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Best sounding piano plugin in late 2025?
So, I had a crazy idea to feed the MIDI data from my practice keyboard into my iPhone 16 Pro Max to record piano performances via AUM. So, for solo piano recordings, what plugin would you recommend for the most realistic piano sound on iOS?
Comments
You can try the free version of pianoteq, I think it has only three sharps missing in a rather low octave, so you could even be lucky, depending on what you feed it.
Cool! Will try that out.
I recently asked myself the same question and looked a bit into it.
I think the main contenders are Ravenscroft, Pure Piano/Upright and Pianoteq.
Ravenscroft sounds good right out of the box but is not very versatile. Pretty much one grand piano sound. Sound detail is medium to deep.
The Pure Pianos are very versatile with many different sounds and FX but their detail is not the deepest.
Pianoteq can sound great if you own a piano model that you like and got it set up right.
It’s very versatile and the sound detail is very deep. People say it has the most realistic feel when playing (unlimited dynamics per note). But as it’s a completely modelled and not sampled piano it can sound slightly unrealistic at times and its price point is rather high. Also CPU demand might be the highest.
I actually chose Pianoteq (Stage) and enjoy it lots. Also love that it’s only about 50mb on my device
RE: Pianoteq demo version, there are eight disabled flat/sharp keys. Also, it requires a restart every twenty minutes.
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=9926
A restart every 20 minutes? Yeah, I don't know then. May go with Ravenscroft. We shall see. Gonna keep my options open. Pure Piano and Pure Upright seem like they may be the winners.
I decided I'll try Ravenscroft 275 since it's on sale for $18, I have 1TB storage, and have the space to fit such an app. I also bought a MIDI-to-USB-C cable. I can't wait to record my piano performances.
Just to be clear, it's a restart of the Pianoteq app every 20 minutes, not of the host or the device itself.
Ah okay. At least it's not of the host itself.
If you’re on a budget the free Numa Player has a number of Pianos (and other things)… perhaps not the best but free !
Or Audiolayer, tons of SF or EXS24 stuff.... or sampling Kontakt into EXS24 into AL.
You don't actually have to restart the app, no? Just the little demo timer in the app itself if I remember. You can also 'wind that timer up' to get a longer demo. Been a long time since I used a demo mode there but it used to be like that (at least for demoing the different versions，Stage, Pro etc, maybe it is different for demoing individual instruments?).
Pianoteq is 10/10. Physically modeled means lightweight and morphing different models together is cool.
I’ve really liked T2L. That would be my second favorite. It’s a hybrid sampled and physically modeled instrument.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/t2l-piano/id6747394589
+1 for Pianoteq. I'm a big fan.
Anyone have opinions on Pure Piano?
You have bs-16i or sfizz? Salamander piano is great to load into those. Honestly.
In terms of pianos, Pianoteq is now generally what I grab, but Pure Piano is pretty cool for the morph pad feature.
It can also be loaded into AudioLayer. If I recall correctly, it fared best in a blind shootout with Ravenscroft a few years ago
I’ve got PianoTeq 8 which sounds great. I’ve heard YouTube videos of a deep dive between PianoTeq 8 and 9 and I can’t tell the difference.
Great suggestions so far. I’d also add a couple of options you could try for free:
Korg OASYS Piano — 7-day trial available in Korg Module
https://www.korg.com/us/news/2024/0402/
Decent Sampler — plus a high-quality, free Pianobook library
https://www.pianobook.co.uk/instrument/pianos/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/decent-sampler/id1530441977
Drambo Logic can do this ;-)
Joking aside, I know you don't use Logic Jim, but as far as Pianos go the Studio Grand that comes with Logic got a lot better with v2/v11 and is now surprisingly good. Maybe not quite at the level of the best sampled pianos, but it is more than 'good enough' for many tasks and has multiple microphone mixes so you can tailor the sound quite a bit.
It looks more straightforward for morphing than Pianoteq. I love Pianoteq but I’m always tempted to play around with morphing and such rather than play piano.
I’ve definitely asked before elsewhere but what are people’s favorite Pianoteq acoustic pianos? I have Shigeru Kawai SK-EX but might look at another acoustic for the next pack.
Yes Salamander won that shoot out
Morphing in Pianoteq is powerful, but it is very different from the simple way the morph pad is set up in Pure Piano, which is kind of a way to morph between different presets using an xy style pad. So both are capable of different things
That kawai one is lovely, honestly they all have their own nice qualities though depending on what you're after. I'd say just play with the demo versions of each piano a lot til you decide what your own favorites are, I think it'll be a very personal thing and you shouldn't care too much about other people's preferences regarding their favorites
There is now the Accurate Salamander project if anyone is interested. It works well in isFizz. I haven't tried it in bs-16i or AudioLayer. I prefer isFizz for it's simplicity and that it does disk streaming, unlike bs-16i. (AudioLayer does disk streaming too). It's interesting to read about all the work that went into perfecting this already great sample set.
An outlier for Piano might be Xinematix which has a concert grand and other pianos among its 62 IAP packs. Currently 19.99 for all access pass for 25gb of high quality sounds, definitely worth it if you are into film scoring or similar.
Though Pianoteq is the best piano imo because of the dynamics.
I use Just Piano when I need a piano sound. I didn't need to go the pianoteq whole hog route and from the premium sampled pianos, I thought the GSI ones sounded just as good as the Ravenscroft. It was much cheaper - you can load any of the GSI pianos but can only have one installed at a time being the caveat.
I do like Xinematix a lot. The pianos and choirs get used a lot for me. I prefer it to Iconica for orchestral sounds.
If you have the iM1 app, try using the Grand Piano, make sure you select COMBI mode, the piano’s are much more crisp than in MULTI mode.
Have you bought it? I like that you can change its timbre quite dramatically with that Timbre knob.