Virtual pianos and other instruments

Del Vento

Here are some instruments which you could play with sforzando (and probably other samplers). I never hear about them, so I'm letting you know, since they might be hidden gems.

They are free.

Once I learn how to open a damn sampler player and/or plugin host and/or DAW (all of which are really hard things to do for a backend software engineer like me), I will try them myself, unless everybody agrees they are 🦀 (closest emoticon to what I really intended 🤣)

burkey

Del Vento closest emoticon to what I really intended

Cooties?
Those two do look fairly average, only 900Mb and 500Mb.

The Salamander at 1.2Gb, 48kHz 24bit, with 16 velocity layers, looks superior:
https://sfzinstruments.github.io/pianos/salamander

Drew-r

Del Vento

Minus the face, were

Del Vento unless everybody agrees they are

everybody cannot agree, on anything, ever ….…. i for one cannot because i’m too dumb to try messing with instruments , samplers, daws n’at but i do like reading about others …..maybe many others will agree they are what looks like ( minus the face) co …. co …. ☕️☕️💩 ( read: “steaming ca ca “ in a little brown pile ) , perhaps? ….. or cooties….. i concluded caca but maybe others predicted ….. cooties ?! ….. huh ? can anybody agree they are cooties….. maybe somebody thinks they are 🐈 meow

Del Vento

burkey Cooties?
Those two do look fairly average, only 900Mb and 500Mb.

Frankly assuming size == quality is a very disappointing way to think. And I found it inaccurate, for example my favorite one is Chateau Grand from soundfonts4u which is only about 250MB (note that the B must be uppercase, because lowercase means bits and it's a factor of 8 lower, as a physicists I have a pet peeve with people not using the units right 😆).

In any case, thanks for mentioning the other three sources, which I knew because they are are often mentioned, but other readers of this thread might not.

EB5AGV Look for Sforzando and also Kontakt Player

I second Sforzando. I greatly dislike Kontakt. There is also http://linuxsampler.org/downloads.html (which despite the name works for Mac and Windows too) which I find very intuitive interface (but it does not work with my sound card 😩 at least not yet), and https://sfz.tools/sfizz/downloads which I have not tried yet (hope to get to it today).

EDIT: rereading myself, I notice that this message sounds a bit rude on @burkey -- I apologize about that, it was not my intention (just saying my opinions: one should judge for the sound not the size, and try to use correct units, no bad feelings, only plain opinions) -- instead of changing the text I prefer to explicitly apologize for my poor choice of words. Thanks for your understanding!

Tyr

Here is another collection of free stuff: https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/

vagfilm

And don't forget the Pianobook project of free sampled instruments, that, if I remember correctly, was started by the owner of Spitfire Audio, Christian Henson.

www.pianobook.co.uk

Btw, it has much more than pianos...

spanishbuddha

Ooh, good thread. But might take me away from practice. I don't have a player, what do I need as minimum, free is good to start with?

EB5AGV

Look for Sforzando and also Kontakt Player

MacMacMac

Del Vento I have a pet peeve with people not using the units right 😆).

Me, too. That's why I insist on 250 MB, rather than 250MB.
There must be a space between the measure and the unit of measure.

Del Vento

MacMacMac delvento I have a pet peeve with people not using the units right 😆).

Me, too. That's why I insist on 250 MB, rather than 250MB.
There must be a space between the measure and the unit of measure.

You are correct if one wants to strictly follow the rules of BIPM (the international organization about the measurement science and measurement standards), as anybody can see on its official English brochure (see section 5.4.3)

However there are a number of style guides which disagree, for example the one from the University of Cambridge (section Measurements). I prefer to follow this non-standard style when writing in "fluid" context (such as this one) where the wrapping of text is performed automatically and could happen at the space between the number and the unit, resulting in a worst mistake than the minor one I am intentionally doing.

In technical documents in which a non-breaking space may be utilized, per the IEEE recommendation (item 9 on page 5), that is obviously the preferred solution.

PS: we are quite pedantic aren't we 🤣