My Desert Island Piano VST - VI Labs Modern D

David Lai

David lai you're a traitor and nothing will ever change that😂🤍

i hope they'd use your help with their next pianos as well
i think some of the best parts of the modern d is because of you and your opinions on the first versions.

@David Lai hope you are getting commission. I wonder how many of us bought it because of your recommendation.

Any strategies or suggestions on how to setup the velocity curve. It either feels too muted or too bright in the mid velocity ranges, can't get it feeling right. I've tried using the midi response and also playing around with the curve on my keyboard. Not sure I understand exactly what the gain response curve is doing.

Kawai ES8

Saw this now, very cool! Great job with the demos @David Lai , beautiful playing!

Irmin Not sure I understand exactly what the gain response curve is doing.

It applies different (than the recorded) volume for the velocity layers. To understand it, let’s assume for a moment that they recorded 127 separate velocity layers. Each one has a different timbre and different volume. You can assign one layer to each MIDI velocity.

The curve on the left will reassign those layers to different MIDI values depending on the curve.

However, if you think that you like the timbre change but don’t like the volume change, you can change it with the curve on the right. If you make it a horizontal line, this will effectively make it a completely compressed piano sound where ppp and fff will sound with the same volume but preserve the timbre change from soft to bright.

A huge grand piano has huge dynamic response because of a big and heavy action. However, a light DP action when controlling these samples may lead to unnaturally jumpy volumes since the light DP hammers can’t be used in that grand, they wouldn’t reach the highest velocities. In this case you can compress slightly the dynamic range of the samples but preserve the timbre variation. Please note that this type of per-sample compression is more effective and natural than audio compression since the latter will dynamically affect the entire piano sound, altering everything simultaneously whereas the per-sample gain applies constant correction only to the specific sample.

David Lai Although I haven't tried it yet, after listening to your performance on youtube and knowing how much you enjoy it, I'm sure that I will also like this virtual instrument. 😊

one of the things that really stood up to me (at first) was the interface, although I've been waiting for their next release for quite a while but at the same time i was expecting a somewhat similar interface to the ravenscroft, an outdated picture of the piano from above where you can only see the soundboard and the keys which i don't like at all
but they've surprised me with the new kinda graphics, i know it sounds odd but i feel better when i can see the actual instrument that I'm playing, the side picture of their beautiful modern steinway d is truly inspiring to me.

another great thing about the interface is that everything is in the main page, you must have something very specific in mind to reach other pages, like tuning, or something like adjusting the velocity curve (a once in a lifetime adjustment)

everything else is right there in the main page, i love this design, it's truly user friendly

Irmin Any strategies or suggestions on how to setup the velocity curve. It either feels too muted or too bright in the mid velocity ranges, can't get it feeling right. I've tried using the midi response and also playing around with the curve on my keyboard. Not sure I understand exactly what the gain response curve is doing

you must first find out what midi value your keyboard sends with every strike, for some keyboards the edges ( around 10 - 0 and 120 - 127) are not very well implemented, so you should bring the 127 point to the 120 so you can easily reach the higher volumes (it's your own journey with your keyboard)

about the gain curve,

imagine you have changed the velocity curve so that when you play mezzo forte it sounds like mezzo piano, so there's a drop in volume as well, but maybe you want it to sound as loud but with a softer timber so you boost the gain curve in the exact area
so when you play mezzo piano, it's louder like the mezzo forte but not as harsh or bright.

i hope it helped (i was going to cancel my comment half way through😂 it's hard to explain really)

pianow

in extreme cases, sometimes i love to compress the volume of the dynamic range so i can play soft parts faster and easier

so i boost the gain curve quite drastically

Hi,

Can the Modern D have the same magical bell sound of the Steinway on this type of piece where you weigh every note and every note?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUw9Mc-rxpM

Regards,

Olivier F

Wow - that VI Steinway sounds amazing - like the perfect modern versatile concert grand, without the harshness of the VSL offers, but a naturalness, clarity and warmth. Also when David Lai and CyberGene say that it plays immaculate I am pretty sure that's the case. I never felt connected to the VSL instruments while playing them, but I am sure that's different for this one.

Just ordered MODERN D

Can't install it on MAC M2 PRO and MAC OS 15.0

VILAbsInstaller have no permission…..just found a solution. not easy…

Need For Pianos Fairheaven welcomes another F1 Competitor. Fabulous! It's like supercar shows! Wow!

pianow

Modern U and Modern D share the same excellent style of user interface. Modern D introduces a few handy newer elements still.

The three TrueKeys pianos and Ravenscroft 275 have the older style.

Cheers and happy tweaking,

HZ

OlivierW

Yes… I remember now that I also ran into that problem months ago when installing Modern U in my M1 mac. But I don't really remember how I solved it. The puzzling thing is that many people seem to not have any problem, and VILabs does not address this in their installation notes… Maybe people with older installations of previous VSTs versions don't suffer from this.

OlivierW

just ordered it i could compare with another video : hope i will not be disapointed. (no demo version…)

Currently download the library….

I am glad I returned the VSL Concert-D 274, because I was not able to get to like it, and this one seems to be the opposite!. I have not yet bought it because of money constraints (damn regional government is holding a payment to me), but will eventually do as soon as some fresh money arrives 😃

Hello,

@OlivierW

@vagfilm

I'm not much at home with Apple, yet I believe there is an "M1 Native" separate download from VI Labs. It may(!) be that the library download isn't diversified but I bet the one for the UVI Workstation is. Herein may lay the solution.

If not, do contact VI Labs directly, surely they'll help you, @OlivierW .

Cheers and best of luck,

HZ

HZPiano no i've found the solution. Currently download the 18 GB.

I could post first demo late in the night

Hope i will not be disapointed

OlivierW make sure you test all the factory presets and start from there. Because some are too nasal and weird. Mine is based on something that sounded like “player full resonance”.

CyberGene

can you share your preset ? i will try it with pleasure 🙂