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I never use more than 3 mikes, with 4 the tone it's already too dense for me - so I never encountered any problem while playing the D.
But this difference is strange, so I repeated your text using 6 mikes. First I recorded a very dense carpet of notes at different velocities, keeping the pedal down - then I rendered the midi file on the two pianos.
To my surprise, using the same midi file, the Steinway renders constantly 20% more voices than the CFX, whatever the number of mikes!

I you play just one note with six mikes both pianos use exactly 6 voices. 2 notes 12 voices and so on. So this happens only when reproducing many notes at the same time.
The VSL site says 4000 samples per notes for the D and 4200 samples for the CFX - so we should see more or less the same number voices while playing as they have roughly the same number of layers.
I'm sure that if this is a software bug, VSL will fix it - but it's possible also that the D has been programmed differently.

In my first test, I was comparing the two pianos playing so as to maintain the same number of voices, between 400 and 500, checking at the same time the CPU % - in this case, of course, there is no difference in resource usage as it is the same software.

I've been having some issues trying to get the sound to come out of my headphones (connected to RME Babyface Pro) when I load this in Reaper. The Synchron Piano VST loads correctly, and when I press notes on my piano, the corresponding notes are also triggered in the VST interface. I can even record MIDI files in Reaper and hear them later as MIDI notes when I save them to a file and listen to it afterwards.

What's strange is that when I load Garritan CFX on Reaper, the audio plays and I can hear it perfectly fine on my headphones. What I'm noticing is that in the volume meter in Reaper at the bottom, when I play notes, the Garritan CFX meter shows both yellow and red bars, but the VSL meter shows only red bars.

Any ideas?

I still have to write a response to posts and a proper post here, but I wanted to say something about not hearing sounds from the Synchron interface. I occasionally have this problem, and also had it with the Vienna Imperial and the CFX, and it appears that changing the latency in your ASIO driver could make a difference. It appears as if certain things will only work if your latency has a specific value (or a multiple of X kind of value). Do you use ASIO4ALL? If so, try changing the latency value a bit lower or higher and see if that fixes it.

In the Vienna Imperial I had this weird problem that I would only hear the reverb if my Latency has certain values, otherwise the sound would be completely dry.

Here a little comparison between a few vsts including the vsl steinway d of course. Its not played perfectly so cover your ears if you hear some mistakes

https://soundcloud.com/pianoten/sets/vst-comparison

greetings

nice comparison! Which preset did you use at VSL Steinway?

Just the player preset (close mic) with increased reverb and i think i turned down the room mics a bit.

How are you liking the VSL Steinway compared to the Garritan CFX?

I really think the steinway is a superb vst. Its playability is above everything I played (except pianoteq). But it has some flaws not gonna lie.

Like the top-mid area sounds a bit strange I dont know how to describe it properly since english isnt my native language but it sounds a bit like sugarcoating on top of a cake tastes... Somehow jingly. But its really a minor thing.

Another downside would be the brightness of this piano. It really sounds like you would play in constant ff so you have to turn down the midi sensitivity to make it more 'round'. As a result the bass is not as assertive as it should if you play in ff.

I would say go for it. It has a lot more character than the garritan cfx but both vsts are pretty great

I have lots of VSTis but I don't own any of these pianos (actually I have the Emberton lite, which I don't like) and I consider myself a Steinway guy, but this comparison makes me wanna buy the Garritan CFX... Guess I like pianos with I consider "perfect" and other here consider "too perfect" or "flat" and don't like what others consider "character".... I wonder how would Ivory American (my current favorite) would have done in this comparison...

Yes, I use a Babyface Pro so the ASIO driver is the ASIO Fireface USB. Changing the latency settings doesn't do anything for me. I can see that the MIDI is registering because there are red audio bars in Reaper when I play notes, but audio doesn't come out.

I can only guess either my inputs/outputs in Reaper are wrong, or the Synchron VST was downloaded/installed improperly. But as I said before, the Garritan CFX VST plays just fine in Reaper using the same settings, and the Synchron VST interface itself pulls up fine and I can see the notes being struck on the visual keyboard as I'm playing them.

If the MIDI inputs from the keyboard are showing in both the Synchron interface and in Reaper, then there are four possibilities:-

1. Synchron Pianos cannot find the samples. You can check that in the "Database" tab of the Settings within Synchron Pianos; if the paths show in red it indicates a problem. Check the volume scan paths in any case and amend as necessary using the +/- at the bottom.
2. The volume within Synchron Pianos is turned down. Unlikely, but you never know!
3. You haven't loaded a profile in Synchron Pianos; by default it doesn't load any and so nothing will sound. Click one of the profiles (e.g. Player) and wait for the samples to load (you'll see a progress bar; could be 30 seconds or more depending on your system).
4. The audio engine is not correctly set up in Reaper (e.g. there is a problem with the ASIO driver); that seems unlikely to be the case if it works fine for the Garritan CFX, however.

It pretty much has to be one of those, unless it's a specific bug with Synchron Pianos, which someone would probably have reported (you can check that by loading into something like SaviHost instead and seeing if it works there).

Hm, too bad the latency didn't change anything. Karvala's suggestions make a lot of sense. Especially the preset loading. I'd add something else that's "too obvious", did you check the license on your eLicenser? Because if the dongle is not connected or if the license isn't on there, the software will load but you won't hear sound.

Thank you!!! I was banging my head all last night trying to figure it out. And you guys are right. These presets sound really rough out of the box.

Thank you sir.



You've heard the expression, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door"...

I'm sure if one company ever did build a better software piano that was a quantum leap forward in sound quality, to become the de facto, almost textbook perfect industry standard, then ultimately everybody would want to own it. They would sell more than all the rest put together because EVERYBODY would buy it, and be paying through the nose to get it. The price could be much, much higher, maybe over £1000, and people would buy still it.
And if they could sell you a perfect Steinway D, I'm sure a year or two later they could also interest you in buying a perfect Fazioli 308, and then maybe a perfect Bosendorfer Imperial, and so on. There exist numerous pianos that are highly desirable. I think there is a always market for "the absolute best."


But to answer your rhetorical question - What does any software company do when their product reaches a plateau, where it does everything so perfectly already, and is so capable at its job, that 99.999% of people are completely satisfied with it and don't have any further desire to buy upgrades anymore?

They FORCE YOU to make yearly subscription re-purchases (upgrades to keep it working!) by never selling you the full software outright - but leasing it to you annually.
Microsoft Word...? Adobe Photoshop...?
Weren't all these tools already more than adequate for all your wordprocessing or photo retouching needs about 15 or 20 years ago? They'd already reached the mature point of near perfection for what they were designed to do, for vast majority of users years ago, but the companies still want to keep making money out of you, so now they are yearly lease purchases if you want to use them.

Likewise, even when some software is already perfect for it's intended job - like Hotmail, and people have gotten comfortable using it for many, many years, software companies like Microsoft will insist on buggering about with it, to transform it into Outlook or something else new, make it all look different and force you to switch even if you don't want to. They will never let you just keep using something good forever that just works in perpetuity. It's not good business for them to let you get on with your life uninterrupted. Especially a new operating system, with active tiles, an email or a web browser, where they can invent new ways of ramming live adverts, website hyperlinks and 3rd party clickbait adverts down your throat, or by default installing recommended apps without your consent, which (because it's all brand new) you haven't quite figured out how to switch off / block / disable / uninstall them yet. The basic settings might not even allow you, and you gotta research and go deep to block them. Once majority of people do figure that out, it's time for them to force another new platform change on you....
Don't be in any doubt that software companies will find ways to spoon-feed you whatever they want and make you keep paying for it, if you want to keep enjoying the same benefits.

^^ Interesting thoughts propianist. Right on the money!

@propianist, thank you for your posts, I found them very informative and they showed me a whole new perspective of things. I also agree about the Software thing you were talking about. I am dreading the end of Windows 7's support and have no idea what to do then, because I don't like what I have seen and heard about Windows 10.


Alright, so I've had some time to play with this Steinway. To sum it up, I'd say: This is a good VST, and IMHO it's the best VSL piano they have released, but it does have flaws and I wouldn't say it's the best.

My first impression was that it sounded an awful lot like their Vienna Imperial. The timbre is really very harsh in its own way, and perhaps that's what the other forum members mean when they talked about it being percussive. Even after adjusting the velocity response, this kind of sound still stays with it. I am amazed that VSL actually managed to make a cold sounding Steinway. WTF? How did they do it? This thing feels like a "Steindorfer Imperial" to me.

Some notes stick out, but that can be somewhat remedied by the note editor. So it's possible to get a somewhat even playing experience. The problem is that some of the notes that stick out hurt my ears. I've talked about this in regards to Pianoteq before. Some notes will be so unpleasant that they give me pain in my ears. I am not sure whether this is from the samples or from my audio setup. I'd wager, it's the latter. Funny thing is, I messed around with the Garritan CFX a bit and muted the ambient mic to simulate the Lite version. And in that config, without the second mic, it has quite a few notes that hurt my ears as well. So I'm not sure about this point, I'd guess this is probably on my end.

The good news though is that, so far, I could not find an out of tune note. I have yet to play pieces in different keys etc., but with the Vienna Imperial and, to a lesser extent, with the CFX as well, I noticed out of tune notes very quickly. Not so here. It seems like they actually did it. This must have been a lot of work. If I do encounter some out of tune notes, I'll post here.

As opposed to the audio demos, to me personally, the lowest two or perhaps three octaves actually feel weak. They don't respond with the same force, gravity or clarity as everything above them. It's not as bad as that section in the Productionvoices Concert Grand, but still noticeable, especially when playing the Garritan CFX before. So I would assume that the audio demos must clearly have been edited. I guess this can also be remedied with the note editor to a certain extent, but I already tried it and it feels to me as if not only the loudness, but also the timbre is a little bit different. Would anyone else confirm this and agree with it?

Regarding the CPU usage, this is a huge hog on my CPU. I have a Core i7 4790K with 16 gigs of RAM. Quite old, but still capable for most other piano VSTs. I have found that only two mics will work reliably. The third one will work most of the time but will produce crackles and pops, sometimes only seldomly, but other times frequently, depending on my playing. The VSL CFX could handle three mics without any issue, so I'd agree that something has changed for this Steinway. That makes this piano VST the third that gives me CPU problems, alongside the Bechstein and the Embertone Walker.

The weird thing about the CPU issues is that everytime I get the crackles and pops, the internal system monitor of the Synchron Pianos software will peak out at 100%, but my Windows system monitor will only show me something anywhere between 7 to 10 or maybe 15%. When I then record a MIDI and load six or seven mics and render that MIDI in Reaper, I get a clean recording without crackles and pops. And Reaper renders at about 150-200% speed. So what gives? Something is wrong here. Either the Synchron Pianos software is poorly optimized, or I'm making an obvious mistake.

Another thing that bothers me is that, when repedalling, the software doesn't switch from pedal up to pedal down samples. So if you press a key or a chord (this is best audible when using the upper few octaves) and then press the pedal down after playing that chord, it will keep sounding, but what you'll hear are the pedal up samples and not the pedal down samples. Only if you then press the same chord or key again after having pressed down the pedal will you hear the pedal down samples. I checked back with another user and then made a few tests in other piano VSTs that have pedal up and pedal down samples. The Hammersmith makes this transition, so does the Bechstein. The Garritan CFX doesn't, neither do the Embertone Walker nor the Productionvoices Concert Grand. Latter only does it if you enable Authentic Pedal which results in a drastic timbre change of the entire sound for whatever reason. As written in its thread, that function seems to be broken. So anyway, I don't know what to think about this. Why would the most expensive piano VST not support this while some Kontakt libraries do it, when it's been my personal experience that all Kontakt piano VSTs tend to be a bit wonky in one way or another? What really gets me though is that Pianoteq doesn't do it either. Wasn't Pianoteq supposed to be a very close simulation of the piano sound's phyics? That is weird. Anyway, the actual repedaling does seem to work well in the VSL Steinway, I haven't noticed any issue with it so far.

I also agree about the sound. I find it hard to get a pleasant sound out of this, probably because of the harsh timbre of it. I agree with the users who have pointed out that many velocity levels feel like they are too harsh, or that those levels should have been mapped differently. It feels like most of the samples have some kind of harshness or recklessness in them, for the lack of a better description. I tried Erard's config and it does sound pretty close. I guess only being able to use two mics at a time doesn't help here. So I still have to experiment. The room ambience is a bit better suited to this Steinway than to the CFX IMHO, but I still don't like it that much. I think that some users will have an issue with the sound, or that this might be the main disappointing thing. The playability is just as great as the CFX and it's finally not out of tune (hopefully), but IMHO it doesn't sound like what you're used to hearing from other Steinway VSTs, plus the room ambience gives the sound a certain color that doesn't feel like it helps. In Garritan's CFX, it felt like it added a lot and it was the perfect room. Not so here.

The sustain resonance is beautiful, but not all that great. The pedal up samples decay really quickly, almost reminds me of the Ivory American Concert D, and it makes me wonder if this could be a general Steinway thing.

With all these issues though, I have to say that this is very fun to play. After making the first config, I forgot time and didn't want to stop playing it. The dynamic range is great, the playability is also great and once I got used to the somewhat cold Steindorfer sound and the constant Vienna Imperial flashbacks, I always looked forward to playing this again and couldn't wait to start playing. IMHO this is the best VSL piano so far. I more or less dismissed the other ones after playing them for a short time, but not this one.

It's probably not gonna become my go to piano though, which is still the Garritan CFX. Considering latter costs about one third of the full price of the VSL Steinway, I'd say the Garritan CFX still stands very strong and is still #1.

Thanks for the demo. It's a wav. file, and a slow piece, which tells me infinitely more than VSL's 128 kps demos of uniformly loud pieces, with fast runs and crashing chords.

No doubt that NO ONE listening to this, pro or novice, would guess that this is not a recorded performance. But I'm not sure that's the bar anymore. No doubt the sample has ample vel. layers, but there's an irksome nasal tone to the sample, at least to my ears. (I'm listening via Neuman (KH) 301s). Could be the miking (mics and placement) Could be the instrument; or its tuning, or its regulation. Could be the recording venue (but I doubt it). Could be the midi file: may be the overall vel level is too high, or the pedaling is too aggressive. Could even be the interpretation itself!!

But the demo is way better than the company's offerings. And, therefore, way more telling.

Problem is: ALL piano sample demos are thundering, and designed to showcase loudness and bass!

Still, this is (in my totally subjective view) an excellent sampled piano, sonically equivalent to HZP and, apparently, much more playable: more levels--ergo more expressive potential. If money weren't an object, it's clearly more accurate than the other piano samples, save I suppose the HZP, which has in reality only 4 vel layers. Younger pianists and piano enthusiasts can afford to wait. But us older folk may want to pull the trigger now, notwithstanding all the usual suspects. VIZ: is this a sample to be PLAYED, mainly (for practice or whatever), or to be RECORDED to the ultimate purpose of making a great recording of whatever (jazz, classical, pop, etc...)????

The next quantum leap in memory and speed may render all current samples obsolete. Mind you, a phenom interpretation, or a totally new creation easily trumps the hurdle of a conceivably sub-par sample. So much music is LISTENED TO these days; not heard LIVE. The arguments and "perspectives" (a weaker term for an "empirical argument") of GG (anti-live performance Glenn Gould or media savvy Marshall McLuhan) are compelling.

My experience of this piano seems to be rather different for almost everyone else's.

I wanted to leave a computer plugged into my digital piano so I dusted off my old Samsung dual core i5 (2012) with 6GB of RAM. I don't have any problem running it in Cubase with a 256 sample buffer (I haven't tried to go any lower). I'm using three mics. I don't notice any performance difference between it and a new MacBook Pro, but I could probably get a much lower buffer on the newer computer.

That should be three mic pairs.