Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards New incoming Yamaha CFX vst from VSL

Agreed, that track sounds phenomenally authentic. Assuming it was actually played from the VST, it would be nice if they released the MIDI so people could compare that to their existing VSTs/DPs.

Still, at $400 and the equivalent of an GPS anklet for your laptop, I'd prefer not to purchase a product that immediately treats me like a criminal.

Hi Gombessa,
Yeah, that demo sounds nice, but it's funny... every time I hear a brand new demo for a brand new, mouth-watering, exciting, fresh meat virtual concert grand I've never seen before, I always think the same...! Always think it sounds so much better than the ones I currently own, and think this must surely be "THE ONE" that I've been waiting for all these years, the solution to all my problems, the answer to my prayers, and I can't wait to pre-order and buy it. Then when it arrives it's crap.
That always happens the same. I should learn from experience, but I don't. I get addicted to the thrill of the chase, the quest for the holy grail, I pin all my hopes on the new unknown quantity being the greatest thing ever, the belief that some company out there has finally got the perfectly sampled instrument I've been dying to own, and I'm just about to discover it. All it takes is a credit card and a few keystrokes on a webpage to order it.
Sucker!!!!

It's a psychological condition of spending too many hours pouring over piano demos and websites, forum threads, A/B comparisons, YouTube videos, etc.
Looking at all their gorgeous images of the shiny Yamaha CFX in their video footage, your eyes see it, and your ears start to "hear" what your eyes are telling you. If you listened to the same track watching photo slideshow of a Korg SP170 you wouldn't get the same misty-eyed feeling.
Marketing psycho-acoustics at work. Very real.

Actually, I was just now plonking around on Vintage D, trying to copy playing the very same music I heard from the VSL CFX YouTube video, with the same rich opening chords...

Eb minor, B major, Eb minor, C major, low F in the bass, F7sus4 type rising arpeggio, Bb high fast twiddley bit, F7 again, Db major etc. whatever it is... ( Is that a famous piece? Anybody know it?)

Anyway in juxtaposition, Vintage D sounded pretty good too! Same kinda ballpark. Not exactly the same but comparable realism and quality on my headphones, once volume levels were approx equal. I think our brains greatly exaggerate the differences we think we hear, so out of context you think one sounds amazingly impressive, and assume it's the best ever, but side by side against a different piano playing the same music, the similarity is surprising. Dial the settings on Vintage D to match that big resonant sound. There is still a difference, okay, but it's not as earth-shattering as I thought at first.

The introductory price is not bad, $222, about the same as the Garritan CFX, which only has three microphone pairs. The VSL CFX Standard has five pairs.

I'm not getting it though, since I'm not sure it'll bring anything new to the table, that I don't already have in my other piano VSTs. I use this line to cure myself of GAS!

Good points all. I'm super happy with Garritan CFX too, and have actually been moving in the opposite direction--I use the VST for headphones, and the DP built in sounds for speakers when I use them and even recording (because it's so much more convenient than walking the laptop display and fiddling with the recording interface there).

Anyways, I'll let my ears open and see what others do with VSL. The last thing I need right now is to throw more money into the VST ring.

Out of curiosity, what are your main issues with LASCG? I mentioned the velocity layer alignments and jumps with some of the notes, and pedalling that needs some improvement. I plan on doing some extensive editing realigning layers and smoothing out the jumps in a couple of months when I have more time that I could share. I may also play around with the pedalling in the script. Would be good to see if I missed anything else major.

In the meantime, if you haven't already, contact Paul at LAS and let him know your complaints. He promised he is still working on improvements that may take him more time since he hit a wall with Kontakt with his current approach. I've made a couple of posts over at VI Control to make public my main issues. The more of us that let him know we are dissatisfied, the more pressure on him to make changes.

As far as VSL, they are first and foremost focused on making instruments for scoring and less for performance. I have yet to see a good playable piano vst come from a scoring focused company. I'm not a fan of bloating a library with all these velocity layers and think it's unnecessary. Even with this many layers, they still may not be aligned tonally. I'm seeing two camps, one that tries to make as smooth a library as possible and one that leaves in alignment and other issues claiming this reflects the actual piano, wear and all. We've seen you can do a competent job with 20 or so layers if well sampled and aligned. I see it more as a marketing ploy here to justify the high price.

It also doesn't seem they are using much compression, if any, which makes the library large. Pedalling and general playability is also unknown despite any marketing claims. So a lot of risk here given the price and lack of a way to actually demo the product. Bechstein at least lets you demo their product for 30 days and get a refund if you don't like it. Like many I don't trust audio demos and paid reviews.

Given the price here, the size of the library, no way to demo, and no way to make edits yourself since their engine is proprietary, it's a pass for me as well.

Wow, hey people, don`t wait, shoot at VSL immediately. My god, nobody order this piano here and yet full of negatives. This is not the first time that samples pianos goes for selling without demo. VSL produce for orchestra work first, and this piano is not only for orchestra but also for solo playing. I have bunch of sample pianos that I paid and collecting dust for years because I dont like them. This is a risk I took and no hard feelings after that. Do we need another piano vst ? No, there are already too many, but what if they stop to make them, what then ? I am glad for every new piano somebody produce, and its up to me if I order or not. No one piano vst will ever grow to acoustic no matter how hard we try and no one piano vst will absolutely satisfied us. So, relax, this is our hobby and we want new pianos. I will probably order this.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I agree, I didn't like the Light and Sound Concert Grand either, waste of money for me. Played it for a few minutes and buried it in the grand tomb of bought and forgotten piano VSTs that I have carved out under my bed. The developer is very friendly and nice, and I guess considering that it doesn't sting quite as much (as it would have stung to have bought Hans Zimmer piano or something like that), but it's unusuable for me. The thing that really gets me though is that part of my reason for buying it was good forum reviews, people saying it's on par with the Garritan CFX in terms of playability, many others who said they really like its feel etc., and I was amazed at just how bad it felt to me when I played it myself. What were these people thinking? This has made me even more untrusting of people's opinions on piano VSTs to be honet - I've had similar experiences before, but not on this scale (where the majority of opinions were positive and then it was a stiniker). It was a remarkable experience for me.

Now as for the VSL CFX, I will get it probably until beginning of the coming week - I have just been too hyped about this for too long to not get it, especially since they give you a cheaper version which is still fully usable and they offer upgrades.



I don't have much insight into their other products, but I wanted to say that at least the Vienna Imperial was also marketed as a piano that pleases classical pianists when being played live, and it's the same for the CFX. I'm gonna make a bold statement and say that nobody needs another piano for scoring or for use inside DAWs with midi files. The holy grail, as people in these forums often called it, is a good sounding AND well playable instrument at the same time. And there is still a lot of work to be done until that has been reached IMHO, even though Garritan's offering has come very close to it, and that's the angle from which I am gonna approach the VSL CFX, because again they make it an explicit point how well suited their new instrument is for advanced/professional pianist live use.

Probably better to write on the main thread about LASCG, rather than sidetrack into long discussion here... but basically, with LASCG, it said 150 missing samples when I tried to load it, had to skip them. The Kontakt screen is far too big for 1080p monitor, there's no numerical value for any sliders or pots (hence no exact repeatability of settings) unless you control them remotely via MIDI values. Pedal down resonance either doesn't work correctly or seems to be almost non-existant under certain situations. The D above middle C sticks out like a sore thumb with bright sample, as does middle C to less extent too. I knew it only had about 5 layers, but was expecting them to sound like they were appropriately spaced mappings for those given velocities, but those notes just don't work. Epic fail. Unplayable. Also, why use 32 layers for high B6, but only 5 layers for more important D3 anyway? Stupid design! Holding D4 with sustain pedal (mic mix) I was getting a repeated pulse of slow tremolo type effect after a few seconds - very weird. Many of the mic perspectives (listened to individually) sound nearly the same, with audibly bad sound quality overall, too much mechanical noise, muddy off-axis sound, thin tone. Realised that his YouTube demo is always mixing several mics together, never exposing any solo, so you never really get to hear what you're working with, just a slightly "off" blend that you think you'll probably be able to sort out once you can isolate the sources and judge, but they're all pretty ropey. And obviously Kontakt Player resets every 15 minutes too which is annoying, and had to download 5.7 to make it work because it didn't like v5.6.


Yes, agree. VSL's mic position diagram shows the position of the CFX in an orchestra floor-plan layout with most of the ambient mics in the conductor position. That's hardly how you'd choose to do it for solo pianist setup.
Not sure what you mean about "aligned"? Time aligned? Sonically coherent when blended together?
They probably record them all simultaneously and save as polyphonic wav files for editing which can be edited en masse with identical results. They should be perfectly aligned as far as each note is edited within the range compared its equivalent note in other mic perspectives. Although time delay (due to path length arrival times) will differ between mic positions and between low and high notes over the keyboard range for any given mic.


Maybe for you, but some of us pro pianist types use these software instruments for work. (Whereas say, photography is just a hobby for me, but I know some people do that for a living.)

I have seen this VSL CFX on bestservice.com... I hope we will have it soon on try-sound.com, then would be able to test it free.

When I say aligned, I mean note to note timbre such that you get the same level of brightness playing the same velocity level across notes. We have seen libraries where this is not the case. Mics are all recorded at the same time, so as long as they are phase aligned to compensate for distance, there should be minimal issues with blending although it's never perfect and can introduce some muddiness.

Thanks for the detailed comments on LASCG. I won't waste any more space here talking about it. As far as VSL CFX, it's a pass for me for reasons mentioned above. Interesting if you can demo on try-sound, but there is huge latency. Will be interesting to see how this compares to Garritan CFX once a few take the plunge here.

Thanks guys for a very helpfull discussion, i truly appreciatie it and it once more underlines how subjective preferences are.
My Hammersmith pro and Ravenscroft do not work for me , althaugh i bought both of them solely relying on the positive online reviews.
To me the sound of the sampled grand+recording room surpasses playabilty. I always seem to be able to find a work around with the latter, but the former is a dead end from the start.
My latest purchase is the CinePiano from Cinesamples and till date my clear favorite.
I do like my Garritan CFX also, but it doesn’t touch my soul as much, for the lack of better words.
This new CFX from VSL maybe on my wishlist, but i’ll wait for some early user reviews.

A small question though, Samsung just realeased SSD’s 860 pro and EVO,..... do you think it will help the overall processing speed of demanding piano vst’s ? Because althaugh i have an I7 processor, , SSD’s, RME soundcard, 16GB ram, the Ravenscroft with all mic perspectives activated starts to struggle during intensive playing.....not that i use the Ravenscroft anymore, but with the focus on this new demanding CFX ?

Hears about VSL CFX.

Sees the hype.

Goes and plays Garritan CFX.

...Nope! No need to buy another CFX! I'm happy with what I have!

On my laptops with RME interface and Garritan CFX Full, the old Samsung 850 EVO (SATA) drive provided the same latency as a new Samsung 961 (nvme). Also, I noticed no difference during daily use of other programs. YMMV:

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...piano-or-pcie-is-a-must.html#Post2710346

Ah thanks !!!!

Drive latency doesn't affect audio latency in quite the way you might expect.

All of my existing Kontakt-based VSTs and my older standalone Ivory v1 will load into memory a large segment of audio data. So most of the time the sound you hear is from that memory-resident base.

Disk fetch need only take place on sustained notes when "early sound" from the resident set nears exhaustion. And the elapsed time to exhaustion is long enough for even a slow HDD to fetch the needed data.

The latency you experience generally comes from other sources, principally from the Windows audio processing chain.

SSDs are good for significantly improving load speeds over HDDs, but even a good SATAIII SSD drive is not used to throughput capacity for any on-the-fly loading of samples that I've seen. Memory is sometimes seen as a limitation, but again if you have enough system memory (generally 8GBs or more for a smooth experience with Windows 7/8/10), and you're allowing the VST enough memory if has a parameter for that (some do), then this is rarely a limiting factor as well. Performance issues with VSTs are most commonly one of three things:-

(1) CPU ability to handle the processing of large numbers of voices and resonances in real time (the Bechstein Digital Grand is perhaps the most severe in this respect).
(2) Latencies that are too low for the audio chip to handle in real time (and depending on the audio chip, this can interact with (1) as well).
(3) Audio clipping by excessive gain within the VST (the Ivory interface and UVIWorkstation are both particularly susceptible to this).

A new sample library, what could be gassier?

I was curious about this so have sorted out a rough demo of the Garritan CFX playing the above posted clip of its VSL counterpart. Does anyone know what this piece is?

Hi Diretonic,
Thanks for that video - very interesting.
Where did you find that MIDI file? Please could you provide a weblink where we can all download it? Or is that you playing it live yourself, having listened and transcribed by ear from the VSL demo? If so, damn good job! Bravo!

Funny, if YouTube sends you an automated copyright notice, you'll at last be able to discover what the name of that piece is! Haha. Strange world we live in, where uploading an interesting unknown piece onto YouTube just to get a copyright message might be the quickest way of learning the title and composer info...

Re: Ravenscroft latency questions?
I've had Ravenscroft running for years on my old Windows XP computer (XP SP2 32 bit, 4GB RAM) and it works fine at 128 samples buffer, although my 4GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3 RAM was very, very fast for it's day! The RAM's 1333MHz clock speed with ultralow CAS latency timings 6-6-6-18 means it calculates to 9.002 nanoseconds latency (for the RAM module). That's actually faster than my present day Corsair Vengeance 32GB SODIMM DDR4 3000MHz 16-18-18-39 which only calculates to 10.667 nanoseconds true RAM latency, so despite technological progress, the ten-year-old desktop RAM is still quicker than today's fastest laptop RAM modules! Unbelievable but true.

Hi propianist - yeah that's me playing it live with my back to the piano while drinking a cup of tea. No, I jotted out the transcription then put the midi together in cubase alongside the VSL audio to get as much timing/mood matching as poss - hence it's part played and largely edited after the fact. I couldn't play those runs at speed without putting some time in.

I wanted to see how the sound matches for power and contrast - I think the Garritan does a creditable job for a relatively careless imitation (my ending isn't as sweet as the VSL but I think that's in the playing).

I half-wondered if I'd get a rap over the knuckles via YouTube for plagiarising a non-public domain piece - as you say, an odd but maybe effective way to identify it.


midi file

Hi Dire Tonic,
Well, you did a good job however you did it! Thankyou for uploading the MIDI file.
I thought maybe you'd used some kind of WAV > MIDI music transcription software, like this which you can find online, but they only seem to work okay for simple tracks then fall apart with more complex fast runs like this.

I'll try your MIDI file in Vintage D and see how it sounds as another comparison....

Regards,
propianist