Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
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Comments
Hey @tja, do you think it is possible to get in touch with Mt. Holm for a guest appearance? That would be so cool! Maybe someone knows how. Like Doug @thesoundtestroom maybe?
"Mt. Holm was a typo, but I like it. This needs to attract attention on a wide scale IMO. Most have not followed these threads. TitlE: BEST IOS PIANO, AND IT IS FREE!!
I new that Salamander was interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! absolutely free! I just need that Gestrument now.
Oh yes, of course.
Did iGrand make an appearance?
The Salamander is part of Auria Pro.
It can also be downloaded at the above site.
At https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u there is a modified version, which is not the same as the original or Aura Pro. Instead it is slightly smaller and could be used in bs-16i
iGrand was not contained in the last 16 of the Piano World Cup,
This was, because I needed to reduce 17 different Pianos to 16.
And as I do not own the read iGrand, but just the demo version, I selected this for the skip.
Voted - And a huge Thanks to @tja for the hard work and everything (and everyone) that helped out!!!
@dawdles, sorry forgot to mention about where to find Salamander. I think you can import it into sequencism, too, which is a free app.
@tja can Salamander be tweaked re velocity and eq? Even RC 275 would diminish for me if I couldn't have customized my own preset. Without these fearures I could not agree under any circumstances that this would be the best piano for me. And perhaps for others
I can only speak for it’s use within Bs-16i as I do not own Auria. As far as I’m aware there aren’t any controls for velocity so you won’t need to make the adjustments from your controller. The soundfont4u site states that the piano comes with five brightness levels which I assume are accessed via the cutoff dial. Note that Bs-16i is an AUv3 so you could perform some EQ tweaks within your DAW of choice. It’s highly playable due to its 15 sample layers.
Understandable @tja. iGrand sounds great in recordings but from a player’s perspective I find the abrupt switching between velocity layers off putting. Perhaps I need to play with the curves.
MY WRAP-UP:
@tja has been persistent and dedicated throughout this process in offering a fair hearing of these Products for comparison purposes.
I think we got what I wanted: does the audience hear the difference between the top choices? The most consistent comment at the end was something like "It's hard to have a preference but... I voted anyway." I often saw my preferences change depending upon what I decided to focus on: how does it sound during the softest passages? How do the note terminations sound (which tests the quality of the reverb added to the piano). A fair piano with a nice reverb would win over the best product served up dry.
For usability in a DAW like Cubasis or Auria Pro nothing beats RC 275 for me. As @LinearLineman has mentioned it has built-in tools for EQ, Reverb, velocity settings (mapping the key pressure to the volume curve).
Fo solo piano playing I use Colossus for many of these reasons but my iPad 2018 with 2GB doesn't seem to have enough RAM to use it as an AU without crashes. It has smaller sample products but that's not what was evaluated here. For painless use, RC 275 rocks.
The world of SF2 and SFZ pianos needs more investigation before summarizing. I'm working on it. I will say Auria Pro helps with these downloadable options.
It’s been really interesting and a great fun way to compare so many pianos. A huge thank you to @tja for putting it all together.
Thanks for your feedback, it was a pleasure!
I think, we can say that Ravenscroft, Colossus, BeatHawk Acoustic Grand and the Salamander from Auria Pro are of a very similar level, quality wise.
They differ in some aspects and also in the way they can be used.
I will not buy Colossus, but have the three others and Salamander is jailed in Auria Pro.
Between BeatHawk and Ravenscroft, I like Ravenscroft more, as I have my mental problems with those Pad Apps and also problems to configure them properly.
It would be interesting to wage iGrand against the top four, but as I said, I only have the free version - but from the last test, it may be worth to compare this anyway.
Not worth it in my view @tja. I bought iGrand first and went searching again for the right girl. No comparison. Probably because of what @onkey has to say.
I use the salamander extensively. Glad to know it’s perceived as sounding good by many. Great job, @tja.
P.S.: it makes sense, though: it’s a huge (1 GB) instrument and it has 15 velocity layers. We tend to not notice this because Auria streams from disk, not from the RAM.
Could please anybody who does own BeatHawk but not bought the Acoustic Grand check how big this Piano is?
Just open the browser, and search for Acoustic Grand. The numbers will be visible there....
Thanks, @White
Another huge library, but less than half as huge as the Salamander (probably one of the two options: it uses CAF files, or it has a lower bit depth, 16 bit would be my guess).
I’ve been too busy to take part in the voting, but what an enlightening experience. Thanks to @tja for taking so much time and effort to put this all together. Thanks to all the voters as well.
That was really fun!
Thanks again for putting this together! I usually use Salamander in Auria Pro, but considering buying the other three as well. Very informative!
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