I apologize if this is a frequent topic, but I have yet to figure out the advanced search for this forum. Anyway, I've heard good and bad things about Pianoteq, and was wondering what other software competes with it. From combing through several other topics, I've found True Pianos and Ivory. Are there more?

Are there more? There are many dozens, more than any one person could keep track of. Maybe it would be fun to try and compile a list with a short description of every piano sample and model on the market.

Thelonius One, Pianoteq uses mathematical modelling to create the piano sound, whereas other packages such as Ivory etc. utilises samples.

There are strengths and weaknesses to each system, however I believer Pianoteq is still the only purely modelled software piano available.

Cheers,
James
x

So, is Pianoteq the only one out there that doesn't use a multi-GB library of samples? I was looking over at the Ivory Grand Pianos website and saw that it uses a library of over 40GB, not to mention the fact that it was bragging about it. That doesn't seem appealing to me to have to use all that space. Does anyone have experience comparing these softwares, especially outside of these Big 3?

The Pianoteq site recommends having a computer with a processor speed of over 3Ghz. Has anyone had problems with using something less or without a dual-core processor?

Pianoteq works pretty well on low powered machines. There are users using it even with netbooks. I can run the trial versions without problems on a Core Duo 2 GHz Notebook. Even on my Powerbook 12 Inch (1.33 GHz G4) it works pretty well. If you get problems, you can try to deactivate Reverb or limit the maximum polyphony to 32.

If in doubt, download the free demo version and try it on your own PC.

TruePianos is the only other one I know of that sort of fits into the modeling category. Everything else is sample based, and there are a bunch of them-

QuantumLeapPianos by EastWest
Ivory by Synthology
Sampletekk offers several a la carte style.
ArtVista
Galaxy
Steinberg
Garriton

These are probably the most well known ones. Some of them come with more than 1 piano. Ivory and QLP have 4 different ones for example.

I wouldn't sweat the space issue.

1. You don't need to load all of the pianos that they offer. Just pick one (or two). I did and it fit into 12 GB.

2. Even is you run the full 40 GB load, that's small potatoes in an age when the smallest available disk drive is over 100 GB, and most run many times larger than that.

3. If you have an older computer with a smaller drive, you can always replace it with a bigger one (or just add a second drive). For $50 you'll be drowning in storage space.

With Ivory (or any of the other libraries) you'll get the benefit of real, sampled piano sound, rather than the synthetic kind offered by Pianoteq.

"If you have an older computer with a smaller drive, you can always replace it with a bigger one (or just add a second drive)"

That is good advice, as long as you get one that rotates fast enough. Slow hard drives make bottlenecks with sample through-put.

Agreed. But let's not leave anyone with the impression that fast disks are hard to find. Most are plenty fast so long as you get 7200 RPM drives (and not 5400 RPM).

Ok, cool. This is a great start for me. Thanks blueston. I was having trouble finding the right words to google.



Yeah, I guess I already know that, but my immediate reaction is annoyance, probably because I'm used to dealing with space issues since the computers I've owned haven't been younger than 2004 (and I'm still stuck in 2003 thinking!). Although I'm more familiar with ATA drives, I've been thinking about purchasing a 1TB SATA drive, since it's only about $40-$50 more than a 500GB IDE drive, but I'm a little anxious about that. Anyways, that's off topic. I'll try to test out those library-based programs when I'm able to purchase a second hard drive.

Does anyone have experience with Kontakt 4? This video of "Laura" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj6TGjf5kaI - sounds pretty good, although I can kinda here some tinniness (if that's a word), but pretty negligible.

Also, most of the software blueton's post aren't readily available on the web (Amazon in particular). Is that also typical?

Hi,

Yes, he is using "Galaxy Vintage D" which is a sampled Steinway piano.
This has a high variability of sound, it can sound mellow or bright, resonances can be adjusted and so on....

So dont judge from this video alone..

A speciality is the freeform velocity curve, this also has influence to the sound and playability. (I use the default linear curve,though, that works for me) Most samplers dont have a freeform Velocity curve. (Pianoteq has it)

This fits into 4 or 5 GB Disk space. From version 4 on, the Kontakt sampler supports lossless compression. This reduces the disk requirements to 50%.

I have this and had performance problems for a long time until I discovered that disk fragmentation is deadly for this Sampler.
I have the samples now on an dedicated small disk partition and it is a dream. Memory Usage is 280MB and with a fast SSD it can be reduced to 28MB (because the buffer can be reduced with a SSD)

I think this uses much less CPU than pianoteq. For example enabling or disabling reverb doesnt matter for me, this has very low CPU usage with or without reverb. Seems they use very optimized DSP code. (Provided that the disk is optimized, this is essential for CPU load) The other pianos out of the Galaxy series run on Kontakt also and are even smaller.

I can really recommend this for ressource usage but of course also for price, sound and variability.
Its my clear favorite now.

BTW,
Amazon is not the best source for such specialized software.

Look at
www.bestservice.de
www.ilio.com
www.galaxypianos.com

or other specialized shops.
Or use Google to find a particular product: Google

Peter