it in, but I haven't spent as much time verifying that it is idealized yet.

Out of the box, neither Synchron Piano is very usable, but it isn't meant to be. They gave us a palette and a canvas. That might turn some people off, but that's why some of us are posting our personal presets, as better starting points at the very least than the weird choices made on the factory settings.

This is my first time trying to attach a file here, so I'm not yet sure it will be allowed for an "unknown file type", but one caveat is that my patches MIGHT depend on having the full edition -- I can't remember off-hand which mics are missing from the standard edition besides the surround mics.

Hmm, it didn't let me upload the ".vsynpreset" files, so I made a ZIP instead. Note that it includes a third preset called "VSL Steinway Regular Surround" that was posted on the Piano Player forum and which helped me understand some interesting things about the mic relationships and the "extra features" that contributed to my own "third revision" finalization, even though mine is quite different.
 

Attachments

  • Presets.zip
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This is my first time trying to attach a file here, so I'm not yet sure it will be allowed...
I got it! That was really nice of you to share these. It's late now here in the SW USA but I'm going to run these up tomorrow. Thanks again!

Oh, I know what you mean by the "palette"... normally I don't want to have to tweak stuff mostly because I don't entirely know what to tweak, lol. But I'm having a blast with the multi-mic mixer, that is SO useful. If anyone is thinking about getting this library, switch to Ramen Noodles and instant coffee for a while and go for the Full version. It's worth it.
 
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Thank you for inspiration.
I’ve used East West QL piano, especailly the Steinway, for several years and at the same time looked for something better. Ive bought several others as many other forum members :).... anyway, I bought Embertones Walker D when it was released and I really love the sound! But the problem with the sustain pedal, after half a year, is very tiresome.
Ive listen to the demoes and watch the video of Vsl Steinway and it sounds great too. It is quite pricy ‘but if it sounds great and works well....... well :).
 
I thought you were gonna say Hans Zimmer Piano ;(
You know, Spitfire makes seriously good libraries, and my guess is that they did a bang up job on the Hans Zimmer version, I wouldn't expect less. I actually forgot about the HZP until you wrote this post, and at THIS point, I don't even want to go listen to demos, lol! I saw the specs, you need 900GB drive space for it. Basically a dedicated 1TB drive... and I imagine that the Steinway sound in the Air studios hall sampled amazingly. So if your heart is set on it, have at it!
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UPDATE: the Zimmer piano is 200GB, not 900. I read about the piano inside the Zimmer collection, it's the whole collection that takes 900GB. Honestly, I thought "Leap first and look later" would end by my 20s... apparently not.
:shocked:
 
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