Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Garritan CFX lite sounds a bit dissaponting

Hi, everybody.

Recently I've got opportunity to try out highly praised CFX lite library (my new roommate owns it, though haven't used it much yet as well), and the first impression was unexpectedly dull. Remembering how much was said regarding Pianoteq's inferiority in terms of tone when compared to CFX, I expected to hear something heavenly delightful, but to my ears it sounded.. muffled and too uncharacteristic? Even worse, I have The Grandeur library, which is rather old and quite generic, and in terms of tone it sounds truly wonderful, brimming with overtones richness and depth. I'm really puzzled now. Is there something I first need to configure differently for it to show its whole potential? For the said The Grandeur all I need to configure is reverb. I tried to play with reverb presets in CFX, but so far not much progress.

May be somebody could share settings which work for them? Also needs to be mentioned that I play it through headphones only.

I play it with default settings (besides the pedal fixes I've posted). The only other tweaks I do is to reverse the perspective to player (by default it is audience, so channels are reversed) and decrease pedal noises to be only a bit over minimum. I guess CFX is simply not your piano which is perfectly OK, we all have different tastes

I totally couldn't play it with default settings. And I can't imagine who could love piano like that, tbh It sounded as if I constantly was playing with Soft pedal pressed, as if piano was covered with some thick blanket, or hammers were made much softer than they usually are. Dull, muffled sound. After I played with settings a bit, specifically by adding a lot of reverb, and rising different resonance settings significantly, it started to sound more or less lively - still not as lively and rich as mentioned The Grandeur library.

You might try turning down the dials for room/release decay, and room/release volume, under the piano tab, if you find the sound muffled. Also, try experimenting with the EQ. Turning down the lows, and boosting highs and mids, might help reducing the muffled sound, and make the CFX Lite sound more cutting.

The CFX Lite is a mix of two microphone pairs, and I wonder if that explains if some perceive it as sounding muffled. The Grandeur, on the other hand, is recorded with one microphone pair, as far as I know. In the case of multi-mics piano VSTs, you can usually turn microphones on or off, but not in the CFX Lite, since the recordings from the two pairs, have been mixed down to one set of samples.

Have you seen the video from Time and Space, below? It might offer some insight, though it's possible you simply don't like the piano sound of a Yamaha CFX. There is no one piano sound to everyone's liking, digital or acoustic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8rn1_LXJmU

I haven't seen many user presets for the CFX Lite, but then again, I haven't looked for them much, since I have the full CFX. There may be some available in the Garritan forums. Try the above suggestions, before you decide if the CFX Lite is or isn't your thing.

You are comparing a "lite" version of the CFX to a "full" version of The Grandeur...

I think the default setting has all the resonances, reverb, saturation, EQ etc turned off. It's just the plain sampled sound, rather than one that has been configured to make it sound good, as you'd find in the default setting for a digital piano. When they sample it, they take care to mute all the other strings and cut out all resonances. And unfortunately all the presets they give you are pants, so you have to make your own.

Yeah, try the presets, though you'll not find them satisfactory (pants that don't fit) some of them could turn out to be starting points to work from.

Lite was never an option for me. The lack of ambient mics was so noticeable, it just sounded flat and dry.

I don't use any of the other perspectives in full, and I'm just as happy with the full-compact install as the full-full version. But having a real ambient perspective built in, without relying on some convolutional reverb model, made all the difference to me, and made CFX full worth every penny.

I honestly don't think you can get CFX full to sound like a small home studio or library, since it's "built in" with the ambiance of the Abbey Road studio setting, but that's really what I was looking for in a 9ft concert grand VST.

It shouldn’t sound soft/muffled at all. Quite on the contrary, I find just a bit brighter than what I consider perfect, e.g. Vinrage D (but Vintage D has other problems that make it unplayable for me). What controller and touch curve are you using? If the controller is not sending a linear enough curve 0-127 for CFX, that might be the cause for softness. My Kawai ES7 works great with the default touch curve and CFX whereas not that good with its own internal sound where I need to soften the sound a bit switching it to “heavy”. However “heavy” will already be too heavy, hence make it sound soft, with CFX. So it’s worth it if you try playing around with your controller’s velocity curve and/or that of CFX.

The Grandeur doesn't have different versions as of now. It's just one library costing ~50$ I also can't agree to this argument anyway. According to Garritan's advertisements comparing CFX lite vs full, the most notable difference is that Full has more mic perspectives. So as a potential customer I at least can expect that one perspective provided in lite is complete and coherent, and provides experience of being at this very spot in the virtual room with a piano (in front of it, as a performer), with all sound's aspects present. If it can't even provide this, somebody may feel they were fooled.. It seems like false advertisement in this case.

I'm using the default curve, a simple straight line from left low corner to upper right. I use the same curve in The Grandeur, and slightly more bulgy curve in Pianoteq. I use the same controller for all 3, it's Casio PX-150. As other 2 work fine, I can't believe it's just because of controller.

Ok, I think I got the point. So the answer seems to be finding the correct settings for reverb, as the library misses significant part of sound related to environment. I'll try to do that now. Thanks for all the feedback.

I can't say I've tried the Full version, but it seems to me that the extra mic perspectives can be thought of as a sampling of the studio environment. The close mic will give you the piano's sound, and the distant ones will give you the way those react with the studio.

Whether this is important depends what you want. In theory you should be able to reproduce those mic perspectives exactly with a convolution reverb taken from that studio (which is, as far as I understand it, a process involving a sound impulse of known shape being sampled, and the timings and levels of different frequencies are use to calculate how other sounds will be shaped by that environment), so long as you have the source sounds (i.e. the close mic perspective).

Or, you can use a different reverb and get the sound as if that piano were in a different setting. Personally I'm interested in the sound of the actual instrument, and not too bothered about getting the precise sound of the Abbey Road studio, so I just use the alternative reverbs that come with it instead.

Well, perhaps the piano is just not for you, but I must admit I am at a bit of a loss why the sound comes across to you in the way it does.

I can't really offer any help apart from what is already said, trying the timbre dial, turning it further to the right will brighten up the sound and keep playing around with it a bit. May be you will find what you are looking for ... eventually.

As it happens I also own the Casio (AP 450, same action as yours ) and for the most part I have never messed with it too much, I found the default is a decent starting point an reflects the tone well with the default curve, but I've only have it for a few months now an not used it all that much.

My personal observation of tone, well, I am with Cybergene on this. If anything the Abbey road CFX is voiced slightly to the right of neutral in my opinion of what I would like it to be (if I had asked a technician to voice it if it were a real acoustic for classical). I recall seeing a youtube video, or perhaps I read about it somewhere about this particular abbey road CFX, where it was revealed it was indeed voiced that way to be a bit of a jack of all trades for different genres, and not classical specifically, to me that fits with how it sounds.

Amongst the nicest sounding CFX recorded pianos I heard that please my ears most, in terms of tone/timbre are the 2015 Chopin competition recordings. Maria João Pires is also CFX artist ( as far as I know) she often tours with it and it is her weapon of choice, her piano sounds wonderful too, and I'd say these all sound darker than the out of the box abbey road CFX lite voicing ( I do not own the full one).

In any case, it doesn't matter what I think, you have to like it and if you don't, you don't.

For me, the CFX VST is everything I would look for in many ways when I first tried it, yet, I do not find myself loving it, but that is simply the tone of it, there is nothing really wrong with it, but at the same time I do not hear a soul in it to love to to say to me, ha, this is the one .. for me .. it doesn't seduce ( me).

Call me crazy, but to each their own, Personally, to this day, I am still a big fan of Ivory American D for recordings, but for playing/praccy I use the ravenscroft a fair deal too, sometimes CFX. I like how the ravens plays/responds, even if the outright tone is no quite my cuppa, sometimes I use a pinch of pteq, but not all that much these days, and then Ivory ACD.

Do I think Ivory is perfect ? no, I can see the argument why people say the CFX is superior in many ways, but for me ACD does have that tone I dearly love, even if it isn't the highest quality fidelity sample.

While the ACD resonance and sustain are quite weak, what I do think is very pleasing, what it does have in terms sympathetic vibrations and resonance characteristics actually sounds quite convincing to me, and compares well with recordings what one would hear in an audience somewhere (rather than sitting right behind it), I prefer that perspective for listing personally anyway.

I suppose, ultimately I am seduced by the tone/timbre of ACD, the CFX doesn't quite do that to me, as good as the Philip Johnston demos sound, I have the same feeling there in the hands of a great pianist !

Also, continuous pedalling works great on ACD, probably I suspect because it does not utilise recorded pedal down samples, which has its downsides, and upsides, AFAIK, it uses some sort modelling approach.

but ....

I most certainly ain't an expert,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX7CeTXoxyU

so ... add salt as needed.

In any case, I hope you can work something out with it to get it more to your liking.

The Grandeur is on Thanksgiving XXL offer now, 50% off, at 49,50 €. It's usual price is 99 €, and if we are to compare it to CFX Lite price-wise, I think we should compare the products at their usual retail prices, not at discounted prices which are offered a few times a year.

Pologuy was probably not saying there was a watered-down version of the Grandeur, which hardly could be offered, except with fewer samples, or shorter, since it only has one microphone perspective. CFX Lite has two, though they've been mixed down to one, and come to think of it, is arguably deeper sampled than the Grandeur, despite having a bigger brother in the full version.

That doesn't mean the CFX Lite is better than Grandeur, you like the latter more, but somebody else may find the CFX Lite better. I myself, am tempted to go for the Grandeur now, or Kontakt 5 at the crossgrade price. I really like the tone of the Grandeur, judging from demos.

I had CFX Lite for some time and then upgraded to CFX - my motivation was to get the ambient mics for natural reverb. CFX Lite sound without it was still pretty good but ambient mics made it so much better. I love the CFX sound now and don't have to make many tweaks at all - but it wouldn't surprise me that some people have a different taste in piano sound than CFX (Lite or full).

Did you change the perspective from audience to player? I would recommend you try some of the internal reverbs and see if any of these are to your liking.

Osho

I'm not entirely sure what 'pants' are in your part of the world, but it's true that the handful of presets they provide (at least with the lite version) is a mixed bag Few of them are fine tuned options, but rather they are mostly off the wall oddities which may or may not inspire you to do something weird and experimental.

But I agree to an extent that the default sound, while quite beautiful and with a great deal of subtlety, is a little lack lustre. What are the best fine-tuning tweaks that bring it a little more alive? I've demoed various reverbs - both in-house and other plug ins. But what about the sound of piano itself?

Obviously the mics and processing are crucial to the overall impression, however at the start is the piano itself. Maybe the CFX sound just isn't for you -- too much of a "blank canvas", and you prefer an instrument that imparts a more distinct tonal character. I mention this a little bit in my review here:

http://www.pianobuyer.com/Articles/Detail/ArticleId/272/Six-Software-Pianos-under-150-A-Sampling

I just wanted to say that was a really well-written and engaging article, I read it all the way to the end.

Like some others have mentioned before, I think CFX Lite depends on using reverb to replicate the effect of CFX Full's ambient mic positions. I listened to a few demo tracks, and when I switched to CFX Full I was always taken aback by how much more full-bodied and realistic the additional perspective was. In the end I figured there was no point going the Life + upgrade route and just went for Full. It was worth it for me.

I regret buying the CFX lite for the same reasons mentioned in this thread.

If i had to do it over again, i would go for the full version instead but that's never gonna happen now (even through the upgrade route) because i already have a go-to Virtual piano that i'm more than happy with (Ravenscroft 275), plus my wallet has better priorities at the moment hence i have a few non-piano vsti that i'm planning to add to my arsenal.