Hi everyone,

So, in the past few weeks I decided that for my solo piano album I'll go with the mixed approach - perhaps including some of the earlier done recordings in the studio and the rest will come from software piano.

What I don't want is to depend on just 1 piano. I would like to make the recording with eclectic touch and would like to both include grand piano and upright.

First of all, I know that in real piano recordings Bechstein upright is considered as a nice choice. But it seems that none of the software pianos offer Bechstein upright. So, at the moment I'm looking into Ivory Upright 2.

Speaking of grand pianos it seems the choice will be between Galaxy Vintage D or Ivory 2... But the thing that makes it look complicated is that Ivory has both Ivory 2, and also Ivory Italian grand, on the other hand Galaxy also has Galaxy 2...

What I have decided from trying demo version, that I won't be using Pianoteq.

My preferable option budget-wise would be that I could get away with 2 purchases - 1 for uprights, 1 for grand piano. However, if needed, I can try and stretch it to 3.

Any advice, opinions? My first priority in this case is the end result and recored sound quality.

Thanks for all the help over the past year & more helping to decide about things concerning master instrument of all - piano!

Wonderful 2013!

There's no particular reason why you would need to stick with one company or the other. For example if you want a Fazioli and a Steinway, you could easily get Ivory Italian Grand and Galaxy Vintage D. Then if you want more you could pick up either Galaxy II or Ivory II. You could also just buy one piano from the Galaxy II suite (they are avaialble separately, unlike the Ivory II pianos) to add to the mix if you preferred. These pianos all can be loaded as plugins in a DAW and used interchangeably or layered or whatever.

The only thing that might make you inclined to buy a lot of one company is the ilok. You don't need it for any Galaxy stuff, but if you want anything from Synthogy (Ivory), you will need to buy one. Once you have it, then everything's on the same playing field. I personally avoid the ilok and just buy Galaxy. The way things are going in a few years probably all VST's will require the ilok, though, so I'm probably just delaying the inevitable.

Unfortunately I have not played any upright VST's that I liked, so I can't help you there.

It seems right now that Vintage D would be the best choice to start with, and then go ahead depending on how I feel Vintage D works in reality, am I on the right track here?

Because, it seems on this forum at least there's a consensus that Vintage D is the best thing out there, well-rounded wise, and also looking from pricing perspective.

I'm not sure about uprights also at the moment, perhaps Vintage D with different settings can do the job.

Vintage D is always a safe place to start in my opinion. Just about everyone in the forum who uses VST's has it and likes it. You can build from there.

I think I'll do that. I searched around in other places and it seems that Vintage D wins compared to Galaxy 2 pianos and Ivory.

One more question, however - it seems that the place to buy is at http://www.bestservice.de/found.asp/vintage%20d/galaxy_vintage_d/en

What's better - to buy a physical CD copy or online? It's strange that the price is the same for both versions, online version should be a bit cheaper as it's free of cost to manufacturers. I find that Thomann store have physical copy even cheaper, but they have delivering costs that add up (to send it to my country).

They both work fine. About half the people here bought the phsyical copy and half bought it online (it seems like). I got the physical copy, which then needs to be updated.

I'm more paranoid than the average joe, so I like to have a physical backup of the installation media when convenient.