Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ravenscroft by VI Labs… First Look and Sound

Hey digitalguy, I'm happy to answer those questions. First of all, sorry for the misunderstanding about comparing software to hardware. I'm sure you understand all the differences and as you say, you've many Kontakt instruments that take a while to load. There are always trade-offs to be made, so we're looking for the best balance of performance and sampling depth but without ridiculous load times. Developing a proprietary engine takes tens of thousands of dollars and a long period of R&D and all the subsequent testing, so this is unfortunately out of many company's range. And there are many benefits to using an already-developed mature engine such as NI or UVI compared to starting from scratch. We could have a great realistic VI piano, but if it's crashing all the time and causing other problems, what's that worth?

The size for the Ravenscroft VI is 35GB. We recommend 4GB of system RAM, but it only uses 600MB of RAM for a single mic patch, 800MB for the full patch. Loading additional mics, una corda, etc. uses more RAM but only slightly more than TK. It's technically the same as TK in having 4 mic positions--Ravenscroft has 4 discreet while TK has 3 plus an additional Mix which is the 4th (separate samples). The larger size comes from more velocity layers, more release and half-pedal samples, longer sustains (the Ravenscroft has an unbelievable sustain with multiple blooms/evolutions occurring as it sustains), and more samples for the new features such as Muted Strikes. But the bulk of it is more layers and longer samples due to the sustaining energy of the piano.

I'm currently going through the MIDI of Ruslan playing at NAMM and will get that posted later today. We're posting new demo videos too like we did for TK, so be on the lookout for those as well as more audio demos. We're on track to get this baby out tomorrow the 4th!

Lance, I'm curious about your terminology: Ravenscroft used for, well, Ravenscroft and TK for the other pianos. Are not all 4 pianos TK and if not, what is different about Ravenscroft?

As a supplement, if I may, are there any plans to upgrade the Italian, American and German in any way and if so, would upgrades be chargeable?

Thanks Lance,
That makes sense, I was not aware that developing a proprietary engine was such a big investment. So, fair enough.
Also good to know Ravenscroft is 35 and not 38 GB (this way I can fit it in my SSD with 36.9 GB left together with TK, though it will fill it up almost completely...).
I don't know if this would at be feasible in the future, but it would be great if one could install mic positions separately. Personally I use the side position almost exclusively and would be great if one could decide to uninstall the positions they don't like or the lite patches if they don't use them, to save space on disk. I see RAM as less of a problem, as doubling the RAM is relatively cheap and easy today, compared to doubling SSD for instance, especially on notebooks (the price difference between a laptop say with 256 SSD and 512 SSD is much bigger than between a laptop with 4 or 8 GB of RAM, all else being equal.
Good to know there are more velocity layers and longer sustain. It will be interesting to compare it with ACD, which has an extremely long sustain and no less than 20 layers. I, and certainly others, will report our feedback on this forum.

Thank you, this is really good to hear. I'm actually just trying to upgrade from my Roland RP301 so I think the bar isn't even that high for me (besides just wanting the best that's available at a competitive price).



Thanks for providing all this information. For Brahms I would say that pretty much any piece from Opp. 76, 79, 116-119 would be useful. For Chopin I think there are lots of possibilities and the nocturne used for the TK German sample was a good one (Op. 27 no. 1). Most of the nocturnes would display the type of sounds that I would want to hear.

Chopin op 53
Chopin op 20 and 39
Rachnaninov op 23 nr 2
Liszt - Paganini Etude nr 6

While that pieces may seems to you "too obvious", I put them here on purpose. You know - the problem with digitals, is that we can hear very often something from the middle, something from up, little from bass. All of these covers all keybord ranges in all possible manners on combining lows, mids and bass together. All of them have detailed pedaling, where you have long pedals and precise unpedaled note. Staccatos and legatos. These are demanding pieces for digital piano engines, so if you are not scared - go with them. There are lot more of them, but you know, these are also well known so will be fantastic to hear.
Also Danse-Macabre transcribed by Liszt, La Campanella, Scriabin's sonata nr 19, Ravel's La Valse - unfortunately - quite to long just for piano test sound. Also last two fragments from Pictures from Exibition, Scriabin Etude 8/12, Romeo&Juliet by Prokofiev - famous Monteki&Capuleti.

All of these are full blown piano capabilites pieces, and we want here the Ravenscroft at it's best and most demanding piano pieces

Hey Digitalguy, it's been brought up in the past to offer separate files for the various mic positions, but that again is more cumbersome that how it might seem especially in regards to iLok management and updates. I do see your point though. Again to use Ivory as a reference, the American D on my Windows system shows it taking about 45GB, and I've no option to install a lighter version. It's an entire sample library, and most any sampled software piano I've used works this way. EWQLP allows installing each piano separately, but I don't remember further separate installations for single mics only. Again though with all that said, it is something we've considered and might have in the future. As flexible as we can make it to satisfy as many situations as possible is always a good goal. Many producers out there still use old PT rigs with TDM plug-ins and limited memory and CPU, so we're sensitive to those situations too and for those who want to use more than one soft synth at a time.

For the Muse Receptor, they approached us at NAMM this year and it is a possibility that our products can be offered with their systems. I'm not aware of their plans, but it is a possibility I suppose.

Sandalholme made a great point that it does take some work to match a software piano to a particular controller/hardware setup in order to get the best playing experience from it. There is a huge variation in controllers and how they respond, and the acoustic piano is probably the hardest to get right because we're all so accustomed to how an acoustic piano should respond that replicating that with the variety of controllers and software is daunting to say the least. It's much easier to use most any controller to trigger any instrument besides acoustic piano! As the Ravenscroft VI makes its way to customers and we get feedback on what works and what doesn't with various controllers, we'll offer our optimization settings for popular controller models and seek feedback from users on what works best for them with their particular setup.

All the suggestions for classical pieces are duly noted! In the meantime, I can easily set up the Nocturne Op. 27 we have for the German as a Ravenscroft demo. And finally, the Ravenscroft is an exclusive instrument officially licensed and approved by the makers of Ravenscroft pianos, unlike True Keys which were solely produced by VI Labs. It's of course similar to True Keys in many ways but with additional features and the official name and voice. Some features might be applicable to True Keys which would be offered as an update in the future, but no definite plans as of yet.

Thanks again for your detailed responses Lance!

Cheers,
James
x

Thanks for the response Lance. I am happy to pass on my settings/thought process on how the ES7 works with TK Italian to VILabs, if this is helpful, with one or two recordings if this is useful. I did share them some time back on this forum, but they have evolved since then. However, I think I now have 3 settled configurations for the Italian. As I said above, one for use via the ES7 speakers - about to give another short recital for charity at the end of March with the ES7/Italian and people have been amazed at the sound - one for recording/listening through headphones and one softer voiced for Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven, as I find the open textures and absence of pedal (largely) need a different configuration.

PM me Lance if that might be helpful.

Hello friends!
First sorry for my english. I bought Ravenscroft 25/02 and saw that the download would be released today for those who have pre orders. I would like to know how do to download?
Thank you very much!

staff, unfortunately the last demo that was added to the site (Ruslan Sirota) showed that the timbre worse instead of better . The sound of the piano became more artificial, very more. It seems purposeful to this change ... I am upset ... I want that tone that rang Sirota, what was more natural than the current ...

Hey, where is my download link? It's 4th of March already now.

It sounds like the new demo may be using more distant mic perspectives "The sound is a blend of Player, Side and a bit of Room mics, no reverb added".

Perhaps the previous youtube version was using more close mics. VI Labs correct me if I'm wrong. It would probably be good to use the same mic perspective settings on both versions so you can listen for any changes to the actual piano sound between the beta and final versions, instead of changes from a different mic perspective being used.

I'm wondering the same thing.
I was IN, I dropped OUT, I am now "on the fence" waiting to see...
Did ANYONE get it yet ?
How good/bad is it - beyond the usual new toy euphoria & buyer's remorse ?

Bahh, I am probably going to wait until December anyway.
There will be a seasonal sale, some bug fixes may be in by then.

On a purely TECHNICAL note; I find it difficult to understand why it has to "read buffer" (or whatever the term) the whole thirty odd gigabytes JUST to load the program.
On a 4 Gig RAM machine it isn't going to hold much more than a fraction of it anyway.
29 seconds first time and 22 subsequently, so it seems to retain SOME metadata - 12.5 on Mac, so Windoze file system probably gets in the way - a LOT !

My database background is peeking through, but unless the sample library has been redistributed since the last time I don't see a need to read it "all", whatever indexes or other metadata was built at installation time SHOULD still be around and useable.
Even if(WHEN) Windoze RE-frags files.

I have VERY mixed thoughts about this - and a LOT MORE technical doubt following Lance's posts.
It SEEMS as if the wrong player ("engine" ? :D) has been chosen, but there is acknowledgement that it would CO$T a few person months to develop one from scratch - Free being worth every penny, etc.

Does VI Labs will not meet the delivery date of Ravenscroft for today? So far I have not received anything ... I'm perplex with this piano...I'm thinking that will be a disappointment...

Still not at all sold on any sampled piano. For example, Ivory American Concert D sounds recorded, has noticeable latency (event at low buffer numbers), noticeable layering, and poor note decay. Far worse are the East West pianos, which are so uneven and unresponsive as to be almost unplayable at any high level. When I play Pianoteq, there's extremely low latency, 127 or so velocity layers (which are not really detectable), and outstanding note decay, not to mention low CPU hit, low RAM usage, and limitless tweakability. Further, every note you play on PT is perfectly and evenly responsive to your touch. Try for example the Steinway Spacious setting with Stereophonic output - this is almost as good as their Bluthner under the same settings - and alter the touch curve to your liking. You can even play decent Mozart (perhaps the ultimate piano test, since his music demands perfection) on PT. I agree PT is not perfect - but it's getting closer and closer. As the race between sampled and modeled goes on, I put my bets on Pianoteq by a large margin. So personally I'm not interested in another sample piano, it's a waste of money if you already have PT, in my opinion.

The problem of pianoteq is than the timbre sounds like a synthesizer and not a piano, especially in fff. At this point is far worse than samples.

I just want to be able to select modeled or sampled depending on the situation. If the Ravenscroft lives up to the hype (and if we ever see it ), that plus PT should be sufficient for my needs.

Have you tried voicing it? I generally do not play at fff, but even so I too can hear some unrealism in PT, but it never gets in the way of the music for me, since it's still much better-sounding than any acoustic piano I've ever owned. Possibly some of the overtones and soundboard feedback etc can be adjusted to remove some of what you may not like, but probably not all of it - there is no perfect acoustic piano either. But it is a matter of taste, and your point is valid. For me "synthesizer" is not a bad word, and PT is definitely the wave of the future and can already be used to create many wonderful "new" instruments that can outstrip the acoustic piano in many musically useful ways. I feel that I do not at this stage really understand all it can do ….

Downloading mine right now.

Joy ... I'm already downloading the files ..