DawdlePuss
Member
Gotcha. What are your feelings on the Garritan?Compact.
Gotcha. What are your feelings on the Garritan?Compact.
I really like the Garritan, but I always feel like I can't quite escape that room. It is a lovely, lovely space, but you're married to it with the Garritan.Gotcha. What are your feelings on the Garritan?
Agree with Jett Hitt - this is a very beautiful piano that has replaced Garritan CFX in my template (although I still use Garritan if I need a "roomier", more aggressive piano sound).I really like the Garritan, but I always feel like I can't quite escape that room. It is a lovely, lovely space, but you're married to it with the Garritan.
I instantly loved the 300 Grand, sonically speaking, but until @Mike McCarthy tinkered under the hood, I found it a bit of a bear to play.
I might feel very differently about lots of different pianos if I had something like the VPC1, but I don't. So for me, the 300 Grand is likely to be my main for a long time.
How do you feel about the playability? I have tried quite a few at this point, and I have personally yet to play a piano that feels comfortable/flexible in Kontakt. I have ModernU which plays like a dream but doesn't have the warm sound I crave, Ravenscroft which fills in about the same space as ModernU, and Xperimenta Due which has a pleasant sound but I struggle with the way it plays. I've tried all of the VSL Pianos and they are close-ish in feel but I still feel like ModernU and Ravenscroft play quite a bit better, and Noire was a quite good sound but it wasn't responsive like I'm looking for. I haven't had the opportunity to play Garritan CFX, and I have mostly avoided it due to the lack of sales and the inability to return/exchange it.Agree with Jett Hitt - this is a very beautiful piano that has replaced Garritan CFX in my template (although I still use Garritan if I need a "roomier", more aggressive piano sound).
Latest tweaked nki is attached (v2.3).
1.fixed a slightly "jangly" F#5 (if C4 is middle C)
2.fixed a slightly "unresponsive/dull" B5 that didn't match the singing tone of the surrounding notes
(both these notes were not sampling/programming errors; they were simply how the piano sounded - I just found them annoying. If you prefer the original notes, use the nki "My 300 Grand - Balanced 2" on page 14 of this thread).
3.Found a very nice IR among the IR's provided by Jason which added some useful early reflections - helpful in a dense mix - it gives a sense of "presence" to the CFX in much the same way that the Hammersmith's tree mics bring the studio's room reflections into play. I've set it as the default, along with the Close 1 mics + the Outside 2 mics (which for me, make the most beautifully detailed yet full-sounding mic combination).
This piano can sound dry & intimate - but also highly ambient if you use the Stage/Distant mics (which I seldom use).
I find it every bit as nice to play as the Garritan CFX (which always gets highly praised for playability) - I think the 32 velocity layers has something to do with it, particularly as they were so evenly sampled from ppp to fff. This piano was very well recorded. The fact that I could find only two notes that bugged me says quite a lot - and they're now fixed .How do you feel about the playability? I have tried quite a few at this point, and I have personally yet to play a piano that feels comfortable/flexible in Kontakt. I have ModernU which plays like a dream but doesn't have the warm sound I crave, Ravenscroft which fills in about the same space as ModernU, and Xperimenta Due which has a pleasant sound but I struggle with the way it plays. I've tried all of the VSL Pianos and they are close-ish in feel but I still feel like ModernU and Ravenscroft play quite a bit better, and Noire was a quite good sound but it wasn't responsive like I'm looking for. I haven't had the opportunity to play Garritan CFX, and I have mostly avoided it due to the lack of sales and the inability to return/exchange it.
What noise issues are you experiencing with this library?The more I play it the more the noise bothers me. It's strange, since other PV piano libraries are very, very clean, with no noticable noise.
I think he's referring to the noise on low velocity layers that @Mike McCarthy describes here:What noise issues are you experiencing with this library?
Yes - this is my only remaining gripe with this piano. Hopefully this will be addressed when Jason is well enough to work again.The more I play it the more the noise bothers me. It's strange, since other PV piano libraries are very, very clean, with no noticable noise.
I have to admit that I had to remove the Grand Concert (full version) from my template and never really used it in any composition. The basses were sounding really weird to my ears :-(I also hope that an update is in the works, however I did notice a thread in a Pianoworld forum where a user commented that they recently purchased a older Production Voices piano (Concert Grand LE) which has a similar issue with the 2 upper octaves being noticeably softer than the rest of the range.
I've never tried the Concert Grand LE, so can't verify if this is in fact the case, but if true it makes me considerably more skeptical that this issue is going to be rectified in a future update.
In the meantime, I am very grateful for Mike McCarthy's .nki edits, which really save this from being an also-ran into a very capable VI, but at the same time I don't feel comfortable recommending others invest in this unless there is a permanent fix from the developers end.