Hamburg Steinway library recommendation

David Lai

Hi everyone! This is David Lai. I need some help.

I'll be preparing a couple of recitals these few weeks, but instead of a New York Steinway, I was told that I had a choice of either Bösendorfer 290 Imperial or Hamburg Steinway D. Though I own the VSL D274, the newly vamped Vienna Assistant isn't screen reader friendly last I checked, and I couldn't install the updated library with the cloud license. Plus with the lack of una corda samples, it's not my top choice.

Are there other Hamburg Steinway choices out there that have great playability and una corda samples? Let's not talk about price yet, I want to hear my options before narrowing it all down.

Note: I don't like the sound of PianoTeq, the realism is still not there yet.

Thanks for any replies!

David

David B

You might want to consider using the Bosendorfer 290 and then you can practice with VSL's Vienna Imperial which is sampled from a Bosendorfer 290 and it has una corda samples.

Here is my review of the Vienna Imperial.

https://youtu.be/Bpj8QwiVtgk?si=ymAQy94q3fCbeDg4

God Bless,
David

Khuja Wangtishvili

What about new Ivory?

johanibraaten

Khuja Wangtishvili What about new Ivory?

Ivory 3 German D is the one I would check out. I haven't tried it myself but forum member OlivierW gave it a good review. The hardware requirements are quite massive though.

johanibraaten

Note that Ivory 3 is only available for Mac at the moment (I missed the edit window).

QuasiUnaFantasia

Steinway D, with una corda:

Galaxy II: Vintage D
Ivory II: American Concert D (obviously this is not a Hamburg D)

I haven't played either, but their reputations are excellent.

David Lai

Thanks everyone! Forgot to say that yes, I'm on a Windows 11 PC, so Ivory III German D is out of the question.

Looks like the ones with una corda are still the ones with Kontakt. I'll take a look at the Galaxy instruments. 🙂 Thank you!

Khuja Wangtishvili

David Lai Looks like the ones with una corda are still the ones with Kontakt. I'll take a look at the Galaxy instruments. 🙂 Thank

Do not forget about VI Labs too 🙂

However, they have NY Steinway and their German is Bechstein seminarium concert grand