I had a friend put some piano parts through his fancy Native Instruments pianos: New York, Vienna & Berlin (Concert Grands) and I can categorically say I didn't like any of them.
Yeah, they're NI's last-gen pianos and they are not good. I own them because they came with NI's Komplete Ultimate bundle, but I've never used them. Having said that, I'd wager that the "horrible room sound" you heard is not baked into the piano and could have been removed by your friend if (s)he'd fiddled with the knobs.
NI's newer pianos are much better.
Alicia's Keys ($99) is a nice, soulful, semi-poppy, piano ballad-y sound, but I find it hard to EQ, and it can get a bit muddy in a mix. That might just be me...
The Giant ($99) is very interesting and capable of a wide range of tones. I've doodled with it quite happily, and think I'd use it if I were doing something Philip Glass-y.
NI also has
some very new pianos which seem to sound pretty good.
But while I'd be tempted to recommend buying one of NI's bundles, I wouldn't recommend the pianos for an individual purchase.
Here are my suggestions. Boydie and others, please join in and argue.
If you can afford it and you're willing to put up with iLok, get
Ivory II Grand Pianos by Synthogy ($349). You get three deeply sampled, wonderful sounding - and
different-sounding - pianos: a Steinway, a Bosendorfer and a Yamaha. Unless you need an upright, there's not a lot you couldn't do with these three, piano-wise.
They have sympathetic resonance, release noises, lid positions, optional reverb... Everything you'd expect a modern piano library to have.
Synthogy's
Ivory II American Concert D ($199) is also very good, and even more deeply sampled than the three above. You only get one piano here, but it's
very usable (its range goes all the way from bubblegum pop to classical) and it's a cinch to fit it into a mix. It maybe isn't
quite as dark as you'd want for some solo chamber pieces, but for a single piano instrument, it's about as versatile as you could hope.
For both the Synthogy products, remember that you need to factor in an iLok ($49.99) if you don't already have one. Of course, you only need to buy one iLok.
But Ivory II is going to be overkill for a lot of people. For non-pianists who want a good rock or pop piano that fits nicely into the mix and doesn't take up too much space, I'd recommend ToonTrack's EZkeys.
ToonTrack have a weird pricing system, which I will attempt to explain.
"
EZkeys" refers to a songwriting plugin framework, which lets you key in chords and produces a full piano part for you. If you can't play piano (and I can't) this is a very good thing.
ToonTrack offers two acoustic pianos that work with the EZkeys songwriting system: EZkeys Grand Piano and EZkeys Upright Piano.
Whichever one you buy first (€139) will come with the songwriting capability, and then you'll get a discount on the next one you buy.
(By the way, don't buy the first one from the ToonTrack website. Instead, check the price at
http://www.pluginboutique.com/ and
http://www.sweetwater.com/ - they're usually cheaper. The only downside is you usually get your license key a day later.)
Both pianos sound
much better than they should, considering the libraries are so small. They fit into mixes easily. And they have inspiring, usable and tweakable presets.
The downsides are that they don't stand up very well to solo work because they don't have good enough low dynamics. And if you use the songwriting function, you'll probably end up buying some of the €25 MIDI expansion packs which give you access to music of different genres.
I should point out that the pianos work perfectly well even if you don't use the songwriting function. And also that there are also electric pianos and a Mellotron available in the EZkeys range.
My last suggestion is Modartts's
Pianoteq 5. Pianoteq is 100% physically modeled, which means it doesn't use samples like my other suggestions; rather it uses maths to create a virtual model of a piano. I should note: some people swear they can hear that Pianoteq is fake and decry it as an abomination. I can't hear that. And these people tend not to do very well in blind tests...
Because it doesn't rely on samples, Pianoteq takes up almost no drive space and is (by all accounts) extremely responsive and playable.
Pianoteq comes in several flavours, and I have the cheap one called Pianoteq Stage (€99). It comes with 2 "full-fat" pianos, the D4 (a Steinway) and the K2 (a versatile hybrid), both of which sound great and fit into mixes. It also comes with some historical piano models, and a set of bells (!). You can also add pianos to it for €49 each: an upright, a Bluethner (which I really like) and a Yamaha. And you can also buy electric piano add-ons, marimbas, and chromatic percussion.
If you want to go higher up the Pianoteq product range, you get more control over microphone positioning and the properties of the mathematical piano models - but I've never felt the need.
Finally,
here's the piano I am vaguely saving up for. I'm not sure I'd use it very often because it's not a good fit for the kind of music I usually write... But my god, it sounds good.
Matt
