My Desert Island Piano VST - VI Labs Modern D

David Lai

Oh that is a very nice and no-nonsense reviewer, thanks for posting! Quite a while ago, he positively reviewed the VPC1 as well.

Cheers,

HZ

dickiefunk

in the past i also have met a lot of pianos that sounded like that

my solution is to apply subtle saturation/distortion with a little eq boost (both on the higher frequencies), it brightens up the piano without any harm.

pianow

Thanks. Would you be able to give me more detail on how you do this please?

dickiefunk

of course, something like this should do the trick :

a subtle saturation on the highs and a very minimal low cut and high boost like in the picture, of course you should change all these based on how modern d sound (i don't have it) maybe more saturation, maybe less. hope it helps.

Thankyou for sharing this. I will experiment with this later.

Amazing virtual piano! Having a good time with it. Will be even better when a find the right monitor speakers for my Kawai CN301.

FREIRE Fantastic!!! I'm using Focal Shape 65. But due to my setup, I can't place them at my sweet spot near the keyboard. So headphones are my go-to now.

Glad you're enjoying the Modern D!

David Lai Those must be amazing. But are huge and expensive for my needs. I was hoping to get the new Adam Audio D3v to skip any audio interface and for being small. Also considered modifying the amplification of the KAWAI CN301 speakers as the line in audio works really bad. Does anyone here know how to do it? Crossover / Dsp? David your videos of Modern D introduced me / sold me to this software. Thank you!

FREIRE Thank you! I love it very much!!! And I'm now not surprised that my videos have directed you to Modern D. It's my daily practice piano library, which says about its quality, sound and response.

The Focal Shape 65, it's indeed rather spacy. I guess if I'm not using my Babyface Pro FS, I'll for sure use a pair of small monitors.

Hope you're able to make a good decision for your VST use!

FREIRE Here's a video I came across a while ago for you, where 2 similar ultra near-fields go head to head.

David Lai Thank you David! Both seem great!

FREIRE Cool. I'm glad it can be helpful to you.

Hi All,

I am a Pianoteq user and I purchased Modern D today. I wanted to share my first impressions after 3 hours of playing, in case it can be useful to people.

I have an i7 3770T (low consumption 13yo proc) and SURPRISINGLY it works as smoothly as pianoteq. Loading time, latency etc… No issue at all. I am in 48,000Hz 64 samples (1,3ms) and my proc usage barely reaches 20%. No crack no pop - similar to pianoteq. I also have a Motu M2 audio interface and a SQ

I have to concede that it's a major surprise, because my only experience with VST was Garritan CFX lite, which requiered lots of time to load and was not pleasant to use (in terms of UI)

Regarding the sound, it's a matter of taste and speakers, but I personnaly find it better than Pianoteq Steinway D.

Thank you to you all in this topic, for having me discover this VST.

Florian75

Hello,

That is nice to know, for I'm using a PC of similar age with an i7 4770 (I believe the number is..). After tuning it runs Modern U just fine. Modern D is not yet on my shopping list, but still lingers in the back of my mind.

Which Windows do you use? I'm still on W7 Pro and for reason of legacy applications, wish it to stay that way 🙂.

Cheers and enjoy!

HZ

I have windows 10 (hardware not compatible with 11). Also a 6yo ssd.

Florian75 I'm glad Modern D is optimized in a great way. Now I truly understand what it means, thanks for appreciating it!!! 🙂

finally bought it from @CyberGene for a great price last night, he's a friendly and professional seller and i highly recommend him🤍 🙂

so far it's been a good experience, the sound is nothing especial, a typical steinway d (i think the technology is at the point where we shouldn't really be that excited about the samples accuracy)

the playability is very good, fast and dynamic and there's something about it that reminds me of pianoteq, it makes me wanna play softer, i think it's because of it's excellent recording quality, most sampled pianos get thin and lifeless in the lower dynamic levels, but this one sounds rounded and alive with all the necessary punch and body, it's beautiful, and when you want to get it Loud, hell it gets very loud, I've read some comments about it being unable to go super loud on vi control forum, i kinda know what they mean now but they said it very wrong, this piano is voiced to be a studio piano, better for jazz, country, pop and such genres, it's not a classically voiced pinao, means it's not gets bright the moment you pass mezzo piano, but it's capable of loudness and sharpness while being incredibly realistic, i think the more classically voiced ny model d on the market is the ivory American d,

let's talk about una Corda, i never had a better experience fr, even on acoustics, most pianos don't have a very well regulated u.c, so they sound softer (a bit), the una corda on modern d sounds like a different piano, it adds a lot of character and depth so it's absolutely impossible to recreate with the typical software Una corda stuff (eq, velocity edit and sample shifting)

before i forget, i find some of the notes to be a little off, some of them don't get as bright and punchy as their neighbourings when you play fff, not a deal breaker at all, but worth pointing out imo,

the mics… they're excellent, very effective and different, i loved the player, side, and hammers

all three sounded so warm and lovely, the room is something I'd use if i want to put the piano behind other instruments in the arrangement, and the close u87s sound a little too nasal for my taste, especially in the lower midrange of the piano (the keys, not frequencies)

and one more thing, it sounds so close to my all time favourite steinway vst - ni grandeur

anyway, a 9.3/10 product, thanks to my dear friends @CyberGene for the great deal, and @David Lai for advertising this incredible instrument 🤍

pianow

A very nice and useful report, thank you!

Cheers,

HZ

David Lai 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. 🙂

After a while of testing Modern D and some others I've noticed that Modern D works with Windows audio better than most others, that tend to crackle without ASIO4all. As if it had sth like ASIO4all built in? The achievable reported latency around 3 ms feels okay for me, while the default 10 ms isn't.

So I'd say that add-on ASIO like ASIO4all does make a difference (if a proper ASIO driver is not available) with other VSTs that handle winodows audio "averagely".

I found another factory ASIO driver for the built-in Realtek card which is supposed to be a "proper" ASIO driver (came with a Realtek driver for some Dell model) which kind-of works but it appears that changing the latency isn't effective, so ASIO4all is better.

I hear M$ is planning native ASIO support in Windows, for the start on ARM (!?)…

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/making-music-on-windows/

Just found out there is a generic Steinberg ASIO driver for devices that don't have their own for Windows (since Dec 2024) but I haven't tested it yet, not sure if better than ASIO4all

https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/17863730844946-Steinberg-built-in-ASIO-Driver-information-download

pianow

Fully agree with your report of Modern-D!