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@Max_Forte : I don’t think Kontakt and Kontakt Player can cohabit, then if someone have paid for Kontakt 5 (as I do), he will have to pay for Kontakt 6 or install Kontakt Player 6 (and disinstall Kontakt 5) to use libraries designed for the newest Kontakt.

I had a similar setup in the past. I believe they were "Kontakt 3" and "Kontakt 4 Player". Worked well.

Just purchased the Embertone Walker piano, mainly for the extensive una corda samples, which my beloved Garritan CFX doesn't have. Now I'm contemplating to buy the close mic (U87) perspective. However, did anyone notice, when you switch off 'tone' (sweetening section), the piano actually sounds warmer and closer? Not sure if I really need that close mic perspective ...

When you switch off Sweetening (all three) you get piano as it recorded without processing. I have full piano with all mics and from time to time I change and combine different mics. Sometimes I love combination with two mics and sometimes solo with different ones. So, not much help for you, only if you take all mics you will have peace

Is anyone else having problems in Kontakt ever since they renamed this to Concert D? It didn't show in the side tab anymore so I opened Native Access where it showed that it was uninstalled despite having been installed earlier. But the name was now changed to Walker 1955 Concert D. Installing it in Native Access made it show up in Kontakt again, but now it is searching for "Walker 1955 Concert D.nicnt" but can't find it. That's because my file is still called "Walker 1955 Steinway D.nicnt". Should I just rename the files or can I break something with that? Would I have to rename every single file, also in the samples folders, and replace the string "Steinway" with "Concert"?

Also what's with the update, didn't they want to release it in July or something, and didn't they claim they just had a tiny little annoyance to get rid of which shouldn't take much more time?

I have the full package too and also many other vst's incl. the Garritan CFX full.
My personal absolute favourite is the hammer close mike.
And althaugh many combinations sound awesome , the hammer close mike produces that unique sound i favour above all other settings.
At first it sounded a bit thin in isolation, but the transparency, wooden hammer sound and gorgious sustain makes it the ideal piano for any mix i throw it in.
Without much further processing (a bit decreasing the bass eq) it is exactly what i need.
It is absolutely wonderfull how it maintains every aspect of the Walker 1955 without dominating to much with conflicting frequencies.

Again, by far my personal favourite after a couple of months playing around.

Well, this morning I ordered the close mic perspective to start with, but Chrome's 'auto-fill' wrote a faulty email address so I never received the code. I wrote Embertone to tell them about it, but based on experience, it could take a very long time before they respond.

Just a note for those interested, as part of a Black Friday weekend sale, the entire suite of Embertone's Walker 1955 Concert D - w/ full (all 6 mic) perspectives is available for 20% off the normal price; i.e. $119.20 USD today (Saturday, November 24th). I just purchased it!

https://embertone.com/instruments/instruments.html

I've been waiting to pull the trigger for the updated release that addresses the 1/2 pedaling and re-pedaling issue... which is very important to me, as I am using my virtual instruments for silent practice on my Mason & Hamlin BB 7' acoustic grand, with ProRecord MIDI and the built in QuietTime mute rail. But I had not seen it available for this price since it's introduction. Any news on the updated release? Last I saw:
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/embertone-releases-walker-1955-steinway-d.72492/page-23


I am adding this to my PianoTeq 6.3 Standard (Steingraeber E-272, Ant.Petrof 275, Grotrian Concert Royal, Bluthner Model One, Grand K2, Hamburg Steinway B, Hamburg Steinway D) and Garritan (Yamaha) CFX Full collection of virtual instruments. Should be fun to compare playability vs. acoustic sound emulation of the various packages!

You have almost the same Instruments as me
Yesterday, I bought the emberton too. Sadly I can't install it but if I figure it out it will be alot of fun!

About update for Emberton Steinway, the last information from Emberton in VI control forum is: `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.`
On my email I receive the message that update will be very soon.
I have a question for you Wolfgangmeister about silent function in acoustic pianos. Do you feel any problems when you play in silent mode, like hard action, key motion range are decreased, problems with tuning etc ? Some people said that is bad to have that on piano and some have opposite opinion. Thank you.

Thank you slobajudge relative to the Embertone update - I may PM Alex for the half pedal improvements beta patch, as this was the reason why I had not bought the package, due to the experiment we made with my MIDI recording of the Gluck-Sgambati Melody a few months back.
Relative to PianoDisc Quiet Time 'silent mode', when a piano is properly regulated, the only difference that I perceive when I play silently (and softly) is in a very small reduction in hammer 'let off' distance (~1/16 inch) when it is in 'escapement'. The two mute bars need to carefully set to be very close and right below to where the hammers just barely miss touching the strings. When the bass mute bar and treble/mid section bass mute bars are adjusted properly as part of a well-regulated action, there is no increase in stiffness to the action, key motion range is virtually identical and the player only feels a very slight perceivable difference in the 'let off' distance when playing quietly.

BTW, there is absolutely NO difference in the piano's tuning... I have seen people say this and it makes no sense! The mute bars only stop the hammers just before they strike the strings. In fact, I have taken my headphones off and if I listen carefully as I place my head very close to the piano (ala 'Beethoven' in the movie "Immortal Beloved"), I can actually 'hear' the resonance of the strings being 'played very quietly' due to the proximity of the hammer to the string, especially when the sustain pedal is down. All in all, it is very similar to the feeling that one gets when playing a Kawai Novus NV-10 or Yamaha AvantGrand Nx hybrid digital instrument - and it is a nice experience when paired with a high quality software Virtual Instrument. In my case, I have a WNG carbon-fiber/composite action installed in my M&H, which is also one of my favorite acoustic piano actions to play.
Congratulations pianoten - as soon as I download all the Embertone files, I will let you know how I make out. Did you download Native Instruments 'Native Access' and free 'Kontakt Player 6' first? These are required to use the Embertone VI...

Demos sound very good! In one review though, it was mentioned that it doesn't crossfade to the pedal-down samples, when the pedal is depressed *after* the notes are played - is this included in the upcoming update?

Greg

Now that I have the close mic perspective I must conclude that I prefer the standard mix version, at least when it comes to the Una Corda samples (which is my favorite aspect of the Walker). I guess you really do need every mic position in order to get 'your' sound. And even then I fear you might not be able to top the main version. Grrrr!

Thank you for detail answer. Between Novus or Avant grand I choose acoustic with silent mode this has more sense for me, and btw lucky you, that piano with WNG action you have is beautiful.

Depends, you really need all mics to find your sound like you said, but mix close and main at the same time, that mix is beautiful. When you have all mics you will change opinion from time to time and use different settings. Room position alone is excellent for classical music, I play a lot with it, but now I use main plus hammer mics to achieve more closer and character piano sound similar to sound in video I post in similar thread, another example is something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn_4p1K4Aew&start_radio=1&list=RDTn_4p1K4Aew

Do you combine the main 'default' mix with one of the individual mic perspectives? Isn't that asking for phase issues since the main mix is a mix of all the mic positions? In some libraries that offer different mic perspectives it's even impossible to select the main mix perspective together with one of the other individual mic perspectives.

Edit: I spoke too soon. It seems that none of the mic perspectives of the main perspective are used for any of the other mic perspectives. Interesting!

Yes, as far as I know the main mic are default AKG mics. You can combine them with other perspectives. In promised update Emberton will give us working multi patch. Till that happening we can use individual mics alone or more of them load separately in the same channel to achieve similar effect.

Before you go drop $100 on this thing you might want to read my experience with this company. A month or so ago I picked up the full version of the concert D because it sounded decent in some online demos.

After paying I went to install it and got constant errors. The support was responsive but when it finally was installed the latency in kontakt was unbearable.(yes they use kontakt so be prepared for that) To contrast I use ravenscroft and their sample player had near zero latency so this was not just some hardware specific issue on my end.

Also, the quality of the samples was worse than I expected based on the demos i had heard. Note I was using this as a VST to use during practice sessions with my VPC1 controller, at least that was the plan.

So after an email chain 16 emails long of installation issue back and forth, constant Kontakt player issues and being overall unimpressed with sound quality and the 0.5s latency on every key press, I decided it was not worth $114 and asked for a refund.

Their reply was that there were no refunds and I could sell it second hand. Well if you look at the sales page you will see it is extremely vague. Also, not one single mention of a no return policy.

You can put two and two together here easily and figure out they leave that out on purpose because they know it will detract sales. Obviously this is unacceptable to me so I open a case with paypal.

Embertone then goes to great lengths at this point to try to fight this case and discredit me to keep the money for a software i have not touched since the day it was bought. PayPal ends up sided with them and I am out $114, the cost of the main vst and a mic pack.

Obviously my experience has been terrible with this company and I know musicians like myself dont have a ton of money lying around. To just throw $114 in the gutter is painful and I don't want anyone to go through what I did.

Similar products like garritan cfx (which i found was a much higher quality product) believe in their software and offer 30 day return policy right on their website. If you buy anything from embertone and end up having ANY issues with it, just realize you are out your money.

To top it off they now seem to sell the lite version for only $10 dollars so so much for reselling this to someone second hand to recoup my investment (which I would never want to do anyway given my issues with it.)

If you are getting 0.5 seconds or 500 ms of latency, then there is something else wrong in your system. I just measured the inherent latency of Lite version and there is only ~10 ms of internal latency to the plugin. Make sure you have the sample start set to the 12 o'clock position to get it down to ~3 ms. The other 490 ms of latency is in your set up. Make sure you have the latest ASIO driver installed and working. Here is a guide for optimal settings in Kontakt and checking latency.

https://support.native-instruments....I-Optimize-the-Performance-of-KONTAKT-5-

As far as sound, it's a subjective thing. I don't find it objectionable and find it has a warm clear tone typical of Steinways. I have Ravenscroft as well and Ravenscroft is bit smoother with layer transitions and has better pedalling behavior for at least right now. I would suggest people try the Lite version first to see if it works for them and then upgrade to Full later.

Hi,

maybe someone can help me with installation. I bought the Walker 1955 Steinway D a few days ago but I didn't get the software running yet. Its my first Kontakt based piano and so it is possible that I am doing something terribly wrong. Here is what I did.

After buying the license I downloaded the full package with their "connect" Software and copied the files to the PowerBook (OS X 10.11) where I want to use the Piano.

At this laptop I installed NativeAccess, downloaded Kontakt Player and registered the Piano with the serial number. The registration was confirmed in NativeAccess.

After starting the Kontakt Player I tried to Add the Library but all i get is that the "Library content is not found" and that the .nicnt file could not be found. But its exactly at the place where it is assumed,- I checked it many times.

In the last three days I tried a lot of things but nothing helped. Today I made a complete fresh install of my Mac, but again with the same result. I contacted Embertone but didn't get an answer yet. Maybe someone can give me a hint, since I am getting more and more frustrated.

Thanks, Wolfram