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Check out this video from the new Promega 2+
Presented by Don Airey of Deep Purple

http://keyszone.boards.net/thread/213/promega-deep-purple-music-messe

GEM made incredible advanced modelling piano' early 2000's till they went out of buiseness
Now a finish Company took over the project and brought technollogy back to 2017 standards.

FINALLY something more than just pretty pictures on a website.

Although we of course already knew what it sounds like. (Unless they have actually changed something.)

And in case someone misses it: That's actually GEM's own YouTube channel with some more videos.

Hold the front pages!!

It layers piano and strings! What a feature!

The thing about old war horses like Don is that, like many gigging musicians, they end up playing the same rig for donkey's years (because they know how to work it and they've programmed their favourite patches etc). Show them something 'new' and they turn cartwheels. But for weirdo geeks like us it's just not news at all.

I wish they would explicitly state whether or not this is basically the thing GEM was making or whether they've further developed it. My money is on the former. The GEM sounds were good for their day but not really competitive by today's standards.

It also splits with acoustic bass and piano!

And I recognise some of the demo tunes as being from the "original General Music" times. Some others sounded like new ones.

Well, feature wise it's still pretty good with all those sample interpolations, resonances, key-off sounds and whatnot. Many of the "buzz words" are there.

And a while ago people were writing about the user interface on Nords. There's some of that here: You want to change something. You turn a knob.

Fatar action?

I wasn't really that impressed with the piano sound itself. It sounded very muffled and flat. Perhaps it's the sound quality of the recording itself, but if you're featuring something and talking about the sound wouldn't you make sure that was great?

The good old Generalmusic USA website is still somewhat functional with some sound samples and more importantly Dave McMahan's demonstration video of the DRAKE engine's details:

http://www.generalmusicus.com/Promega2.htm

Hey - speak for yourself. I'm normal.

Greg.

Had to sift through a little to find just the piano without voiceover - and the fist solo piano clip I'm annoyed that the pianist can't do legato pedaling. Then I played the Piano Finale one, and it sounds like they have a chorus effect on the piano or something. It sounds good, I just wish they only used reverb (I assume that's an effect and not built into the sound).

You keep telling yourself that!

[s][/s]

Cant imagine they be using something else, the latest triple actions from fatar are quite good...

Some of these demos on their YouTube page just sound weird. Is this one what their piano engine really sounds like? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5REHzGRmBQ

That sounds like the grand piano patch on my SY99 - one velocity layer, maybe 1-2 looped samples per octave, etc. Some of the other videos sound slightly better, but that one just sticks out like a sore thumb.

I've understood that the RP-X module was/is very close to what was/is in Promega 2 and 3. It's easy to find sound samples of that module.

For example here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/marcoballa/search?query=rp-x

SoundOnSound has a Promega 2+ demo video from MusikMesse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hho-ewWgElA

Ouch...2999 GBP or 3300 EUR. USA price and availability to be confirmed later.

Well, it seemed like being targeted for gigging professionals already early on as the focus on their marketing talk was on reliability and easy serviceability. Maybe those who play well can afford a one.

So, it will be a niche product played by few.

Muzykuj.com now has a short demo video with just playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Vv9ykcNP8

You can also see the keyboard close up. No signs of wood and kind of average key length.

RGTV also got their hands on a one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlNmiAIHMw8

I remember the second acoustic piano sound very well (at 0:47). It is a Steinway and I always liked the tonality of it. Their much trumpeted Fazioli never really did it for me.

I think this is further evidence that you get basically the same sound set as before. Just two true stereo pianos. Quite decent Rhodes. And a very direct user interface.

Assuming I liked the sounds I'd pay no more than £1500 for this thing and it's getting on for double that I understand. Crazy money.

What do you mean by average key length?

I mean the pivot point.

It's just a very rough guesstimate based on how much of the black keys remain visible at the fallboard's end when the key is pressed down.

In concert grands the black key disappears almost similarly much in both ends. In actions like Yamaha GHS or Fatar TP/100 the other end stays quite high.