VIRTUAL PIANO PATHWAY
Follow our thoughts and actions – progress on this conversion . . (0) — (1) — (2) — (3) — (4)
Transitioning Steinberg piano hosted by CuBase and powered by a 1990’s Dell tower PC to
— either a new keyboard with good piano sound built-in
— or stand-alone virtual piano and Macbook, keeping the RD-600 key base.
FIRST STEPS:
– Upgraded to the Steinberg ‘Grand 3’ – OS compatible and stand-alone (since 2009).
– Say goodbye to Native Instruments B4, designed for PC and Mac but our version no longer supported.
ALTERNATIVE VIRTUAL PIANOS: (sampled as well as modeled)
Synthogy American Concert D – has to be among the top, listen! (sampled)
Arturia, Piano V2 — Three (modeled) classic grand pianos plus uprights and fun experimental pianos. However it has been difficult to adjust the lower half of the keyboard to not give a “muddy” sound.
Best result so far, and closest to the Synthogy American Concert D, is Arturia’s version of the American Concert D — getting a decent result requires using a lower value of keyboard velocity and tweaking the three “mechanical” hammer controls of ‘hardness’, ‘dynamic range’ and ‘position’. We now have a reasonable result and will post an audio track soon.
The graphic implementation of the Arturia software is very good:
Pianoteq; here the Steinway D:
KEYBOARD:
Yes there are better-feeling keyboard actions out there, but it becomes clear that the old Roland RD-600 remains good and better than many, so we keep it. MIDI control capability is also fine for software pianos and other external instruments.
Follow our thoughts and actions – progress on this conversion . . (0) — (1) — (2) — (3) — (4)
