STAC101 Leaving out sympathetic resonance modelling, was there a lot of Kontakt scripting involved in your "Experience Pianos"?
Compared to Galaxy instruments, no. The two main chunks of scripting that were difficult were half pedaling and sympathetic resonance. SR was very challenging given all of the scenarios that you need to think about. Oh, and it's not like I'm a professional coder or anything. My coding technique is probably really bad.
STAC101 I see you offer your pianos in two formats (kontakt and sfz), does that mean you had to script in sfz as well?
Yup, they're in the downloads.
STAC101 You mention that sympathetic resonance only works in the Kontakt version. Does that mean that the Kontakt scripting language is more powerful than sfz?
In terms of Piano, I would say they're the same, since Garritan is built on SFZ. The only reason I even attempted was because I had seen that "piano features" had been implemented on these platforms before. I recently started with DecentSampler, which is another wonderful free platform, but no one has made a nice piano with it - and it's because the tools are not flexible enough (yet).
STAC101 I think UVI also has its own scripting language. Would you say that one of these languages is better when it comes to piano sampling specifically?
I can't say really. I can only judge by what others have accomplished. Seems that all of these platforms (kontakt, SFZ, UVI) can handle all of the advanced piano library features (pedaling, SR, mixing, etc). Some have inherent problems, like Kontakt pedaling will never be as good as SFZ, but it can be implemented nonetheless. Sforzando no longer gives licenses for GUI, so SFZ is limited. I know very little about UVI, although I considered switching to it because the platform allows for copy protection. But I don't want to go through the hellish exercise of implementing SR again on another platform.
STAC101 What would you say is the most technically challenging part of sampling a piano?
Without question, the most challenging part (for me), is recording in a silent environment. I approach the work in an entirely different direction than the "pros". I don't rent a piano. I don't rent a recording studio. I don't record for days and days. I use what I have access to (which is pretty good actually), record in homes, and use software tools and computer time to optimize to a product that is (I hope) similar in quality to the big guys. SW has come a long ways in the the last 10 years, and you don't need a recording studio if you know something about spectral analysis and editing.
Right now I'm making an updated version of my Mason & Hamlin. Because I control the environment, or rather, I can set up mics and record at night or whenever it's silent, the editing will not take me weeks.
