hey all you Piano buffs!

[wizz]

As my Native Akoustic piano plug started acting weird lately I grabbed Ivory today. Wow, it\s mile ahead. Havent heard EastWests piano. Seems like Ivory plain works on my system, no flaws as of yet and totally amazing sound reprod..

[mazz]

Jun 10, 2008, 7:36am, aimusic wrote:I CAN'T BELIEVE THE NEW EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAP PIANOS ARE FRIKKEN 263Gb in size?!?!?! That is MADNESS!!! how much cpu does it chow? I got 2.1ghz core 2 duo with 3gb ram... should I upgrade to a quadcore cpu for this bad boy?! As it sounds AMAZING and I want it hahahahaI think you can install smaller versions of the pianos if you want to. I guess it boils down to what kind of music you're doing. If you're doing a ton of exposed piano stuff that needs real subtlety of phrasing, pedaling, etc., then you might really need the Quantum Leap pianos right now.On the other hand, a lot of background music won't get that kind of sonic scrutiny. I'm sure some of the Oprah composers would surprise you with what they used for piano sounds and their stuff probably gets played all the time.I'm not advocating cheaping out, just take a look at what you need now to do what you need to do now. Does that make sense?John

[aimusic]

Hey John, (Ha first time I learned your name)Yeah I totally get what your saying, I was actually discussing that with some people last night - I think eventually I would need to get them because I really really wanna get into film scoring - that type of vibe, and I love my dramatic pieces and subtle piano pieces too!I've tried my Akoustik Piano from NI and I aint impressed 1 bit... sounds like a toy to me... but for now I think Ivory may do the trick - what's your take on Ivory?Take CareB

[sirj]

Jun 10, 2008, 7:36am, aimusic wrote:I CAN'T BELIEVE THE NEW EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAP PIANOS ARE FRIKKEN 263Gb in size?!?!?! That is MADNESS!!! how much cpu does it chow? I got 2.1ghz core 2 duo with 3gb ram... should I upgrade to a quadcore cpu for this bad boy?! As it sounds AMAZING and I want it hahahahaIt is not about CPU here is about how much RAM do you have. Usually this library stream the samples from the Hard drive on the fly. Don't think the 200 GB gets loaded all when you need them!!! Usually 2 Gigs of RAM is starting point for a library like this and as always poeple will recomed you to run it from second PC instead.

[stansongman]

I use Ivory and love it. Up until recently I did the whole thing from my MacBook Pro in Pro Tools. You really need 3-4 GB Ram, and you'll have some latency. I have my sample libraries on FW Drive, separate from my system drive and audio drive (which is also a FW drive). It has all worked very nicely. I just upgraded my system, and can pretty much do what I want now (4 cpu, 8GB RAM!!!)

[flyingtadpole]

I'm using the Steinways on Garritan Personal Orchestra, played through Kontakt; occasionally the cheapie GM pianos out of Bandstand, and sometimes the industrial piano with Chinese overtones (slightly sharp, edgy) of my inexpensive keyboards. Typical examples on the Myspace pages.But as with all their samples, GPO pianos are dry as dust, zero reverb and ambience. So everything has to have a little post production at least. But NOT with the terrible ambience software they throw in as a freebie: I use Wavelab (Lite). GPO is not an expensive library, for those wincing at the cost of EWQL.

[flood]

I have Ivory as well, and would swear by it, except that I don't ever cuss. Unless I need to, of course.Ivory is pretty stout in memory requirements too, but sounds dynamite.

[mojobone]

Jun 10, 2008, 4:19pm, mazz wrote:On the other hand, a lot of background music won't get that kind of sonic scrutiny. I'm sure some of the Oprah composers would surprise you with what they used for piano sounds and their stuff probably gets played all the time.I know exactly what you mean; there's one particularly egregious example in the bumpers for CBS' morning show, so cheesy and plastic-sounding that it drives me nuts.I've been using Gigapiano, but the samples have a maddening buzzy quality, despite the overall realism. I'm warming up to the Garritan Steinway set, it's great for those Floyd Cramer moments, and has a more "produced" sound. The wishlist includes Ivory and the Reason piano expander's pop pianos.

[stansongman]

Ivory gives you a lot of options to tweak, including room ambience, stereo placement, soundboard quality, mechanical noise, etc. Of course, like most of these packages, you're not going to have half-damper support/etc. I guess the only way around that is to use the real thing

[georginasaint]

Interesting thread guys. I've been unable to even load in my Steinway B grand from my EWQL GOld so I upgraded to 4 GB and now it gets to 97% loaded but I still can't use it!!!I wonder if I could use Ivory - I have never heard of this. I'm really missing having a good piano sound. The one on my Korg workstation is awful. Georgie