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Tried it. Plays really good on sfz. Thanks for your work.

I played more with it, both in Kontakt and in Aria. I also compared it to the free Hammersmith and to PianoTeq. After spending more time with it than I really wanted to, I think the root of the problem some of us are experiencing is this "different feel on different controllers". I think the velocity my Yamaha NU1 sends is too low for your instrument. If that is correct, I was listening my "pianissimo" (and lower) with the volume boosted to be at the level of a mezzo forte to forte -- that is why I described it as a "wind instrument" at least in some octaves. Just for fun try it that way and see what you think. The Hammersmith has exactly the same problem, but there is a (somewhat) easy to find way to adjust that. PianoTeq wins hands down in user friendliness in that regard, because the velocity of the input notes are right in front of you in the first screen, with an option to change that manually or automatically with almost zero effort.

So my constructive feedback to you (since you asked it in another message for the next version) is to include something like that in your instrument for Kontakt, and if possible ARIA and/or Sforzando.

I have no idea how to make it, and frankly I think that should be the responsibility of the player, not the person sampling sound, but hey, I also thought that Kontakt should play MIDI and allow you to record WAV of your performances but it doesn't. Perhaps it can do that with Garage Band, but I gave up. It's clearly designed for the sound engineer (with all that mixer sliders, useless to me) and not for the undersigned dumb piano player who just want an occasional organ or harpsichord and doesn't want to argue with computers (despite being a professional software engineer, or perhaps exactly for that, since he sees how it should have been done for a pianist)


Your understanding is right. The "free" player isn't free at all. They have two versions of it: the "fake free" where the creator of the sound (rather than the user) pays, and the "paid" in which the user pays. See https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/04/23/kontakt-demo-mode/ for explanation.

So in conclusion, I find no reasons to use Kontakt. Everything that I wanted to do with it is not possible or a huge hassle, it's poorly designed, not readable on my screen and extremely expensive. For the person who plays the piano PianoTeq rules: I don't like its sounds, so I use only the demo for doing occasional tests, but their user interface is the only one that makes any sense to me (and it has most of the right features).

Some references about what I mentioned in this message, just in case any other dumb person like me stumbles into this (I am sure you smart Kontakt users know it all already).

https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/import-midi-files.170104/
https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/how-do-i-record-kontakt.2019/
https://support.native-instruments....ative-Instruments-Plug-ins-in-GarageBand
https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/serious-kontakt-interface-issues.372673/

As previously memtioned the sf2 version has had volume normalisation changes and a few tweaks to overcome to low volume problems of the sfz and Kontakt versions.
There is something captivating about the tone of this piano so I think it is definitely worth the effort. Here is my feeble demo attempt of the intro to an old Elton John song:
https://soundcloud.com/john-nebauer/masonhamlinsf

Kontakt player : Just to play Galaxy, Native Instruments, the Hammersmith Soniccouture, Perl Concert Grand, Bechstein Digital Grand Essentials... virtual pianos to name a few. They are near 100€ to 150€ each (even 0€ for the Hammersmith free), not much more than Ivory, for examples. Less than VSL.


A product you don’t like its sound rules. Curious advise. The aim of a virtual piano is to enhance the sound. If you prefer sampled sound, you may try other products.


If the issue is that you have an high resolution screen, I don’t think many virtual piano are better. Perhaps Arturia Piano V (Arturia permits you to set a screen ratio)

hehehe

No offense intended, but you totally missed the point. I don't like the sound of the sampled instrument either!!! As I said both Hammersmith and this M&H-A sound like a wind instrument on my setup, not a piano! How can I like that??!
Moreover, with these sampled instruments I have no idea how to tweak the things because in Kontakt they are both hard/impossible to read and they are not oriented to the pianist but to the sound engineer with lots of pianist-meaningless parameters (with lots of effort I improved a bit Hammersmith).

On the other hand, most of PianoTeq parameters make pianistic sense and if I absolutely needed to buy something today, it would be PianoTeq. I cannot get a "good" sound out of it (like I cannot get a "good" sound out of any sampled instrument I tried), but at least I can get a mediocre one and I can tweak in ways I can read and understand.


Again no offense intended, but you missed the point a second time. First, no software should be written that way.
Something that is written that way can be called crap which is what I did of Kontakt in an earlier post, but I kept the one you are replying to more polite. The fact that other virtual pianos are crappily written does not make Kontakt any better. Moreover, I have a similar complain about PianoTeq (being written with a non-fluid, non resizable interface), however it has "fixed magnifications" which make it readable in screens of any size.

But even if I buy your argument, and use one of the plenty old laptops I have with "adequate" screen, then they are not adequate in disk capacity, CPU and disk speed and probably other characteristics (e.g. drivers). I know I could buy an old external VGA screen and the adapters to attach it to a modern laptop (which has the USB port for the screen), and hook the whole thing, etc etc. How I said (perhaps in another post), that is a big hassle not worth the mediocre sound result.

So the whole point of this post is: by this experience I learned that PianoTeq, which before I considered bad and not worth its dime, by comparison with the competition raise to the level of mediocre and edging to the level of good. Certainly it is the best among the ones that can be tried without spending money. Somebody can say that some of the instruments you cannot try without paying are in fact better for a pianist. Well, they might be better for the sound engineer, but frankly after this experience I do not believe this is possible from a pianist perspective (except perhaps Garritan in its own "version", not in the ARIA player).

The tweakability is a surely an advantage of Pianoteq. It is normal : the sound is made from algorithms where you can change the parameters. (But few are available on Pianoteq Stage however).

With a sampled piano, the sound is the one recorded... then you have few options. If you don’t like the sound, select an other (and unfortunately, it is not easy to test before purchase). Multiple perspectives enable you to mix between different takes. Bechstein Digital Grand has a Bright/mellow parameter : easy to tweak, efficient (sorry it is a Kontakt one). It also has a kind of mixer between 4 or 5 part of the sound, but since the settings is proposed key-per-key, it is not that practical. The Addictive Keys has also a setting where you can use mf samples for ppp notes or the opposite. This makes the piano brighter or mellower.

I'm not getting the same problems descibed above (sounding "like a wind instrument") when playing this piano via Plogue sforzando so this has convinced me to stay away from Kontakt. I do get the occasional note cut short but as Dore Mark says this can be improved with a bit of reverb added. For those wanting a no-fuss version (OK'd by Dore) I have uploaded an improved v4 of the sf2 that loads to sforzando simply by dragging it to the sforzando desktop. With the latest version I have made 3 additional virtual velocity layers to smooth out the switching from p to f to ff samples. There are 3 mic perpectives available as presets. The sf2 plays nicely on both sforzando and the bs-16i app for iOS.
Mason&HamlinSF2-v4 downloadable here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nAafn0AU6yv6II69jtRNT0ExBfvz8th7/view?usp=sharing

I've been using this piano for a couple of months and it is probably the best free piano vst. Now with this modification from Jonky it is even better. Thanks to the author and Jonky for their work.

In case anyone is interested in downloading the sf2 version of Dore Mark's lovely Mason & Hamlin Model A there is now a link to the latest version on my site (I have removed the old link because of updates). Features include near seamless transition between layers with 6 layers (3 sampled plus 3 virtual) and improved attenuation. There are three preset microphone positions available.
Scroll down to the Piano section and look for the link "MasonHamlin-A-v5.1"
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
It plays very nicely on the free Plogue Sforzando app for PC or Mac.
If you want to run it on iOS you'll need the bs-16i or the SoundFonts app.

Here is a demo using the Close Mic setting recorded directly in Plogue sforzando - Clair de Lune.
https://soundcloud.com/john-nebauer/masonhamlin-clair-de-lune

Thanks.

I downloaded it and the sforzando player as well. It works nicely, no problems.

I find it to be pretty impressive for a free DIY libary. Nice work Dore Mark!

Wow, great work! I also didn’t know about Pianobook, I‘ll
check this out.

To clear a little bit about the confusion around Kontakt. The free Player version doesn’t allow you to create your own instruments. That includes opening 3rd party instruments that aren’t officially licensed. To get that license, the author has to pay a fee to NI. That’s the reason why so many Kontakt Instruments (especially the cheap ones) require the full version.

If you open an instrument in Kontakt Player it will open in demo mode, limiting the time you can play it and after a while will completely refuse to open it.

I don’t own Kontakt either, so thank you for the alternative Version, very much obliged.

The newest MasonHamlin doesn't work quite well on Sforzando. The player registers the key stroke but in every 2nd or third note won't played.

Thats weird. I redownloaded it from my site just to make sure there wasn't an error and it worked fine for me.
I wonder if there is some setting that is causing this.
The settings that work for me are:
Poly: 128
In Settings:
Ram: 2gb
Disk Pre-caching: 128kb
Sample Rate: 44100
BSize 512 for both.
Also check you are using the version designed for sforzando and not he one designed for the iOS app bs-16i.

I'm using the sf2 file which get converted in Sforzando. Tried the same settings with the same result. Version 4 worked without issues.

Google says: Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist. Make sure that you have the correct URL and the file exists.

I have updated the file - latest version for sforzando is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aHjiKCXG-cMjdgEf_KRcNG-Wi6BQxqTI/view
Better still go to my site and look for it in the piano section to be sure you have the most up to date version.
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
There are also versions that are designed to run well on iOS apps.

Good News: I have removed the ARIAConverted Folder of the MasonHamlin Samples and dragged the sf2 file again into the player. Now it works!

Piano works perfect, the first time Sforzando convert downloadable file to playable sfz files and ask where to save them. Move them where ever you want and just use import and point to new sfz file.