Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Anyone HERE purchased the Garritan Yamaha CFX?

Macy, you're right about partial pedaling and repedaling. These are fine points that the best software pianos **should** address.

But, to everyone else: those items are down low on the list of priorities in a software piano. The piano should first **sound** like a piano. If it doesn't then the partial pedaling and repedaling just don't mean much.

So many of software pianos sound terrible. Pedaling authenticity won't fix those.

$2.99 plus shipping and handling; but wait, if you order now, you get a free sustain pedal and two cookies.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but it hasn't come up, probably because it's something that every software piano has...but what's "repedaling" and how does it affect things if software lacks it?

Totally agree that sound is the top priority. But a great sounding piano without repedaling won't do me any good at all, so that is very much a high priority to me.



But we have 3 or 4 very good to excellent sounding software pianos in the Vintage D, Ivory II Steinways, True Keys American, and perhaps a few others (depending on taste).

From what I've heard in a few snippets (sent to me by a user that I unfortunately can't share) the CFX can sound excellent too. But with no repedaling, it doesn't do me any good until that feature is added (if indeed it ever is).

Since Macy did not answer this, my guess is that it's the bloom or resumption of existing resonance, mostly on the bass, after the pedal is briefly lifted then pressed down again. In other words the resonance is stopped on pedal down, but if you are quick enough it resumes softer when the pedal is re-pressed. This is different from partial pedal.

Repedaling is when you release the damper pedal (often partially or fully) and press it again before notes have completely faded away. That catches the remaining sound of the notes that were previously being sustained as they fade away and sustains them again from that point in their decay. The effect is most prominent in the lower register of the piano since those notes have the longest decay times when damped. Repedaling is something you do purposely for the effect, but it also often occurs naturally during normal playing.

Hi, I am a new poster:-)

I have purchased the Garritan CFX, and having no space at home for a real grand piano, I have collected a number of virtual pianos.

My Yamaha CVP609 is reasonably good as a master keyboard, and I find that playability of virtual
pianos is very much associated with controller keyboard action and finding the "correct" velocity curve.

Before the Garritan CFX was released, I had demoed Yamaha's new CLP575 and I liked the built-in CFX sound.
I had read and heard a lot about the Garritan Authorized Steinway which seems to be held in high regard although, surprisingly, discontinued.

Although the price of the Garritan CFX was comparitively high I bought it here in the UK.

It was delivered on a USB pen drive as a boxed product (no download option at this time, according
to 'Making Music' support), and on my PC (Intel i7-2940k CPU, 24GB memory, Samsung SSD for sample data).
It took almost exactly one hour for the installer to copy and decompress the usb files to
a Samsung SSD and which resulted in 122GB being occupied for a full samples installation.
(Initial loading of a full default preset takes only a few seconds however.)

I was initially underwhelmed while going through the "out of the box" presets and found it difficult
to emulate the sounds in the demos but in common with the other virtual pianos I own, some time spent
in setting the Garritan CFX VI's integral velocity curve for my CVP609 made a significant difference.
In my opinion, the velocity curve control that is integral to this virtual instrument could have been
better implimented, as there are effectively only two points on the "graph" which can be adjusted,
i.e. it is not as accurate or conveniently adjustable, or drawn, as with the Galaxy or Ravenscroft for example.

I am still tweaking around with velocity but imho the Garritan CFX has got the potential to be very
good indeed not only as regards the sound but also in playability.

I find tweaking the microphone faders can make a significant difference in the sound, as can the EQ settings.

I say "potential" because, again in my opinion, there are a couple of things I have reported back to
'Making Music' support that I would have thought should not have been compromised or omitted on a
'flagship' model, which the Yamaha CFX indeed is.

One of which is the absence of half-pedaling, or 'continuous pedaling', which I had got used to and
enjoyed, as what I thought was quite an important element of "piano technique", on the Galaxy and
Ravenscroft and on other virtual pianos that I own.

I posted my opinion on the Making Music Garritan forum, that it was dissapointing to find half-pedaling had been omitted.

'Making Music' support say that half pedaling on the Garritan AbbeyRoad CFX"is slated for a future upgrade".

I have uploaded a short wav file to Soundcloud, a relatively quiet piece, Chopin Prelude 4 recorded
directly to WAV via. the Aria engine (I am an amateur ) with the velocity curve I have
currently set for my CVP609 and with no EQ or reverb or anything, just the default
"full classic" mic "performer" perspective with the ambient and close levels slightly adjusted
and with the lid set to half.

https://soundcloud.com/brianr7/01-g...;utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email

Brian

BrianR7

Sounds beautiful

I bought Garritan's CFX Concert Grand and used it on my piano solo compositions played back through Sibelius 7.5 music notation software.

My opinion is that it's currently the best piano sampling to date.

I'm not good at playing the piano but have some music playing in my head that I want to share to the world. So, I resorted to produce them electronically using music softwares (Sibelius 7.5 and CFX Concert Grand).

The piano sound may not be as real as the acoustic piano sound but it serves my purpose as an electronic piano solo music composer.

For what it's worth I also purchased the Garritan CFX during the recent $199 holiday promotion..I have to say it is a very nice sounding piano with a warm tone. I also own 7CG Grand, 8dio Steinway 1969/1928, XLN Studio Grand and Imperfekt Fazioli. For me personally it is much better than all of these in tonal sound and has a good number of velocity layers to work with. The 1969 Steinway has a good tone as well, but the 8dio samples barely have any velocity layers, making them really hard and tedious to work when doing piano heavy work.

One downside is it takes a reasonable amount of time to load the samples..Not too bad on a fast SSD, but if you have an older hard drive, something to keep in mind.

Here's a piano solo composition I posted just yesterday that uses only the Garritan CFX (compact edition used, with minimal EQ, and some very faint pads in the background at some points):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThsW9zHyiR4

- quantum, thanks for posting up your track. While it's a commendable recording and sounds polished it's somewhat contained in a narrow dynamic range so fairly difficult to distinguish it from other very good 'rounded' sounding libraries. The few libraries you mention by comparison are already known to me (except the XLN Studio) and, to be honest, I wasn't impressed by any of them.

Did you by any chance get an opportunity to try any of Ivory II, Galaxy, the new NI collection or, in particular, the Ravenscroft which I suspect it might resemble? I'm very tempted to try the CFX during the current UK sale but am a little concerned that the margin of improvement or difference in character compared to these other libraries will be too small to justify splurging more cash.

I hear ya..I haven't personally used the Ivory II, Galaxy, Ravenscroft, etc. To me the front runners were the Ravenscroft, Production Grand Gold and Garritan CFX. Then I came across this thread on gearslutz:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mus...t.html?highlight=ultimate+piano+shootout

And after carefully listening to everything there and comparing the three, the CFX was a clear winner for me, mostly because of the added warmth the tone brings. But Ravenscroft and Production Grand both still sound good to me, I'm just not made of money to own them all

yep, ditto...thanks for coming back.