I just tried it — the dynamics feel more realistic and better balanced by default than the recent VSL Steinway D-274. It has a beautiful, very “Hamburg” sound — congratulations to the tuner and the technician who prepared the piano, they did a great job.
However, the playability of the resonances doesn’t feel real, and their “sympathetic resonance” option still doesn’t work properly — it’s basically fake and sounds terrible when enabled. The sustain and sympathetic resonances aren’t really simulated at all, just long sustain samples that don’t allow for true repedaling behavior within the resonance.
In short, it’s interesting in the demos, but when you actually play it, it still lacks the realism and responsiveness of instruments like the Modern D. This piano could have been excellent if VSL had made the effort to properly program the behavior and resonance of a real piano — at the level of the UVI interface by VI Labs, like the Modern D or Modern U. Beautiful work from the technician, but not from VSL’s software team.
It has a genuine Hamburg tone, but the software simulation is disappointing — and in 2025, that’s difficult to accept given how far competitors like VI Labs and NI (Galaxy, Noire, etc.) have advanced in terms of programming realism.
I will improve it with my Soluce : VSL + PIANOTEQ 9 resonance (SR and repedalling an Sustain) . sonne my logic file
