60% off “AS Piano Collection” by Acoustic Samples

Kawai-EX PRO

The Kawai-EX Pro sample library is a fabulous, powerful and bright 9-foot (276cm) KAWAI EX concert grand piano that used to be in the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Acoustic Samples worked closely with Lance Herring on this library and decided to give their project a new dimension, they carefully recorded this extraordinary instrument with 3 microphone pairs and state of the art gear to try and recreate how powerful and precise this instrument can be.

Preferences

The Kawai EX PRO is now in V3 and includes many new features to make it one of the most complete pianos on the market. Each feature is detailed below and of course it still contains the features of the previous versions like the release volume, pedal noise and key noise.

Three Microphone Positions

Acoustic Samples recorded the Kawai EX PRO with three microphone positions:

• The Close position with a pair of microphones close to the strings inside the piano to provide deep bass and rich resonances.
• The Player position with a pair of microphones next to the head of the piano player to really get the feeling of being in front of the piano.
• The Rim position with a pair of microphones at the side of the piano to give more of a soloist playing with a piano perspective.

You can enable/disable, load/unload and mix each microphone position separately to get exactly the sound you want.

Resonances

The resonances on a piano give some kind of a reverb effect when all of the strings start resonating. There are two kinds of resonances that are important to model on a piano, the pedal down resonances and the sympathetic resonances between the held notes. Both these effects are present in the Kawai EX PRO, you can even change the amount of each of them.

Repedaling/Half Pedaling

On a real piano, the pedal is not a simple on and off and in classical music, people often use the repedaling and half pedaling.

• Repedaling allows you to “restart” a chord that has been released with the pedal if the decay is not ended yet. This is especially used when you want to blend chords together.
• Half Pedaling is as its name implies what happens when you play with the pedal half pressed. the decay is much longer and as the strings are not completely dampened, you hear some resonances.

MIDI Controls

Acoustic Samples added a few midi controls to the older version. The sostenuto and sustain CC can be changed in case you want for example use an expression pedal instead of a regular on off pedal. You can also change the Midi curve, the dynamics and the velocity response to really adjust the library to your liking, keyboard and playing style.

Summary

• 17.49Gb uncompressed, 2.15Gb compressed in lossless flac format, around 4932 samples.
• 3 microphone positions that you can mix from the interface.
• 5 Velocity layers for the sustain (4 on pedal up and 4 on pedal down).
• 15 Velocities for the release.
• Different release samples corresponding to different sustain length.
• Pedal down resonance.
• Key noises samples.
• Sustain pedal noises (up and down), triggered automatically.
• Advanced UVI scripting giving you access to a simple yet powerful interface and advanced features.

AcademicGrand

The AcademicGrand is a 1963 Steinway D concert grand which has seen countless recitals and concerts over the years where it served as the University of Arkansas’ primary concert instrument.

The piano has been an inspiration to hundreds of students and visitors, and with being well-maintained and cared for, it’s a wonderful instrument with a unique history and classic American Steinway sound.

Default Interface

In the default interface of the plugin Acoustic Samples adjusted all of the parameters the best possible way. If you want to adjust something, simply click on settings.

Mixing Settings

On this library, the Mixing settings are only a control over the volume and pan.

General Settings

In this panel, you can change most of the aspects of the library to make it sound just like you want. You can adjust:

• The Release Volume: the sound produced when you release a key if a note was going on.
• The Key Noises: the sound produced when you release a key and no corresponding sustain was played.
• The Pedal Noise: the sound produced when you press or release the pedal, it adds a lot to the realism.
• The Tone: a simple way to make the piano sound brighter or darker.
• The Sostenuto CC, also called the middle pedal. You can sustain selected notes, while other notes remain unaffected.
• The Polyphony: If you lower the buffer or simply want to be light on CPU, then increase or lower this value.
• The Reverb: Acoustic Samples use a convolution reverb and you can adjust the dry and wet parts separately.

MIDI Settings

In the MIDI panel, you have access to all of the MIDI controls to help you adjust the library to your controller or playing style:

• The MIDI Remapper allows you to assign any input velocity to any output velocity.
• The MIDI Curve controls the midi remapper and will give it a concave or convex shape thus changing a “MIDI sensitivity”.
• The Velocity Threshold is simply the minimum velocity that you will have to play to hear the piano, it is present on a real piano.
• The Dynamics Curve changes the volume curve of the library.
• The Sensitivity will set the minimum volume for velocity 1 and give you access to all the dynamics that you want.

Summary

• 2.82Gb uncompressed, 1.11Gb compressed in lossless flac format, around 816 samples.
• 4 Velocity layers for the sustain (4 on pedal up and 4 on pedal down).
• 4 Velocities for the release.
• Pedal down resonance.
• Key noises samples.
• Sustain pedal noises (up and down), triggered automatically.
• Advanced UVI scripting giving you access to a simple yet powerful interface and advanced features.

B-Pian

The B-Pian Upright is a bad, old, out of tune, mechanically unperfect but still usable upright piano.

After watching a movie (we won’t say which one) scene with a guy playing on an old upright and hearing what clearly was a 9 foot grand, Audio Samples decided that it was time to produce that sound everybody knows, the sound of the piano you played on when you started learning the piano, the one that you were at your friends place and is taking dust and that goes out of tune in two weeks.

Mixing Settings

On the B-Pian, the Mixing settings are only a control over the volume and pan of the library.

General Settings

In this panel, you can change most of the aspects of the library to make it sound just like you want.

• The Release Volume: the sound produced when you release a key if a note was going on.
• The Key Noises: the sound produced when you release a key and no corresponding sustain was played.
• The Pedal Noise: the sound produced when you press or release the pedal, it adds a lot to the realism.
• The Tone: a simple way to make the piano sound brighter or darker.
• The True Pedal action, it is a feature that allows you to play a chord without the pedal and then hear the resonance of the whole piano when you press the pedal (without releasing the keys).
• The Sostenuto CC, also called the middle pedal. You can sustain selected notes, while other notes remain unaffected.
• The Polyphony: If you lower the buffer or simply want to be light on CPU, then increase or lower this value.
• The Reverb: Audio Samples use a convolution reverb and you can adjust the dry and wet parts separately.
• The Pedal Resonance: It is the amount of resonance during pedal down.

Midi Settings

In the MIDI panel, you have access to all of the MIDI controls to help you adjust the library to your controller or playing style.

Summary

• 502Mb uncompressed, 231Mb compressed in lossless flac format, around 166 samples.
• 3 Velocity layers for the sustain.
• 3 Velocities for the release.
• Pedal down resonance and true pedal action.
• Key noises samples.
• Sustain pedal noises (up and down), triggered automatically.
• Advanced UVI scripting giving you access to a simple yet powerful interface and advanced features.