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If I buy it now,can I install it in some way? or I need to wait the installer from Muse?

- yes, in theory.

My interests are admittedly special, to be sure - just look at my chosen nick so this question is vital for me: my take from the above is that there is no way to select scale tuning and stretch tuning other then that is coming out of the samples.

I have experimented a lot previously with re-tuned sample pianos, used that feature of the Galaxies, re-tuning individual notes with Kontakt in a number of instruments, and I must say I never heard any audible artifacts. While this is a tricky and complex issue in general (think of all of the interdependencies of stretch, scale tuning, individual pitch correction, reverb, sympathetic resonance, transposing, etc...), however deteriorating of sound quality was never a discernable issue (which I myself found very interesting).

For the sake of correctness I didn't see just the ideal solution in any single currently available instruments or DPs ( some implementations coming closer than others), but complete lacking of the functionality means for me having to wait for the next version which offers this at least in some basic way.

Sorry for that, because I am greeting heartily every genuine effort to produce significant improvement in this segment, and I guess VI Labs is such a player. And for many potential buyers it wan't be an issue either, depending also on the music genre. I don't expect Jazz/Pop/and most of romantic classic needs this at all, although even Chopin had probably not composed for in equal temperament tuned pianos.)

I'm curious. Did you try the Ivory II User defined tuning?

A piano that came with multiple tunings, that is unfortunately no longer available, was the Garritan Authorized Steinway. It included:

Equal temperament
One-quarter comma meantone is also known as Pietro Aaron’s meantone
One-sixth comma meantone
One-fifth comma meantone
Rameau’s temperament ordinaire
Temperament Ordinaire II
Werckmeister III
Kirnberger III
Young I
Carlos Optimal Circular
Broadwood Best
Pythagorean
Just intonation

Interesting, but it wasn't useful to me.

Macy, I don't have Ivory, I have had just checked with them, that with IvoryII it should be possible to use text files with pitch offset (like scala files, but possibly with a given fixed format - Pianoteq uses .scl) beside of using some predefined ones.) I should find out the exact tuning tables behind the items in your above list, but for pre-classical music (around JSBach) I would seek for an appropriate one among the following:

• Rameau’s temperament ordinaire (there are a few of him, beside of this the interpretation of the same verbal description of a temperament can lead to more than one numerical table and hereby to different effective temperaments)
• Temperament Ordinaire II
• Young I (it it is that one of him from 1799, not the later one)
• Carlos Optimal Circular (??)

(Perhaps later in this weekend can I take time to investigate.)

The Galaxies have a comparable set of predefined temperaments (out of factory they don't sopport any flexible user definable temperaments).

I wrote my own Kontakt tuning scripts so I was able to combine these with other scripts (for sympathetic resonants from Kornel Mezo e.g.) which I also tried with SampleTekk, PMI pianos and above all with the Beurmann Edition Dutch Clavichord. (The last was a real challenge, being both tuned by fast 3 semitones down and tuned to 'Valotti', but neither the scale tuning nor the individual pitches were precise (had to be corrected).
(Which is often referred to as "Baroque pitch" is the "cammerton" pitch - some 1 semitone below today's concert pitch).

Ah interesting to know. The ones I listed for the GAS are all scala files. I'll have to try loading them into Ivory and see how that works.

As I said, this is really isn't an interest of mine, so I am of little help. But this is from the GAS manual.

RAMEAU’S TEMPERAMENT ORDINAIRE
During the eighteenth century tuners in France and occasionally elsewhere in Europe often modified normal meantone by spreading the out-of-tuneness of the meantone wolf fifth over a number of different notes. This created a tuning which was playable in many keys, arguably in all keys even if dissonantly in the remote keys. It also created a sense of key color for each key center, which had previously been missing from the regular meantones. Jean Philippe Rameau’s temperament begins as 1/4 comma meantone for the diatonic C scale, and then distributes what would be the wolf fifth across all the black keys.

Young I
Thomas Young described his Temperament No. 1 in 1799, which is a refined Well Tem- perament, following the same base principles as Werckmeister III. It provides an excellent balance of key colors, with the thirds and fifths changing evenly from the most harmonious key of C to the most dissonant key of F#. It is a good representative of nineteenth and late eighteenth century Well Temperament.

CARLOS OPTIMAL CIRCULAR
Wendy Carlos created this temperament, which is a mathematically optimal version of a Well temperament. It smoothly and even-handedly trades consonance for dissonance among the key centers. C major is the most consonant, F# major is the most dissonant, and Eb and A are nearly the same as equal temperament. This tuning could be used for any music for which you would wish to use Well Temperament. Used with permission from Wendy Carlos.

That's all I got.

That is funny. There are 18 different preset tunings in a pop-up menu on the Vintage D. Mine has been set to the default Stretch for so long I forgot they were there until you mentioned it.

I know you can do it manually. I'll have to check with the technical team to see how involved it is. They made it sound like it was pretty easy. If you want to send me a message with your e-mail address I'll forward all the details for receptor installation.

Can you see a numerical tuning table in your IVORY-II manual? (Such textual descriptions are coming from the marketing division and are just as much worth).

From the Rameaus this special one seems then to be a different one from his 'BB' temperament which I found generally very arguable.

What I have found so far about Wendy Carlos temperaments they seem to have no relevance for prehistoric music to me - being just temperaments. This Circular one could be interesting - but there are so much public well temperaments especially near to equal, that one ought to be able to chose one from them, and wan't need such a highly secret one with a 1:10^^10 homeopathic dilution.

This may not be of any help. The 1.5 manual is here. Tuning info is on Page 35.

There is no ""tuning table" in the manual, but it's explained (although not much explanation is necessary). There is a Default tuning file (just a text file with comments) provided that makes it very easy. You simply enter a tuning change for every key in cents, then rename the file, and it appears in the pop-up menu. I tried it and it works fine.

To automate the process of generating the file, you could copy and paste the default file into an Excel spreadsheet and then calculate the key tuning changes in Excel. Then copy the Excel file back to a text file.

BTW, I don't know who told you a scala (.scl) file would work. I tried that and it didn't recognize that file. Perhaps there is a header in the file that needs to be changed, or they simply don't work.

I just got a chance to put this video from the Winter NAMM show up. It's Jordan Rudess playing Somewhere Over The Rainbow with the True Keys American Grand and MOTU Symphonic Instrument 2. It was an amazing and surreal experience.

http://youtu.be/mEH94y2ZRyk

Unfortunately, that's not going to help. Ivory 1.5 didn't have the tuning tables feature at all. That is why you don't see the tuning tables pop-up menu in that picture. It appears below the Stretch/Equal selector in the newer interface. That item was added in Ivory II.

I can't find an on-line Ivory II manual, but as I said above it's trivial to create the tuning table except for typing in the values. But you could "automate" calculating and entering the values into the tuning table template with Excel.

BTW, I don't know who told you a scala (.scl) file would work. I tried that and it didn't recognize that file. Perhaps there is a header in the file that needs to be changed, or they simply don't work. [/quote]

I asked this back in 2010 about Ivory and actually I can't find explicit mentioning about .scl format regarding Ivory.

Principially there is no difference : scala files are also text files with a header and list of pitch offset information just with flexible definition conventions, (which is just for "(in-)convenience"; that all doesn't adding anything useful to the tuning information itself).

Scala file format (.scl)

Sorry for the inconvenience while trying this, (especially if it should not work - I could have mixed up with the PT solution - I have edit my previous post to minimize misleading info.)For me personally there is no difference, I made a simple converter between .scl files and tuning tables for Pianoteq.

BTW, if there are any predefined temperaments, tuning tables were necessary to know which temperament is referred to by the given names. These names were relatively freely attributed to the tuning sequence defined in the program. (Believe me, some you might experiment with could come from me ... but I can't name the product, I am afraid.)

The scala file is much more compact and less typing. Just the 12 notes of the (repetitive) scale are defined.

The Ivory format defines each of the 127 MIDI notes (obviously only 88 matter for most pianos). It's a lot more typing to enter/change the values. That's why I suggested using Excel so you don't have to type in 88 individual cents values.



No problem. It just took a couple of minutes to try.

I'd like to mention, You can have with scala other microtuning scales (not just the 12 semitone tuning.)

If you have to define the pitches for all of the MIDI notes, you have to combine the stretch table + the offset from scale related tuning table.

But it is also a marginal issue for of baroque music on a concert Grand, being restricted mostly to the middle 4 octave and the stretch table more flat than that of shorter instruments.

Deleted

Thank you posting that link to gearslutz. I am, or was, about to choose between Vintage D and Ivory II American Grand and edging towards the latter. Concerned that the I-Lok fiasco is not mentioned on the Synthogy website under "News", given that it seems that any new purchases of I-Lok protected s/w are unlikely to work until Pace sort out the technical issues.

Anyone out there with any more info, including recent experience with I-Lok?

Do you need more info? That thread at Gear Slutz ran to 40 pages in a single week! Does that not provide enough information on the subject?

I was always reluctant to buy an ilocked product. I have Ivory 1.5, which requires no ilock. But I did not follow with Ivory 2, which does require one. (That was over a year ago.)

Now that the ilock has proven to be a nightmare for people everywhere, I'm convinced not to buy any ilocked product.

I can understand why the maker would want to protect his software. But I choose not to suffer the consequences.

I was unclear: I meant experience with i-Lok and IvoryII: it seems the problem hasn't affected every product/developer.

(Also, I didn't wade through all 40 pages - the first few and the last few!)