Hi guys, been playing around with Pianoteq and Truepianos demos for about a week.

I like pianoteq for expressiveness except it doesn't have much punch and sounds a little odd - but still is kinda cool - love the sustain and life it has.

After playing i can see that I need to go VST route. I wondered what is my best bet. I can't seem to find demos of anything else.

i don't really play classical.

My controller would be a Yamaha P-250 and I don't have a huge budget.

You can't go wrong with the Vintage D. So I'd say yes, but it's a matter of taste, of course.

I love it.

I am a huge Yamaha fan. Love the bass in yamaha grands. I only been able to play a steinway grand 1 time many years ago. But what I have heard it sounds good.

So is Vintage d better than Alica's keys ? I know they are different pianos.

I don't know Alicia's Keys at all, but if you love the Yamaha sound you better make sure you spend some time testing the Vintage D before purchasing. I finf it darker, richer, "woodier" than the typical Yamaha bright sound. Although I'm also fond of the Yamahas too. I think it depends on what kind of music, what piece you are playing etc. ... I like to use different sounds for different styles of music.

I really like Galaxy Vintage D.

I also have Galaxy Vienna Grand.
I also have Ivory 1.5 (German/Steinway, Vienna/Bosendorfer, and Yamaha).

But I find myself using Vintage D about 99% of the time.

Forget Alicia's Keys. I have it and it is not good.

My personal preference would be the Garritan Steinway.

The galaxy library is my go to library and I find myself using the Vintage D and Vienna Grand most often. They're both scores better than Alicia's. If you like the Yamaha sound, you can get a similar bite out of the Vienna. It's just more powerful and boomy in the low end. You can also tweak the color and tone to suit your needs with any of the Galaxy pianos. The Vintage D is naturally warmer but, again, you can tweak it to have more hard or soft attack. You can adjust either piano to sound great for Jazz, Classical, or Pop. You can see how the adjustments change the sound here:





Another thing to look at is Sampletekk's Yamaha C7 samples, but you'll have to get a script if you want convolution reverb and half-pedaling.

In my opinion Vintage D is the best under $200, yes.

My second choice would be the standard Galaxy Steinway, which is a hair cheaper. It has a bit less variety of color, but it sounds bolder and maybe clearer.

They both sound very characteristically Steinway, which is often associated with classical music, though it's pretty versatile.

Yamaha is more associated with pop, but I don't know of any quality Yamaha pianos with half pedal and other niceties that can be had separately and in that price range. In my opinion, Alicia's keys is not very good so I'm not counting it.

thanks guys.

So where would be a good place to order the Vintage D ?

and those other Galaxy pianos - can you get them individual or do you have to order in a package ?

also, would these work ok on a i3 processor. I have an i7 but I usually leave that at work.

http://www.soundsondemand.com/detail1.asp/best_service_galaxy_pianos/vienna_grand_k4/en-usd

You can buy them individually there. The performance depends more on HDD speed or RAM than processor. I run them fine on a 2.3Ghz i5 with a 5200RPM drive and 8GB of ram for what it's worth.

You can get the boxed Vintage D on Amazon and your i3 is more than adequate. If you will experience problems it will be as a result of the driver for your sound interface. That can be fixed with the right hardware or possibly software if it's a problem, but most likely you will be fine.

thanks to all for the helpful links and videos

what is bad with Alicia's keys ? I'm assuming it would be a lot better than the sample in my p-250 ?? Are you selling ?

Which Garritan Steinway do you have the Basic or Pro ?

I took a listen to the Sampletekk Seven Seas - sounds great. Would I just load that into the same interface as the vintage D program ? I'm new at all of this. I don't care about reverb - i run both my piano's dry - probably b/c the ones on board usually stink.

No, the Keys software is not for sale. Not because it is so good but for the opposite reason. I would not want to be the one who sold it to you. Actually, it has some value for me with BLUES type playing.

I have the BASIC Garritan Steinway.

I'm not sure that 7CG runs in the free version of kontakt player. If not you'd have to buy the full version which costs a good chunk of money. Galaxy and Alicia's work with the free version but a lot of 3rd party samples won't work for more than 15 minutes (demo mode).

Now, there are other options but you'd have to have Logic for the EXS or buy Gigastudio, which is also pricey. You could always email the company and see if the 7CG works with the free Kontakt player. If it doesn't you'll have to look into other options that don't require the full version of Kontakt.

Acoustic samples has some nice pianos that come with a free player. Their Kawai-EX would have that bright Japanese sound you like. It doesn't have half-pedaling and you'd have to buy an iLok (an anti-piracy device) for it. http://acousticsamples.net/kawai-ex-pro

For what it's worth, I have it and can make the Galaxy Vienna sound pretty much identical. Both are bright pianos with very deep bass and both are very versatile. The Vienna wins because it allows more tweaking and half-pedaling, but you likely won't need half pedal if you're not playing classical.

It doesn't.

Hi Don, thanks for the info! - looks like the Basic Garritan can run stand alone. What is better about it than the Vintage D - playability? Seems like a good price

Basic Garritan is technically inferior to Vintage D in a number of respects (fewer timbral layers, stretching, etc). I also prefer the tone of Vintage D. However, Basic Garritan has a close, clear perspective that some (like dmd) really like. Vintage D is very rich and warm, but it's not the best for penetrating through poor speakers or other music in my opinion.

They both sound like Steinways. There are tons of Steinway software pianos and if you listened to one after another (with similar settings) eventually you'd have a hard time telling them apart--though vintage pianos like Vintage D and PMI Old Lady do have something of a distinct tone. If you don't care about half pedal and other niceties, then there are other cheaper options that might even sound better. In my opinion, though, any piano without half pedal can't be called 'playable'.

Yes, now that I've listened to them I think I like the Vintage D sounds better than the basic Garritan. Well Vintage D looks like a good one to start with. I have a feeling I'll be getting a few more VSTs in the future.

The good thing about VST's is that they are not too expensive and easy to swap out, unlike the digital piano itself.

I find the timbre and amplitude consistency of Garritan Basic to be quite good. In fact I purchased the Basic version over the Pro version because Garritan told me it was actually superior to the Pro version in that respect. They told me that they spent a lot of time on the Basic version to improve those characteristics. Similar effort was planned (but never occurred) on a future Pro version (no longer even available). My main reservation about the Basic version is the lack release samples. The Garritan is somewhat less harmonically rich than Ivory II (which is my current favorite) but I still like to use it as an alternative to change up the sound once in a while.


I'm currently waiting for the boxed version of the Vintage D to be delivered. I read enough good things about its sound and playability here that I decided to try it.

Interesting information. That's the first I've heard of that*. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, I supposed that they stopped shipping the pro version because they were going to come out with a replacement, but as that has not happened so far, I'm not sure what they are thinking. It's not like it costs them much to sell it now that they've made it.

* Of course, stretching across keys automatically decreases the variance in timbre and amplitude across keys, but that doesn't mean they didn't do extra work as well.

Just to fill out the story a little more - I had called Garritan to ask a few questions about the timbre/amplitude consistency because of a bad experience with a costly competitors product, and Garritan recommended that I buy the Basic version because it had been recently upgraded (version 1.04) and it was better (they said) in that respect than the Pro version. That talked me into buying the Basic version and waiting for an upgrade to the Pro version. I was a hesitant because the Basic version didn't include the release samples. But when a company tells me to buy their lessor version (much less expensive) and wait for an upgrade to their higher priced version, I couldn't ignore them.

Unfortunately, that upgrade was never produced and the Pro version was eventually pulled from the market. In addition, the 1.05 upgrade promised way back in January of 2010 for the Basic version (to add repedalling I believe) was never completed. However, recently Garritan was sold. Now they are again saying a 1.05 upgrade will be released shortly.

The new Steinway version was said to be a model B rather than a model D. So it's a different piano. I don't know if the original Pro version of the model D will be revived or not. I would have just been happy if they had added the release samples from the Pro version to the still selling Basic version.

Well, price alone might be reason enough to try it.

I like it because it just seems to be a bit more clear than the Vintage D. Vintage D seems just a little on the dull side.

Understand, when I first got Vintage D, I absolutely loved it. That seems to be the way these things go. One day you think they are great and as you keep using them you long for something different. That is the beauty of these software products. You can just switch to a different one for a while.

The same thing seems to happen with the native sound of a digital piano. Initially it sounds great and then after awhile ... not so much. The bad news is that it is much more difficult to change sounds. Then you have to purchase a different DP. I used to do that. No more.

BTW ... You mentioned TRUEPIANOS in your original post and I noticed there has been no mention of that at all. In my opinion, TruePianos has a very nice option ... especially for Blues or Jazz ... in its' DIAMOND JAZZ sound. I use it all the time for those particular types of music.

I feel that its' strength is that it actually sounds more like a real piano than some of the other more "perfect" sounds.

i bought Vintage D and Galaxy Steinway the other day via download.

Not getting the sound I was hoping for. Using the ASIO4all and it's worse sounding that just direct sound.

-- What is a good usb sound card with asio drivers that you guys would recommend?

-- Also is Kontakt 5 OK to use - i couldn't find Kontakt 4

I use Kontakt 5 with Vintage D. And I use the Presonus Audiobox sound card. It comes with the ASIO driver.

The presonus already mentioned, M-Audio Fast Track Pro, Focusrite 2i2, and even Behringer UCA202 are recommended.

It's a little strange that ASIO sounds worse than directsound. They should both sound the same, just with different amounts of latency, assuming you are not getting clicking and popping.

Make sure you use a nice set of headphones before deciding about these sounds. It's very easy to blame speaker/headphones problems on the underlying tone generator.

Kontakt 5 will work fine.

Vintage D finally arrived today. My first impression is very good. I'll post some thoughts vs Ivory II tomorrow after I have more time with it.

Any chance of a couple of sound files to hear the difference? Love to hear some real-world demos.
Waiting for my VinD to arrive as well. It's sitting in Louisville, KY, at the moment. So from Germany, to the US, to Australia.

Around the world in a VinD.