Is there any VSTi you consider a decent alternative to Synthogy Ivory. My teacher has Ivory and I play the German D a lot but lately I've been getting a bit tired of the sounds. They seem more thin and with less character than before. Pieces seem to have far less personality when played on Ivory versus my teacher's upright piano.

NI Akoustik Piano, Pianoteq 2.0. Both worth trying. Pianoteq reproduces more acoustic nuances of a piano, due to advanced synthesis algorithms. The sound of AP is, however, a notch more natural because sampled.

If youre unhappy with your sound you might want to consider investing in better speakers or amplifier. You should also try playing with equalizer settings to get a more satisfying color to your sound. If your hardware isnt optimal, new software wont help much.

I've got Galaxy Steinway 5.1 and I love it, although it is the only decent library I've tried. Other than that I just used some crappy 10 or 20 meg soundfonts - yuck, LOL.

The only other major player in the field is Native Instruments Akoustik, as mentioned before.

Also - you may want to play around with settings/filters/effects in Ivory itself, to shape the sound more to your liking.

I'd love to try PAV's Bluthner Digital Model One. The reviews sound incredible.

If you like to tinker with myriad of settings you can get a Native Instruments Kontakt 2 sampler plus some sampletekk/PMI piano libraries. Sampletekk library quality and layering is excellent and Kontakt 2 has virtually infinite configurability as it supports custom script language and tons of pre-defined signal processing tools.

I've got EW's Bosendorfer 290, which is quite nice and includes plenty of varied patches to get you started. It's been out for a while now, so probably there are better options available, however for me it works well and has patches to cover all sorts of applications - from really bright to cut through a multi-instrument arrangement, to nice dark and mellow which sounds sublime for solo playing. The only negative that I've found (and this is something in common with all of the sample based libraries I've tried) is that the sustain is nothing like that of the real deal. You can play complete passages with the pedal held to the floor, which would sound completely blurred and uneven on a real piano..... oh well that's my ten pence anyhow

I'm using something called GEM RP-X. It's an external Piano Sample/AI module. It has what is called GEM Drake technology. This provides sympathetic overtone. I.E, If I hit a silent chord or note, and hold the key down; then hit another chord or note the open key will resonate sympathetically. You get a much more complete piano sound. You get the same type of resonance while using Sustain Pedal also.

I like some of the samples it has, but I also will do a layer in which I play a voice from my S90 along with the GEM RP-X. The extra string resonance from the GEM bleeds out from the S90 voice.

I am also planning on mixing my Ivory samples with the GEM (Ivory needs an update for the new OS X Leopard so I can't test this yet) :-(

Interesting. I'd really like to hear how that sounds. I find lack of true sympathetic response, to be the main feature lacking from Ivory, and wonder if it'd be worth getting the GEM myself. Though I'm not sure $500 is worth hit.

I would second the suggestion that you make certain you have the best possible monitor setup before you "jump ship" if you have not already addressed this.

I get some great sounds from Ivory through ProTools over a nice pair of reference monitors in my studio. It compares very favorably with a nice (real) Seinway Grand that I have here, but any decent live piano will sound better than most any electronic simulation if the monitors are at all lacking...

Sure, no prob...
I'll be posting something as soon as I am able to get my Ivory going again. I'm surely missing it :-(

Hi All,

Resonances - sympathetic or otherwise- are more audible on a true accoustic compared to digital whether a DP or a software piano. I own a lot of
software piano samples. The ones that give the
best resnances are K2-based libraries like TBO, Black Grand (Sampletekk), provided you insert a
sympathetic resonance script which you can download
from the internet (Kornel's script).Thanks to this
gentleman the software libraries can sound like an accoustic piano.
Pianoteq also give quite good resonance.
I believe Akoustic Piano also come with a resonance script. Ivory, BDMO both lack real resonance.Hopefully these will improve in future.