Insanity Samples - The Stein

[srkrishnan]

Came across this piano today. What do you guys think?

https://insanitysamples.com/products/th ... cert-grand









Many more demos are on the website.




THE STEIN is a meticulously sampled Antique Steinway Model B. With a depth of character and colour that instantly inspires from the first note. With a whopping 10 individually configurable microphone signals, 6 of which placed to create a deep stereo image, the nuance captured is highly detailed. The STEIN also has additional mechanical noises from pedal sounds alongside mechanical & musical release triggers for added realism. We have also created a trailblazing approach to the sympathetic frequencies heard when using a sustain pedal on the real deal. A concert grand not to be missed!

So nuanced, you'll feel like you are sitting in the room with this one of a kind Concert Grand...



Important Note: The STEIN requires the FULL version of Kontakt 5/6/7 or above. Do not purchase this if you only have Kontakt Player.



AT A GLANCE

3,311 samples
10 mic signals [player pos l/r, front l/r, soundboard l/r, centre, rear, floor & room]
4 dynamics with 2 rr's across all velocities
revolutionary sustain-pedal-down sympathetic resonance workflow
mechanical & release sounds
special FX reverse texture
EQ & post effects chain

System Requirements
i5 or equivalent (i7 recommended)
4GB RAM (8-16GB recommended, the more the better!)
7GB Free Space (SSD preferable)

[playz123]

Gymnopedie No. 1 definitely created my interest to look into this. Can’t say I like the reverberation added to many of these demos, but perhaps it’s just a matter of taste. Do hope it’s not part of the library and has indeed been added. Will listen further once I’m back in my studio.

[Piet De Ridder]

I bought it for the sole reason they did a Thelonious Monk demo.

It’s good. Or good-ish anyway. But not great. What’s there is well-sampled, it’s got a nice tone and all that, but the problem, for me, is: there’s not enough of what I feel is required to make a great sampled piano: quite a few samples have to span 3, 4, and in one case even 5 keys, and the instrument has no samples with which to render the dynamic-timbral extremes a piano is capable of.

Here’s some of what I wrote about this library, a few months ago, on VI-C:

A few GUI suggestions:

- Would it be possible, in an update, to add the option to link the stereo channels? (Would take much of the tedium out of setting the desired sound.)
- Also: some of default values of the faders ought to be checked: the default value of a mono channel should be centre, not 100% left.
- Maybe also consider renaming the ‘Sustain’ parameter. That parameter isn’t related to the sustain of the instrument at all, but mixes in a cloud of resonances.
- Not essential, but convenient nonetheless: a few parameters with which to control the responsiveness and dynamic behaviour of the instrument.
- And a small, minor thing: why not make the entire buttons, with which to switch tabs, clickable? So much easier than having to aim for that much smaller area to the left of those buttons.


Not GUI-, but sample-related:

I don’t know if there’s still some unused material among the material you recorded for this library, but I very much hope there is, because using only one sample to cover three, in some cases four notes, is stretching it rather, I find. (There’s even one range of five notes that all share the same samples, and unfortunately that occurs in the all-important lower-mid range of the keyboard.)
The many problems this causes are quite noticeable all across the keyboard, I'm afraid; a particularly telling example happens when you go from a A#2 (Yamaha note-naming standard) to a B2 (or C3 or even C#3; another threesome that also has to share the same samples among them): huuuuuuge and very distracting difference between the 'Front' sample that sits under A#2 and the one under B2.
(The samples that cover the B2-C#3 range are, sadly, among the weakest of the entire pool: no definition, no power, no authority whatsoever.)

The (raw) samples themselves are, in most cases, too good to be spread out like this, I find. It prevents what is now a half-nice and semi-decent piano library to be a great one. (And it really could have been a great one, based on the quality of what's included.)

And talking about adding samples: an extra layer at the top, to cover the highest and most resonating dynamic of a grand piano, would be very welcome too as it would expand the expressive powers of the instrument considerably. (At the moment, playability feels a bit restrained because the piano just doesn’t open up in the f>fff range.) And the same goes for the range at the other end of the dynamic scale.

In brief: moderately satisfied with the purchase, but I also quickly recognized — too quickly, in fact — it as one of those libraries of which you hope that it is loved enough by its developer so that it'll get the update(s) it needs and deserves.
.

Have to add though that, if your piano music or -playing rarely uses dynamic extremes, and if you like the timbre of this library, the Stein is well worth considering.

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[srkrishnan]

Thank you Piet! Yes I too liked the sound but it's a shame that multiple notes are sharing the same samples. Need to research a bit further before purchasing it.

[Lawrence]

Sounds pretty good to me in the demos.

At this point we have such a surfeit of piano samples that I think it’s come down to personal taste, engineering and the skill of the player. Not that there’s the be all end all piano anywhere, but certainly good results can be generated by any number.

Of course, this doesn’t stop me for reaching for the Grail by acquiring my umpteenth piano.