Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards I just bought Ivory II American Concert D & Vienna Imperial.

What did you think of it? Since it was free I thought I'd give it a try too. I do love the ability to change the sound, lotsa options there. My overall opinion was that it sounded a bit "plinky", especially in the higher register. I tried every preset with FX and they all had that similar sound. Not really my cup of tea, but I can see it as a good piano for $50.

Understood. Thank you Macy.

Well, I have similar problem like with all other sampled libraries I tried - I feel kind of "disconnected" if it makes sense. Not sure if it's caused by lag (I can notice even 10 ms). I guess I will stick with my Kawai sound for now.

Playing Vienna Imperial for the first time. And it does have re-pedaling, I hit a key, release it, and then hit the sustain pedal, and it continues to sustain what was left of the sound. I'm playing dry with no effects and it's giving me re-pedaling.

First impression, very responsive - I'm playing with ease now and my fingers are dancing on the keyboard, this feels like playing a real piano. Nice pop and punch, great bass, the higher register is beautiful, I may prefer the Steinway lower register for it's wood... I'll have to experiment more, they're both excellent, just a different flavor. The soft pedal is to die for, and exactly what I need for some Cramer style picking. Perfecto! on the soft pedal.

I would say overall it sounds more like Alicia's Keys than the Steinway. But they are worlds apart, I may not touch Alicia as much now. I think the Steinway is a killer for classical style stuff, and the Vienna excellent for pop and/or country style Cramer stuff, and Alicia may be nice for slow and soulful - but I can easily see the Vienna filling that spot too.

Three great flavors to choose from.

Thanks for the report. That is counter to what has been previously reported by other users. Perhaps it was added. I may have to get it and try it now.

You are talking about the Vienna Symphonic Library Vienna Imperial piano that is priced at approximately $650+, and not the Vienna Symphonic Library Bösendorfer Imperial piano that is priced at about $175, and not the Galaxy Vienna Grand Imperial 290 piano? Correct?

Right this is the Vienna Imperial which takes up nearly 50gb of total space, 100 velocities, etcc..

I was quite surprised myself to hear this feature since there is virtually no report about adding repedaling. It leaves me a bit confused because this seems to be the biggest complaint, except for the price, about the Vienna. One would think they would announce this. I guess it may not hurt to post over at the VSL forum and see what Paul has to say about it.

Partial pedal.

You have me intrigued enough to go buy and try it. But I want to be sure what it is really doing. Would you please try this experiment for me? Play a chord with the pedal down. Then release the pedal and then quickly press the pedal again. Does it catch the chord during its decay and sustain it from that point on?

Also does it partial pedal. Can you depress the pedal half way and it sustains for a shorter period when playing a chord than if you depress the pedal all the way when playing the chord?

Thanks so much if you will try those experiments. I hate to spend $700 (with the USB copy protection dongle) and then find out those features are missing.

Re: Vienna Imperial

There is no partial pedal support.

As for re-pedaling or whatever you want to call it...

Vienna Imperial triggers a release sample whenever you release a key or let go of the pedal. Different release samples are triggered depending on the duration of the note or if the pedal was already depressed. But these release samples are just like any other samples. They get sustained if you press the sustain pedal before the sample decays. So what you asked about will happen as you expect it should.

One more thing ...

Vienna Imperial supports a parameter it calls 2sus. The 2sus Feature increases the realism of sustained notes that are pressed before the sustain pedal is activated. This option is switched off by default, as it halves the streaming performance and reduces effective polyphony to half its setting value.

Vienna Imperial supports up to 384 voices and if you have a fast drive (e.g., SSD) then enabling this feature will not cause any performance problems.

Thank you very much. If you are involved in the product design (just guessing) do you know why there is no partial pedal support?

I'm going to try playing Ivory II American D and the Galaxy Vintage D with partial pedal turned off (repedalling still enabled) and see how much that affects playing them. If not too bad I may get the Vienna Imperial (unfortunately I'm not a Bosey fan).

I have no affiliation with the company other than as a customer.

Yes it does exactly that. In fact you can quickly pump the sustain pedal and it keeps the sustain alive as long as it can before it diminishes. The instrument is very alive and I am having trouble keeping it from being too resonant, but that's likely due to my heavy handed approach, not used to playing a responsive instrument.

There is no partial pedal as alluded to.

I'm still making comparisons with the American D as far as overall tone. They each are equal, where one gives, the other takes. A combination of the two would be perfect. I think they are both worth $400.

Thanks for confirming.

What does your last sentence mean? The American D is about $180 and the Vienna Imperial is about $700 with the Vienna USB protection dongle. If they are equals (in your opinion), why would the Imperial be worth more than $180? And the Vintage D is better than the American D in my opinion, and it is about $135.

I can't imagine why you'd buy this if you don't like the sound of a Bosendofer.

It's my way of trying to convey their equality by worth, which is irrelevant to their cost. $400 is a compromise, it brings the American D up in value, because I think it deserves it, and brings the Vienna down a notch because if you compare features, the American D is better with all the presets and way to shape the tone.

One thing about the Vienna, perhaps it is my keyboard, Yamaha CLP340, but I had to reduce the volume of Middle C to the next B - that entire octave, which sounded like I was getting a too strong velocity with those notes. I also had to increase the volume on a high C, D, and D#. I know the Yamaha keyboards have had their issues with MIDI so perhaps that was it. But I was able to adjust those using the key editor which I find quite valuable.

I can't comment on the Vintage D but the Vienna is definitely brighter than the American D.

Yeah, you're right. I'll probably hold-off until one morning I wake up and realize I haven't had a new piano VST to explore for a while and just have to have somethig new to play with. What I really want is another Yamaha. I'm not entirely satisfied with the sound of the Ivory II C7, which is the best I've found so far.

I don't know of any MIDI problem like you describe with Yamaha keyboards and I use the CVP-409GP for my software pianos. Perhaps you are referring to the fact that many keyboards, the Yamaha's included, don't put out MIDI values above about 115-120 (somewhere around there, I don't remember exactly the limit on mine at this moment). But that is easy to "fix" by changing the velocity curve.

I glad you said this - I thought they were the same VSL library - i thought maybe since it's been a while the price dropped from 650 to under 200. I wonder what the main difference is between them.

While I wasn't a fan of the Bosendorfer samples at first after playing Galaxy Vienna... it really grew on me (after tweaking). Of course I doubt I would ever find a real Bose i could afford - 100k just for a 6' model - wow - but I'm digging the sound now. The VSL Vienna sounds tempting, but I could buy 2 full suites for 650

Well I thought it was just my keyboard but it turns out Vienna is quite unbalanced in terms of individual notes. I found that there was a variance of 10dB between various notes or sets of notes. As a comparison, American D was within 2dB throughout the entire range of notes.

But it wasn't just my hearing that was telling me this, but I was able to check this since I have nearfield monitors that display the level of incoming signals.

-Set the VST to mono.

-Set the Yamaha key sensitivity level to OFF, that makes the velocity the same no matter how hard or soft you hit the key.

-Check decibel reading on nearfield monitors.

If you have a way of measuring the output of the signal you can check this as well.

One may argue that a real piano has variations in volume, and that may be true with the lower register usually being of higher dB, but this was not the case with Vienna. You may have one note at say -37dB then the next note at -40dB, then the next note at -36dB. Quite odd I must say being that they seemingly took this directly from that electronics geared Bosey.

Again, the American D was absolutely rock solid in decibels from lowest to highest note. At my particular volume, the range was -43dB to -45dB.

Fortunately the level variations can be edited for each individual key with the Key Editor.