VSL Synchron Steinway

[RobS]

since I upgraded to the full version I've quite grown fond of this piano, the ribbon/tube/hi surround especially are my favorite combo.
I wonder if you find it nice sounding too or if not, what you think it's missing...

www.robertosoggetti.com/ConAlma.mp3

here's the midi, in case someone wants to try his favorite piano:

www.robertosoggetti.com/Con_Alma.mid

[Piet De Ridder]

Rob, there's something wrong with the link to the midi-file, I think. Could you have a look at that, please? Thanks.

The Synchron Steinway doesn't sound bad in your example, far from it, but it's not really a revealing excercise — revealing as to the quality, potential and problems of the library —, I find. (My apologies for referring to your wonderful playing as an 'excercise'. It's soooo much more than that.)

If you configure the Synchron Steinway for incoming midi-data of this type — all soft and gentle, with only low to medium velocity values — and if you’re going for a close-up intimate sound, then sure, you get a pretty good result. As your ‘Con Alma’ shows.
(Except that I prefer a piano recording with a stereo image that favours the mids a bit more than the sides. I never much liked piano simulations, nor piano recordings, where the upper register is present predominantly in the right speaker and the bass notes occur at the opposite end of the stereo image. These type of pianos are also a nuisance to mix well with other instruments.)

But yeah, set up for one type of playing combined with the choice of a close-up, direct sound, the Synchron Steinway isn’t bad.

The first trouble starts, in my experience anyway, if you want a Steinway that needs to be able, in one and the same piece, to show both this tender side as well as a more boisterous, energetic persona, let alone a third persona that captures the noble grand majesty which a real Steinway is obviously capable of as well. You can’t do that with a single instance of the Synchron Steinway. (And a real grand piano has, of course, countless more of these personas.) If you optimize the Synchron Steinway for ‘Con Alma’ type playing, it’s going to be a very unsatisfying instrument for anything that needs the mezzoforte, forte and fortissimo dynamics to express itself. And vice versa, if you optimize it to render those higher dynamics as good as it can, it will be no longer able to whisper gently and poetically the way it does in your example.

I once tried to use the Synchron Steinway in one of those rhapsodic scherzos for virtual piano and mock-orchestra which I enjoy doing so much. I ended up using six (6!) instances of the Synchron Steinway. And it still didn’t even begin to sound like I wanted it to. Which leads me to the 2nd problem:

The second problem occurs when you bring in other mic channels. You avoided this by choosing a very close-up sound with very little of the Synchron ambience present, but when the time comes that you want, or need, your Steinway to make a more spacious, concert-like appearance and hope to summon that suggestion with the available mic perspectives — which is exactly what, on paper, they’re there for —, you’re in for a rather unpleasant surprise. At least, I was. To my ears, the more spacious mic-channels paint a very smeary, poorly defined image and also bring out that clangy, hard, ‘banging-on-dustbins’-type of sound that is, unfortunately, very much present in the higher and upper dynamic ranges of the instrument. Very, very unappealing sound, I find. And also technically, sonically and spatially flawed, in my opinion.

I have *never* heard a good-sounding example of the Synchron Steinway as a concert instrument in a concert-like environment. An example, that is, where the instrument is both a convincing presence on its own (in as much as sampled pianos can ever be that) and also sits believably in the mix with the orchestra. Tried it myself more times than I care to remember (because that was, after all, what I bought the library for in the first place), but never succeeded. Jay Bacal, master of all things VSL, recorded a few excerpts from piano concertos and I don’t like the sound of those either (showcasing, as they do, the exact same problems I ran into when attempting to use the Synchron Steinway as a concert instrument in a (mock-)orchestral setting). So I concluded that it can’t be done. Not in the way I like it anyway.

All this is strictly personal experience and opinion, of course. You wouldn’t want to have to feed all the people who strongly disagree with everything I said above.

I deleted the Synchron Steinway (as well as the VSL CFX) from my harddisk some time ago. (I’ve kept the Fazioli and the Bösendorfer 280VC for now, but their future on my hard disks is very uncertain too.)
It’s funny (and a bit sad at the same time): everytime I need to make space on my hard disks for some newly purchased material, I simply open the Vienna Assistant and delete some more stuff. I never use any of it anyway. (Only the Synchron Harp and a few instruments of the Synchron Percussion are occasionally called upon.)

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[RobS]

sorry for the wrong link Piet, it should now be fixed... thanks for the comment, to which I intend to reply later, have a nice day my friend

[Piet De Ridder]

Thanks, Rob.

Here's a version with the Chocolate Audio Model 7. (I did edit your midi-data a bit in order to suit this piano.)

The Model 7, while not perfect — and also not being a Steinway, which disqualifies it from certain repertoire or types of piano music — has plenty of what I hope to get from a virtual piano. It’s not a piano that’s suited for every genre, but it does surprisingly well in most. And what I particularly like about it, is that it can from a full, warm and round sound to a sparkling, snappy forte and fortissimo that has plenty of power, punch and impact, rich in convincing overtones and resonances, and all of that with just one instance of the library. Here's another demo (which you might have heard already because I also posted it a few weeks ago in a piano-thread on VI-C). Apart from a bit of additional reverb, there's also no processing on the audio.

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[RobS]

I love it Piet... it's also more balanced in terms of dynamics, I have gone too far in my customizing the vsl. A thing about the attacks: the model 7 has a crisper, clearer attack but immediately after it, the sound has a little dip before it goes full again while the vsl keeps the sound up immediately which to my ears make it more singing. On the other hand I've always had the impression that the first few milliseconds were cut from the samples in the Steinway, there's not the correct distance between the moment the key is pressed and the hammer hits the strings. I may be wrong of course but that's the sensation I get. All considered the vsl sounds less like a midi instrument to me, and although I think you have better ears than mine (also for aging reasons) I'd be choosing that one above the chocolate model7. Lovely demo by the way, the range of dynamic power of the piano is well exposed.

[RobS]

if you'd be willing to share the midi of that piece I'd like to try it with the vsl as a test for dynamics

[Piet De Ridder]

Here’s the midi, Rob. Not sure if it’s going to be all that useful though because in the Model 7 you can remap the incoming data with a Soft > Hard slider — different but not dissimilar to the ‘Midi Sensitivity’ parameter in the Synchron Piano Player software — and I did turn that slider a bit to the Soft side for ‘Con Alma’. Meaning that the piano responds to incoming midi-data which is slightly different from what was recorded.

About those attacks: yes, you’re right, but it so happens that for most of my music, the Model 7’s attacks are a great fit. At least, I think so. They’re richly nuanced, well-rounded, nicely defined, affirmative attacks which articulate my kind of piano playing more or less the way I like it. (The only other sampled piano which gives me that same experience is the Vintage D.)
But it’s certainly true that for many other material, something more along the lines of the Synchron Steinway’s attacks might make more musical sense. (I do remember always raising the ‘Smooth Attack’ parameter considerably though in the days when I was still trying to get along with the Synchron pianos.)

To illustrate the difference: like I said, I deleted the Steinway, but I still have the Synchron Fazioli installed and here’s a comparison — first the Model 7, followed by the Fazioli — that illustrates quite well why I’m much more pleased with the Model7’s attacks than with those of the Synchron pianos. To my ears, the Model 7 is much more dynamically nuanced and expressive, and the sound also wraps itself much more musically around the notes (= the sound becomes part of the music), whereas with the Synchron instrument, sound and content are and remain completely detached and there’s also a rather tiresome sameness in the attacks no matter the nuances in the dynamics. As a consequence, the ‘player’ in the Fazioli performance sounds like a worse player than the ‘player’ in the Model 7 performance. To my ears, anyway.
And I’ve started bashing, so I might as well finish: the sound and the sound-projection of Fazioli is also much worse, I find.

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[RobS]

thanks Piet I was referring to the other piece of yours though...

[RobS]

oh yes the difference in your example with the Fazioli is evident... probably model7 has more velocity layers, it's much more varied

[Piet De Ridder]

thanks Piet I was referring to the other piece of yours though...

Here's the midi of that Model 7 demo, Rob.
(I thought you wanted the midi of my rendering of 'Con Alma' to check which changes I had made.)

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[RobS]

Sorry and thanks

[Ashermusic]

Thanks for reminding me of the Chocolate Audio Model 7, I had completely forgotten about it.