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Vienna Imperial is my true love.

Would you go as far as calling it your ‘immortal beloved’, that there Vienna Imperial?

Yes.

So, I think you can say the conclusion here is: You have to see for yourself.

I’ve seen things, U3piano; things that should’ve been left unseen, for they have caused me tremendous suffering. So I say, be careful what you wish.....to see for yourself!

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Back in the day I almost purchased Ivory II, but glad I didn’t, and now greater things have come our way.

A solid list as it seems to me. I have the Production Voices libraries, and the Sampletekk ones you mentioned, but none of the other ones.

A few notes though.

All the Sampletekk pianos are at 80% off, not 70%. Which makes them an even better option. I like the Black Grand MkII, and the White Grand MkII.

They're probably not the best ones ever, in many peoples view, but for 80% discount, totally worth that money.

The Production Voices libraries, Production Grand 2, and the Concert Grand Steinway, are great, and at 60% off, good value.

As already pointed out, they need the full Kontakt, which possibly rules them out for very many VST users.

The same goes for the Sampletekk pianos, except the Sampletekk Black (not the Black Grand MkII, which still needs full Kontakt, but the one named Sampletekk Black, without the MKII added).

The Sampletekk libraries with MKII in their names, are the same libraries as the ones without it in their names, but with some features added, for example True Resonance, Real Time/True Pedaling, Sympathetic Resonance and some other nifty features, as they say on the website.

Let me finally raise everyone's attention, that Simeon Amburgey has made a walkthrough video of Production Grand 2 LE. Love all his videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KZ4AdCmlYw

I love Simeon's videos too! I even reached out to him before, a very nice person. Though I play classical and he is more of a Gospel origin musician, it's wonderful hearing him trying out the libraries, and bring them to their extremes! A nice content creator!!!

The Production Voices Concert Grand could have become my favorite piano but it has a bunch of issues, as I wrote here earlier. There is a range in the higher couple of octaves that is a lot quieter or less clear than the rest, it sounds muddy and weak. The advanced pedaling features are broken, they don't work when you activate them and actually crash the plugin. Same with when you change some values in the configuration menus, it also crashes Kontakt. These things never got fixed. Such a shame, another one of those "could have been a top contender but nope" pianos.

I wonder why nobody mentions the Waves grand rhapsody ?


I think that we should ask which piano vst gives you the most pleasure.
For me it’s the Embertone Walker 1955 and maybe it lacks here and there, but it gives me by far the most pleasure of all piano vst’s. And i have two VSL piano’s, Garritan CFX, Wavesfactory Mercury, Hammersmith pro, Pianoteq, CinePiano, Signature grand Sam Samples, Ravenscroft , Super Grand and lots of others i try to forget about I ever purchased for some greedy selfish moment of weakness.

There's just not enough love for VSL CFX

I rarely use a VST .... but when I do .... I prefer Pianoteq.

It gives me instant access to many different sounds.

If I do not particularly care for the one I have chosen, I chose a different one.

I usually modify the bass sound (reduce it) and add a velocity curve for the moment.

And go.

I do not listen intently to hear if it sounds exactly like a real piano.

I just listen to hear if it sounds good to my ears.

And it usually does.

Then after a bit ... I might tire of it and I might select a different one.

Or I might use my MP11SE internal sound and somehow it now sounds better than it did prior to using the VST.

Magical ...

And on and on it goes ....

Grazilerimba, I just fired up my Production Grand 2 Gold, and turned on Authentic Pedal, and Continuous Pedal. It didn't crash anything.

Are you sure you have the latest updates of everything, Kontakt 5/6, and the plugin itself? I don't remember if there is an update after Jason published version 2.

If the pedalling features work or not, I have no idea. I guess I'm tonedeaf when it comes to repedalling, half pedalling, true pedalling, or whatever it's called, LOL!

Oh, the Waves Grand Rhapsody, the less we talk about that one, the better.

I hope you understand that 'True' in their statement is fake, right? They just use Kontakt scripts to emulate it.

Yes, I knew that, and they say so on their website (which I'm assuming most will read, if they are taking a look at these Sampletekk libraries). Maybe that's one way to keep the size of the libraries down.

Which leads me to think, VSTis are maybe never only sampled, or only modelled, well - except Pianoteq. A lot of piano sample makers model resonances and other stuff, like pedal behaviour.

So I don't think it's right to call it fake, unless you believe that Pianoteq is 100% fake, because everything there, is emulated.

@TheodorN
I was talking about the Concert Grand (the later released Steinway), not the Production Grand (the earlier released Yamaha).
I am not aware of such issues with the Production Grand.

Does Pianoteq declare they have something 'true'?
Samletekk declares their scripted features as 'true' which is fake statement IMO.

The best VST is the one you enjoy playing at the moment.

God Bless,
David

Grazilerimba, sorry, you said Concert Grand, just missed it, because we were discussing the Yamaha library, or emulation as we might call the VSTs now.

By the way, I fired up Concert Grand LE, and the pedal behaviour was in fact very strange. When turning on Authentic Pedal and Continuous Pedal, it was like the sound was cut off, so the sustain was better without the features.

It didn't crash Kontakt, nevertheless.