I have been anxiously waiting for two VSTs:

Synthogy Ivory II
AND
IS - Fazioli Concert Grand



After months of fruitlessly checking his website and even writing him an e-mail regarding the upcoming release, I just went to his website and almost fell of my chair haha!

I was so excited because Matt Stedeford said that the Fazioli he was sampling will be the largest sample library at the time of release, with 71,588 samples and 127 velocity layers in the Extreme Edition.

Website: http://www.imperfectsamples.com/

It looks like you can buy/get all versions except the Extreme Edition immediately. You can pre-order the Extreme Edition for the release on the 31th of October, 2010. What I find so intriguing is that he will ship his entire library on an external harddrive, that is very convenient. I am suprised that he is able to use the official "Fazioli" name, where as Synthogy did not get that privilege and had to resort to calling their VST "Italian Grand *HINT HINT*".

The prices will be:

• Fazioli Concert Grand (Basic) £39.99
  8 Layers, ~2000 samples, 2 Mic perspectives
• Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand (Pro) £89.98
  12 layers of perspective 1, and an extra mic perspective with 8 layers, 4,653 samples
• Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand (Complete) £119.97
  Up to 14 layers and 3 mic perspectives gives the Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand (complete) added versatility and dynamics,
  ~9000 samples
• Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand (Extreme) Delivery: 31st Oct 2010 £299.96
  The World's Largest sampled grand piano, with up to 127 layers, 5 mic perspectives, with perfect and imperfect instruments, 71,588 samples, 162GB, ext. hard drive, 5 mic positions

The Extreme Edition seems to be the mother of all sample libraries. I am very anxious to get my hands on it!
The "Basic" Version seems to give you the most bang for the buck for just ~50 Euro and 8 dynamic layers is just 2 short of Ivory.
Listening to the sample songs on his website really impressed me. Might consider ordering the Extreme edition.

Video:

Blimey. What sort of computer will run this? If it can be made to work on any decent laptop and sounds good I think this is great value. Looking at the specs of the extreme version I checked the calendar to check it wasn't 1st April...I'm astounded that someone has put this together. 127 layers!

Steve

Looks like there are both EXS24 and Kontakt versions of this. I wonder if it will run on the free Kontakt Player.

To those wondering if it will require a powerful computer to run this. No. The size of the library does not have much effect on the amount of CPU power required. That is determined by how many notes you play per unit of time. Layers and notes you don't play just lay there on the disk and do nothing. But you will need a disk large enough to hold all the data.

EDIT: To answer my own question here is this quote from the Imperfect Samples web site


So I guess this means if you are using a Windows based PC it will cost you an extra $380 or so to use this product if yuo don't already have Kontakt 4. EXS24 is an Apple format.

127 layers sampling is really interesting, however what about half pedaling?

The ad says "70,000 samples". That works out to 795 samples of each key.

I sent an e-mail to Matt asking him about Half-pedalling and Sympathetic String Resonance etc., once he replies I'll post his answer. (or maybe he replies himself)

Divided by 5 mic positions.

Strange that the Youtube demo shows off so few layers!

From their website:

"With a choice of 5 microphone perspectives, up to a record-breaking 127 layers, true staccato, release samples, direct picked strings, perfect and imperfect instruments, piano effects, muted keys, unmuted keys, piano body wood knocks, seat and lid sounds, and many more, the Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand contains over 70,000 samples."

I wonder what "up to" means?

Right now I'm listening to the demos there. The first two seems like quite a muffled / mellow sound, but a quite authentic sound. A lot of pedal noise, especially in the "Gymnopedie No. 1" demo. (Why do people think that that is a good thing?) The third demo is a mix, and the piano is fairly buried.

The last demo combines solo and a bit of mix.

No spanked key demos at all - or the usual 8,000 notes per minute type of demo!

I'm intrigued. I get a real Art Vista type vibe from these demos. I wonder what the playability will be like.

"Up to 127" is in reference to the perspectives.
The "imperfectly" sampled perspectives do not have 127 velocites, only the "perfectly" sampled perspectives. There are 5 perfectly sampled perspectives, which can be seen here:

http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website/samples/fazioliconcertgrand/fazioligrand_extreme.php

You can compare the different perspectives in mix, quite a cool feature I just discovered lol.

http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website/samples/fazioliconcertgrand/fazioligrand_extreme_mixer.php

Huh? What the heck is a "imperfectly sampled perspective" v. a "perfectly sampled perspective"?

Their website says, "The Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand (extreme) contains up to 127 velocity layers . . . "

OK. I just checked out the various perspectives in the mix thingy, and that is indeed cool.

Well, they are clearly saying that the imperfections are much of the charm of the real thing and create a very real, authentic experience. It might just be me but I really don't like all this creaking, banging, scraping and knocking. This does not equate to my ideal piano at all. If I listen to what I would regard as a very well recorded grand piano you hear almost nothing of these sounds...just a little pedal whoosh maybe, certainly no creaking or banging. They have even represented the creaking of the piano stool I think - crazy.

That said, the demos are very mellow and woody. Nice sound but there is no indication of how it would sound played with a bit of gusto. There is a real richness to the bass but unfortunately a slight muddiness too. I haven't discovered the perfect versions yet (Fazioli sans creaking)...must revisit the site and listen because that would be the stuff I'd be interested in. It's a very intriguing product. I think you do need Kontakt or whatever it's called and that costs proper money. Still, certainly worth investigation.

Cheers,

Steve

Yes - I second the request for some demos with more vigorous/forte playing. The existing demos sound very good though!

Greg.

"It might just be me but I really don't like all this creaking, banging, scraping and knocking."

Ah, well. De gustibus, non disputandum est. I always found the 'rest of the sounds' my piano made to have a great charm, and to give it a feeling of aliveness. Haven't listened to this demo; I suppose you could take it too far. My first upright would even resonate a bit when I spoke, but it didn't creak, bang, scrape or knock.

If it's digital, why not provide sliders for each of these?

I can imagine the mix room chatter: "Turn up the creaking a bit... perfect. Now give us a scoch less banging... ahh, just right!"

Ah, there are some more demos on the "demos" page, with a bit more forte playing. I like "Endless World" a lot. (uses compression though)

Greg.

Btw, here's a CD that has purportedly been recorded on a real Fazioli: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ericmuhler I prefer the sounds I'm hearing in these sampled-instrument demos so far.

Greg.

From what I understood, you can disable the creaking, knocking, scraping and "sitting on your chair" sounds.

I really like the "Sin en Mass" demo found under the Complete Edition tab.
The bass is very deep, the higher octaves very crisp and clear.

Yes, remember this a sample library that you use inside either Kontakt 4 (not the free Kontakt Player) or with Apple's EXS24. So you get to use the full power of either Kontakt or EXS24. Both of these programs allow you to do just about anything you can imagine to do with a sound file as well as the mapping from MIDI to samples and specify any level blending or filters to be applied. These full featured sampler programs have great depth, enough that I doubt many people ever understand all the features. Certainly turning down or off the sampled noises would be easy enough.

At this page you can download .wav files of the demos, which is helpful for evaluation purposes.

http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website/samples/fazioliconcertgrand/demos.php

Matt Stedeford answered my e-mail and said that while half-pedalling and sympathetic string resonance are currently not implemented, there will be a free upgrade to all customers with these and some other cool features.

He also said there are no plans for a group plan at this point (discount based on large group orders)

Well, a free upgrade can take a few weeks up to whatever it needed, so I would choose to wait until the functions I need are fully implemented.

Yes. I strongly enhanced the bass for my Vintage D and added a bit of reverb and it sounded much like this Fazioli.... ;-)
Its not that I would dislike the sound, it is impressive, but I think this is not natural bass...
Peter

I think these sample makers should provide a limited trial. There's just no way to tell from demos how the thing will play. The only trial versions I've found of popular samples are for Pianotek and Truepianos (please let me know if if there are others, like Ivory, or Garritan that I missed).

Also it doesn't come with a standalone player so it will cost $500 more for Kontakt or Logic (to get EXS24). At least Alicia's Keys came with a player (but no trial version darn it). Pianotek and Truepianos also play standalone.

Matt did say that one of their samples (the white Grand) has an AU version which I think means it can be loaded into Garageband although I'm not sure how this is done. He also said there would be an AU Fazioli version in a while. He didn't say anything about a trial version though.

No half-pedaling, no string resonance, and no re-pedaling makes it quite unusable for anything other than recording for me.

It makes it not usable for me at all. Its weird to not have these features in a competetive time like this, I will wait for Ivory 2 .

Did anyone try it yet? How is it?

Matt just sent me another e-mail saying that the features below ARE supported. That is very good to know!

Ahh ok so only the extreme version has all those things. Hmmm, I want the complete version, but only if it has the sympathetic resonance and half pedalling, I wonder how fast those will be available.