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Bosendorfer (Vienna Imperial) has 100 velocity layers on 1200 samples per key. Question is - how many layers they achieved in CFX (4200 samples per key)?
Last edited by Rychubil; 05/01/1806:44 AM.
Kawai VPC1 | Arturia Minilab Mk2 Pianoteq 6 Pro | Synthogy Ivory II | Arturia Analog Lab Lite | Korg Collection Roland Quad Capture | Neumann KH120 | Grado SR225i cornet Olds Ambassador, Hohner harmonicas and melodicas
It sound great and the specs are impressive but I am not fan of the room ambiance in most of the demos
There's a video on the main page called "introduction". There's a brief demo of all the presets mid-way through. The "player" preset sounds pretty dry to me and full.
It would seem this is now available. Pricing similar to previous Vienna products - €490 for the 10-mic Full Library or €255 for the 5-mic Standard Library, and you'll need to buy their USB licence key - so not for the faint-hearted. Similarly, the size is fairly astronomical - 238,040 samples requiring 239.9GB for the Full Library or 119,020 samples requiring 115GB for the Standard Library.
Demos sound nice but mostly fairly ambient and rather limited. Playability is a key question in view of their previous efforts and without a playable demo, and given the quality of the Garritan CFX for a third of the price, I think this is going to be a tough sell. I'm tempted, because I like the CFX as an acoustic piano, but there are too many question marks here for me.
Broadwood, Yamaha U1; Kawai CA67; Pianoteq Std (D4, K2, Blüthner, Grotrian), Garritan CFX Full, Galaxy Vintage D, The Grandeur, Ravenscroft 275, Ivory II ACD, TrueKeys Italian, AS C7, Production Grand Compact, AK Studio Grand, AK Upright, Waves Grand Rhapsody; Sennheiser HD-600 and HD-650, O2 amp
Casio PX-5S. Garritan CFX, Production Grand 2 Gold, Concert Grand LE, AcousticSamples C7, some Sampletekks. Pianoteq 8 Std (Blüthner, SteinGraeber, NY/HB Steinway D).
Nice! I am really excited. Can someone buy it and post super lengthy posts and reviews please :p
As for the "up to 4200 samples per key", the question is, how many keys actually have 4200 samples and how many do the keys have that don't have 4200? Also my suspicion is that they mean 4200 samples across all microphones. So if it's ten microphones, that would mean 420 samples per key. I have become too mistrustful of marketing hogwash to believe such a statement at face value.
As much as I prefer sampled VSTs to anything modeled (currently), this really illustrates how difficult it is to keep scaling sampled solutions. 4200 samples per key? You'd almost have to retune the piano between keys And as mentioned, if you add a new mic or sample target, you have to add hundreds or thousands more to that!
Does the library say how many samples or how much space is in a single playable perspective? I imagemine that would have a big impact on playability.
Also Gombessa: Nice catch. How can they play a note 420 times, then then next, and so on for 88 notes ... without retuning?
My addition to this: Does anyone really need 4200 samples per note? Or even 420? We got excited a decade ago when we saw things rise from 3-per to 10-per and even 18-per. But more is not necessarily better, and 4200-per is just ridiculous.
The Vienna Imperial had up to 100 velocity levels. The maximum of plain MIDI is 127. But we can multiply it with pedals (Vienna Imperial has dedicated samples depending of the forte and una corda pedals). releases could multiply the number of samples too. They depends of the initial velocity and when you release the note, this could explain how many sample you have. Higher notes have no damper, then, no release samples are needed.
http://www.sinerj.org/ http://humeur-synthe.sinerj.org/ Yamaha N1X, Bechstein Digital Grand, Garritan CFX, Ivory II pianos, Galaxy pianos, EWQL Pianos, Native-Instrument The Definitive Piano Collection, Soniccouture Hammersmith, Truekeys, Pianoteq
Yes of course, it will inevitably be compared against the Garritan CFX, simply because it's also a "Yamaha CFX" instrument - and we know that Abbey Road Studios already did a very good job sampling Garritan's CFX library and that's a tough act to follow, probably the best virtual piano on the market today - but the same comparison could rightly be made of ANY new virtual piano asking us to part with our money. They are all competing for sales against what is already out there in the world, and what has been done before. ... So all new virtual pianos that are introduced into today's market must all being compared to Garritan CFX already. If that's currently the best product and costs £149, why should we pay any more for anything else? Why should we bother buying anything cheaper if we know it's inferior? Even if they're "Steinway" samples and not supposed to sound like a "Yamaha CFX" they're still gonna be compared to Garritan CFX because their primary task is still to replicate the sound of a recorded concert grand piano, first and foremost, and if Garritan CFX is the no 1 product currently deemed the best so far at doing that job, it's the industry yardstick all new products have to aspire to. Companies should ask themselves "Can we sample pianos better than Abbey Road Studios? Are we using better mics / preamps / AD converters / do we have better mic placements? Can we build a better mousetrap?" Are we just trying to jump on a commercial bandwagon by knocking together a suitable piano collection (Arturia / Native Akoustik, etc.) to include as part of our larger software bundle package? Are we just trying to sell a few more piano libraries on the strength of our few previous successes over a decade ago and our still lingering big name reputation? (Synthogy)
Rather than asking is VSL's new CFX as good as Garritan's? We should ask is every new software piano at least as good or better than the best we've already got? If it's not, why did the company even bring it to market? Nobody would try to market a 200MHz computer with 16Mb of RAM these days? The technology status quo has moved forward a long way. So any new software piano these days must be able to compete with the best that's out there already, if it wants to be taken seriously. And the competitive battle is not to deliver one particular brand of piano better than somebody else, but to deliver a concert grand piano (whichever brand) to a level of realism better than everybody else before has.
For the older piano libraries that are out there, I certainly hope that some of them see that there's still some sales available if they repackage their sample set as an iOS instrument. The computer-based software pianos have moved on, but as we're still size-limited in the mobile world these companies really could give the Ravenscroft some competition in the mobile space. I for one would be happy to buy Galaxy's Vintage D as an AUv3 for my phone/iPad.
Wish they'd offered a package with just close and mid mics. I doubt I'd ever use the 'ambience' mics. The standard package is missing the close-2 mic, which looks like the one I'd want along with both mids (only one of those in the standard package). I'm assuming you need the full package for the player preset, which does sound nice. The But $420 on sale? I gambled on the VSL Vienna Imperial based on the number of velocity levels but have always felt it's not as enjoyable to play as other virtual pianos I own and don't use it that much. Would still love to try this though.
I asked VSL support about number of velocities. I got reply:
We found that a minimum of 60 Velocity Layers are a good number to capture a concert grand. A great advantage with the Yamaha CFX is a high number of Release Samples that makes for a perfect playing experience. We reached a sample count of up to 4200 sample per key (that's for all mics).
Wonder, what is maximum of Velocity Layers if minimum is 60?
Last edited by Rychubil; 05/02/1804:23 AM.
Kawai VPC1 | Arturia Minilab Mk2 Pianoteq 6 Pro | Synthogy Ivory II | Arturia Analog Lab Lite | Korg Collection Roland Quad Capture | Neumann KH120 | Grado SR225i cornet Olds Ambassador, Hohner harmonicas and melodicas
Hopefully not, but that may be some cunning response.. "we found that a minimum of 60 velocity layers are a good number..." - not saying how many they have, they may just as well have 30, followed by the maximum sample count per key :)) Although given the number of layers in their other piano, they may have 60 layers per key.
I'm not in the market, but it would be nice to hear impressions and some beautiful recordings when more users get it
Well we can do some fast and dirty calculations for the the samples. We know there are 238040 samples in the Full Library. If we make a crude assumption of equality across mic perspectives and 88 keys, and we assume that there are three sample sets (sustain on, sustain off, una corda), then it comes out to an average of 90 samples per key. Some of those assumptions may well be incorrect, but this gives a ballpark figure. The "up to 4200 samples per key" claim, even if aggregated across all mic perspectives and all pedal conditions, indicates that the sampling was not even across the 88 notes, so some may have more than 90 (the claim suggests up to 140, although anything above 127 wouldn't really make sense), and some less (perhaps as low as 40, but perhaps they had most set to 60 and a few in the middle with higher levels?). The claims are somewhat full of hyperbole, but it seems clear from the volume of samples that there are going to be an adequate number of samples per key in any condition. It seems unlikely that they'll be going down below 10 in any situation, for example.
Last edited by karvala; 05/02/1806:09 AM.
Broadwood, Yamaha U1; Kawai CA67; Pianoteq Std (D4, K2, Blüthner, Grotrian), Garritan CFX Full, Galaxy Vintage D, The Grandeur, Ravenscroft 275, Ivory II ACD, TrueKeys Italian, AS C7, Production Grand Compact, AK Studio Grand, AK Upright, Waves Grand Rhapsody; Sennheiser HD-600 and HD-650, O2 amp
If the actual product really sounds as good as this video demo, then I'm interested... (even though I've got Garritan CFX Full already.)
The full price is crazy expensive though!!! What if you don't like it after you've purchased???! You cannot send back for a refund, like buying on Amazon or ebay, or any other online seller... There's no buyer safety net - you're stuck with it, and that's a lot of cash to risk buying something blindly. I've bought enough virtual pianos over the years to know these things NEVER sound as good as the demo. I recently learned that the hard way (yet again!!) buying Light & Sound Concert Grand which turned out to be a complete unplayable pile of shÃt. But what else can ya do? There's no way to find out, other than buy it.
Shame these software piano companies can't adopt a different paradigm to sales, to make things fairer to customers - especially for very expensive single titles like this. eg. 1. You pay up-front audition fee of £50 non-refundable to get full install to test for 7 days, with internet connection challenge/ response verification every day, then after 7 days it locks you out, and becomes useless. 2. If you didn't like it, you just delete / uninstall from hard drive. They've made £50 out of you (I've spent that or more on rubbish many times) but you had some fun, a really good satisfying trial, but at least you didn't waste £400. 3. If you love it, and want to keep, you can choose which mic perspectives you want to buy (if you're a classical / jazz / rock player you might not need every option) and just purchase what you need and prefer to. The mic perspectives could be priced individually however the company sees fit, maybe in tiers of greater discounts if you buy more, but ultimately you're not forced to buy all 10 mic perspectives if you'll only use 1 or 2 of them. It isn't the "all or nothing" raw deal you usually get. Although you may buy them all if you pay full total price (inc your original £50 towards) if you wish. 4. Yes, they'll probably sell fewer complete 10-mic libraries, but overall, they'll sell a heck of a lot more smaller bundles of 1 or 2 or 3 mic perspectives to a lot more customers who wouldn't have bought anything otherwise.
What if you don't like it after you've purchased???! You cannot send back for a refund, like buying on Amazon or ebay, or any other online seller... There's no buyer safety net - you're stuck with it, and that's a lot of cash to risk buying something blindly. I've bought enough virtual pianos over the years to know these things NEVER sound as good as the demo. I recently learned that the hard way (yet again!!) buying Light & Sound Concert Grand which turned out to be a complete unplayable pile of shÃt. But what else can ya do? There's no way to find out, other than buy it.
Shame these software piano companies can't adopt a different paradigm to sales, to make things fairer to customers - especially for very expensive single titles like this.
Yes indeed, and that's my reason for taking a pass on this. If they'd had the decency to either (a) charge a sensible price rather than notably higher than comparable VSTs; OR (b) disable the software and offer a refund for customers who don't like it (this is easily possible with individual licences); OR (c) offer a time-limited or partial functionality playable demo, then I would be a likely customer. But since they want me to hand over hundreds of Euros based on their marketing alone, with no comeback when I discover it's actually unplayable, they can forget it. I think if they had ZERO sales, they'd probably come to the conclusion that they need to do something like that, so I'm actively boycotting this product and would encourage other people to do the same.
Broadwood, Yamaha U1; Kawai CA67; Pianoteq Std (D4, K2, Blüthner, Grotrian), Garritan CFX Full, Galaxy Vintage D, The Grandeur, Ravenscroft 275, Ivory II ACD, TrueKeys Italian, AS C7, Production Grand Compact, AK Studio Grand, AK Upright, Waves Grand Rhapsody; Sennheiser HD-600 and HD-650, O2 amp
And as mentioned, if you add a new mic or sample target, you have to add hundreds or thousands more to that! 
