SonicCouture have updated their Hammersmith Steinway and the library now also includes two generative tools (not unlike what you find in a.o. Noire).
Me, I never clicked with the original Hammersmith. It's been years since I played it, but I do recall it had a lovely pianissimo and a strong fortissimo but in between those two extremes, everything sounded sort of samey to my ears, despite the 21 velocity layers. However, the new demos seem to indicate that things have improved quite a bit in the new version. I'm downloading.
Piet, do you know if they also updated the LE version?
EDIT: just checked, yes they have.
If you don't mind, do you think upgrading to Pro makes a big difference? I see I can do it for 49$, seems like a good opportunity.
I've been spending some time with it today and ... I'm afraid I still don't like it very much. I'll post an audio example tomorrow, Rob, cause I can't describe with any useful accuracy all that's bothering me while playing this instrument.
As far as I'm concerned: I'll be soon moving this update to where the previous version of this library resided: my graveyard HD.
But first a few audio examples.
thank you Piet, I always love your improvisations... as for the tone, it sounds like there's a hi-pass filter on everything. Like they took away all the warmth and emotion from the sound. I won't update at this point, thanks for helping me decide.
I agree, they made a few strange decisions when processing/finalizing the Hammersmith content. The audio generated by this library also sounds very compressed at times to my ears, and that must be coming from the samples, because I didn't use any compression or limiting at all.
Sixteen days late to this party (I haven't checked this board much lately, apologies!!) but my findings are... very much like Piet's, which probably isn't a surprise.
I very, very much wanted to like Hammersmith when I got it several years ago and I just never could. Soniccouture is a bit of a perplexing company to me, they do things extremely well and clearly care about a high level of quality in detail in everything they do. But for some reason, several of their virtual instruments – especially, IMO, Hammersmith – just don't get along with my tastes.
On the upside, I do think this update improved things a bit. It might be faulty memory, but the VI seems to respond a bit more "snappily" now, more responsive to a player's touch, than the previous versions. Still a far cry from the standard-bearers like Synthogy and VI Labs, in that regard, but better.
The biggest thing that irks me about this piano, though, is a strange timbre around treble clef C/C#/D (third space, fourth line), that general region. To put it lightly, this is a region of the piano that I use with quite some frequency. For there to be some foibles in that zip code is quite an issue.
Still, big respect for Soniccouture for generally doing what they do extremely well. Our aesthetics don't always line up but I recognize passionate professionals who genuinely care about quality when I see them.
