VST Piano - Steinberg's The Grand....??

[robchittum]

Hey folks,
I am currently recording a lady that sings and plays piano. Her keyboard is rather low quality, and we were looking for an inexpensive way to get a decent piano sound. I ordered Steinberg's The Grand, which we thought would at least be an inprovement even though it won't be the "real deal." Does anyone have any experience with this plug or any other sampled piano that might get the job done?

Rob

 

[daaronhoffman]

My friend Taylor Mesple' uses that plugin.
You can contact him through his site:
http://

Hope this helps!

I LOVE William Coakley's piano samples.
http://www.williamcoakley.com
Highly recommend!!!

aAron

 

[robchittum]

I received the Grand today and installed it. It sounds fantastic. I am not a pianist, and my ears are probably not fine tuned enough to tell the difference between a "real" piano and this plug in, but I can tell you that it sounds great to my ears. I think it will sound best in the mix versus out there by itself, but it is a huge improvement over the cheap samples on the keyboard that we have been using. I have noticed it being a cpu hog though. So far no crashes or anything major. The only thing that I am curious about is how to get the volume up. The plug has a volume button, and I have the levels cranked up as high as they will go and it still can't compete with the volume of the vocals and other previously tracked instruments. Any ideas on how to get more volume? Thanks.

Rob

 

[David French]

Give it some gain from a fader or a plugin perhaps?

 

[robchittum]

David,
I have the fader all the way up on the midi track, and I tried several plugs including compression, magneto, and a couple of other things and they all color the sound too much to be useful. I don't want to lose any of the great piano sound that I'm getting. Someone mentioned that the L2 plug would bring it up without much coloration, but I don't think I have that one (I assume that is on the waves mastering edition?). Any other plugs you would recommend to pull up the volume without coloring it?

Rob

 

[David French]

Man, giving advice lately on such things has been a little difficult as my studio is shut down due to moving into a new space and a computer upgrade. There has got to be some plug that comes with your sequencer (Cubase I assume?) that will give you just a clean gain. Most compressors have makeup gain, and you can probably find one in the free plugin links thread in my forum, "Digital Audio". If you do use a compressor, just set the ratio at 1:1 and leave the threshold at 0.0 dB. Do you have the fader all the way up on the VST instrument track (if you;re using software that supports this)? I know Cubase SX should give you +6dB this way, and that should be enough.

 

[David French]

Plus, in SX 2, there is a trip pot that can give up to I think +24dB, if you're using SX2, that is.

 

[maintiger]

render the piano to audio at the highest possible volume- then you can treat it as a audio track and increased the gain, et all- I am in the habit of rendering all my softsynth to audio as it conserves a lot of CPu resources, plus you need to do that when you do the final mix anyway-