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How do iOS pianos compare to the likes of Nord, Korg, Yamaha, etc?
Question aimed at the more serious piano players here who either own or have plenty of experience with hardware digital pianos.
I think Ravenscroft is superb, but have never had chance to compare with a Nord Stage, Korg Kronos, etc. Would love to know well in competes in this field.
Comments
Kawai’s EX, Shigeru-Sk, excellent.
Nord can download fantastic pianos forever. If the action were better (now they are incorporating a modified Kawai RH111 action in their 4K piano) in a 2k keyboard I would go for it, tho I love the Kawai ES8 I have now, both action and sound (over headphones, onboard speakers just ok, which may make the Kawai MP7se a better value as a midi controller in the same price range almost, with the same piano samples). Also the mechanical noises in the Kawais are very adjustable.
It's not the sound that makes a difference, but the keyboard. You can have the best sampled piano in the world, but it won't feel the same as a good weighted hammer action keyboard.
The sound could be comparable, but you wouldn't be able to play it with the same level of 'feel' that you can on a more natural piano keyboard.
I agree, and I have a decent hammer action MIDI keyboard (Studiologic SL73 Studio) with which to play Ravenscroft. I also have an upright acoustic at home so am all to aware of the differences in feel between the real thing and an emulation.
Desktop piano software would probably yield the best results if you are seeking the best non acoustic piano sound.
My impression, too, is that piano VST's on desktop are generally better than piano voices in even high end digital keyboards/stage pianos.
I don't have a high end keyboard, but I've noticed that picky people with high end digital pianos often resort to using software VST's. I have low end Roland FP-10 digital piano, and sometimes use Pianoteq VST and/or Garritan CFX Lite running on a PC for sounds; both are significantly better than FP-10's built-in sounds. But I think a lot of people get hung up on the VST's and waste a lot of time and mental effort on agonizing over which is "best". The truth, in my opinion, is that most of the stuff out there (including my FP-10's built-in sounds) is good enough. Obsessing about finding best VST can get to be like audiophiles who agonize over their gear, listening for tiny differences (that may or may not be there) while missing out on the pleasure of hearing the music.
FWIW, Ravenscroft has a decently regarded desktop version that has a few differences from the iOS version, but ". . . [t]he rest is identical, the same samples are used as well as the same number of velocities and our advanced scripting that makes the Ravenscroft so playable." That should tell you something about difference in overall sound quality. See the chart near bottom of this page for the differences: https://www.vilabsaudio.com/ravenscroft275ios The main thing missing from iOS Ravenscroft, for me, is the half-pedaling, sustain is only full-on or full-off.
You can search on youtube for what are probably many videos comparing stage piano sounds with software VST's. For example, here's one comparing Nord piano sounds vs. Pianoteq VST:
They are much lighter.
I will show myself out.
@hes, I pretty much agree with you, but for a couple of things. Lots of users collect vst pianos, an innocent if expensive hobby. I don’t find anything objectionable in that. Many users can detect subtleties that are beyond me and so I think it is like someone who approaches fine wines, and it is exciting when a new one comes out. A new VI upright has come out and it seems quite exceptional, for example. A new Synchron Bosendorfer, and Ivory ll is on half price sale with two Steinways and a Fazioli for $160. These instruments are incredibly out of reach as hardware. If I didn’t abhor using a laptop after iOS I might want a few myself.
As for the Ravenscroft, it is the piano I almost always use, but I would love the desktop version. The mic placement feature, the velocity curve refinement, the release tail samples, the half pedaling. The iOS takes up around 900 mg, the desktop close to 6 gb. There’s gotta be significant difference for there to be such a disparity,
As a soundman, I always find it a plus to not have a nord doing acoustic piano sounds onstage. Electric piano and organ is a different story, nord sounds great on those.
Thankfully I usually get to mic a steinway, which is a challenge and a pleasure.
I agree that the keyboard action has an important part in how a piano feels to play, I can't enjoy playing one without a good keybed. The most expensive are not necessarily the best, I found them to be very much a matter of taste.
I don't agree that sound doesn't make much of a difference. I believe that the evergreen discussions about "the" best piano sound are fueled by the fact that there is none.
There are more acoustic piano sounds than there are electric piano sounds and most of them have their individual and good position in whatever style of music when combined well with the piece.
If you look at the range of available virtual pianos today, the choice is breathtaking, sound-wise.
@mrufino1 From the day that I once played a Steinway grand on a stage - just for a few minutes - I knew that there's nothing like playing a real, good grand piano in a room that is large enough to let it breathe. Virtual instruments are getting closer and closer to the sound of the real deal but the playing experience makes a huge difference for the player indeed.
IOS Pianos consume less space in every sense of the term "space". And sometimes good enough is more than fine when you want to play at 2AM. It's perfect. The illusion is complete and I have recordings to prove it.
Still, PianoTeq's approach on an IOS device would be amazing and consume even less space since they don't use samples... just CPU cycles. They ported the damn thing to the Raspberry Pi. So, they could do it. I hope some smart young programmer is working on his own modeled piano to give us a space conservative option.
Yeah, I agree, collecting VST's can be seen as a relatively inexpensive hobby. I admit I get a sort of satisfaction using Pianoteq and switching from, say, the "Bluethner" to imagine myself at the keyboard of a "Steinway D". Probably more satisfaction than I would, I think, if they had named the pianos, "Piano 1" and "Piano 2". So it's partly a psychological thing. (At the same time, I recognize that they've put a lot of effort into making their VST's actually sound and respond like the piano they're named after, and that people familiar with the acoustic models feel the similarity.)
Yeah, strange that they say "otherwise identical" given disparity in size. Regarding velocity curves, though, I think you should be able to get a curve identical to what you'd have using the desktop version by routing the ios controller's midi through an iOS app that applies a velocity curve before it's fed to iOS Ravenscroft.
I think the 19 layers in the desktop version is where the size disparity lies.
So is the consensus, as far as sounds and playing experience goes:
1. Desktop VST
2. Hardware
3. iOS
??
I too would love the half-pedalling function of the desktop version of RC in the iOS version.
I assumed "layers" was what they meant by "velocities" here: "The rest is identical, the same samples are used as well as the same number of velocities. . . " But fewer layers would seem to be an obvious way to account for at least part of the size discrepancy. I guess that's also asserting that in saying "the rest is identical", they didn't really mean "the rest is identical", just marketing-speak, somehow.
I used to love the Bosendorfer that came with my Ensoniq EPS16+. It came on a single 720K floppy.
Things have moved on a bit since then I think. :-/
I’d say that’s a fair summation. This video pretty much confirms.
I have a new freebie that compares favorably to the Ravenscroft and its all of 268mb in size! Chateau Grand will run on soundfont player bs-16i and you can get it from the bottom of the Piano section on my site. Take the Pepsi challenge....
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
Demo Here:
@Reuben this is fantastic! Lots of gnarly bite at the top end. Care to share which piano you’ve sampled? And how does one reward your efforts.
Its a Kawai Grand that was offered as a free download in sfz format. I've converted it to sf2, looped, trimmed and EQ'd to suit the bs-16i player. It has 4 notes per octave each having 6 velocity layers. The velocity layers were adjusted to make it sparkle and the different presets have slightly different velocity curves - one of which should suit your keyboard the best. Its a freebie - enjoy,
Thanks for sharing. I’m rocking a 10-yr-old Kawai digital so perhaps my ears are attuned that sound. Speaking of which I’ve dialled in a convincing Coldplay sound which I must remember to SynthJacker.
Nice tip. I went looking for the Kawai in the SFZ format because AudioLayer can load that format. I found one and it's nice... AudioLayer allows for a lot of sythn-like sound editing that no piano app does. I was hope I could filter the piano into something like "Felt Piano" but it doesn't work.
There is a several "Felt Pianos" in Kontakt format available for free from
PianoBook.com. To use these Kontakt samples just download and move the
sample folder to the /On My iPad/AudioLayer/Import or /iCloud/AudioLayer/Import depending on your installation choice.
Then create a new instrument in AudioLayer and import the raw wave files
into a layer. Some file are named to declare root notes but AudioLayer can also detect root notes if they are not named to assist with layering decisions.
I was just a little surprised to find that the largest piano samples used by Nords seem to be quite a bit smaller than even Ravenscroft iOS. In fact, the only one that's larger than 200MB is the Nord White Grand Piano, which is 245MB. (See here, where people with Nords can download the samples: https://www.nordkeyboards.com/sound-libraries/nord-piano-library/grand-pianos/white-grand )
Not sure of what significance that has, but just offering it up here since I think this thread started as question about how high-end digital pianos compared with Ravenscroft iOS.
Nord discloses:
Hmm, I'll take that Nord disclosure with a grain of salt. I'm pretty sure every manufacturer deals with a tradeoff between (1) amount of lossless compression to apply vs. (2) the processing power required to uncompress on the fly in realtime. I'm skeptical that Nord has come up with a method of doing it that's better than anybody else. In any case, it would be easy to test by zipping the Ravenscroft iOS files and seeing how much smaller they get. And apply same zip to a Nord file and see how much smaller it gets.
But you were musing about Nord vs Ravenscroft on IOS. Not another hardware vendor that can build
decompression chips into the platform. IOS provides some chip functions for a vendor to use and probably (I'm guessing) some code for standard audio compression/decompression functionality like
MP3 and the Apple formats.
But please salt according to tastes. UVI has made us an excellent piano and made it work in the AUv3
requirements. But I've noticed they haven't released any new IOS products except some BeatHawk IAPs.
Yeah, no, I have no idea. I wasn't even thinking that there were chips dedicated to decompressing, was just assuming it's done in software. But it may be that most piano VST-makers just don't worry about disk space and have the samples uncompressed on disk so they can avoid dealing with it at runtime. Still skeptical about size of Nord's samples. But of course it's the sound that matters.
The recordings I've heard of the Nord's sound good. They can also created better audio hardware
electronics than Apple does for the IOS D-to-A conversion step.
My favorite IOS Sample playback device is embedded in Auria Pro in the Lyra Sampler. It can disk
stream massive samples in realtime without issues. I've been hoping they might break it out as
another app but still waiting. It can load SF2's, SFZ's and EXS24's I think. But it's still inside AP.
Pianoteq would be the best. No samples needed as well
But it also cannot do all or you have to buy all expansions and build your own.
But still would be nice to get Pianoteq Stage/Standard on iOS one day.
My all time favorite software piano is the Wing Tacked (Upright) Piano inside Spectrasonics Keyscape. Such a great character.
Otherwise i find even the piano inside Garage Band usable.
I did not tested or bought the Ravenscroft iOS nor the biggest (in terms of samples) from Crudebyte called Collossos.
I wonder how they compare. I heard about some performance issues.
And do any of these on iOS offer sympathetic resonance?
That would be nice but they would price it close to their desktop models.
Yes. I'd would be nice to have IOS instances of tack, felt and muted pianos.
Ravenscroft and Colossus have dedicated "sustain pedal down" samples to deliver the sympathetic
resonance effect.
Maybe Pianoteq will eventually make it to iOS. I use Pianoteq for playing my digital piano and I like it. It is far from a universally acknowledged best, though. There are many people who dislike it. Just goes to show the large amount of subjectivity in this stuff. iOS already has some good options.