A couple of threads now on the go on this vst. Since this one showed up FIRST on a search, I'll add my 2 cents here:
I ALWAYS draw a firm line between a piano sample's PLAYABILITY, on one hand, and a piano sample's "RECORDABILTIY", on the other.
I do this because many samples can be made to sound pretty good when "massaged" or "played with" to make a realistic recording. But you get a real shock, often, when you sit down and PLAY the sample AT THE KEYBOARD, "live," so to speak. The results seem so different. Recorded piano vsts are the "Demos" you hear online, and of course they're only there if someone in the company thinks they make the vst sound fantastic. So, although those "Demos" are useful to some extent, they don't really speak to the playability of a sample.
It's probably also useful to bear in mind the distinction between Steinway and non-Steinway vsts. Steinway vsts seem harder to do realistically, to me at least. That may be because I (like many folks) have ears that are used to hearing Steinways on most solo piano (jazz, pop, classical) recordings and live performances, and that becomes the aural benchmark for what a great piano, well-recorded, should sound like.
So with those provisos in mind, Simple Sam is a Steinway, so maybe a harder test to pass in terms of "realism." Seems to me, now I've adjusted my soundcard (RME 9632) to get a clean low latency result in live playing--I've done a LOT of playing with the sample on a RM3 Grand 2 KAWAI keyboard--that this is the current BENCHMARK against which all other Steinway samples can be measured.
Benchmark in playability, I mean. I say this aware of the fact that it doesn't have the vel layers of other much more expensive contenders. I won't say any more than this, except to note that your PC had better be up to the demands of the sample, or you're going to have problems. In my case, I had to check the BIOS settings on my ASROCK Pro 370, which (to my shock and horror) does not automatically distinguish between older hard drive technology and ssd drives. Once I made the adjustments I was getting imperceptible latencies.
Long and short of it: to MY ears and with MY playing, the SS is far and away the best Steinway for playability. As a sample for "recording" purposes, I can't comment yet. I'm still using the HZP, which has fewer vel layers than the SS, but which produces pretty convincing "recordings" as far as I'm concerned.