Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards N.I. Grandeur - very nice piano!

- read about it here .

Apparently 'mr Galaxy' had a hand in the production. It seems to have all the control flexibility of the Galaxy range with some even more elaborate frills - although here and there this could be a case of the same parameters with new labels. No una corda samples (that won't seem to be a major shortcoming for many) but repedalling and half-pedalling are taken care of.

On first cursory listening, those weaknesses I hear in Vintage D aren't immediately apparent in the Grandeur which does sound to me like another Steinway D (sigh), although there's no acknowledgment of the source. The bass is very different, and better IMHO.

I'm not blown away by the demos on NI's site - I'm not usually much taken by any of the developers' offerings so not much to go on there - but £89 seems like a very fair price for what, on the face of it, is a well sampled, expressive piano with few blemishes.

£89 seems reasonable. it is bright.

It is bright. I'm not sure if any of NI's demos have attempted to soften the sound but it's very tweakable, easy to soften.

My jury is still out but I think it's promising. The Galaxy pedigree and the generous sampling (18 levels, 9 levels for release!) suggest it should be taken seriously.

Looks like the interface is pretty similar to that of the Giant, very easy to use and tweak. Looks like this new range using it too.

I picked up the Giant for 49 GBP black Friday offer, bargain. Mainly for the fun effects though. My initial impression of it, for piano solo I prefer the ivory stuff I own. That said, if you want a piano with huge bass the giant certainly can bring the house down, and that is not an understatement, the bass is really huge, but also really nice for delicate soft sounds too. On the brighter sounds though, not so sure, but I've yet to play around, it certainly has a unique sound and I have no idea what that piano sounds like in real life. I do sense a synthetic nature in it in a way I find hard to put my finger on why, or how to explain it.

Sounds nice enough, but JAP. (Just Another Piano) ;^)

Greg.

Now that's a hip abbreviation.

Regards,
JAP (just another pianist)

Probably a nice compromise from the expensive ones, there aren't many sampled pianos for 99 of this quality, specially without owning full kontakt.

All NI pianos sound compressed to my ears. Am I missing something?
They sound well and, for price and system requirements are worth a try. They are way better than any average DP. But they lack...charm.

Unfortunately there appears to be no trial for this library so if you're judging this purely on the demos then yes, you are missing what it's like to actually play the thing and to hear what *you* can do with it. I don't mean that to sound flippant, it's just that aside from some very good playing I've never been particularly impressed by the sound of developers' demos of any software piano I've heard even if here and there it's possible to chance upon a recording by someone who's taken some care or had some luck in hitting a library's sweet spot. Rather, we're fed an attempt at a busy virtuoso piece or some new-age moody nonsense soaked in reverb. Nothing can be learnt about the core sound and of course, nothing about playability (although I think that hurdle has largely been cleared with libraries from the last few years together with cheap, low-latency hardware).

Ditto with the charm - I think for the better simulations it's mostly in the hands of the performer, e.g. I don't like pianoteq but I've heard a couple of performers getting something very convincing out it.

Compression: yes, some libraries suffer these sonic distortions but to my ears the Grandeur fares every bit as well as Vintage 'D' on that score...as well it should in the light of its background.

I won't say yet that I find it better than Vintage 'D' but in due course I might do!

Well, there are several youtubers that have good videos where you can picture what can be achieved. You among them, by the way. I've linked your Chopin Mazurka, op 68 no 4 in F minor in a spanish forum where we are collecting info and examples of best VST's.
I miss some kind of crossed table where we had every nice model and their functions etc in one glance, so as to compare.

Yes to this:It's like just about anything else: Until you try something for yourself you can't appreciate its qualities.

Given that the price was reasonable (contrary to the Yamaha CFX for instance...), I and a friend decided to give it a try and buy it together (we have already bought a couple of virtual pianos together in the past). I haven't played much yet but here is my opinion. I have to say the piano is worth the price. Compared to previous NI pianos, it's miles ahead. I believe Vintage D is a bit better but they are close. My favorite piano, Ivory American, is definitely better than this in my opinion. I would rank it close to True Keys American, probably even a bit better. So for a piano that runs in free Kontakt, it's a good deal.
Just a note on the settings, I tweaked a bit with the settings and it sounded better (to me) after I switched the tone a bit towards hard and reduced a tiny bit the dynamic range.

I withdraw this comment - I searched for more demos, and I like it quite a lot. I also like the Maverick too!

Greg.

I've bought the whole set - only tried the Grandeur so far and I love it! almost bought that Addictive Keys but I'm glad I didn't. (but *big* kudos to them for making a demo available)

I now feel like setting up a permanent computer for the first time. (although if I had bought one of the other "mainstream" pianos that others here respect, I probably would have wanted to do this a long time ago)

Greg.

- yes, this whole library is really good, the first time NI have cracked it IMHO. I even like the upright (The Gentleman) and having the same GUI for all the pianos makes tweaking a breeze.

I think it's achilles heel may be that the forte samples aren't as aggressive as I would like, but it's only a minor quibble.

One thing I absolutely love about this piano is the loud and sonorous bass notes. (and I didn't even have to tweak the bass notes setting). Actually the only setting I have needed to adjust so far is the release sample volume level - it was too loud. Other than that this piano sounds like it was mastered with my MIDI controller and my headphones. ;^)

Greg.

Yes, this is a very nice piano. I tweaked the tone color just a tad harder and turned the space (reverb) settings up just a bit. And it sounds great.

I got this during a recent GAS attack ... which too often yields yet another crap piano. But not this time. I'm quite pleased with this one.

Now ... can I resist the two allied offerings from NI, The Gentleman and the Maverick? Or can someone lend me some Beano?

- I turn the tone up too, to about 1 o'clock and, as Greg has done, I've reduced the release sample (a lot!) although I think the need for that is probably style-dependent.

I was A/B-ing the Grandeur and Vintage D and found the Vintage to be a tad brighter, hence the feeling of needing to up the tone a notch. But the overall result is even more rewarding than vintage D and yes, the bass is really strong.

re aggression, in Kontakt, it should be possible to set up a velocity controlled eq that would lift a suitable frequency band with higher velocity. I don't know how well it would work. Ideally non-linear if you just want to effect the higher velocities only.

I like the other pianos in this collection though I don't think they'll get anything like as much use.

The Maverick & Gentleman have more aggressive forte's - maybe they weren't allowed to sample The Grandeur piano at FFF because it was too special and the owner was worried about wear & tear

All three capture PPP very well indeed. I just tried reducing the dynamic range of the Gentleman to zero and playing the PPP samples very loudly - I can't hear any background noise or any other problems. I have to wonder whether it is even humanly possible to play that upright piano as softly as they have sampled it.

Greg.

I'm not getting that comparison at all. I'm finding forte really kicks out well on the Grandeur. BUT....it's almost impossible to have a 'standard' way of appraising these things because the VPC1 doesn't yet have a dedicated curve for these pianos and tbh, I tend to just stick to the Ivory AD curve it boots up with no matter what I'm playing....an objective appraisal is out of my reach.

BTW, one adjustment I'm making where I think NI have inadvertently allowed a couple of parameters to bleed into each other - it applies to all pianos in the collection where a more staccato sound is needed. I was getting too much decay even with Anatomy/release samples set to minimum, -40db. I found in the Tone panel, tonal depth was better set to zero - it defaults to about 75% which makes it sound like the damper bar isn't fully seated.

No problem for ambient, high reverb or slow music where a boosted tonal depth helps to open up the sustained sound.