My Desert Island Piano VST - VI Labs Modern D

this one looks like the end of everything (in the best way)

I feel like the search for a complete virtual piano is finally over, and the fact that it's a steinway, a somewhat brand new steinway d (built in 2021), makes it much better.

pianow And don't forget, it's a New York D. So you have both lyricism and clarity.

David Lai

Yes, clarity is what I dearly miss in Hamburg Steinways.

So, good point!

HZ

Anyway, guys & gals, this sounds amazingly good.

Congratulations, @VILabs !

Cheers,

HZ

HZPiano I believe the clarity on modern New York D's is because of the Renner action. If you compare the classic Ivory American D with this, you'll see why. That D was made in 1951, and the action is the old one used with New York Steinways.

FYI: the 2 dry demos were done with a combination of room and side mics, while the ones with reverb was done with a combination of close and room mics.

@David Lai

Great piano and demos.

I do not want so be like a cheap Scotsmen 🫣

But were they so good in VI LABS, that they have given you exclusive code for your Pianoclack members to get it with 50% discount? ,p

You ruined my day!!!. Err…my wallet!!! 😆

Now I need to get it!!!

Thanks @David Lai 🤩

Jose EB5AGV Haha, Jose. I knew I'd get you!!! 🙂

OK, so, despite being very tired, I decided to test it 😀

I've been playing with it for the last one hour and I can say this is maybe even better than my favorite Garritan CFX. I need some time with it to be able to declare it as a clear winner but there are aspects of it which are obviously better. I've been thoroughly enjoying it, it's the missing Steinway library I've always dreamed of. Kudos to VI Labs.

I created my own preset after some tweaking, also a touch curve for the N1X and it's absolutely majestic 👏🏻

However, there's a bug with half-pedaling that I will report in more details to VI labs tomorrow and can record a MIDI for them to test. But shortly: I have re-pedaling and half-pedaling enabled, then I play a loud and short bass note, release it, then catch it with a fully pressed pedal towards the end of its release, not immediately. Then I slowly release the pedal and at the start of the half-pedaled region there's an unnatural volume increase, I guess the half-pedaled mapping is not good and restarts from an earlier (louder) region.

My piano playing is extremely rusty, I've not been playing a lot recently, and I haven't played my beloved Scriabin for maybe months, so I almost completely forgot the pieces I knew, but here's the first part of a Poeme that I used to play. Had to play it for 10 minutes to remember it and it's still bad and not very smooth but you can hear the preset I created and like:

scriabin-poeme-incomplete-modern-d-normalized.mp3

On the VI-Control Forum, there's a post for Roland users, and I quote:

"For any Roland users with this, just for reference.

Use "Light Touch 1" in the GUI for PHA-50.

Use " Light Touch 1" or "Light" inside the digital piano itself (FP 30 x, RD-88 etc) for PHA-4."

Hope this helps!

CyberGene The half pedaling is indeed something they need to fix IMO. I've reported bugs before, and they've improved since their first bata version in May-ish.

Jose EB5AGV

I already missed you in this topic, hoped you'd hop by ☺️.

Cheers!

HZ

I'll let you in on an interesting detail. Listen to this recital I played 2 years ago with the Steinway serial number 613699. This sampled Steinway D has the serial number 616803. Do you hear the closeness between the 2 instruments?

Well All,

It's several hours past my intended bedtime but I've gone through all David's (and the other two) demos and the (very well done) hour-long walkthrough video.

I have to think a bit about the finances so cannot jump on it like many of you/us have already done this afternoon/evening.

But from what I've heard and seen so far, I'd say they once again have knocked out of of the park. By a country mile.

Cheers and good night,

HZ

Pete14 I do wonder how this VST would sound with Pianoteq providing the resonances (as a plug in)?

i think the ptq resonances are quite powerful, one of the best in the industry, the vilabs sampled resonances on the other hand are... not subtle but in the background of the notes (which i think true to the physics of the piano they've sampled, but anyway it's in the background at 0db, where with the ptq sympathetic resonance set at 75% you can drown the piano in soundboard reverberations

i personally like both of them tbh.

David Lai

yea, you know that I've been begging for a decent virtualized ny steinway d, and there aren't many around, so I'm very happy with the release.

i think at this point vsl is behind by a country mile, they are for sure the most expensive piano VIs on the market & have a few hundreds of GBs worth of samples (with the lossless compression💀) but no una corda, no resonances, no silent key, it's not right...

and one more thing that grabbed my attention in the vilabs videos was the fact that they care so much about the details, like how perfect their tuning and preparations are, and the importance of having una corda samples instead of some eq effect,

where the vsl simply push the pianos under some mics without any preparation and correct tunings, they record 80-100 layers per key but they don't have una corda and they think it rarely used🥴🥴🥴

I'd say this very clearly, if vsl would release another piano with their old recipe (tons of gb and samples without una corda and resonances), I'm not gonna buy it, especially when something this good (modern d) is around for a lot less money.
same goes for most brands these days, please LEARN FROM VI LABS

For people who may have trouble accessing the demos, Lance from VI Labs has kindly provided a link for us to download the demos at their original uncompressed WAV format. He gave me permission to post this link here, that's why I'm sharing it.

Have fun listening!

pianow I'd say this very clearly, if vsl would release another piano with their old recipe (tons of gb and samples without una corda and resonances), I'm not gonna buy it, especially when something this good (modern d) is around for a lot less money.

I agree. Another thing about this Modern D -- you can make it sound echoy and in a hall, or close and clear. I think they did a good job making it versatile.

David Lai

yea, being able to put it in different arrangements is an important aspect of an instrument, i believe there are a few (very little number of) virtual pianos that can be useful in different mixes, most virtual Pianos are there for a specific genre, and that's not how a real piano behaves, especially when it's a world class 180-250k$ steinway d, you can sit behind a real D and play everything, and that's what 99.999% of virtual instruments lack

I think/hope that the modern d is in that 0.001%

i can surly say that the ravenscroft was, it was indeed a VERY versatile instrumen.