Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards [Poll] VST or builtin sounds?

Wise words! And that's why that I'm gonna keep my Korg C1 Air and customize the heck out of it (VST, speakers...) until I can afford an AP.

I guess I was the third to vote yesterday, and I selected built-in sounds. I prefer built in sounds. But the default sound on any DP is not satisfying to me, so I try to tweak it as much as possible to get the tone I like and which sounds great on my headphones. Some DPs require much more tweaking than others.

I do love the VST sounds, but its too technical for me with its endless options. VST also allows adding/modding additional gear to make the whole experience much more elevated. It just too much setup and complexities - so I am now in the built-in sounds world.

Interesting poll. Just voted. I am in the minority with my VST. It is already a sizeable sample (56 people or so) but Europe-dominated. The US probably still needs to wake up.

Once you know the VST way, there is no way back. You will return to it. And your inner self knows that.

THIS IS THE WAY!

VSTis have caught up, it's almost 60 - 40 right now. Well 61 - 39, but I'm biased so I round down for the built-in sounds, but round up for virtual libraries.

I would like to be able to use the built-in sounds, they are more predictable in their behaviour and respond well to my playing. They're just so horribly hollow and dull sounding. After I started with VSTis, I started disliking the built-in sounds of the Casio PX-5S.

The textures and character I can get in many piano VSTs, and I don't even have the best ones (except the Garritan CFX), is something I've not been able to get with the onboard sounds. Not even with massive EQing and layering of many piano voices, and occasionally with EL pianos and pads.

Mmathew, there is no need at all to immerse yourself in the endless technical options. Just play it as it is. Have you watched this video?

A question has kind of tickled my mind for while...

Why is this forum, or most other forums I suppose, dominated by Europeans and Americans? Why no Japanese or Chinese people? Or South American (except for one or two Brazilian fellows) or elsewhere? Is it language barrier? No interest in piano in those locations? Or is it that they are too busy practicing? This I think applies to the east Asia nations because I see many of them posting their practice sessions on Instagram.

Where are you seeing these numbers split by geography?

There are no numbers split by geography. Just, in Stockholm, Sweden, it is half past three in the afternoon, and in Stockholm, Iowa, it is half past eight in the morning. We in Europe have had many more waking hours to vote.

95% of the time I use built-in sounds. At home, I have a real grand piano. So the piano sounds in my other keyboards are for gigs/rehearsls/parties etc., and I don't feel that the incremental improvement of bringing and setting up a laptop is worth the bother. The only times I've used a VST is when recording, and either I was not at my house with access to the grand, or it had not been recently tuned, or it was something quick where I didn't want to bother with all the setup required to record the grand. Heck, and even then, sometimes I've used a built-in sound.

I've switched back and forth over the last few years. I think built-in sounds are slowly catching up to VSTs; they still lag considerably in "depth and detail" but have really made strides in the fullness of sympathetic resonances. I've switched back to using VSTs full-time, and I think the good VSTs really do sound a lot more like real pianos.


My recent Mac Mini VST build is documented here. I really couldn't ask for a more perfect setup. It's completely silent, hidden, and integrated into the DP, runs headless and on 24/7. When I need to access it, I can do so from any other computer in the house, including directly from the tablet on the piano's music rest (that serves as my sheet music display). I also use a keyboard as a BT page turner, and since it's already paired to the tablet, I can just pick it up off the floor if I ever need to type anything.

Hit the Next button in the poll results page.

Language I guess. Many european countries, e.g. the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark etc, have a language spoken by a relatively small population. It makes no sense to have a forum like this in Dutch, because there would be too few people. The second language of many people nowadays is English, so that is where we gravitate towards.

Other languages are quite large: Spanish, Chinese etc. I am sure they have their own piano forums, but it may well be that they are also just debating pivot lengths, velocity layers, modelling, VSTs vs on board sound, headphone impedance, and, on their acoustic forum, whether or not every part in an acoustic has to be produced in Germany, including the last screw, in order to be considered 'real' .

I saw a map somewhere, when clicking 'next' a couple of times after voting. In Europe the center of gravity was in the Channel between France and UK

I actually chuckled. Good one.

I think that is literally true. There are probably more dedicated pianists/piano students in China than in ROW combined at this point, and they're all interacting on Chinese forums and social media sites. Just as an example, we haven't had much in the way of tear-downs here, but within weeks of the CLP-7xx release, there were already links to Chinese forums that were...measuring pivot lengths and all that. So I don't even take that as being in jest.

A reason to learn Chinese now. For how can we resist a good debate on Pivot length

Let’s try to google 钢琴键盘枢轴长度 (the simplified Chinese translation of piano keyboard pivot length)....

okay maybe not learn Chinese for me.

This is sort of like the DAW wars! You have to use a particular one or something is wrong with you. Use the one that works for you and enjoy learning piano/playing piano.