Acoustica User Forums

I'm using Pianissimo more and more these days. But I'd like to send the developers a message if I may. "Improve the low end samples." They're a little on the weak and muddy side, compared to my dedicated piano keyboard. I'd be glad to pay for an updated version.

Pianissimo sounded a little dull to me at first, but Mixcraft 8 Pro's transient vitalizer really brought the mid and hi end back to life! I'm really liking the mid and upper ends a lot now. The mids and hi's on my external piano keyboard have "too sharp of an attack and they decay way too fast". *** Pianissimo seems to be right in the range I like.*** However Pianissimo's low end samples below C3 are a bit muddy and not as strong as I'd like. The fundamental seems to be overcome by harmonics & such, maybe they were mic'd too far away, or need a longer grand (9ft'r!)

I love the low end on Casio PX-350! Their low note samples are as solid as they come, and it's next to none! (the absolute best of the rest) The low A is solid and a TOTALLY useable note! (wish I could upload a sound bite to demonstrate) They must have sampled a 9ft'er. But sadly the PX-350's mid and upper end suffer from too loud of an attack and too fast of a decay.
My piano arrangements typically use most or all 88 keys, so I need a piano sound that can accomodate that. I have an aggressive piano arrangement that has a passage that ends with a predominate low A. It's obvious when you hear that one note! The song really pops because of the PX-350's solid low end. But when I play the same song with Pianissimo, the low notes are too muddy and not as strong as the PX-350.

So, any plans for future Pianissimo improvements? I haven't been able to fix the low end with any FX combinations yet.
Lance

PS Touch wise, My favorite Keyboard for Pianissimo is still the PX-350. And it's cost is surprisingly low. Some time ago I walked into a large music store and said, "I don't care what it costs, I'm looking for the keyboard with the best grand piano touch!". They had <$1K all the way up to >$10K keyboards in stock. I was surprised how many expensive ones had lousy touches. I settled on a Casio PX-350 a couple of years ago, and it's still my favorite. Not because of price, but the touch. (the key edges are a little sharper than I'd like, you'll discover that when you thumb slide up or down the keyboard. They definitely should've rounded them more, but they look like real Ivory keys, and otherwise are perfect to me) No slop or ringing after you've held down or let up on a note. None of that fatiguing mechanical feeling of little hammers hitting the bottom of your fingers after you've pressed down and held a note. (No mechanical backlash or ringing. Worst in that class was my old 70's Rhodes. I fixed that with a felt strip under all the hammers. If you're a fast player, all those things are important to prevent fatigue)
Edit: I just played my brother's Yamaha CP300. It's piano touch is great too. But it's the built in speakers that are seriously incredible! I would definitely buy one of those if piano is your main skill.

I kind of feel bad about my 1st post above, complaining about Pianissimo's lowest notes. It sounds like I'm an ungrateful Pianissimo user. Nothing could me further from the truth. Pianissimo is absolutely stunning at it's price!!!! I use it and Mixcraft for composing all my piano arrangements.

I've been lucky enough to have had access to a 9' Steinway D at the Willow Bend recital hall in Plano, Tx. (sadly it's gone now) They only unlocked that beauty for certain players. I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is nothing more thrilling than the sound coming from that piano at the bench!! The long strings and large soundboard increase the amplitude of the fundamental, which makes those low notes so solid and incredible!! (Ever owned a Yamaha CP70 with it's short low strings? You know what I mean)

I'll be 64 later this year (already singing, "When I'm 64" to my HS cheerleader wife), and I've lived thru all the years of electronic grand piano development. What exists on the market today is absolutely incredible compared to just a few years ago...ok maybe a couple of decades ago. I resisted the early 8bit samplers, then bought my 1st decent grand piano sampler, which was an 80's era Roland S50. Since then it's only gotten better every year, more expensive for a while, and now incredibly affordable! (like Pianissimo) Most keyboards and software today have really decent piano samples that completely fool the common man, and most keyboard players. It's the picky picky ones, kind of like me (but not ungrateful!), who use all of those 88 notes and listen for all the nuances.

As computers, software and hardware get better everyday, so will these great grand piano products. We live in a renaissance period of sound development.

I hear what you're saying about the low end. Wish it was better too, but after buying a $200+ Piano VSTi and full $Kontakt$ to play it... Pianissimo is still my favorite VSTi.

sjoens,
I hear what you're saying about the >$200.00 piano VST's offered over the years. Its hard to believe you get Pianissimo with a great DAW, and for only $179!!! Not to mention the rest of the library.
It's no wonder more and more guys are using Mixcraft, its a complete one stop package for most composers! And I'm seeing a lot of students use it. In my opinion, the tutorials really sell the product to them.

To be honest, I've got a whole bunch of different piano VSTs , the full set of EWQL Pianos , Waves Grand Rhapsody, Alishas Keys , and this. Other than perhaps the Yamaha grand in EWQL, Pianissimo is my favorite so far. Oh, theres a nice piano in Logic too actually, over in the mac dimension.

I think its very difficult to make *any* VST sound good compared to real wood. Its not just a case of the speakers making the right sound, but its the whole 3D space around you of vibrating wood.

But for *recording* purposes, even the greatest audio engineers in the world can never truly capture the live sound of sitting at quality wood, so putting that aside, so far this has been my favorite. You can clear up a lot of low end mud by just toning back the hammer effect, which while doing a fairly good facsimle of what a 'real' piano sounds like, its a sound in real piano recordings that the recording engineer generally will piss and moan about because to be honest, its mud. BUT you can get in there with a good multiband EQ and tame it down a bit, perhaps with a strategic shelf nice and low which I might add will paradoxically make the rest of the low end sound LOUDER if done right, by liberating those good low frequencies from competing for air with the bad low freqs.

Just EQ it up a bit!