Someone over at Northern Sounds was good enough to do a Garritan Steinway rendering of a midi recording I made way back in 1993 of my wife playing a Fats Waller piece. And it just so happens, I also have a couple more recent recordings of her playing the same piece on a few very real pianos... a 7-foot Nordiska recorded in my living room and a 9-foot Fazioli recorded in concert in a church.

Alligator Crawl - Garritan Steinway
Alligator Crawl - Nordiska 215
Alligator Crawl - Fazioli 278

Though its not the comparison you're looking for, it does reveal a bit about the pianos. The Nordiska's clearly the lightweight here... the dynamic excursions of the 7-foot piano almost appear compressed compared to the peaks of the 9 footers. But interestingly enough, it's bass power approaches that of the bigger Steinway. The Fazioli, however shows a distinct advantage on the bass end compared to the other 2... almost a 3db edge in the recordings. If you ever experience one of these live, you'd know its true.

Howard

Ooops! I never got back to this did I?!

I will say that it takes a bit more CPU to run Garritan than it does Ivory. I had a few clicking and popping problems at first that were traced to my video driver (!).

I really love the live-to-WAV capability - I can open the standalone player and record an idea very quickly without having to load up SONAR and wait for the VST to load. Very cool feature!!

The tone of the piano is perfect. I've found that I am using the Player perspective most often. Not that the others sound inferior, more that it just fits my compositions best.

I wish it had better control over the velocity settings. With 5 presets to chose from I, of course, find that I would prefer a setting that's in between two of them. Grr. Ivory has a min and max velocity control and you can set them to any level you like. Something more adjustable here would be nice.

I think they could dispense with the animated keyboard (or at least allow it to be turned off). I don't see the need for it and to me it clutters up an otherwise very clean player interface.

The lack of a 'gain' control is a little restricting. I found the levels of the piano to be very low - a lot lower than I am used to with the Ivory Steinway. I've only EVER raised the gain of my Ivory Steinway to +3dB but it's nice to have the ability to go higher if I absolutely need to!

While I really like the Garritan Steinway I am anxiously awaiting the updates that were whispered to me.

My overall opinion? It's perfect and it's only gonna get better!

Curt

I'm playing around with the Steinberg Grand II, Art Vista, and the Garritan Steinway Standard version. My impression is that the GS is wonderful. However, you need really good speakers or headphones to get the full quality.

I have a Core2 Duo E6600 running at 3.2, with Vista 64bit, 4 gigs of memory and an Echo Mia Midi soundcard, so that the latency is just over 2 msec at 256 sample rate, or 5.8 at 512 sample rate. In either case, the "delay" is just not an issue. I think most relatively contemporary systems would handle it OK, as long as the HD is at least 7200 rpm.

Check out the demos on the Authorized Steinway web site. They're pretty faithful, and impressive.

To me, it sounds like the hammers are very soft. fff doesn't hit hard enough.

Could someone explain to me in plain English what would be involved to make Garritan Steinway the piano sample for say a Kawai MP8II or CA71 digital piano?

Do I understand that you would need to have a midi cable going to a fairly resource heavy PC running GS ? Does the sound then get fed back through the instrument or do monitors have to be connected to the PC sound card?

PianistOne111: Try the Chopin's Scherzo - there the hammers hit quite hard for me!

theJourney: You are right. If yours Kawai has line-in's, the audio can be fed back to the instrument. If not, monitors should be connected to the PC (which would be a good option, because the quality will be perhaps significantly better).


M.

Thanks.

Has anyone compared Garritan to Ivory side by side?

That's the demo I was listening to, mate! But listening a second time, I also hear something rattling...nevermind. The sound of the dampers muting the strings is unrealistically loud.

theJourney, you don't necessarily have to use a MIDI cable. I have a CA-5 connected to my computer with a USB cable.

Hi guys,
I'm a new member on this forum. (My first post - just to check it works okay!)
In the next week or so I'm gonna try and post some comparison audio demos here, of the Garritan Steinway Pro and Best Service Galaxy II, both of which I own and rate very highly.

Regards,

propianist

I look forward to hearing them, propianist!

Bruce

propianist,[/b] saw your thread on northernsounds - it seems to have been deleted!

Sorry people there jumped on you. IMO Gary G. does wonderful things for the sampling/production community and I have the greatest respect for him, but some of his admirers are a little thin skinned.

That thread was educational for this technoignoramus and I hope that you'll post your observations here. I also learned from the Jeff Hurchala post which included a explanation of the Garritan Steinway's 16 bit samples gaining extra bits when normalized.

BTW I've posted on the Steinway sub-forum, asking why there are no release samples in the Basic version. That version has the close audience perspective that I'd most like to have. Since normal playing levels would probably be at an effective bit level of 20, it's just what the Budgeteers in the group are looking for;-)

The samples don't sound too impressive to me. I'm listening to the Debussy "Reflections" and it just doesn't sound realistic to me, very keyboard-ish. There's a thin quality to the sound. The Chopin Scherzo did sound better, though.

"Reflections" uses the Basic version - no multiple release triggers and not all notes sampled.

I've posted on northernsounds, asking why the release samples aren't included in the Basic version. Updates are in progress and I'm hoping that this will be one of them.

I wish there was a trial of Garritan Steinway to download. I would love to test it on my own setup prior to buying... the demos, for me, sound ok. Especially those by forum members, who spent time on tweaking the whole thing. But I was impressed by the demos of Akoustik Piano, and honestly can't stand these samples lately.


M.

how do these software stuff work? i'm still a bit confused at their functions.

if i don't like the sound of my digital piano (yamaha p140), can i use the software and their samples to replace the p140's sound just so i can get a better sound when playing?

redcheese, you can use the P140 as a "controller" by switching Local Control to "off."

The sounds that your controller would trigger would be stored on your computer. Akoustic Piano, the Garritan Steinway, Ivory, etc. are examples of software pianos.

You'd also need a soundcard. The quality of what you hear will depend on the quality of that card and on the quality of your speakers or headphones.

Developers list the computer specs needed to use their samples. Most current computers should be able to handle software pianos, but it's a good idea to read the developers' specs.

Ah! thx for the info. so i can use my keyboard as a controller and use those awesome steinway sounds instead of the yamaha ones. however how does one connect a digital piano to the computer??

Check out these related threads and click the links within the thread (if ever):

PC and MIDI-compatible DP

Another DP to PC connection related thread

You can also use the "search" function button near the upper center area of the webpage within this forum through browse through recent and old threads pertaining to Digital Piano to PC/laptop connection.

I wonder if I'm the only person who kept seeing the title of this thread in the "New Posts" box on PW's homepage and—not knowing it was in the Digital Forum—assumed that someone had misspelled Grotrian Steinweg.



Even now (with my 20-year-old DP that I've never even tried to hook up to my computer), I'm pretty clueless.

Steven

redcheese, the threads that BeowulfX included above will give you detailed info. Basically it's via either MIDI cables or a USB connector.

IMO the best first upgrade purchase is a set of studio-quality headphones. You won't really experience the true quality of your DP's included sounds - or those of a software piano - until you get those 'phones. When I started on the upgrade path which led me to software pianos, 'phones were my first purchase. Thanks to them I could continue to use included piano samples for almost another year. Sennheiser's HD580's used to show up occasionally on eBay. Their new 600's are c.$300 on Amazon.

As far as headphones - unless you are made of money, I highly recommend these:
Sony MDR7506

They can be had for $90. After reading glowing Amazon user reviews, I bought them for my DP Ivory setup originally, and liked the sound and build quality enough to purchase another set for my home theater.

I just ordered a Garritan Steinway Standard version. After some playing I will try to post a detailed review with sound demos after meticulous tweaking.

Regards,
M.

Please include your 'board and choice of velocity curve.

And your computer specifications also. Especially: processor, amount of RAM, kind of soundcard and type of harddisk.

Thank you

I have two questions:

1. Does anyone here know whether the Realtek ALC888 soundcard will be suitable for me to use with PrintMusic 2010 and the Garritan Authorized Steinway library?

2. Does anyone here know whether most computers are compatible with ASIO?

------------------------

I am planning to purchase a new spiffy computer (specs in brown below) that will have Realtek ALC888, but neither the manufacturer of the computer (HP) nor MakeMusic can tell me whether that will be what Garritan advises I use for the Steinway library.

The following is from the Garritan FAQ:

What Soundcard Do You Recommend?

People ask us often about soundcards we recommend. Although we cannot recommend specific cards (each system is different), there are many good and inexpensive ones to choose from. Yamaha and M-Audio are brands you may want to research for soundcards. Your soundcard is very important to making music with our software instruments. It is important that you have something a step above a "stock" consumer grade soundcard that comes pre-installed in your computer. Stock soundcards are not designed to handle higher quality sounds and the performance needs of Garritan instruments.

In looking for a soundcard, be sure to look for a low-latency card. Make sure you have a soundcard with adjustable buffers so you can set the latency. Basically, latency is the time it takes to play a sound on your keyboard to when you'll hear it playing from your speakers. There is a inverse relationship between latency and performance. The lower the latency the higher the resource demands. One can often find a sweet spot between latency and performance and each system is different.

------------------
Also, the system requirements Garritan publishes on its site include “compatibility with ASIO,” and HP said it doesn't know what that is.

Any thoughts or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

-----------------------

Computer specs:

Configurable- HP Compaq dx7500 Microtower PC
-Configurable- HP Compaq dx7500 Microtower PC - FN838AV
Genuine Windows Vista® Custom Downgrade to XP Pro
Intel® Q45 chipset integrated
HP dx7500 Country Kit Includes a Quick Setup & Getting Started manual in English and a country-specific power cord.
Intel® Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz L2-6MB) processor
3GB PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) 3x1GB
Integrated 1394 Port
Promo HP 320GB SATA NCQ HDD SMART IV Hard Drive
HP Backup and Recovery Manager Software standard
No Removable Storage Media Device
SATA 16X SuperMulti LightScribe drive
HP PS/2 Standard Keyboard
No Mouse
No Item Selected
HP 3-3-3 (parts/labor/next business day on-site) warranty Microtower


------------------
Thanks!

bgranat,

The computer specs you've listed are more than capable of running Print Music and the Garritan Steinway but, as is most often the case, how well your computer can run the Steinway especially, will probably come down to the system's weakest link. In this case, trying to use the computer's built-in audio will probably be what might cause you some problems. There are any number of decent quality audio interface cards that you could look into and as long as you're will to spend another $100 or so, anything you would buy in that price range would be better than trying to run a software-based piano through your computer's built-in soundcard.

As far as ASIO is concerned, the decent quality audio interface cards I'm referring to will almost certainly come with drivers that will have ASIO functionality included. ASIO has more to do with the sound card specifically, and not so much the PC itself.

A good place to see a variety of decent audio cards is just to go to the online stores like sweetwater.com or guitarcenter.com, musiciansfriend, etc. and look at the various options that are available within your price range. Here's a link to Guitar Center's website with audio cards within the $100-$200 price range. I'm not suggesting that any of these cards would work for you but it will start getting you familiar with the names of the companies and their products that you will start hearing more and more about as you continue with you research.

Guitar Center Audio Interfaces $100 - $200

Being able to run software like the Garritan Steinway (and others like it) can be incredibly rewarding. Just understand that, if you've never set up a computer to run a program like this, there may be some growing pains along the way as you try to get all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together.

If you're using a desktop computer, E-mu's 1212M isn't expensive and gives very good sound quality.