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In the 'Digital Pianos' part of the forum, I sometimes run into posts that talk about software piano's. I'm intrigued by that.
How is the general consensus? Excellent thing or just another gadget ?
I looked at the website from one developer, and it was a hefty price ( around $ 250 ) ...
Also, are there excellent software piano's for Ipad's ?
So what's your opinion and experience with them?
I have a Kawai CA65 and I like the standard 'Concert Grand' a lot, but that's about it. The other piano samples are not to my taste... Especially not when listening through headphones.

Some of us use exclusively software pianos and don't the sounds stuffed into the digital piano. I think that it is safe to say that software pianos are ahead of what digital pianos offer, and some people even think that the industry should improve the quality of the samples found on digital pianos. They are improving... but very slowly.

Take a software piano like Vintage D... it sounds gorgeous. If I recall correctly it has a size of something like 4 o 5 GB. Is out there any digital piano with something comparable in it? That is for sampled pianos. For modelled pianos, let's take Pianoteq. Here the situation is more tricky because the Roland V-Piano is something comparable to Pianoteq (I don't dare to say which one is better)... but the V-Piano is outrageously expensive (compared to the cost of Pianoteq).

Because of that I think that Kawai will have success with its new VPC1, because has realized that some users don't really are going to use the sounds inside the digital piano and they don't want to pay for them. Of course, software pianos are too risky for a gig situation (you don't want to experience a freeze on the computer on stage), but in a studio or at home... for me software pianos win hands down over the sounds inside digital pianos.


Regards,
Kurt.-

Korg Kronos (and a somewhat scaled down version in Korg Krome). Though not everyone agrees that they are the best sounding self-contained pianos. For example, some people prefer some of the Nord piano sounds, even though they are much smaller. So size isn't everything. But overall, I'd say your post is generally correct.

For the most part software pianos stand head-and-shoulders above their hardware equivalents, especially in terms of sound detail and realism (on the sampled side).

They have a few downsides:

• They are another thing to set up and configure
• Their velocity curve isn't always just right for your piano and finding a better curve by trial-and-error can be a hassle for some people (the Kawai VPC1 apparently addresses this for the most common software pianos)
• They are only as reliable as the computer they are in (with the audio interface, if present), which is way less reliable than a hardware piano
• Even at their best they have more latency than the hardware piano, though for most configurations and players their latency is fine

I only use software pianos. Can't bear listening to the imperfections on hardware pianos any more.

I hear you, gv. I sometimes re-engage the piano's internal sounds ... and I cringe. What was I thinking when I bought this thing? It's piano software or nothing.

I think the velocity curve is easy to set up on some software pianos ... but, unfortunately, not on my favorite ones (the Galaxy Vintage D and Vienna Grand). If only they would use Pianoteq's poke-the-dots method!

Yeah, you've pointed out something I find generally to be true: PianoTeq's interface is always the best and most convenient. I'm not a particular PianoTeq fan but I do think they are more considerate in designing their UI and built-in functionality than other software piano designers tend to be.

+1 on that. The lack of detail and especially resonance ruins solo playing for me on digital pianos. In a band context I'm not so picky.

What's the view on the IGrand software? High quality samples or not ?


http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/igrandipad/

Well, if you go by the demos on their website, they sound terrific. They actually have me thinking of purchasing an Ipad just so I can try the IGrand product.

The only thing restraining me is my previous experience with demos. What I hear on demos is not always (EVER) what I get on my system.

I will just have to wait for further confirmation on this one.

About the IGrand. It doesn't really sound THAT amazing. I mean given that it's for an iPad, it's an app, and it costs 9$ it can't be THAT amazing. Some demos sound good, others sound quite poor, to be honest... So...

Now, on the topic at hand. One thing that's not mentioned about software pianos is that they can be used in studios: The digital piano will produce audio files eventually (even if you rig it to midi and fix it, etc... Eventually you'll have to bounce it in your computer as audio). The software pianos will remain midi until the last minute, which means further tweaking and toying with the pedal and any wrong note you may have done... It's all in the game!

And, yes, software pianos are simply much better than their hardware equivelant, in terms of sound.

The rest has already been mentioned.

iGrand doesn't mention if it emulates other piano noises, particularly sympathetic resonance...

Other disadvantage is that DP's cooperate with damper pedal better in a technical way. For example, half pedalling.

Or other thing - in my Roland FP-4, you can catch the sound of a note even 0,5 second after you released it, using damper pedal. That's quite realistic compared to real grand. I recorded in studio using some beautifully sounding VST (sound man choose it) and it didn't tolerate using damper pedal even 0,0001 second after releasing a note, which resulted in some aborted chords. Very artificial phenomenon and unpleasant feeling. Even if it did have that feature, it should support half pedalling to take full advantage of it. This is quite surprising for someone like me who plays DPs, and will be even much more surprising for someone used to playing acoustic pianos daily.

But sound quality, sound selection and timbre are great at software pianos. Add other sounds, and potential effects you may find. I consider buying laptop instead of new DP, even for gigging. Just compare price/sound quality ratio...

Luckily for everyone, for the most part your comments are out of date. All the good, current software pianos implement half pedalling and repedalling well.

Software pianos that don't do that stuff (or don't do it right) are either outdated or are cheap, "entry level" software pianos. They sound just as good as the current generation, but don't play well.

That's great to hear I examined it and your'e right, some better software do it in right way, like Galaxy Vintage D, Alicia's Keys or - of course - Pianoteq. But these don't respond to half pedalling:
- LIMEX Vienna Grand Piano Expansion
- Garritan Steinway Professional
- EastWest Quantum Leap
- Ivory Bosendorfer Imperial 10
- Vienna Symphonic Library

... and I suppose a few others.

I was pretty sure Garritan did, actually--it doesn't seem to be for sale any more, though. But yeah, the lack of partial pedal is one major things that makes those others unpopular in this forum (I'm thinking mainly of VSL and EWQL here). There are other forums where people like them better.

I'm fairly new here, but have read through many of the threads. Can someone explain to me why half pedal feature seems to be the whipping boy for the high end soft pianos? This one feature seems to have an inordinately heavy weight when comparing libraries. Some of you just dismiss a given library if this one particular feature is missing, in spite of that library having many other features that other libraries don't.

Well, as near as I can tell, for those that feel that way ...

It is similar to how you might feel if piano was just perfect in everyway except that a particular key on the keyboard didn't work properly.

If you never use that particular key you might wonder why that matters so much. But, if you do use that key, you can't live with that issue.

The Ivory II Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Grand certainly does have half-pedaling, as do all Ivory II pianos. I guess you are thinking of the old, and discontinued Ivory I pianos.

I would add that the Ivory II and Vintage D also have re-pedaling, which is MUCH more important than half-pedaling to me.

You can get some more perspective (from both sides) in the recent thread, "Entry level digital piano with continuous sustain"