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i want to connect my digital piano to my computer for better sound. i need to choose a piano software, what are the avialable options? ive seen mentions of ivory and pianoteq, are there others? which has to most realistic sound? that is what most important to me.

You can download free demos of Pianoteq and TruePianos and try them for yourself. Unfortunately, you can't try Ivory, which is why there is no way I'll every buy that product.

The weal link will be the analog playback eqipment. The quality of the amp and speaker(s) you select will matter about as much as the software.

I was just at the music store and noticed a Yamaha CP300 and CP33 on display. These both use the same internal samples but the CP33 sounded MUCH beter and had power like a real grand piano. Why? The CP33 lacks built-in speakers so they had it hooked up to a Harke kayboard amp. The amp was about 30 inches square with a large 12" speaker plus a smaller horn tweeter and about 100 watts of power. Even at low volume the sound was better then the built-in spealers of the others.

There is a web site, I can't find it now but it has samples from almost all of the software pianos. I'm sure someone will post the link. This is exactly what you need.

But you know what? Apple builds in a sampled Yamaha Grand to every Mac. I don't think it's bad and, well, it's free and already there. If you use Logic for recording there is a better Yamaha that comes with it.

Ivory has Pianoteq beat in every way in my opinion. I own it and that's what I use. It easily blows away the piano sound/expression of all the high end DPs I've tried as well, which is why I just chose a cheap one with a touch I liked to use with it. I've tried Pianoteq but the difference is it is shaped (algorithms), not actual instrument samples, and I can tell.

Ivory allows much more expression because it is actual piano samples recorded at around 10 different velocities (for comparison my DP default piano sample is, 4?). The sustain samples are full length (not looped) and there are no obvious transitions or any of the other obvious digital signatures.

To give you an idea of the size Pianoteq is about 250mb if I remember correctly. Ivory is somewhere around 40 GB. As for which one sounds more "real", Ivory is real, Pianoteq is virtually created. There are other options of course, but these two are the only ones I've tried.

Here's the list that I know of. There are many other smaller sets of samples / soundfonts that you can also look for.

Pianoteq
Truepianos
Ivory
Garritan Steinway
Native Instruments Akoustic Piano (4 separate instruments or the bundle)
East West Quantum Leap pianos
Best Service Galaxy II Pianos
Art Vista Virtual Grand Piano
Steinberg The Grand
Vienna Imperial (not sure if this replaces or is a more expensive version of Vienna Boesendorfer) - this is probably the most expensive software piano on my list, by far.

I know I've seen another modeled piano, but I don't have it in my book marks. There is also a freely available version of Modartt's VST available (pre-Pianoteq).

I use Galaxy and Truepianos, and I prefer Galaxy by far.

The latency is killer - it's not good for much other than seeing how you like the base sounds - but you can trial some of these at this site:
http://www.try-sound.com/
including Galaxy II and Ivory.

Rich

In the case of Pianoteq vs Ivory, it's not the size that counts. Those are two different animals.

I do find most sampled pianos to sound more "real" than PianoTeq, but I find PianoTeq much more enjoyable to play in real-time. The latest update to it has blurred the line between the two even further.

My advice would be download the demo of PianoTeq and the various sampled libraries you're considering and have a play to find which you prefer.

I use Best Service Galaxy II. Sond On Sound awarded it five stars. Included are a Hamburg Steinway D, a Bosendorfer Imperial - which has become my daily player - and a Bluthner baby grand.

There's a downloadable demo page here. It's free, but registration is required.

The Galaxy II pianos are highly tweakable and are probably intended to be tweaked. If you try the Bosie, I recommend using c.35% compression and c.20 warming. The damper and string noises are set a little high for my ears, so you might want to experiment with lower settings. (The string noises are ones which you hear when holding down the damper pedal.)

Here is the list I was thinking of, LOTS of MP3 files to listen to. Put them on an iPod and spend a week listening. iPods have this neat feature were tou can "rate" tracks one to five stars as you listen. Try rating without looking to see which software you are listening to.

Warning: You go nuts. there are about 50 recording of the exact same, note per note piece each made with a different virtual piano. It's the perfect way to compare but I get tired of the same thing, over and over.

I find that that are all good enough that all the steinway D sound like steinway D. Even Apple's (which is nearly free because it is included on the "orchestra" jam pack that samples every orchestra instrument)

http://purgatorycreek.com/documents/27.html

Personal opinion, respected in every way!

Yes there are. A lot of people in the sampled world have gone to other sample libraries because of that. VSL has at some points 100 velocity layers (!!!!) Pianoteq has 127 in every single note

Pianoteq is max 20 MB, not 250. QL Pianos are 270 GB(for 4 pianos) and The Garritan Steinway is 68 GB. Size does play an important part, but it's not the end of the world.

The equivelant that I like to make is this:

Sampled piano: recording
Modelled (synthed) piano: live creation.

Take your pick!

I'll agree that pianoteq is still not 100% there, but as someone else mentioned it feels best when playing with a DP (although it doesn't sound best).

Hi Nikolas. As I said those are the only two I have tried so that's all the comparison I can make. I'm no expert of course, just going by what sounds best to me (which is always subjective). Can you explain what you mean by live creation? Do you mean practice as well? Using the ASIO drivers with a low buffer I am having no latency with the sampled piano, but I'm still interested in what you mean. Thanks!

iroh,

Remember that you will need to take your computer setup into consideration before making a final decision on a piano. I prefer Ivory, Garritan Steinway and the Galaxy II pianos but if you don't have your computer setup properly (Ivory works best with fast hard drives that are separate from your system hard drives) you may or may not be happy with your decision.

Although I don't own Pianoteq, I've played with the demo enough to know that it will not tax your system as much as a sampled library so you will need to take all these things into consideration. Choosing a sampled piano based solely on it sound may create hours of frustration if you find your computer can't handle it and you end up listening to a bunch clicks and pops as your hard drive struggles to keep up.

i can't seem to find where to edit my original post.

ok, i need the piano software to work under linux now. so lets make two lists, the best software piano for linux and the best software piano in windows.

as for comp and sound requirements for best quality lets assume i have the hardware, i would like to focus on the software. the sound quality is what i am after.

Pianoeq is being used by Linux users, the following is the most recent thread on the Pianoteq forum:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic.php?id=924

A search yielded me 33 threads dealing with Linux/Pianoteq.

Glenn

I'm finding that the sound quality is VERY much influenced by the analog amplifiers and the speaker system used. Try this experiment: get a very good quality CD recording of a solo piano performance. One that is technically well recorded. Then play it through the sound system you intend to play your DP through. Close your eyes. Does it really fool you into thinking there is a real grand piano in your room? Likely not. Your DP can never sound better than that CD. So get to work on the sound system until the CD does fool you.

One thing you will find is that if you run on Linux or a Mac you don't need such powerful hardware. Windows is quite poor when it comes to fast real-time response and you have to make up for this by using higher-end, more powerful hardware. Even very old Macs and Linux running on "hand me down" hardware works fine for music recording and virtual instruments.

I

I think these folks are running it under some form of emulation -- there isn't (so far as I know) a `real' Linux version of Pianoteq. If you're prepared to go for emulation, I expect that most of the Windows piano apps would work fine on Linux. You'll probably have to fiddle around a bit to get decent low-latency operation, however.

I don't know of any modern piano emulators that work natively on Linux (not using emulation). I'd certainly like to know if there are. You can get tolerable results using the elderly Timidity, particularly if shop around for quality samples to feed it with. But how it stacks up against modern software, I don't know.

I had to look.... Downloaded and decompressed the trial version.

Yes it is 100% pure native linux. Here is what the "file" utility has to say

~ $file /Users/chris/Downloads/Pianoteq35\ Trial/Pianoteq35\ Trial
/Users/chris/Downloads/Pianoteq35 Trial/Pianoteq35 Trial: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, stripped
~ $

If only more people understood and believed what you stated.

One Pianoteq user didn't like the sound of it - he was using the onboard sound chip in his laptop. Yikes - when my EMU crapped out two weeks ago, I had to use the Realtek onboard sound for a few days until the EMU was fixed - the sound was unbearable.

Glenn

This discussion on the merits of good sound hardware is intriguing.

At the moment I'm recording my P155 straight from AUX OUT to stereo line in on the PC (using a 10ft cable). I have a Realtek HD onboard sound card, and a budget set of Logitech X230 speakers. The recordings to PC, when played back, don't sound quite as nice as when I play directly through headphones (ATH700), of course.

I believe that upgrading the onboard soundcard wouldn't do much to improve the quality in this case, but I'd like to hope it would ...

A few more names to add to the list:

Sampletekk
K-Sounds
Pianowave

I have one from each and they are all very good. I also have and like Pianoteq.

Greg.