It’s another Friday…time for Big Fish Friday!
Today I’m checking out a single instrument from Big Fish Audio.
The Prosonus Grand Piano.
My reason for doing so is because it comes in akai format, and since Native Instruments Maschine now imports akai format, I wanted to test it out on a native akai library.
So let’s check it out.
What is the Prosonus Grand Piano?
It is a sample Steinway grand piano, optimized for use in digital samplers. This library comes from the days when a piano wasn’t multiple gigabytes in size.
The largest patch in this library is 128mb, may not sound large, but don’t let that fool you.
Remember many keyboard workstations don’t even come with a gig of sample rom.
So size isn’t always equal to quality
In addition to the 128mb patch, you get the same piano in 64mb, 32mb, and 16mb, each size comes with more/less detail, with 128 being the most detailed.
How does it sound?
It actually sounds pretty good, in a day and age when physically modeled and extensively samples pianos are the norm, this well sampled, well programmed library can stand with the best of them.
You get more detailed instruments depending on which program you load.
The 16mb is sampled in major thirds and 1 velocity level, the 32mb patch is major thirds in 2 velocities, 64mb patch comes in with whole steps in 2 velocities, while the 128mb patch is sampled in half steps in 2 velocities.
I know what you’re thinking…only two velocity levels? Trust me, it still sounds great.
The tone is clean, ready for your own reverb or other processing. This is an example of the great sampling and programming companies had to do when memory was more of a luxury than a commodity.
What’s the bottom line?
The bottom line is it’s a solid, good sounding piano. My main goal was to test the akai format in Native Instruments Maschine, so anyone looking for a plug and play way to expand the stock piano sounds in Maschine should definitely check this out.
The price is right, the size is right, and the sound is nice.
I gave this a 4 out of 5 subs.
I think it stands it’s own ground in a world of gigantic multilayer piano libraries.
If you don’t feel like loading up a 2 gig piano patch, check out the Prosonus Grand Piano over at Big Fish: Prosonus Grand Piano
yo the 128mB sound more realistic , it has sustain etc .Not bad for what is is bro. I still think that the best sounding piano sampler out there has to be NI akoustic piano, but then you are talking about gigabytos of HD. Nice review peace
@Funk Bandit, oh no doubt, like I said, it’s not like the multi gig pianos, but it’s still good.
NI Akoustik is far from the best in my opinion though, there are so many of them out here. One of my favorites is Pianoteq, it’s a modeled piano so it’s only 20mb for the program but sounds amazing.
I have a few more that I’ll be reviewing as well. But piano sounds are really diverse and it depends on your style and what you like.
Yo Saint Joe! Thanks for another dope review!
I had a question about Maschine itself:
Does Maschine (the software) time stretch loops automatically to match the tempo of the beat?
If not, what’s your method of time stretching loops to match the tempo of the beat? I haven’t found a way to do this smoothly, when I time stretch loops in Cubase it sounds kind of choppy.
Thanks!
@Producer, no, it doesn’t timestretch yet. Honestly, I don’t really use time stretching much at all, I just chop and fit the tempo to the chops or whatever. I’ve never been a bug user of timestretching myself, I would imagine it should come in at some point cuz it’s useful.
Wow, I’m actually surprised by how good it sounds considering the size of the files. I’ll have to keep this in mind if I need anymore pianos. You can’t beat $49.95 for a nice sounding piano that loads faster than Kontakt, right? That’s a rhetorical question lol.
@madbull1971, you gotta remember, before kontakt etc became popular it was all about akai and other rackmount samplers, with low memory, they most one came with was 512mb late in the game, before that 32-128 was the norm! They had to do some dope programming man, still some very useful instruments.
check`d out Alicia keys piano vst?
I just checked out and I`m pretty enjoying it.
Personally,think it`s the best piano I got.
when I heard her latest album I thought her piano sounds great,
and just found out she used this vst instead of her piano..
@DAVID, yessir, it’s a dope piano, i’ll have a video on it in the future. I like it, sounds different than most “classical” piano instruments.