Some of these vintage pianos may not be heard anymore one day. It is quite educational and for character piano fans, it is a blessing. I saw a developer sampled a whole museum of historical instruments for school in the US. To be honest, I mainly seek after modern pianos. But this new product shows how VSL has been working on. The later modern ones of Studio series may look more promising and interesting.
revox Only @pianow manages to write a few nice words, thanking the person who invested who knows how much time, money, and passion, only to have them read this negativity on the FIRST DAY of the release.
i always stand out lol, thanks 🙂
pc-king Who buys an old Steinway?
me
I'm interested to hear how this compares to the ViLabs Modern D as the demos sound quite promising.
This is a pretty impressive recording. I found this collection of videos on Youtube that I believe are of the same piano, and comparing the recordings of the live instrument to the generated one is pretty convincing (at least to me). Obviously, there are pros and cons to both, but in some ways, the VSL setup sounds even richer at times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A4kEGIHnb4&list=PLZ2_xiglJp-3Vn8XPQbU75VLUHNk3kTGK
My initial impression is that this feels like their best recording yet, and it is a beautiful instrument.
As always, it is a pricy option, which is my only hesitation. I'd love playing it just as a piano enthusiast, but would I use it for a final recording? I already have it competing with the German Upright for a vintage sound and the D-274 for classical, but there definitely are enough special qualities to justify this. I'm looking forward to trying it over the next few days.
EDIT: It also seems to me that this is a completely different sound than Modern D, so there really isn't an apples to apples comparison. I was kind of hoping for a direct clash between titans, but the advantage I suppose is that there is room for both. 🙂
Side note - Massive props to Vincent and VSL for putting some quality video game music on their recordings. I especially loved the Silksong piece. I knew I liked Vincent lol.
The piano especially sounds great when close up! I'm curious how the tube mic will sound on the program. Hopefully someone can demo it in detail.
dickiefunk Very different in tone quality. Modern D has a pure, clean sound, while this Steinway has a more vintage sound with some "dirt" in it. Both are very good instruments IMO.
revox fully agree, forum lacks moderation
revox And please, open your own thread and post your complaint there. To pollute the announcement thread like this is, in my worldview, simply evil. You either have no compassion for the developer, or you are intentionally trying to destroy the product and harm sales with your comments.
Well, maybe.
I lurk on a number of piano forums.
This one perhaps has the largest concentration of users who really push the limits of piano VSTi technology for solo piano performance.
So there's the eternal search for the holy grail -
the VSTi piano that half pedals and re-pedals, that has a perfect velocity curve out-of-the box for MY controller, that has real sympathetic resonance, that doesn't sound artificially perfect, that has perfectly constructed velocity layers where no note changes its tuning in the slightest from one to another, that offers silent-key, that has true una corda, and that meets a number of other criteria I'm not coming up with at the moment.
And if one is blind, like David, the amount of independence he can have based on the accessibility that the developers bothered to engineer into their product is a significant concern.
So when something new arrives, there's a feeding frenzy to see how many "must-haves" are now satisfied in the search for the ultimate instrument.
I've no doubt that a lot of work goes into all commercial offerings.
But a maxim I've well learned over the years is
"We judge ourselves by our intentions. Others judge us by our actions."
Or in this case, people who have a lot of experience with a number of competing products have learned what they want to look for in a new offering.
I don't think it's malice on the commenters' parts, just the natural pursuit of self-interest. To label that "evil" seems a bit hyperbolic.
Jane Well said, Jane.
Yes definitely. I think this may be a nice compliment to Modern-D when I want a more character piano.
Will need to clear a decent amount of hard drive space before I can try the demo, but I'm intrigued. If I'm honest, I'd hoped that VSL's next offering would be something from a less often sampled manufacturer, but the timbre of this Steinway sounds quite distinctive from the demos (which I agree are better than usual, and let you hear the sound of the instrument rather than just the hall ambience).
I'm wondering if it might almost be a replacement for something like Piano in Blue which I love but doesn't fare so well on the playability factor.
CraigNZ Now that you mentioned it, I do hear a similarity to Piano In Blue! 🙂
clavierhaus You should be. We really went the extra mile to get una corda in a way that so far is unheard of. My technician is a Kawai MPA and we ordered special voicing needles for una corda. You will be thrilled by the sound of it.
I don't see una corda mentioned on the website. Probably I'm missing something.
But the the guy doing a comparison with the Synchron Steinway demonstrates the new una corda samples at 2:54 in his video:
Jane
I'm embarrassed to say that I could barely tell the difference (and I didn't see it mentioned on the webpage either which is a curious omission). I still like the sound of the instrument though, and as my digital piano only supports a sustain pedal, I think I'll survive!
clavierhaus Thanks for your effort recording such a historical instrument!
There's one thing I am particularly interested in. Given this piano like 150yo, there must have been significant amount of effort restoring and maintaining it. I haven't ever touched any piano like this in my life, and very curious to know what you have done so far, like what parts you have to replace and how things are done to get it back to life?
Finally had a chance to spend about an hour with the new Steinway, and I have to say that I really, really like this piano. The tone is so warm and mellow and the playability is fantastic - possibly the best so far from VSL. I love how the decay time is ever so slightly shorter than on a modern piano, but not so much that it feels like a completely different instrument. The tone is undoubtably vintage and from an earlier era, but it still has enough in common with a modern grand that it feels both comfortable and refreshingly different at the same time.
In regards to the una corda, I don't know if something went wrong, but I'm struggling to hear any difference in tone when the una corda pedal is engaged. Could be an early release bug that needs to be fixed in a future update, but if there is a different set of una corda samples, the difference is so subtle that I'm not able to reliably pick up on it. Maybe others can chime in if they are hearing the same thing?
That aside, I'm really liking this and think it's a winner overall. I hadn't been too enthusiastic about VSL's last few releases (particularly the Fazioli F212) so this is a welcome return to form, and I can see myself getting a lot of use out of it.
Jane The Chopin Ballade No. 4 excerpt has una corda.
jdg78 On my side (Mac OS + MP11SE), Una Corda works very well, but there is distortion when playing certain notes forcefully.（maybe my cpu issue）
add：I tried the full microphone. There is indeed a problem.