Hi all,

There are a lot of variables that influence the performance, sound and playability of Ivory II (and other similar products), including hardware of the computer running it, the installed OS, the configuration of the OS, the quality of the audio interface and monitors/headphones, etc, etc.

In my case, the improvement provided by Ivory might be stellar - or it might not work at all.

So, for for me, buying Ivory II (without taking care of all these risks) would be a hugh leap of faith - to the darkness.

Unfortunately, I can not afford to just pay the price and hope it would be OK, so I definitly need a way to try it out before I buy it.

But here is the catch: there is no demo/evaluation version available.
There is a remote playing session, but
a) it does not run on my HW, so I can not evaluate it's feasibility.
b) it has horrible delay, so I can not really evaluate playaability

Is there a way around this?

I am thinking about contacting someone who has already bought it, and trying his/her copy on my HW. (Borrowing the iLok for the time.)

This is fully legal, right?

What do you think the best approach would be to locate people with Ivory II who live at (or near) Budapest?

Thank you for your help:

Csillag

If you go to www.try-sound.com you can actually try out Ivory II Grand Pianos, Italian Grand II, or the Upright Pianos II from Synthogy.

Here is a direct link to Ivory II Grand Pianos: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electroni...-softsynth.html

This site is an option to preview how the product works before buying.

Regarding the "huge leap of faith - to the darkness" ...

I had the same dilemma. I have Ivory 1.5, and I wanted Ivory 2 just to get the half-pedal capability. Unfortunately there is no way to demo the product. And I mostly read that Ivory 2 is either "slightly better" or "no different" than Ivory 1.5. So ... do I want to spend $400 just for a half-pedal capability? Hmmmm.

I later read a number of posts here extolling the virtues of Galaxy Vintage D. Since Vintage D is a single piano, it's much cheaper than Ivory 2 (which has 3 or 4 pianos). So I jumped in ... a small leap of faith, backed by strong recommendations (instead of a bigger/costlier (Ivory) leap of faith, backed by tepid recommendations).

Vintage D is SO much better than Ivory 1.5 that I've not touched Ivory since I got Vintage D. It's absolutely fantastic.

FWIW, I recommend it over Ivory.

I have Ivory II but i can't argue w MacMacMac. I only like the Steinway in Ivory II. If the Vintage D sounds as good as its demos and the Kontakt 4/5 player is stable (it should be very good from using earlier versions), save yourself a couple hundred bucks and buy the vintage D. Everybody here hates Alicia's Keys- but it would give you a yamaha to use for 99 bucks.

I'm OK with my purchase because the German D steinway in Ivory II really works well for me. but i'm disappointed with the Yamaha and find the Bosendorfer flat out weird.

I wish software synth companies would realize that people want to try demos for playability and are likely willing to spend a few dollars to get a demo on DVD or via download.

Right now there's just that streaming website which has such horrible latency that there's no way to know how the playability is.

Kudos to Pianoteq for providing a decent demo. I hope other companies will follow suit.

I know that site, but (as I have already mentioned in my opening topic)

- It's running the software on their back-end, so I have no idea how it would perform on my own hardware. This is important, because if it is insufficient, then I need to upgrade it, too, am I need this information for the decisino, too
- Because of the delay, I can not really evaluate playability.

Really, it does not add much to the already existing (pre-recorded) demo songs.

Yes, definitely! Also, note that they are also the only one to provide a native solution for Linux. (Both product and demo.)

Really, why can't the others do the same?

For the same reason that most software developers do not write native software for Linux - the potential customer basis is very small.

James
x

I wonder how many developers develop in Linux and then port their results near the end? Many (most?) of the embedded coders I've worked with did this.