Orchestral Tools have released a 'cinematic concert grand', the James Newton Howard Piano, a Steinway Model D (sampled with 25 dynamic layers) recorded in the composer's studio and shipping with 5 production-ready mixes by Alan Meyerson.
Available for the introductory price of €99 until August 7 (Reg. €129). Requires the latest version of SINE (v 1.3.4).
Talking with some fellow piano nerds about this one on Discord, etc... Seems like a nice instrument, but for such a huge amount of storage, I can't imagine replacing Modern D. Looks like the samples were very well-recorded, and the intro price is very friendly. But man, what a huge disk footprint.
To be fair, the main reason for the giant footprint is the many mic positions and the various "styles" of the piano.
I personally only use the Mix, which makes it much more easy on disk space.
There's also a lot of trickery under the hood, with time-based releases, etc... So it's more than just "a ton of regular sustains that take a lot of space".
Alan Meyerson as the recording engineer makes me interested in the library. I'm on holiday and can't listen to the audio properly. With a lack of round robins, repedalling, and sympathetic resonance, it's more a character piano than a real workhorse. But the footprint is immense just for that. In the end, I'll let the sound decide. If I like enough what I hear, I'll probably buy it. Even if the Garritan CFX works fine for me in most situations.
Good library. Had everything installed at first — which indeed requires quite a bit of disk space — but spending some time with the ‘Soft’, ‘Dark’ and ‘Cinematic’ parts of the package and hearing little future use for that type of piano presence in the music I make, those three got dismissed again, leaving me with the “Pure” and the “Stage” pianos (together offering most of what I hope to get from this type of virtual piano), which amounts to a little over 50gig of data. (I do want all the mics, not just the “Mix” samples.)
Sound is again really, really good — it has been for some years now with anything that OT releases —, the instrument sampled is clearly of a very high quality and well maintained, with a consistent, nicely even timbre across the keyboard and no notes that jump out, and, thankfully, the recording doesn’t give you that excessively (and, to my ears, irritating) wide sound which makes some piano libraries so tiresome to play and difficult to mix. This instrument’s image sounds very natural to me (and should you need or prefer a wider sound, that’s easily accomplished with the right tools anyway). Highest octaves are particularly gorgeous. Lowest ones a fraction too tame.
Haven’t run into any major performance issues yet (and, given the hours played and the sort of thing I played, it sounds like I never will), only one or two occasional distractions that may be caused, though this is just a uniformed guess, by a pedalling script that is perhaps not as optimized yet as it should be: the odd hanging note (only very rarely though) or a note-release that lingers on longer than you expect.
The ‘stage’ illusion of the “Stage” piano is very convincingly summoned, I find, all the more impressive given the fairly small size of the room the instrument was recorded in. The main thing that stops this instrument from functioning believably as a complete concert piano is its dynamic ceiling which, for more energetic playing, is undeniably too low.
I would have liked a more resonant, powerful and majestic sound at the highest dynamic — somewhere around f>ff appears to be the timbral ceiling of this instrument — but understanding that this virtual piano was not created to also emulate that ability of a Steinway grand — the room might have proven to be not ideally suited to play and/or record a grand piano at its highest, most roaring dynamic; smaller rooms rarely are — , don’t read this as a complaint, just a wishful comment.
Depending on what you want from a virtual piano, certain critical comments could be made, I suppose. Those who want a so-called character instrument or a piano that sings its age or exhibits some audible wear and tear, won’t find much to their liking here. Neither will purists who insist on things like realistic half-pedalling or who like full control over each and every aspect of a pianosound (the sort of control you get with, for example, NI Claire). But if an expertly recorded, great-sounding, unfashionably noises-free, beautifully expressive across 80% of a piano’s natural dynamic range, and very satisfying to mix virtual piano is what you’re looking for, this JNH Piano from Orchestral Tools should, in my opinion, go very high on the list of contenders.
That's a good review, thank you! I've never really done anything with the OT Sine player so I'm not sure how it handles piano response, but your report is encouraging. The demos certainly sound good to me, and I like the modern, consistent sensibility of it (I seldom need "character pianos").
