Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards grandeur vs Embertone Walker vst

H all,
More curious then anything else.

I have heard people comparing these 2 as alike.

I am a big fan of Grandeur so I was wondering.

Do you agree that they sound more or less the same and if so..

Do you prefer one over the other and why.

Or should they not be compared to each other at all.

Ron

I don't think they sound much the same at all.

I'm also a fan of the Grandeur for its extremely clean, clear sound production and tonal evenness across the range of the keyboard. Not a ton of character, but very adaptable, accommodating and easy to play.

For better or worse, the Walker D is much more of a character instrument - it has a noticeably drier, more vintage sound with much less evenness to the tone. To me, this was problematic as I felt it sounded rather wobbly and out-of-tune in the upper-mids, but it has a lot of fans for its realism and individuality.

It will warn you that it's definitely a lot fussier and more demanding than the Grandeur in terms of playability and CPU resources. Whereas the Grandeur plays and sounds great out of the box, I could never get the Walker to play as easily or responsively despite hours of tweaking, and I would get small blips and drop-outs when playing more complex music which doesn't happen with any other VST I have. Ultimately this was a deal-breaker for me, and I ended up returning it.

Embertone offers a 7-day trial period though, so you can always try it out for a few days and return if it doesn't work out for you.

They don't sound anything alike in my view; I agree with jdg78 that the Grandeur is much cleaner...slightly blandly so in my view.

I've found even the lite version of the Walker to be a real pain to run smoothly. My system isn't spectacular, but it's a Coffee-lake i7 that comfortably runs all the VSL pianos, the notoriously demanding Bechstein digital, Garritan CFX, and far too many others without blinking...yet I struggle to run even the basic version of Embertone without crackles etc.

Honestly, for a great sounding, very versatile Steinway D, the Simple Sam Signature Grand might be where I'd start. No doubt, however, I'll end up buying the full Walker D at some point simply to satisfy my curiosity!

Slightly off topic (and besides, I do not have Grandeur). I wasted enough time and money for buying and trying to tame Embertone Walker (full version) to run smoothly, and I cannot be silent when it is discussed as a working piano VSTi.

Embertone Walker is suitable ONLY for slow one-finger playing without pedal. In this situation it sounds very good. In all other situations it is unplayable, at least using my Dell Vostro 15 5000 computer (which brilliantly runs most other piano plugins).

IMO comparing Embertone Walker to something, which really works, is meaningless.

Well that answers that question.

I can't remember where I was, but there was a lot of love for the Embertone and comparison with Grandeur

The Utube videos really did not pan this out as far as I was concerned.

We all know how these videos can be misleading at times however.

Glad to see you confirm my suspicions.

Ron

I keep reading that people are having trouble running the Walker and when I see the specs of their machines they are way better than mine. I run it on an old G860 with 8gig of ram and have no problems at all as long as I stay away from the HQ and HQ+ settings on the pedal and stick to one microphone.

I don't understand why I'm fine when other people with far more powerful machines struggle. Admittedly I'm not playing Prokofiev War Sonata level stuff so maybe it would be different if I was. And this is a PC, not a laptop, so no power saving modes kicking in robbing CPU power as they are all off in this machine.

Kit I'm using:

G860
8gb ram
Samsung 840 evo 250gb SSD
Focusrite Saffire LE Firewire with its ASIO driver

Kontakt player on its own - not through a DAW. Volume and dynamic scaling in the Walker have been set to their lowest on the left side. Bars underneath removed. Also, in a post in a separate thread jdg78 pointed to a velocity tool in the Kontakt player itself, hidden behind the KSP button. See his post below for instructions in how to find it. I'm using the stock Comp/Expand setting, haven't tried the manual ones yet and the playability and dynamics of the Walker have been markedly improved.

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...truments-a-small-review.html#Post3182334

Remember to turn back the amount of voices that worked great for me using walker 1955! MooganDavid

I'm using the stock Comp/Expand setting what does that mean and how do I try it? Thanks MooganDavid

I'm using the stock Comp/Expand setting what does that mean and how do I try it? Thanks MooganDavid

It is strange. I have a 2017 iMac desktop w/ 32 GB RAM, a 1 TB fusion drive and a 1 TB external SSD. Had read about other people having performance issues, but from what I'd heard it seems to run better on Macs so I thought I'd be fine.

I decided to try the light version to see if I liked it, but I kept getting drop regular dropouts even with the lower velocity layers. It also felt slightly more sluggish in terms of latency and I could never figure out how to fix it. It wasn't a complete disaster - it never totally crashed - but the performance was noticeably buggier than any other VST I've tried. Can't image what the full version w/ multiple mics and full velocity layers would have been like.

I'm using 36 velocity layers and there's only ever a problem if I use more than one mic and get sloppy with the pedal. My computer is a dinosaur compared to yours.

As for latency - what soundcard/outboard module do you have? If it's outboard, how is it connected? Are you using ASIO drivers? Have you got any background applications running, like antivirus? Are you in power saving mode? Also, fiddle with the sample start control. I found that seemed to affect latency.

If you've found the Comp/Expd setting and clicked it, it should be running. There's a bypass button in there so press that to hear the difference.

I assume the Comp/Exp stands for compressor/expander. So it makes the quiet bits quieter and the loud bits louder. Walker is pretty flat sounding even at the settings I mentioned above. The Velocity Changer in KSP gives it much greater dynamic range. The Comp/Expd is a factory preset. You can play around with the settings in all the presets to find something that suits you. I'm still fiddling with it but the default Comp/Expd setting has made it easier to play both quieter and louder.

Maybe that's it. Mine's at 600 voices. I think that's what it was when I installed it. Or maybe I changed it. It was a while back and my memory's not too good.

Mine installed at 1200 and I reduced it to 400 but I'm using 2 mike positions. I'm still hung on Comp/Expd I don't see any factory presets maybe I didn't download them. My dampers in the gui don't work either but developer said that's normal now for newer installations maybe they got rid of the presets too. MooganDavid

Don't know about the dampers. As for the Comp/Expd - in case you haven't set it do the following:

Press the KSP button in Kontakt.
A grey panel appears at the right hand side of which are three buttons - Bypass, Preset and Edit.
Press Preset/Factory/Transform/Change Velocity.
Change Velocity panel appears with a graph in the centre.
Above the right hand side of the graph is a button with "Linear" on it. Press the down arrow to the right of this.
Press Comp/Expd.

Or pick one of the other presets. Play around with the settings and controls to see how they affect the sound and feel.

My biggest problem with the Granduer lately is what others posted in the past. Despite having 18 velocity layers, the dynamic range is just not right when compared to other Steinway sampled vsts, Galaxy instruments has done like Vintage D, or even the older Steinway they first sampled.
I have tried playing with the dynamic range control but not much luck.

Embertone, I'm just not satisfied with the tuning of the instrument and pedaling.

I have been going back to the e-instruments Session Keys S for my Steinway. Dynamics are there, pedaling is good with half pedal, and it's in tune. I think the e-instruments is overlooked because it's probably eclipsed by vintage d and the Granduer from a popularity perspective.

Thinking of buying the Steinway from Production voices. I have their Production grand and despite the Yamaha piano, the scripting for pedaling is great. Repedal and half pedal is the best.

Thanks Boylan got it. What did you start out with in dynamic scaling and volume scaling no bars under graphs? I don't have a problem with the walker's tuning I notice some but after using vienna imperial it's not that bad.

Start with the default setting. Pull the left hand sliders all the way down on both the dynamic and volume scaling. Leave the right hand one at the top. Adjust the bars under the graphs to make them disappear. This expands the dynamic range. The KSP tool expands it even more.

This is what I have done but each setup will be different. For example, I have velocity/volume scaling on my keyboard as well. All these controls affect the sound and feel. You have to keep fiddling around until you get something that works. It can be time consuming as each variable interacts with the other variables in unpredictable ways.

Yes, the tuning is off in a number of places. That's character Embertone tells us. Hmmm.. really? I find the volume drop when I press the sustain pedal equally annoying. But the tone is better than any other Steinway VST I've heard. At least for me. Just wish they would update it again and fix these issues.

I have the sforzando lite version. It's very good but way too bright and clinical for me. Might be my setup but I much prefer the Walker.

I found the PV Concert Grand too bright as well but was able address that with a velocity curve. There's no way to use a different velocity curve with the sforzando player that I know of but I was able to apply a velocity curve in my DAW. But yes, it is "clinical", and if you're looking for a "character" piano, that would be Walker. I prefer clinical I guess :-).