Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Embertone Walker Concert D Lite - $10 Cyber Week Deal

Just wanted to share that the Lite version is only $10 this week for the Cyber Week sale. The full version is 20% off this week. Separate mics are still $15, so no sale price on these. Below is the latest on the half pedal update.

"We are extremely delayed updating our Concert D... but it really is just on the threshold. I want to convey my disappointment that it's not ready yet, and say with confidence that it will be finished and ready before the holidays. If anyone is particularly antsy and needing the half pedal improvements of the piano, please PM me. I can get you a beta patch."

https://www.embertone.com/instruments/concertD.php

Embertone stated that there will be an upgrade path after the sale to go from Lite to Full just paying the difference between the two. So may be a better deal to go this way.

Have you tried the Light version? The Full version?

Regarding the Light version, the web page says:
It does not have Una Corda + No Sustain Pedal
and ...
It does not have Una Corda + Sustain Pedal

What the heck does that mean?

I think it means it doesn't have Una Corda.

Crap. I expect ALL of my pianos to come with at least a Sustain pedal.

The logic escapes me. What does it mean ...
"Does not have A + not B"
and
"Does not have A + B"

Shall we interpret the + sign as the word "and" ?
Or shall we interpret it as the boolean operator "or" ? (Seems unlikely, eh?)

And regardless ... it still doesn't make sense.

Thanks for posting this Boston99. I thought I was done with VIs for a while lol.

For $10, Embertone lite is a no brainer and will be fun to noodle around with. It also provides a perfect demo to decide on a purchase of the full version. Recording demos of VI pianos are not so helpful.

In a similar Steinway vein, I was quite pleased with the Production Voices Lite at $30; it is fun to noodle around with every so often and I really like the sample recording.

I hope both Embertone & Production Voices are able to address some of the minor quirks via updates in the near-term.

I picked this up and was able to play with it and look a bit under the hood. So a lot to talk about. First I installed the Contunuata app in the email I was sent and copy/pasted my code. The download went fast with 8 files and took about 15 minutes running at 49-50 mbps on my fast connection. After the last file, the app stopped with some error and could not install the files. I went in and manually unzipped the files. Everything worked at this point. There was a posting that you might need to change "Steinway" to "Concert" in the nicnt filename to get Kontakt to recognize the library. So try this if you have problems.

All the normal samples are arranged in 6 interleaved groups for pedal and no pedal. Lite only has two of the groups covering velocity layers 3 to 36 with every 3rd velocity layer of the full 36 in the full version covered, so layer 3, 6, 9, 12, etc, up to 36. So the full velocity range is pretty much covered in the Lite. One of the two groups covers layers 3, 9, 15, etc and the other 6, 12, 18 etc. The bad part of these separate layer groups is that the jumps between some velocity layers is quite noticeable and hard to balance. All other libraries I've ran across put all the velocity layers in one map/group, so linearity is better maintained. It is probably balanced as best as it can be, but not the optimum way to set up a library. I think the full version will definitely help out in this regard to smooth the transitions. When set to 6 velocities, only the 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36 velocity layer group is activated.

As mentioned, there are no una corda samples present, although the group labels exist. There are separate staccato samples with 2 round robins.The normal samples have separate sustain pedal samples and no pedal samples. There is some key noise present in the release samples. When the sustain pedal used, there is also separate group for key noises so you get two key off noises with the sustain pedal, one when you release the key and a more subtle one when you release the pedal. The release volume adjusts both the release sample volume and key noises when the sustain pedal is used. I found in full Kontakt, I could adjust these independently in the edit mode to better balance the effect.

In the Color tab, most of the controls use the Kontakt built in effects. Tone activates a separate preset 12 band eq that is independent of the 3 band Equalizer. Dyn activates a compressor/limiter and Sat a saturation effect. For the Reverb, I had to select a couple of different impulses before it worked, so some kind of bug here. All these are tweakable in the full version of Kontakt in the edit mode.

The Response tab has the velocity response settings. By default, it is quite compressed. I lowered the volume scaling control almost all the way to expand the dynamic range and pulled down the dynamic scaling curve a bit to get close to that of Garritan CFX. Pedal noise by default is set too high and is intrusive as heard in some demos. I lowered this quite a bit. Also lowered release volume a bit.

With Sample Start in the default position, I measured internal latency and found about ~10 ms from when a note is received to when sound is heard. For reference, Garritan CFX is 3-4 ms. I set the sample start at 12 'o'clock to get the latency down to ~3 ms. If you go too far, you will start to hear some clicking due to zero crossing issues and a too aggressive default envelope setting. Then, you would need to adjust the volume envelope for each sample group to about 2-3 ms to get rid of this.

Overall, the note to note consistency is pretty good and nothing stands out. Samples are clean with little to no background noise. Stereo separation is very good at the default setting. Repedalling is present, but can have a bit of a swelling effect - not as smooth engagement as CFX or Pearl Grand. No half pedal, yet! Tonally, I think this library is fairly close to Vintage D, but clearer, less distant with better a better soundstage. At this price, it may be worth auditioning to see if you want to invest in the full version later when the upgrade path becomes available. I plan to wait to see what the next update brings before upgrading.

I think it just means "has neither the pedal up or the pedal down una-corda samples", HOWEVER, if that's what it does mean, I don't know why they don't simply say "no una-corda samples". So, I'm not sure.
Edit: actually, I am confident my interpretation is correct - the table is a detailed feature list, and they want to make it very clear that the product has both pedal up and pedal down una corda samples, and in the case of Lite, has neither. The + & - signs are (slightly confusing) abbreviations of "with" & "without".

Greg

(oops - it doesn't say + & - but you get the gist. Perhaps)
Man the new edit timeout is pretty aggressive.

Try this
not (A or B) = not A and not B; and
not (A and B) = not A or not B
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan%27s_laws

I agree the wording for the una corda samples is confusing. Point being made is that there are sustain pedal samples and no sustain pedal samples (only key press with no sustain pedal depressed) in the full library for both the normal and una corda.

In the Lite version, you only get the normal samples and not the una corda samples. If you want una corda, then you need to buy the Full version. It would have been better to say Una Corda 'Sans' Pedal and Una Corda Sustain Pedal to be consistent. I think the other differences between Lite and Full are clear.