My Desert Island Piano VST - VI Labs Modern D

PV 300 Grand is also delivered in 16bit 44.1khz audios with 72 gigs, 36 velocity layers, 9 mic perspectives, 10k samples. Just not in flac. If Kontakt could do that later…

On the other hand, Kawai Legend is delivered in 24bit 96khz audios with 30 gigs, 18 velocity layers, 1 mic perspective, 3333 samples.

Modern D is delivered in 16bit 44.1khz with 18 gigs, guessed to 25 velocity layers, 5 mic perspectives, 34615 samples.

Just for fun.

Kawai Legend has the cleanest tone to me. 300 Grand has the most beautiful UI. Modern D has the most complete features.

pianow as i said, they were smart

Yes, and from 32 bit FP, 88.2 KHZ 130 GB wav, to normalized 16 bit 44.1 KHZ 18 GB flac. Which has better performance, it shouldn’t be hard to see. Also, not to mention that the difference is very much negligible.

That said, I wonder why I hear less noise floor when rendering in 24 bit vs 16 bit flac on Reaper? That’s actually the reason why I asked that bit depth question a while ago.

Just purchased it to see what all the fuss is about (and also because I just can't stand Pianoteqs sound anymore). It's downloading right now, I am really looking forward!

porco_rosso I hope you like it! A good response curve to your controller will be a good friend. Once you have it dialed in, you'll be experiencing a great combination of playability and realism, which I believe, is second-to-none!!!

Thanks! It's installing…

Regarding sample-based pianos I have tried VSL Pianos in the past (all of them except the Faziolis) and didn't like the playability of them. The sound felt detached from my playing.

porco_rosso Not surprised. Out-of-the-box they don't play very well, and you need a lot of tweaking to make them work. Plus, they don't have una corda, and their release samples are not natural. Modern D is more full-featured than VSL pianos, and if you want distance in your mix, turn up the room mic and add some hall reverb!

How do I start the piano in the UVI workstation?

porco_rosso After installing, either open up UVI WorkStation standalone or load it in your DAW of choice, mine is Reaper. Then, double click to open the browser, choose "Modern D" in the Sound Banks list. Once it's loaded, you can start playing.

Keep in mind that the initial load of this library is very basic, only one close mic, and the response curve is linear. I suggest you look at the controls in the main panel to turn some things on, or load another mic for a fuller sound.

I have no DAW besides the UVI Workstation. When I choose Modern D in the folder sound banks it doesn't load, nothing happens? It's installed and activated with iLok.

Ah, it worked now! Thanks!

porco_rosso You're welcome!

Rabih Rihana, who made a few demos for VI Labs Modern D, did a preset exploration livestream today, and if you want, you can hear / watch him in action.

porco_rosso It will take some time to load. I would also suggest you set up your midi and audio devices. If you don't have an external audio interface, you need to work with ASIO4All, which uses the native ASIO driver. Not the best, but it gets the job done.

Wow, my first impression is that the D sounds gorgeous! Really natural and warm, with an intimate character. Way better than the VSLs I tried. It also plays really good so far, but I have experiment with the MIDI and gain response curve a bit.

I succumbed too 😉 My first impression was pretty awful due to latency issues, wasted a couple of hours… I'm happy with the sound, does sound better than Pianoteq (demo). But regarding the "playability", the native FP90 sound feels better, though I'm not particularly in love with its tone. And it can't really compete in playability with my old upright (a recording would probably come out better with this Modern D than using affordable mics with the AU, but recording is not a serious objective here).

_sem_ What drivers are you using? If you're using anything Windows native, then I'm sorry, latency is expected.

Not certain what's going on with this new laptop yet. The built-in audio has ASIO but a fixed buffer 512, too much. Windows audio with the shortest buffer - the latency is reasonable and no crackling. I couldn't get the external DAC to work yet, seems to be a connector issue.

_sem_ I see. I have moved away from the Windows built-in audio for piano VSTs for many years now. Hopefully you can work it out with your laptop. My native ASIO driver doesn't work, unfortunately, so I'm forced to "outsource" my audio. 🙂

Windows systems can be hit or miss for low latency audio, regardless of drivers or external hardware. Unfortunately, there's no standardized spec you can look at prior to purchase that'll tell you whether or not a given system will be suitable.

Last year, for instance, I got a great deal on a laptop, only to have to return it because it was useless for playing VIs. Crackling at all buffer settings, regardless of what I did, even when using my audio interface and its dedicated driver. A mini PC with essentially the same CPU, memory and storage allotment as the laptop, however, has given me exemplary results, allowing me to run virtually all of my libraries* with the minimum buffer size allowed by my audio interface, with zero issues.

*The only exception is the Embertone Walker, which must just be poorly optimized because it's crackly on every system I've tried, and I've read of many other people having similar trouble. Even the official demonstration video has some crackling in places.

Argyris That's interesting. So for my next Windows computer, maybe I should think about mini PC's?

My second impression is that the piano still sounds gorgeous, but that the upper mids regions (form C5 up) is a bit soft and it requires really much (too much?) effort to make it stand out and "sing" compared to well prepped acoustic pianos, built-in digital piano samples and Pianoteq. Do you agree?