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Light and Sound Concert Grand



And here's the mic positions, raw out of the box, reverb disabled!

Really like those Decca Tree & Room mic perspectives. I achieved a nice balance yesterday with an Under + MKH80 + Neumann M149 mix. Just a thought for any future updates: a solo or mute button on each mic fader would be helpful, instead of having to manually move the faders down. Congratulations to the Light & Sound Team - stellar work. Given I own over 60 sampled/virtual pianos, it takes a lot to impress me these days!
 
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What a lovely tone. It’s quite a challenge for a piano library to set itself off from a majority of others but this succeeds at doing just that IMO.
 
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It sounds great.
Even the manual explains the mic positions, some sort of picture/ diagram would be helpful.

This has been suggested and we agree- we'll be mocking something up and likely add it to the manual. Possibly the UI, but we're already looking at adding solo/mute buttons first and we'd rather not clutter it too much!
 
Which mic is the close mic so to speak...?

I'd also like to hear some demos covering various genres....
 
Which mic is the close mic so to speak...?

I'd also like to hear some demos covering various genres....

There are three "main" close mics - the LR and the p.Front and p.Rear. Using the p.Front and p.Rear together is generally recommended, however the option to replace the p.Rear for the m149 is there as an alternative to that specific mic too.

The rest of the mics are aimed to be complementary mics, however pianos are personal taste, and many users we've been speaking to have been finding their own personal favourites using various other mics - experimentation is definitely recommended!
 
There are three "main" close mics - the LR and the p.Front and p.Rear. Using the p.Front and p.Rear together is generally recommended, however the option to replace the p.Rear for the m149 is there as an alternative to that specific mic too.

The rest of the mics are aimed to be complementary mics, however pianos are personal taste, and many users we've been speaking to have been finding their own personal favourites using various other mics - experimentation is definitely recommended!

What worries me a bit about the LR mic is it seems to have weird panning as someone mentioned earlier. What I hear is the same note bouncing around the stereo field. What I expect to hear is notes in the lower register more towards the left and higher registers more towards the right, with a good stereo spread enabled. What is the actual behavior of the library? Am I hearing things wrong ?
 
What worries me a bit about the LR mic is it seems to have weird panning as someone mentioned earlier. What I hear is the same note bouncing around the stereo field. What I expect to hear is notes in the lower register more towards the left and higher registers more towards the right, with a good stereo spread enabled. What is the actual behavior of the library? Am I hearing things wrong ?



The LR is shown there - the mics are moving around a bit and I do move the stereo field to expand it a bit, but it should be consistent.
 
What worries me a bit about the LR mic is it seems to have weird panning as someone mentioned earlier. What I hear is the same note bouncing around the stereo field. What I expect to hear is notes in the lower register more towards the left and higher registers more towards the right, with a good stereo spread enabled. What is the actual behavior of the library? Am I hearing things wrong ?
The concept of bass notes to the left and treble to the right is a misrepresentation reinforced by how many digital pianos (and some sampled pianos) artificially spread the notes across the stereo field. This is not how a real acoustic piano's sound works, particularly when the tones blend. Close your eyes and play a grand piano with the lid up, and you'll hear a blending and merging of bass, tenor, mid & treble notes across the stereo field or soundstage, and the image evolves.
 
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That sounds absolutely wonderful. Is the piano sampled chromatically?
Sampled chromatically above C2 (the C below middle C), and every whole note below C2.

At first I was intrigued by the "as many velocity layers as needed to capture the timbre" approach. Unfortunately I'm not sure how well that works in practice. Or at the very least I think I disagree with what was necessary for this piano based on my particular playing style. I do tend to spend a lot of time around p and below so I have a bad habit of really noticing the velocity zone boundaries in the quieter dynamics.

For example, I was just adlibbing with an arpeggiated C- triad below middle C on the left hand around pianissimo, and that Eb just kept popping out. I was playing the notes in the triad with a fairly even velocity and below a certain velocity the timbre felt nicely consistent, but after some threshold the C and G's timbre remained the same but at that velocity the Eb would push into the next layer and the timbre change would lurch out.

Of course I can reduce the probability of slipping into the next velocity zone by tweaking the velocity curve. But that only moves the problem to a different threshold.
 
Sampled chromatically above C2 (the C below middle C), and every whole note below C2.

At first I was intrigued by the "as many velocity layers as needed to capture the timbre" approach. Unfortunately I'm not sure how well that works in practice. Or at the very least I think I disagree with what was necessary for this piano based on my particular playing style. I do tend to spend a lot of time around p and below so I have a bad habit of really noticing the velocity zone boundaries in the quieter dynamics.

For example, I was just adlibbing with an arpeggiated C- triad below middle C on the left hand around pianissimo, and that Eb just kept popping out. I was playing the notes in the triad with a fairly even velocity and below a certain velocity the timbre felt nicely consistent, but after some threshold the C and G's timbre remained the same but at that velocity the Eb would push into the next layer and the timbre change would lurch out.

Of course I can reduce the probability of slipping into the next velocity zone by tweaking the velocity curve. But that only moves the problem to a different threshold.

Seemed to good to be true...

Why not sample the whole piano chromatic ally...
 
Why not sample the whole piano chromatic ally...
Well, in fairness I do think it matters a lot less in the lower registers. You're generally not playing melodies with a lot of chromatic motion down there after all.
 
Well, in fairness I do think it matters a lot less in the lower registers. You're generally not playing melodies with a lot of chromatic motion down there after all.
I agree. It also makes for a more efficient and less resource demanding instrument (especially with multiple Mic's) with a neglible trade off in terms of sound.
 
Well, in fairness I do think it matters a lot less in the lower registers. You're generally not playing melodies with a lot of chromatic motion down there after all.

I feel like this coupled with the Timbre based sampling could be an issue. On it's own it's probably ok yes...
 
I feel like this coupled with the Timbre based sampling could be an issue. On it's own it's probably ok yes...
Hmmm. Interesting point. Maybe the developer Paul can contribute his thoughts on this, given he did the sampling by hand and would know the piano extremely well.
 
This has been suggested and we agree- we'll be mocking something up and likely add it to the manual. Possibly the UI, but we're already looking at adding solo/mute buttons first and we'd rather not clutter it too much!

an idea would be to add the diagram into the instrument in a Kontakt tab, to have quick access to what is being done while in a rushing production, instead of looking into the manual?... :)
 
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