Synthogy Ivory Grand Piano 1.7 Virtual Instrument

Comments about Synthogy Ivory Grand Piano 1.5 Virtual Instrument:

"Sound on Sound, March 2005 Synthogy's Ivory goes where no virtual piano has gone before, sampling three full-size grand pianos to form a detailed library more than 30 Gigabytes in size � and all in one �189 plug-in! I don't think I have ever heard a Kurzweil synth that didn't have a decent acoustic piano sound. Even in 2004, the one instrument which I enjoyed gigging with the most was a Kurzweil PC88, which considering its vintage, has an amazing piano sound. And now I know why. It would appear that Kurzweil had a secret weapon � a gentleman by the name of Joe Ierardi who was solely responsible for sampling and crafting the fine piano sounds that have been loaded into the various different generations of Kurzweil keyboards. This fact has come to light because Joe has now teamed up with a DSP software designer called George Taylor to produce Ivory � a plug-in which offers sampled pianos of the same extraordinary quality to Mac users for the princely sum of �189. It runs under both OS 9 and OS X, and host support is equally comprehensive � it can run in VST and AU hosts, as well as under Pro Tools and Digital Performer . Only Windows users are currently excluded, although a PC version is promised for 'early 2005' � so who knows, it might be out by the time you read this. First Impressions Ivory offers samples from three grand pianos: a nine-foot Steinway D concert grand, a seven-foot Yamaha C7 Studio grand, and the biggest of the lot, a B�sendorfer Imperial grand (in 88-note and nine-octave 97-note versions). Following installation (see the box opposite), I started with the B�sendorfer, as I have always had ideas above my station (and it is the first to load). Having managed until now with EXS24 loading Akai samples and other tired and outdated formats, my immediate response was that the wait to find a decent virtual grand piano has been well worth it. Ivory 's B�sendorfer also loaded and played back without serious problems, something no piano has done for me since Stereo Grand ECO on EXS24 . It was a pleasure to just sit down and play after the installation without having to spend a couple of hours de-bugging, which has happened to me a lot with large sample libraries lately. I was further encouraged when I tried to load some of the more ambitious eight-layer versions of the extended B�sendorfer. Let's face it, 97 notes of eight velocity layers with separate Release and Soft Pedal samples will stretch the most generous of resources, and sure enough, I found that there was not enough memory assigned to the host sequencer under OS 9 � Ivory brought up an error message to this effect. But somehow, I still had a playable piano at my fingertips. I wasn't sure how Ivory did this (I think it missed out some of the lower layers), but it was a refreshing change. So many other sample-based virtual instruments will simply not come out to play at the first sign of any shortcomings in your hardware or software. Ivory , in contrast, seems to load what it can and then let you play that. In the studio, it's less of a problem if the your virtual piano drops out and you have to spend a couple of minutes assigning extra memory and reloading, but on stage, where mad fools like me are now attempting to use virtual instruments like Ivory , such unwanted intervals can feel like a lifetime! With Ivory , however, if something went wrong with your memory allocations, you would still have a playable piano to get you through the next song. Of course the best way to avoid this problem is to use OS X with its dynamic memory allocation, and most people I know are now using OS X on their laptops (even if their studio machines may be running OS 9 for a long time to come). Under OS X, at least you don't have to quit your sequencer to allocate it more memory and then relaunch. It's great when the first sound you open is the one you have been looking for for years � I must have played the B�sendorfer for at least 20 minutes before I even thought about calling up another preset. I found that the six-layer 88-note version with the Soft Pedal samples switched out would load into 512MB of RAM when nothing else was running inside Logic , and I found this had more than enough subtlety for my playing style. When I did finally get around to a leisurely amble through some of the presets for the other two pianos, I found the aggressiveness of the Yamaha C7 ideally suited for rock (there was even a chorus'ed version for those who remember the CP70 fondly), while the Steinway was more suited to romantic compositions, although the many different presets available using each basic piano type drastically change the character of each until they overlap � all told, they cover a very wide range of applications. Layering & Memory As I continued to play and became more critical, I began to appreciate the nuances available because of the multiple layers of velocity-switched samples. Synthogy refer to complete multisampled, velocit"