Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ravenscroft by VI Labs… First Look and Sound

Don't get me wrong, I'm still looking forward to the piano and I'm excited to play it, I'm just a bit annoyed at all these delays and missed deadlines.


I appreciate that they're doing "final tweaks", but they've been doing these "final" tweaks for the past two weeks - so not really that final. They could have released the version they had on the date they set, and then just added the improved version in their up-to-date download links (the same way all their other pianos work).

I think they were a bit premature with their pre-order sale, selling off licenses and then advertising that it would be released on the 8th, then the 14th, then the third week in February, and now.....??? It's a full month later and still no product for everyone who pre-ordered. Just seems a tad misleading, and not a great way to go about a pre-order sale.

Back about two or three pages ago in mid February we were into disc read rates, SSDs, USB 3.0, etc.
While I suspect that sample libraries and the players have some optimization that minimizes the consequences of latency, I still believe that "less is better".

I recently got a couple of 128 Gig USB sticks, specifically PNY 128 Turbo 3.0 flash drives.
I will be using them for purposes other than sample libraries, but maybe their speed is of interest to some people who can't add an SSD, or don't want the expense.
Since I brought up the EXPENSE topic, these were 49.99 ea on NewEgg "Special" with free shipping.
To the NUMBERS;
CrystalDisc Mark 3.0.3 x64
180.9 56.94
158.2 32.53
7.082 0.312
6.806 0.322
Test Data; Default, 50 MB.
This was from a "fresh start" run of CrystalDisc, i.e. I had not just run a pass on a different disc.

I just did a second run without reloading the program, the differences were trivial.
==============================================
Just to do the TOTALLY MEANINGLESS test that can probably make ANY drive look good/fair, the Gigabyte results are;
192.2 75.99
159.2 4.738
6.591 0.092
6.046 0.110
=================================================

My (obvious) conclusions;
1) These memory sticks are about 2x faster than my system's hard drive.
2) USB 3.0 is NOT a bottleneck.
3) If I add to that the fact that access to them doesn't have to compete with access to the hard drive by the program or O/S they would be the location of choice for sample libraries.

BTW they are about 4x faster than my SDHC cards.

I want to emphasize that these USB sticks are NEW, i.e. they have little or no directories on them that needs to be accessed to locate the files that they read/write.
Well, the directory structures are almost certainly there, but they aren't heavily populated.

========================================================
They could be good candidates for swap space on Linux or Virtual Memory space on Windoze too, but that is a whole 'nother subject

EDIT:
Correction; Windoze doesn't recognize them as potential virtual memory devices, or as suitable for use in the wretched "ready boost" hack either.
:END EDIT

Check the VI Labs website now.

Looks like there are 4 MORE sale/discount days ?
Kinda ~ODD~

Yup. It's ready. Shipping on March 4. See the blurb from their website:

http://www.vilabsaudio.com/

Ravenscroft 275 VI is now ready! March 02nd, 2014

Great news! While we apologize for the delay in the release of the Ravenscroft 275 Virtual Instrument, we are happy to announce that it is finished and that all pre-sale orders will be delivered on March 4, 2014. New features and improvements have been added and required thorough testing before it could be released. It is now complete and is a piano virtual instrument we are all very proud of.

All pre-sale orders will be delivered on March 4th, and the pre-sale price will remain in effect until March 5th which will conclude our pre-sale period. We are also adding new audio demos and videos, so keep checking back as the days to come will be very exciting at VI Labs. Thank you to all those who have ordered and for your patience as we have made the Ravenscroft 275 Virtual Instrument one of the best virtual pianos ever!

I went ahead and purchased it and I will do some comparison testing vs Ivory II (both German D and American D sampled pianos) after I've played it awhile.

I'm in the market for some kind of virtual piano and listened to the different piano samples on the True Keys website. Listened to the TK German, American and Italian. To my ears, the Italian was significantly more impressive than the German and American. I was very surprised by the bass as I was expecting it to be very "bright." I didn't find it to be a harsh treble sound but instead is was very crisp and convincing. For that particular piano it was the closest to sounding like I was in the room.

I listened to the Un Sospiro on the Ravenscroft and wasn't able to conclude anything based on that sample. The bass was kind of muddy like the German and I didn't like that but it was not a good example to confirm. I hope they post more examples like Brahms or Chopin. I find the bass is almost never convincing enough for Brahms but hoping to be surprised.

Very curious about the Ravenscroft version after hearing the Italian. Anyone using the TK Italian and satisfied with it? (listened to the Hungarian Rhapsody)

Hey everyone, Lance from VI Labs here. I wanted to make a post to update everyone on our progress and the official release date of March 4th. I noticed it already has been posted in here, but I did want to introduce myself and be available for any questions. The missed deadlines are annoying for everyone and probably shouldn't have been specific as there was much work still to do before release. To chicolom, I'm glad you're excited and really believe you'll have a lot to be excited about with this instrument and all the improvements! Yes final tweaks do take a while as the new features and tweaks must be thoroughly tested by our beta testers before we can call them "good" and be able to release a finished version. While many software companies prematurely released unfinished software, we decided to wait until we were happy with it and thoroughly tested as opposed to releasing a possibly unfinished or broken version only to then follow up with updates to fix it. That's not a good approach, but conversely, we should be providing information too because leaving everyone hanging is also not a good approach. The addition of new features and many fixes and improvements since we debuted it at NAMM took much longer than any of us expected. As they say, you can't dictate innovation.

The pre-sale period will continue until the point that pre-sale orders are fully delivered. Once the product is released, the pre-sale period will conclude. We're allowing an extra day to make sure all pre-sales are fulfilled, then the discount will no longer be in effect.

While a beautiful piece, perhaps the "Un Sospiro" isn't the best for showing off detail. If anyone has a specific request along with someone that can perform a demo beautifully, say a Brahms or Chopin, we'd love those suggestions. We have many more audio demos planned and these requests will be helpful. All audio demos posted are directly from the VI--no mastering or any external processing is used. There will also be video demos posted from VI Labs as well as third party users and our testers, so stay tuned for new content to be posted in the days to come as we prepare for our full launch of the Ravenscroft 275 VI. It will be a very easy step-by-step registration and installation process. And remember, for those that don't have a physical iLok key, you can authorize your license now to your computer hard drive thus eliminating the need for an iLok key if you prefer.

Again, our sincere apologies for the delays and lack of informative update posts on our behalf. Feel free to PM me on here or contact us via our website for any other questions. And keep checking for our new content and demos. Thanks!

-Lance Herring

Hi Lance, I am glad that you finally came to this forum. I don't know if you have read the whole thread or not. However, as I mentioned earlier on here, I have followed you since Academic Grand and Kawai Ex pro, and bought True Keys American. I also pre-ordered Ravenscroft, but the delay had almost made me cancel my pre-order. I hope the result will be worth the money and the waiting. I take the opportunity to give you some feedback. There is a major problem I have with UVI and True Keys, that may be even worse with Ravenscroft. It's too slow to load even on SSD. Now I know it's big, but my Ivory II American D loads almost instantly and it's more than 45 GB... I know that you have lite patches, but I (and probably most people) am not interested in a downsized version of the best. So I would encourage you to find a way to load the full sample faster. Well, if the problem is all with UVI, well you may want to think about this for your future sampled piano... And speaking of it, I'll tell you the same thing I told Synthogy when buying Ivory. I would really love to see Bluethner Model One sampled. I know there is already a sampled version. But it's from a virtually unknown company. If I buy I would like to buy from a company that has already proven they could produce very playable and very well sampled pianos. After all there are many competing sampled Steinway D around...

Thanks for the update Lance!

Congrats on another beautifully sampled instrument too!

Cheers,
James
x

Hi Lance!
Great of you to come on talking about the Ravenscroft VI Thanks very much! Looking forward to it! Cheers Mike Wright
p.s. Already Love the American Grand!

Just curious, how long does it take ?

Mine takes 30 seconds.

Is that too long ?

It takes around 15 seconds on SSD and a little less than 30 seconds on a 7200 rpm HHD (I have it on 2 pcs).
And the new piano is bigger...
Other libraries take long as well, but as I was telling another member in a PM, if American Concert D can load almost instantly there must be a way to make it faster.
Maybe you don't mind, but waiting 30 seconds each time I load a piano is not something I like. Exactly as I wouldn't like to have wait 30 seconds to start playing each time I turn on my Roland digital piano.

I have the same doubt about Italian and ravenscroft.

Also, anyone could tell if Italian or Ravenscroft could play as good as yamaha for pop/rock?

Well, you are right about that.

I don't even think about it.

Thanks for the update Lance.

Yes, all I was asking for was a little more clarity and communication and a bit less ambiguity around the release process. When $150 bucks has already traded hands you can understand why the customer would get a little annoyed when the products get delayed and there seams to be a lack of communication about the progress towards release. I'm glad it's finally done though, and I can't wait to play it.

As for demo ideas, I think that particular piano lends itself well to jazz playing. I enjoyed Ruslan Sirota's performance on it from NAMM, so maybe some more virtuoso jazz performances

I use many diverse systems as well. For example, a 4 year old i7 machine with 7200rpm SATA internal drives, the Ravenscroft 275 VI takes 29 seconds to load fresh. Subsequent loads after it's all cached in RAM load quicker.. roughly 22 seconds. A new Macbook Pro with SSD loads the same file in 12.6 seconds. One thing to mention is our products at VI Labs are considered "sample libraries" and are not a standalone unit like Ivory which uses its own proprietary engine. Our libraries use the UVI engine much in the same way instruments for Kontakt Player use the NI Kontakt engine. I can't speak on how Ivory or others that use proprietary engines manage RAM buffering (the cause for loads times with sampled instruments), but our pianos use thousands of samples all of which must be buffered. For instance, our release samples are numerous...as many as 50 per key, per mic position, and that doesn't include Una Corda or half-pedal which use their own discreet samples. So there can be upwards of 90 or more release samples for each key, and all have to be buffered as the instrument is loaded. Everything is sample-based including all sympathetic and pedal down resonance too.

So comparing load times to other instruments is a difficult comparison because the engines all work differently. And it's certainly "apples to oranges" when comparing the load times of a deeply sampled VI library compared to a hardware digital piano by Roland, Yamaha, etc. Yes those come on much faster, but they work much differently and cost substantially more than most any sampled software instrument. Now, I don't feel it's my place to give any subjective opinion on a forum like this--I'm only here to clear up the release date communication and any technical issues, so please don't think I'm hijacking to turn this into a customer support thread. I will say though, given the quality of any software VI (not specifically what we're discussing here), yes I don't mind longer load times if the quality is there. But with that said, it is a valid concern and we're always working to have the best sound, most capability, deepest most detailed sampling, but not so we end up with a package that becomes cumbersome and impractical to use. It's a fine balance.

And to chicolom, thank you for accepting our apologies on the delay. We really hope you and every user of the Ravenscroft 275 VI will be blown away at the realism and playability. It's such a unique instrument too! I think I have the MIDI track of Ruslan's playing in that video. Would you or anyone be interested in hearing that as an audio demo using the final version? Of course the sound in that video was using the NAMM beta version.

Again, thank you all for your patience and please PM on here or contact us via the website for specific questions.

Lance Herring
VI Labs, LLC

Yes. That would be cool to hear Ruslan's MIDI track "playing" the final version.

x Lance VI Labs,
Have you planned to realize it for Muse Receptor?
Thanks
Robi

To answer the 2 questions about TK Italian. I struggled to get decent sound from this - whereas the TK American and German worked well immediately - but perseverance paid off. For quite some time I blended the TK pianos with the native Kawai ES7 sounds, but now I can really enjoy the Italian on its own. I believe I am quite picky with sound, being a hi-fi buff, formerly played the harpsichord as well as playing/owning various grand pianos over the last half century. This pickiness extends to having different settings for playing direct through the ES7 speakers, a separate one for recoding to play through the hi-fi and another "revoicing" for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven through the ES7 speakers.

You do have to work to match a s/w piano for your particular hardware. Having done so, I am very happy playing the Italian: it has a wonderful sound across the range, not as uniform (bland?) as the American and the implementation of the una corda is better than the American and German, so you really do have a wider dynamic range. It also takes a bit more playing - reminds me of how you have to adapt your approach with grands that are better than your own. The German by the way has its own character, much darker and feels more like an acoustic grand in its imperfections. In other words you have to work out how to bring out the best in it. I don't feel the need to add the Ravenscroft to my armoury, sorry VILabs! The Italian suits me just fine and I spend many hours just playing it with great enjoyment.

Hi Lance, thanks for taking the time to reply.
Well, from what you say I gather that Ravenscroft and True Keys have similar loading times, which is a good news in itself, given it's bigger. My purpose was not to compare TK o a digital piano, and some of the big libraries I have for kontakt (I have many) do take long to load. But Ivory II (which has a proprietary engine, but comes with Cantabile) manages to compete with my digital piano, I don't know how they have managed at Synthogy but they have done it. I do agree that quality has a price also in terms of loading times, but I think many would also be ready to pay the additional amount of money that developing a proprietary engine entails, if that cuts loading times dramatically (to be honest sometimes when I have to choose between Ivory and TK I choose the first to avoid waiting 30 seconds... but I still play TK often, so it doesn't put me off too much).

I also have a question, since we are here for technical questions as well. In Ravenscroft there are 4 mic positions vs 3 in TK. But the size is almost double. So I guess that additional mic position doesn't explain all. So what are the main drivers behind the increase in size, more velocity layers? Other elements? Even if you do not disclose the exact amount, can you tell us a bit more about what makes Ravenscroft bigger? Thank you