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Concert Grand LE, Production Grand 2 LE, and all SFZ libraries are on sale (50% or more) till May 31st.
Concert Grand LE, and Production Grand 2 LE require full Kontakt (not Player).

I own the PV Grand LE. The installation is without NI Access. The requirements for Cpu is very high.

The sound quality and playability is good.

I am interested in 300 grand but only if it runs in Kontakt.

What is 300 grand?

300 Grand is the Yamaha CFX, only Sforzando version as of yet, a cut down version. Don't understand what is delaying the release of the full Kontakt version with all the microphone pairs (I'm guessing it'll be huge, and expensive).

That said, I was hoping the 300 Grand Compact would be included in this sale. I really wanted to snatch it, would do for $29, even $39, but not for $49. I would stay away from the Sforzando versions of the other ones, and rather wait for a bigger discount on the full versions (if you have Kontakt full).

I have both the Production Grand Gold (Yamaha C7) and the (Steinway) Concert Grand LE. I haven't noticed any CPU problems on my system - I7-8700K, 16GB RAM. My biggest gripe with them is how long they take to load. Some samples for a few notes fail to load in the case of the Production Grand, but I can live with that.

oh, that´s interesting. I also mean the loading time, but i am not a computer nerd, so sorry. i own an 5 year old i7 Laptop and the loading time from Garritan and PV LE is nearly the same. it tooks minutes.

The 300 Grand is sampled from a CFX disklavier.The velocities should be very exact. The sample rate is very high and the sound is amazing. The sfz version has only 1 Mic and costs at the beginning 29€. I would recommend the youtube video from simeon.

Now the price is 49€.

Which C7 do you like more? The PV or the acousticSamples C7?

Sigh. I really wish these companies would do standalone players like VSL, Garritan, and others.

It’s so annoying to have to spend super amounts of money on the samples themselves, then have to spend even more money on the Kontakt player.

Also, unfortunately, the one I’m interested in no part of the sale. I want the Concert Grand. Sound quality seems stupendous. Unfortunately the lack of a demo or significant samples means I’ll have to wait until I have some more disposable income before I can splurge.

Klausi6, my experience differs a bit from yours. I don't play the piano that often now, but I just tested loading both of those piano VSTs.

The Garritan took less than 30 seconds, each microphone perspective. So if one likes switching between perspectives, you spend about a minute and a half loading, which is not terrible I guess. When I used the Garritan, I mostly used the classic perspective, so it's only 30 seconds for me, but yeah, Contemporary and Player have the same loading times.

It took between two and three minutes to load the Production Grand Gold. It is bigger than PV Grand LE, but not that much bigger. These missing notes increase the loading time, because I have to confirm the popup warnings for the missing sample files.

When the Production Grand loads initially it loads a preset with only two mic perspectives, and if I want to switch to the other presets, with more microphone pairs, then these need to be loaded of course, which increases the loading time.

I'll have to give an edge to the AcousticSamples C7 Grand, but mostly because of the ease of use. It loads almost immediately, as it is very small, and I like the sound of it, quite pianolike. I don't dislike the sound of the Production Grand C7, but I sometimes feel it's a bit sterile. It can be sculpted in so many ways though, just haven't dug that deep into the settings.

This user (un)friendliness of the Production Voices libraries, is something the company must work on. It is a turnoff, having no GUI in the beginning, and having to dive into the file-explorer-like interface of Kontakt. Piano playing is so much about feeling, and when the feeling is negative, I tend not to use a piano VST. Lousy GUI is OK for a word processing program, but not far a sample library.

Sorry for a long post / rant!

kontakt works great with the hibernate mode of my laptop. this makes all pianos available to me within a few seconds.
that´s why i am a big fan of NI Kontakt.
it works multitimbral and is extemely customizeable.

but i was also surprised that there are still libraries that you have to install manually in kontakt. also the error messages about missing samples were annoying. i had confirmed these fix routines and saved a snapshot.

PV LE works but it is not my favorite.

I also am interested in the 300 grand but in kontakt only, as well. I had reached out to their developer and the sforzando version won't be supporting any advanced continuous controller functions. So no half pedal or repedal in that version. Kontakt version however, will support continuous controller data.

99.9% of all VI are made not with piano players in mind, but with composers/music producers instead.

Kontakt is built on top of 2 decades old proprietary framework, and has very old core engine with outdated and slow IO and outdated GUI. But it offers very reach scripting language, and a lot of production ready scripts for library creators and music producers. And its backwards compatibility is very important for majority of its users which makes NI very hesitant to major upgrades.

I just tested Production Grand 2 Gold (54 GB of sample size) - it took me seconds to start playing, not minutes. So it might be your slow hard drive (I use PCIe4 NVMe drive).

I have the Garritan on a WD 500GB SSD, and the Production Grand Gold on a Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD. Why is the Garritan CFX faster, when they are both on regular SSDs?

For the record, I have the Concert Grand LE on my NvME system drive, 500GB. Just tested loading it, took roughly two minutes and a half, with no missing files. No siginificant difference in loading times, between it and the Production Grand.