The Sound Board

http://links.waves-audio.com/a/750/clic ... 2d6c3ea5b1

It's a huge library, looks like tons of control - insanely cheap.

I took the plunge, but it's a 14 gig download so might take some time when I get off work...anyone else pick it up?

I'll try to do a comparison with wavesfactory mercury(both in cpu/ram as well as sound)

It looks lke waves is using their own engine, so I'm both skeptical and interested in how it'll perform compared to kontakt

Jeez, 29 bucks? That is indeed insanely cheap and looks like you tweak this thing quite a bit. Just skimped through the demos and I don't get excited by the sound, but I also have a grumpy day haha, so that might also be included for about 40% of the listening experience
That said, I recently picked up Keyscape and that library made me almost cry on how beautiful and rich some sounds where so I am good for the moment, but I am curious to hear how the experience is. Might be a great entry level library which I could keep in mind to recommend to some students or something. Keeping an eye out and thanks bringing it to attention Kyle!

Yeah, never know... I don't have omnisphere so keyscape is a no go for me

What I do like is that there's a chance that all sound shaping is reasonable to automate... which means that I could potentially use a few pianos with the same footprint

But I'm more or less curious how good the piano can be for 29$

Nothing to lose really, I've paid more for Chinese food that went straight through me

I clicked the email link, and it said you also needed to download one of three sample players, then appeared to give no clue as to what these players are. Can anyone shed any light, out of curiosity?

I have waves factory mercury, that's what's funny

Anders Wall wrote:(...) It is the same piano isn't it? (...)

Seems to be the exact same piano, yes. (When I first read the announcement, I thought that maybe Waves had licensed the raw samples from WavesFactory, but the ‘Making Of’ videos of both libraries clearly show that the Grand Rhapsody is the result of an entirely different sampling session.)

Waves obviously couldn’t call theirs ‘Mercury’ because, apart from probably getting into serious trouble with WavesFactory, they also already have a product with that name. Which might explain why Waves’ choice of celebrity artist to link this piano with, is Adèle. Freddie Mercury’s name is not even mentioned on the product pages.

29$ makes this tempting, doesn’t it? (I have the WavesFactory instrument too, but I’m not very happy with it.)

_

Anders Wall wrote:But what is really wierd is that Wavesfactory released a library featuring the same (as in the SAME) piano earlier this year.
They call it Mercury
https://www.wavesfactory.com/mercury/

I don't have either, but it is really strange that Waves would sample the same thing as another company.

Or did I miss something?
It is the same piano isn't it?

/Anders

The same piano, but different sampling sessions. Wavesfactory called it a bad coincidence.

Mercury is my go-to piano it's just not very optimized

However it is my favorite I just stack two of them

uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

this thing might be my new favorite piano

especially with the formant shift, and insane control - I can't stop tweaking things...

Video soon... and the thing takes WAYYYY less system resources than wavesfactory's mercury... and it feels pretty dang good... the key up noises, pedal noises, sympathetic resonance are all adjustable, and ER/verb settings, stacking 3 mics(out of 8 to choose) for blending, delay per mic, as well as phase flipping individual mics - and I can't say enough about the formant shift... it's amazing.

what I assume is going on, is transposition + pitching back to the original note... and the timbre change is great, aswell as perfect because it's automatable(spelling?) so I just midi learned, and sculpted it so sit well with whatever I'm playing it with... this is way better than an EQ in my eyes, because it's a more "natural" shaping.

but damn, 29$ makes this an absolute no brainer.

I didn't bother comparing sonically, since I just don't have the time right now - but you can see all the settings and control

I did a half arsed review: it's long - and you don't need to watch it, I'm just trying to practice making reviews(so if you'd like to review my review, review me) but damn I don't know how to make a review shorter... it needs to be VERY short, do I need to set up a metronome

KyleJudkins wrote:Yeah, never know... I don't have omnisphere so keyscape is a no go for me

Perhaps you know this, but Omnisphere is not required to use Keyscape. They are completely separate animals. And yes, Keyscape is amazing. I wasn't excited when they announced it, but I really like it now that I've had time to use it.

But it's a far cry from $29

Cheers

kpc wrote:
But it's a far cry from $29

That's not a fair metric to go by,

That price is insane!

But based on what u understand about pirating, it might be the route to go if you're bigger, buy that would be silly to expect out if a small studio

KyleJudkins wrote:

kpc wrote:
But it's a far cry from $29

That's not a fair metric to go by,

I wasn't using it as a metric, just making a little joke.

That price is insane!

But based on what u understand about pirating, it might be the route to go if you're bigger, buy that would be silly to expect out if a small studio

I don't understand what you are saying here, but I in no way condone pirating software. I don't think you are accusing me of that, but just to be clear.

kpc wrote:

KyleJudkins wrote:

kpc wrote:
But it's a far cry from $29

That's not a fair metric to go by,

I wasn't using it as a metric, just making a little joke.

That price is insane!

But based on what u understand about pirating, it might be the route to go if you're bigger, buy that would be silly to expect out if a small studio

I don't understand what you are saying here, but I in no way condone pirating software. I don't think you are accusing me of that, but just to be clear.

woah, yeah no way. I'll clarify:

I'm trying to ignore the 29$ price tag, I think $ for $ it would hard to beat anything that's 29$ unless you had an amazing library that was free - but 29$ itself is kind of an extreme price - so It's kind of hard to compare it to other libraries in it's price bracket, that's all.

and ofcourse I'm not saying you're a pirate(unless you wear a patch and have a shoulder parrot) I'm just saying that big companies(like adobe) get pirated so often, that they apparently profited by switching to a small fee - simply because people were more likely to buy it for a small price than to pirate it... smaller companies aren't as targeted by pirates, but larger ones(like waves) have probably had so many plugins pirated that a price like 29$ might be better than pricing it at 149$ and having 10x as many pirated copies than purchased copies...

I cant imagine anyone on these forums has a pirated piece of software... sorry for the confusion

edit: I see the typo, "what u understand about pirating" was meant to say "what I understand about pirating" it's just the I and the "u" are right next to each other, and I was on my phone typing that(sorry) but yeah - I remember reading a lot about the topic when adobe decided to change their model and I was legitimately curious if adobe went insane, or if there was some logic behind the bold switch.

I'd love to hear how EWQL feels after releasing the composer cloud... its an interesting(and sad) discussion to have... had a big long talk about it with ernest from numerical(Hollywood IRs) about it... he's resorted to watermarking each individual copy of the IR's to combat piracy - which is pathetic that it's gotten that bad - but I'm happy there are some developers out there laying "bait" instead... I'd be happy to see someone get bagged for uploading another hardworking artists sweat and blood, while being showered with "thank you's" for being so "generous" as to helping people steal...

see what you did? Now I have to go out and find a pirated copy of something just because, well, because....

Ah!

Back to pianos... I really wanted the Mercury piano to be cool because it was once played by Freddie, and he is one of my rock & roll heroes, he was absolutely brilliant (guess you'd have to be to share the stage with a rocket scientist). So far nothing I've heard of the Mercury piano has caused me to even reach for my wallet. Pity!

The silly level of control over the Waves piano is intriguing... but even at $29 I'm just not sufficiently motivated. What does that mean?

wst3 wrote:see what you did? Now I have to go out and find a pirated copy of something just because, well, because....

Ah!

Back to pianos... I really wanted the Mercury piano to be cool because it was once played by Freddie, and he is one of my rock & roll heroes, he was absolutely brilliant (guess you'd have to be to share the stage with a rocket scientist). So far nothing I've heard of the Mercury piano has caused me to even reach for my wallet. Pity!

The silly level of control over the Waves piano is intriguing... but even at $29 I'm just not sufficiently motivated. What does that mean?

it means I'm going to motivate the hell out of you.



you'd better watch that before I change my mind and remove it from even the obscure parts of the internet

KyleJudkins wrote:you'd better watch that before I change my mind and remove it from even the obscure parts of the internet

I wouldn't be the one to talk you out of that.

Oddly reminiscent of:



(Oh, and oblig.)

Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head in the shatner style...

"Rocket -man... " and now I want to write a musical for Gilbert Godfrey and christoper Walken.

Or they could have taken Russell crowe and Hugh Jackman roles in the last movie version of les mis... equally entertaining.


Hurry up wst3(if that is your real name)

I don't need alcohol to make bad decisions

there it is boys. Started working it like it's going into my template - and could still use some work, but sounds pretty damn real to me.

and also -I used midi's of real pianists, since I suck. Listening to those midi's really makes me zone out and forget it's a VST + plugins

it might also be because they're my 2 favorite piano pieces(cliché as hell, I know)

If I may...


I don't usually comment on someone else's libraries, because you know, it's not a nice thing to do. But this is Waves so I don't think I'm going to hurt anyone.

I'm at the moment on a very slow connection so I can't try to buy this instrument.
This video shows a series of wrong things about sampling a piano that's unbeliveable for a company like Waves.

1) they removed the lid. While there are some libraries with lid open and lid closed, removing the lid kills the natural sound of this instrument

2) They have placed a lot of mics in a similar position, but facing themeselves in a way that it's going to be a phase-cancellation festival. In this way the centre is super exposed and subject to phase cancellation, and the extremes are weak and off-axis.

3) There's a schoeps mic (worth 2000$) covered behind a SM 57 (a 80$ mic).

4) Royer mics, which sound wonderful on strings, are inexplicably over the sound holes.

5) Parallel mics to emulate the head of the player? Why? When it's proved that the best way to emulate the human perspective is to use ORTF or Binaural Heads.

6) Is there something more amateurish as a video presentation for this piano?

Also the pricing system seems done just to hurt Wavesfactory's Mercury Piano, which to me sounds better than this thing (a bit too bright for my tastes, but anyway better than this thing here).

Why didn't they hire someone, like Native Instruments does, who's actually already in the industry and famous for sampling pianos like Hans Adamson or the guy from Sampletekk (which I don't remember his name?). Or, at least, anyone who has a kind of idea about how to record a piano?

Sorry to be so critic, but the whole operation seems to me quite terrible.

Ha, Ha! I watched the OP's classical demo video first. For a while, I entertained the idea that this must be an eccentric billionaire who has set up his composing rig in the large marble hall of an old bank building. The largest composing room ever. Good fun for a while, there. Then, I watched the Queen rendition, and the reverb on the voice made a lot more sense.

Apologies to the OP for this off-topic indulgence.

Queen rendition, eww, speaking of which, I have reverb still setup

Paoling, there are phase flip button's per mic

My issue with mercury is the really poor opt mainly, but I don't see this as a slight towards the guy, considering waves electric piano is 39$

Reversing the phase wouldn't solve the problems, on the contrary, it is going to conflict with all the rest of the microphones. Look at any basic "stereo mic positions configurations" on the internet. You won'd find one where the mics do this:
________THING TO RECORD
___________/______\

Bought it and will report back when I receive the dl link... wouldn't be the first time I've thrown my money in the gutter

paoling wrote:Reversing the phase wouldn't solve the problems, on the contrary, it is going to conflict with all the rest of the microphones. Look at any basic "stereo mic positions configurations" on the internet. You won'd find one where the mics do this:
________THING TO RECORD
___________/______\

Didn't watch the video of them sampling, but I'm not sure they actually sampled that way...

Would look like a drunk xy. Or a backwards ortf... I feel like theres no way the finished product would be usable if it was truly their mic positioning...

It looks to me after watching the video, that is what they did. I can't say for sure, but it does appear that way to me.

Also, He was talking about the mics at the back of the piano and said "I would use them from where I placed them" What? Then why place them there? I get that he is talking about using them in concert with other mics and "completing" the picture - I get that. But it struck me odd that during a video about miking a piano (with any high end mic you want) to hear the words " I wouldn't use them where I placed them"

Anyway, I have no dog in this fight. I don't need another piano vi and not a fan of Waves as a company. So I will bow out at this point.

And thanks Kyle for clearing up your previous comments. I figured you weren't advocating for stealing software