8Dio's 1969 Steinway Piano ? Is it worth grabbing?
- Thread starter constaneum
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Ultraxenon
Active Member
I think it is really good, love the sounds and presets, but 1990 Grand has a fuller more natural sound so it depends what you are looking for. 1990 Grand also feels a bit more responsive when you play. I use both and 40% discount it is definitely worth buying it in my opinion.
For me personally the 1969 piano was a waste of money. Potentially gorgeous sound but I find this piano unplayable in terms of dynamic response, it is all over the place, different notes jumping out in volume level with only tiny variations in velocity level, and different responses for different notes. Tried everything, adjusting velocity curves, even putting multi-band compressor on it to little avail. I think it's what I see a lot with many 8dio products - beautiful underlying sound / samples, really poor programming/scripting on top. Sorry!
That sums it up
MillsMixx
Production Director/Sound Designer
I like it and got it on discount last year and feel it's worth the 40% price although I don't think any of 8dio's libraries are worth the full price so I always wait for a sale. I agree with jtnyc about "beautiful underlying sound/samples, really poor programming/scripting on top." Only 8dio in their video walkthoughs do they sound good.
The 1969 has a nice tone out of the box and can also be a really nice piano for sound design as it also features onboard presets like Glisten, Infinity, Ethereal, Golden, Suppressiano, Glockiano, etc...
Turth be told my favorite of theirs is the 1901 studio upright which has a very nice intimate tone. Although ever since I bought the Spitfire Olafur Arnolds Composer Toolkit my go to for that soft sound is the Olafur felt piano. It's got a lot of character.
The 1969 has a nice tone out of the box and can also be a really nice piano for sound design as it also features onboard presets like Glisten, Infinity, Ethereal, Golden, Suppressiano, Glockiano, etc...
Turth be told my favorite of theirs is the 1901 studio upright which has a very nice intimate tone. Although ever since I bought the Spitfire Olafur Arnolds Composer Toolkit my go to for that soft sound is the Olafur felt piano. It's got a lot of character.
dogdad
Member
I also have it (received it as a gift when they were running a promotion) and love it. I initially thought I wouldn't use it very much as a have a bunch of pianos already but it turned out to be one of my favorites. I'm not a players player (I'm a guitarist who plays keyboards out of necessity) per say so I can't comment on that aspect of it but I like the sound of it very much.
I decided to revisit the 1969 since I haven't opened since I first got it. It really is poorly done. To me ears there seems to very few velocity layers and the playability is awful. Notes poke out unnaturally and it's all over the place up and down the range. I took a look under the hood to check the velocity layers, but it's not clear at all as I can't even see the range of samples across the keyboard. I'm not sure why, but it's not how the sample mapping view usually looks. As to the samples themselves, they're nothing special IMO. I find it very odd that they skimped on the velocity layers and programming yet included 6 mic positions. That makes no sense to me at all. All of my other pianos perform circles around it. The other "unique" sounds are not very unique IMO. One with a glock layered underneath. One with some chorus, some reverb, convolution etc... nothing I can't do better myself with a well sampled scripted piano.
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jmvideo
Senior Member
Exactly. The 8Dio pianos become especially glaringly awful when you A/B them with other pianos.
OP
OP
constaneum
Senior Member
What about their latest Studio Grand which it's the C7??
I keep going back to my 1928 scoring piano that I never liked , trying over and over again to find a good use for it ...It just doesn't cut it as others have said when using other companies goods ..... I bought it , and keep trying to use it , but it's never gotten any use other than the continual practice of trying to use it ....Sorry , but that's it ....Jim
Yep exactly this, also re the 6 mic positions - why they are necessary, and favoured above proper programming is beyond me. I think the quality control in 8dio is generally poor, they can have great concepts and sampling ideas, but I think often poor execution and finalisation of the product, e.g. noises and poor programming / inconsistent behaviour in lots of their string products too. And that's often the trade-off - sometimes they can do things others can't, but you seem to have to put up with their inconsistency.
Anyway, this not about the strings, back to the pianos (although these are strings too I guess!). (These comments probably don't apply to the percussive instruments (although I don't have many of them) as percussive instruments are easier to turn into Kontakt instruments).
I find the 69 Piano is a bit of a CPU hog as well and can cause clicks as the voices go up, and in combination with other instruments. The only thing I've been able to use it for, is slow emotional stuff for which the tone was really nice for, but even then it required a lot midi tweaking to get the note volumes half OK (and even then a velocity change of 1 can cause a big change in volume).
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Ultraxenon
Active Member
Yes, Olafur's piano is my favorite too
Its kind of a weird piano. I bought it when it came out as I just loved the demos.
Technically its great, but I just can't get into the sound. When I compare it to my other pianos it just sounds totally processed with no actual character to it really.
I feel like maybe they just put more effort into the super duper fancy GUI and overprocessed the samples. Wish they had kept a bit more of the rawness in it instead.
Personally I think there's quite a lot of better options out there for the price.
Technically its great, but I just can't get into the sound. When I compare it to my other pianos it just sounds totally processed with no actual character to it really.
I feel like maybe they just put more effort into the super duper fancy GUI and overprocessed the samples. Wish they had kept a bit more of the rawness in it instead.
Personally I think there's quite a lot of better options out there for the price.
Thorsten Meyer
Senior Member
8Dio 1969 Piano is included in this comparison it is a Youtube playlist:
kurtvanzo
Capt. Zorro
#26 of 33! (took me a while to find it) Interesting Thorsten, I can honestly say you own WAY too many pianos.
Perhaps adding clarphonics to some and not to others is a slightly unfair comparison, as it adds clarity and harmonics to samples that is not there out of the box. So for some without the $200 plugin (or R-verb) might be disappointed not getting the same results. But kudos for posting the video with the plugins to try to clarify.
