They claim a lot of things. It sounds like an Apple keynote… “the best piano ever”.
With no: “one more thing”. 
And I’m running out of jam points.
2 Likes
OK, I took the leap on the Steinway D and the Yamaha Upright but it will be a few days before I get it all going. I’ll be able to side by side it with Ravenscroft and Ivory Concert D. I’ll get back when I have a chance to play it some. Another thing is you can buy a month’s access to test the pianos and if you don’t like them you don’t have to own them. And now I’m running out of Jam points too … 
2 Likes
I’m going to wait for more models (as promised by IK) before subscribing.
You mean the one from the bundle (Steinway, Bosendorfer, Yamaha) or the American Grand?
Sorry, I meant the American Grand. I have the bundle and like the German Steinway but I found it darker than I wanted for live and the American was brighter to me. The Yamaha from the bundle was too bright for what I like FWIW.
1 Like
American Grand is great. One of the best Steinway D. I’m curious about the new Ivory3, but again no-demo policy!
Me too, from the forums I hear it is a CPU and system hog with even larger libraries so for me it’s not suited to live work. But that said the demo audio of it sounds really good.
1 Like
I think for the use you have for piano sounds you’re fine. This newbie will just be another set of samples by a new vendor with a different and hopefully better samples & audio engine. Realism in the sound is different than realism in the feel of playing it live to me. Pianoteq is extremely playable but I don’t love the tone of it. Ivory is a hog and some sample sets are not consistent but it sounds really natural. That’s my curiosity. I have been playing the same sample set for a long while and I think I will be able to see if this is better or not from my perspective. We’ll see …
2 Likes
OK, I did the first session yesterday on one of my gig rigs. It is about twice as resource hungry as Ivory and has some spiking issues on my rig at 128 samples on a Baby Face Pro interface. On a 2.9 Ghz I7 4 core running 128 sample buffer it uses 40% resources at idle and ranges up to 75% when playing normally with the occasional spike when you change velocity and note choices quickly (likely my streaming isn’t keeping up). With Pianoverse at 256 samples it settles down to about 22% at idle ranging up to 45% when playing At the 256 setting it works well and is no issue. It is also a larger library than advertised once installed. Instead of the 20Gbytes it weighed in at 29 Gbytes for the Grand and 32 Gbytes for the upright. It is miked very close and the samples are very dry with hardly any room sound in them. The have a round robin setup that makes it seem to have more character and the samples are bold compared to Ivory. I did the testing on an Oxygen 88 weighted action keyboard so it is a simple 2 contact keybed setup. I am going to connect the RD2000 and give it a test with that more advanced keybed and hammer action today. We’ll see how it goes. I worry I have played Ivory so long that I am not giving a fair chance to this and I have to tailor it more to my needs since it has a number of adjustments you can tweak to your taste. The Spaces are really good IMO but add to the resource hunger of the beast. The effects are great but are for Cinematic use IMO and wouldn’t help me in my live work. Anyway that’s the initial report. I’d be cautious using this live at small buffer sizes without a faster processor than I have.
5 Likes
Did a rehearsal with the band subbing the NY Grand in for Ivory 2 American D on several songs. Using the RD2000 as the controller made it very enjoyable to play. It has a more natural sound to it than Ivory and Ravenscroft IMO . The singers especially noticed it was warm to sing over top of in solo accompaniment situations like FM’s Songbird. In the sonic sense it beat the pants off the Ivory patch I was using for the same piece, way more natural and alive. It’s more expressive and emotive to play than the other pianos I have. Ravenscroft has great samples but IMO doesn’t play as expressively or have as natural a sound. In the end all 3 would be (and are) great for Rock and Pop but for music with leaner mixes where the piano is predominant I would reach for the Pianoverse sample set followed by the Ravenscroft. I found out that it has a range of 20 layers down to 14 layers of sampling depending on the key being played. So, I like it a lot but as I said I had to adjust my rig to handle it properly, once that was done I had a great time playing it. I am hopeful that it gets a few improvements along the way that would aid the CPU load and the preset load times. Other than those gripes it was money well spent on yet another another piano VSTi. Now excuse me while I pop some more Rolaids for my recent gas attack … 
Cheers,
Dave
5 Likes
Thanks for the review!
IKM has been killing it lately. Might have to try it.
Dave,
Are you saying the Ivory settles down to 22-45% @128? This is a bit weird. Take a look, American Grand @128 with its own reverb, no other effects enabled. With buffer 256 not big difference.
Only with Sympathetic Resonance enabled, the time load rises to 20% and more.
No I thought I was saying that with Pianoverse @256 samples it settled into 22% and while playing it jumped between there and 45%. Sorry I wasn’t more clear. Ivory uses less resources on my rig than Pianoverse. Wow! You resource use is almost nil. I will check my setup for sympathic resonance but even then I think your rig could run circles around mine. 
I edited the post to hopefully remove the poorly written part.
Nothing supernatural in my time load and processor usage. I think it just depends on my overfussiness during initial PC tuning. 
Thanks @cpaolo :), I turned the sympathetic resonances off for Ivory II and like you said the load dropped to 3 or 4 % load. And it still sounds fine! I have gotten the Pianoverse beast working pretty good at 128 samples as well with the load ranging from 35 to 65% load while playing. I installed Process Lasso and it appears to have had a positive effect on my C4 setup and Pianoverse’s performance. Anyway as a result I have been playing a lot on Pianoverse and am really enjoying playing it. It’s been a while since I had a VST that I just played for hours and Pianoverse is becoming that VST. I’m hoping that they might optimize the engine in a future update but as is it’s very enjoyable and is more natural sounding than the Ivory American Steinway. So I think I will use Ivory on instrumentally crowded songs and sneak Pianoverse in on solo piano parts. It’s nice to have the option.
Cheers,
Dave
2 Likes
I keep the sympathetic resonance on for certain piano solo only, for studio pieces, surely not for gigs, even I love very resonant pianos.
I’m thinking to try Pianoverse, and now I have the information I was missing. How cpu hog it is. And now you tell me it is in true IK style.
65% peak creeps me.
Most probably I’ll try one month subscription then I’ll see, but I’m going to wait for the full pianos availability.
At the moment I’m still using VSL Steinway for solos. It’s a great and dynamic piano.
Paolo
2 Likes
I purchased a one-month subscription to test drive the Pianoverse library. I must say that I am very impressed with the overall sound, feel and “playability” of the pianos. I could definitely see a place for these pianos in my toolkit, however the long load time and high memory footprint are show-stoppers for me. My focus is live performance, and the Pianoverse library consumes vast resources on my beefy laptop (Ryzen 7840HS, 32Gb, fast SSD), making it unusable with multiple pianos pre-loaded in a set list. It’s a shame, because I really enjoy playing these pianos. Although IK may eventually improve the processing efficiency of these instruments, I don’t see the memory footprint changing so I’ll have to pass.
4 Likes
My sentiments as well Bruce, hoping for some optimization but love the pianos I got when I run them alone.
1 Like
New piano in the Pianoverse collection: Gran Concerto 278.
This one is the Fazioli F278, their 9.5’ grand.
Again the usual BS about system requirements.
Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2? Mid-2000s stuff. Is this a joke?
I don’t laugh at all.
1 Like
Interested in these pianos and trying to decide whether to purchase one or two individual pianos or get the yearly subscription. I’m not thrilled with the idea of an ongoing subscription but do like the variety and automatic upgrade feature.
How does this work with Cantabile Performer (especially with the subscription)? Does anyone know if you can add these like any other plugin to songs?