If you’re looking for a nice-sounding piano that won’t break the bank ($29) and doesn’t stress your CPU to its limit, then take a look here:
A new release from Production Voices - I couldn’t resist pulling the trigger, and it sounds reeeeally nice. It runs within Sforzando (free plugin), so no Kontakt or other required.
Definitely worth giving a shot.
Cheers,
Torsten
Downloading. 
As an .sfz, it should also load directly into UVI Falcon.
Nice piano, a well sounding CFX. Too bad the sample loading time too long. Maybe the FLACs uncompressing (weird on a i7-10700H + PCIe SSD)?
What is the licensing format for this. I see 2 instances. Anything out of the ordinary?
Thanks!
Rick
Not sure - you need to register the xml file with sforzando to access the soundset. I don’t know if UVI Falcon allows that.
I read about the two installations in the EULA, but I doubt that this is enforced by technical means. Dragging the xml file to the Sforzando GUI registers the soundset with Sforzando - I don’t know if there is any license management mechanism behind the scenes.
Definitely no iLok or challenge-response mechanisms.
I’ll test for technical restrictions when I’m back behind my studio and live PCs…
I may have misspoken. Sforzando bills itself as a “free sfz player”, so I assumed 300 Grand Compact would at some point expose an .sfz file. Falcon can take .sfz files directly.
Thanks.
Good to know!
Thanks for the reply.
Rick
Thanks for the heads up!
I need a decent cost effective piano (or two) so checking out all they have to offer in their Compact editions.
[edit] went for the 300, the Concert Grand and the freebie version of Estate Grand, all really nice and enough different to be worth it imo 
BTW, if you need to remove an instrument from Sforzando (such as a demo) the only way I could manage to do so was using Windows Regedit and navigate to:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Plogue Art et Technologie, Inc\Aria\Products
Once in that folder you’ll see some numbered subfolders. Click on each one and you see a product description and vendor. Just delete the subfolder for the product you no longer want to see in the Sforzando menu.
Surely there must be an easier way but I couldn’t find it…and if not, this is how it can be done.
The samples are in FLAC format, the instrument is .xml (the one you have to drag into the player).
Thanks for the tip… Will probably add that to my gig format. Always looking for great sounds.
Any more Black Friday tips?
I bought the 300 Grand Compact soundset and it works fine in the free Sforzando player. I would prefer running it in Falcon, but haven’t successfully imported the .sfz files in Falcon. Has anyone gotten it working, and if so how?
Production Voices confirms that the 300 Grand Compact soundset will not run in Falcon.
“There are SFZ programming opcodes in 300 Grand Compact that are specific to Plogue Sforzando. Unfortunately, they do not translate into Falcon.”
“So, 300 Grand Compact needs to be used in either Sforzando or Aria Player.”
Thanks for doing the research.
for just 25€:
Just an FYI about the Production Voices products:
The 300 has a tuning profile that works great with electronic orchestration, i.e. it has virtually no stretch on the high side and a slight negative stretch on the low end (much how many tune the low E on guitar slightly flat to compensate for the tightening effect of higher amplitudes).
The Concert Grand on the other hand has a definite stretch on the high end of about 6 cents sharp at Eb4, very noticeable to my ears in a project I’m doing with electronic orchestration.
Fortunately I have an in-law who is a concert piano tuner and strings repair person who told me all about stretch several months ago, so I saved myself the embarrassment of emailing the dev to tell him the Concert Grand is out of tune. 
That said the Concert (Steinway) stretch profile is totally appropriate to use with something like BBCSO (which is what I bought it for)…
This looks really nice. Thanks for sharing!
How well does it hold up when summing to mono?