Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Garritan CFX Lite $59.95

Yeah, change velocity curve, compressor, reverbe, microphones, etc, Till you start moving you furniture as a plus to fix sound in this piano, maybe is time to admit that Grand Rhapsody simply is not worth it.

Yes, the Grand Rhapsody does have issues. I sent an note to Waves with my list. As this is a first release, I hope they can make a number of improvements for an update to be pushed out. I like the idea of having multiple mics for each position. I think I will also pick up the full Grand Estate to play with. For the CFX, I made a mistake on the compact presets, The one with the issue is the compact sus-only which has an issue with the keys above G6 without dampers not having any sustain. This is a scripting issue. The normal compact preset is the best and works fine, but with 2-3 note stretching and only half the velocity layers versus the full presets. I saw cybergene was playing with the script to make some improvements for the pedaling. I think I will play around with the script for the suggested improvements I proposed.

In my short time playing around with CFX, I found that dropping the ambient mic volume does help reduce the sustain pedal cathedral effect, as does reducing the pedal resonance and *increasing* the sustain dynamic range. I have no idea what the last setting is but it seems to also drop the resonance.

The last time I ran it I really into a minor but weird problem. When I pressed a key on the DP, CFX would play the correct key but the virtual keyboard on the display would light up the b# right next to it. It's like the display way transposed one semitone. If I clicked on the key with the mouse it would play the note clicked though. Weird.

I was referring to Grand Rhapsody; I assume you're referring to Garritan CFX here, since I don't see a piano tab, or indeed crossfade, on Grand Rhapsody? I don't have that problem on CFX, or at least only to a relatively small extent.

On CFX, for some music which requires a dry sound with only occasional pedalling (e.g. classical music such as Bach and Mozart and indeed some contemporary jazz), I do indeed do more or less what you suggest here, along with the removal of the sustain samples. That works okay I find. For 19th century music onwards, I'll generally turn them on again, and I can get on with that okay. In fact, my principal complaints about CFX, apart from the fact that it's not quite the one-setting-fits-all solution that I was hoping for, are that it's a bit tiring to listen to after a while (that's just my settings I suspect, should probably turn down the higher frequencies a bit) and the incredibly annoying and oh-so-avoidable rattle on D6 and especially D#6 (which I'm surprised no one else is complaining about).

Thanks, that sounds worth trying.



Did you adjust the Timbre setting at all? It has that effect, quite systematically, presumably related to the fact that that the setting causes it to effectively play a different note and transpose it back to the one you asked for, to get the different timbre.

Oh wow, I had no idea it worked like that. I didn't need with the timbre (much) but I did select a present profile based on higher volume (I find CFX is typically a low volume on my Mac and I have to crank everything up to hear it without getting blasted by incoming notification sounds from calendar events). The preset I choose might have aggressive timbre settings, up check that out, thanks!

No, not because it was tedious, but it took over 8 hours and multiple installation attempts to actually get it working. There were multiple different failures ranging from not being able to find the samples to not having any presets (Nor being able to load them) and getting now sound.

The installation finally did take.

Now that I have gotten some sleep, I am a little less bitter about it, but during the process I was very unhappy about it.

It appears that I had an old stock version from 2014 that had a bug that could manifest on installation with OS X Sierra. I have it updated now and it's working.

I am impressed though, one of the developer's was PMing me and assisting me in trying to figure out the issue, late on a Saturday night!

Not worth 19 euros? I can't get a decent night on the town for that. If the Waves Grand entertains me for one evening, and doesn't give me hangover, then it'll be worth it.

I don't think moving the furniture will change what I hear in my headphones. If I had paid $199 like the CFX usually sells for, I would say the Waves Grand Rhapsody was not worth the money given for it. Is the CFX ten times better than the Waves Grand? I'll leave that as a question tp those who have both.

I agree with your comments about the Grand Rhapsody....well worth the €19,-.

I also have the full version of the CFX and a good controler (Kawai MP8) that i gave a recent inside cleaning job and leveled all the keys and cleaned the sensors and used a high definition piano lube for the hammer parts.
I am a pianotuner and technician, so it was a sort of straighforward job.
I don't know what others use as controllers, but i find the majority out there not really up for the job to trigger a large piano library.I also have an internal RME soundcard and latency and spikes do not occur.

I am dissapointed with how the grand rhapsody presets sound,......way to much key and pedal noise and rediculous amounts of compression.
But i have played around with it for some time now and i simply like it's sound in specific settings...so all in all a good purchase.
I still like the Garritan CFX more, and i only use my own presets, because i don't really like those presets present in the package.

I will not go into specific details, but i still am over the moon with the results i get and i prefer it so much over any current hardware equivalent that i wonder what people expect ?
I am glad that the current available software piano's have come such a long way.
Sure sometimes you buy something that you do not like . I have purchased the Hammersmith pro edition, but after days/hours of tweeking i couldn't warm for it's overall tone in the discant.
I bought it because of all the raving reviews and the online demo's were promissing too,....
It wasn't to be and i will surely give it another chance when my ears are reset again. :-)

pianistje,
would you please tell us what your preset settings are?
what did you do to make presets that you like?
and do you like them through headphones?

I was a little sarcastic, dont be angry.



Yeah right, there are already at least hundreds of similar defective sample pianos on the market, what is one more ? No dust for virtual piano for sure except next to nothing. I choose one night in town. Cheer for you bro !

Slobajudge, I wasn't angry, sorry if I came across as such. I understood you were being sarcastic, and so was I, so I had humour for it. I know you meant, no matter what I would do, the sound of WGR would not be good enough. I tell you, you may actually be right. Enjoy your night on the town.

Pianistje my biggest gripe with WGR is not the key, and pedal noises, or the compression, though it is a bit irritating. I always turn all three down, if I switch to a new preset. I'll see if I can dial in a sound I like, if you can do it, maybe I can!

Because of the huge number of microphone perspectives, and all the other settings, it ought to be doable. Maybe, the best thing would be to start with clean settings, do a full reset, and manipulate the settings from scratch, microphones, key/pedal noises, and all.

I'm pretty sure my Casio PX-5S is a good controller. It has High Resolution MIDI, which is supposedly good for manipulating virtual instruments. I'm more worried about my computer being a bottleneck.

The Waves Grand Rhapsody is probably nowhere nearly in the ballpark of the CFX. If it were, somebody could sue Garritan for usury.

Each to his own,.....i read over at gearslutz that you really like the Hammersmith.....i really don't.
But i do like ''my piano'' from fluffy audio also very much.It's a gem !

We both hear something different we like or dislike and sometimes we like the same piano library.

Thank you TheodorN


After Steinway B in Pianoteq I completely change my ears and mind about sample pianos. What a relief. Now it is only piano I use. I just cant stand quirks and problems in samples any more. But I do like Fluffy My piano. It still has something.

[/quote]
After Steinway B in Pianoteq I completely change my ears and mind about sample pianos. What a relief. Now it is only piano I use. I just cant stand quirks and problems in samples any more. But I do like Fluffy My piano. It still has something.
[/quote]


do you mean you completely change your ears and mind about sampled or modeled pianos?

I certainly haven't tried all combinations of microphones, but I'm absolutely certain that won't fix any of the many issues I have with it. I have tried all of the microphones individually, and some in combination, but the problems are already essentially down to a lack of smoothness and blend in various ways; I would imagine that mixing different microphones would exacerbate the problem, as indeed it has in the combinations I have tested. I have also just played around with it again for another half hour, fiddling with the velocity curve and compressor signals, but I still can't get anything close to usable, even for an existing midi file that sounds fine on various other instruments. Indeed, even using the Full Reset, which basically turns everything off and sets it back to a single close mic, still sounds bad.

The room position I can live with; on the some of the close mics it's almost okay, though there are still some really odd things going on with a single mic (e.g play D5 and E5 in succession a few times and listen through headhphones - you'll hear a significant change in spatial location that bears no relation to their location on the keyboard). The two main problems I have are the extreme timbre changes within a normal velocity range that I can only partly fix by manipulating the velocity curve (and when I say fix I really mean disable, since the fix just drastically reduces the available dynamics), and most of all what I can only call poor quality samples which make even a single note played on its own sound somewhat questionable, and a combination of notes played in succession to sound positively unpleasant. The latter isn't so much of a problem in some types of music; playing pieces which are mainly full chords at a relatively even dynamic actually sounds almost okay (not great, but I could live with it). It's chains of single notes that sound awful. Even just playing a simple scale up and down a few times highlights the poor quality of the sampling. I don't think any amount of tinkering can get past that basic problem, regrettably.

I change my mind about both after disappointment for samples and after my ears opens for modeling piano.

ah, I understand.
I think I'm beginning to agree with you too.

Thanks karvala, for your detailed response. It seems the dynamics of this VSTi, are all over the place. The Giant, and the Galaxy German Baby Grand, both respond in a more normal way, dynamically.

For WGR, I ended up with the bass at 35 hz, +4 and the velocity at I think -5, and using only the cond87 close mic. Everything else is turned off. As with the CFX, aberrant notes can be removed and stretch the sample next to it. Velocity layers also need adjustment as well as some of the envelopes. This is all doable by Waves if they are willing. I plan to study this piano in more detail after I finish my playing around with the CFX.