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Best Sellers | | Home Synthogy Ivory Grand Piano 1.5 Virtual Instrument | |
|  | |  | | | Synthogy Ivory Grand Piano 1.5 Virtual Instrument | | | | | | | |
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| | Features | Nearly 30 GB of Grand Piano sampled instruments like Yamaha C7, Bosendorfer 290 and Steinway 9'Powerful 32-bit sample playback & DSP engine, engineered specifically for recreating acoustic pianoSympathetic String Resonance for realistic damper pedal response; Ambience/Chorus/EQ effects88 keys individually sampled in up to 8 dynamic levels - no loops; separate samples for soft pedalRuns as a plug-in for AU, RTAS, or VST; for WinXP, Mac OS 9.2/10.2 or greater
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| | Description | The ultimate virtual grand piano! Over 3,500 samples are combined with a sample-playback engine built from the ground up to bring out the resonance, response and character of the world's finest Concert Grands. Ivory?s superb piano samples were brought to life using no-compromise technology in the finest studios and concert halls. The sessions were produced by Joe Ierardi, an accomplished pianist and award winning sound designer and producer of piano modules for Kurzweil Music Systems®. Ierardi?s unique expertise covers every aspect of piano design, from tuning and regulation, to recording, editing, programming and engine design. More than 20 Gigabytes of stunning, all NEW, Acoustic Grand Piano sampled instruments: German Steinway® D 9' Concert Grand; Bösendorfer® 290 Imperial Grand; Yamaha® C7 Grand (Each piano can be installed separately) Synthogy's exclusive, powerful 32 bit Sample Playback and DSP engine, engineered specifically for recreating the acoustic piano Sympathetic String Resonance DSP for realistic Damper Pedal response World class digital FX including Real Ambience, Chorus and EQ Customizable with User controls for Timbre, Stereo Width and Perspective, Velocity Response, Mechanical Key Noise, Tuning and more Expertly tuned and regulated pianos in world-class studios and concert halls Phase-perfect stereo samples stored in 32 bits! All 88 keys individually sampled in up to 8 dynamic levels (plus Bösendorfer extended low octave) In... | |
| | Product Details | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 5 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 5 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 found the following review helpful:
 Inspiring Feb 26, 2006
By young scientist
This is the first electronic instrument I tried playing which is comparable to playing a real grand piano. Of course the experience is not the same, for a variety of subtle reasons. It is starting to come pretty close, though, and if you are not in a position to have your own Steinway grand in a dedicated music room, you might find that a state of the art virtual instrument like Ivory gives a bigger boost to your playing than a run-of-the-mill real instrument.
I thought quite a lot about just why pianos are so difficult to imitate electronically. My feeling is that the difference between Ivory and a real piano sound reduces to two main areas. The first is true sympathetic resonance. Ivory has a dedicated DSP engine for simulating the interaction of strings through the sounding board, however this only works en masse. The algorithm does not take into account which which keys are down, hence the ringing effect of notes sounded in succession, or chords struck at the same time is not really there.
The other area is just the pure audio soundscape. No matter how fancy the software is, you are still listening to a signal relayed through cables, amplifiers, speakers, etc., subject to all the pitfalls of electronic sound reproduction. It's just not the same. The limitations of stereo are particularly evident. Anyone who has played a concert grand can relate to feeling the presence of the sound, emanating not just from the left or the right, but particular places in space. Two channels cannot possibly reproduce this.
Having said all this, some of the samples in Ivory are breathtakingly beautiful. The recordings were clearly done on top notch instruments and with great care. Ivory gets you pretty involved in the sound engineering process by offering a number of tunable parameters including various filters, key noise, resonance, etc.. It is interesting to gain an appreciation of the fact that there are always compromises involved, and sound reproduction is about much more than playing back exactly what has been recorded. The flexibility of being able to adjust your instrument to your taste and the demands of each piece you play is an added bonus that you don't get with a real instrument.
I was surprised to find how much of a boost Ivory gave to my playing, both in terms of creativity and in terms of technique. A good instrument allows one to hear more, and express more subtle nuances, even at the advanced amateur level that I am at. It also brings out deficiencies of one's playing in high relief.
I listened to lots of mp3 samples, tried Ivory out in a music shop, but I still found it very difficult to gauge what it was going to be like as an instrument until I actually took it home. As I understand, the main competitor at the moment is Akustik Piano, which I can't really comment on, since that I have not bought. It's important to note that Ivory needs a host application, such as Cubase, ProTools, or something similar.
One final note: the hardware demands of Ivory need to be taken seriously. Contrary to the product description above, Ivory actually contains 41GB of samples that need to be fit on a hard drive somewhere. Because Ivory streams in samples on demand, this has to be a fairly fast drive, and preferably not the main drive used by the host application. I haven't tried using the same drive, and the way I am using Ivory now there does not seem to be too much on the fly loading, but even with the setup I now have, loading a new instrument takes about 10-15 seconds. I did have a lot of streaming when I tried playing with just 512 MB of RAM, and in fact with that configuration the instrument was basically unplayable. The 1.5 GB I now have seems sufficient to hold all samples in RAM.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Finally, Good Resonance, Decays, etc Sep 09, 2007
By Dennis
Here's the nitty gritty:
1) Don't even try less than 1.5 GB. I got mine to all 10 piano layers with 2GB ram upgrade (cost me extra $160)
2) Don't even try a SoundBlaster audio card. I bough and EMU 0404 for my MIDI IN which in the SB had a huge latency. Now, no latency AND I was able to get both cards working, EMU for IN and RECORDING and SB for OUT PLAYING (each change requires a reboot) Cost for EMU $107
3) Need extra Drive, at least 50-60 GB and 7200 speed. I had this, but you may need to buy and install it. Cost you around 60 bucks.
My System:
AMD Athlon XP 3000+, had 1.0 GB RAM, now it's 2GB, had SB X-Fi, now also EMU 0404. No problems after the 2 upgrades.
Why did I buy?
I wanted: REAL Sustains and BOOMING low end of a Grand. This has them. Man they sound real nice. Just perfect for SOLO work. Don't know how it sits in a mix yet, but you can tailor so much, I'm sure you can tweak one of the piano's.
Overall:
It's Expensive. But I think it's worth it for me. I finally don't feel any internal cringing at those synthetic sustains that ring out, that pitiable low end that sounds bereft of gravatis, and that lack of sympathetic ringing that I expect when playing the real thing.
By itself, it cost me 320 out the door. Upgrades cost me $277. So if you DON'T have a system that is already there, expect to pay up to 500 bucks as of 2007.
BTW, as of this review Sept 2007, Synthology is on version 1.62 and now has a STANDALONE. You've probably read reviews from 2005 that talk about it being only a vst plugin, but that is no more!
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 ILOK needed with MAC Leopard OS Mar 06, 2008
By R. Scofield
I bought the Synthogy ivory pianos. The description didn't say I need the ILok. I got the software, tried to install it and nothing. Looked through the manual and nothing about the ilok was under "requirements" which is where I would assume the "requirements" for running the program would be. I called support and they told me I need to buy the ILok. Mac osx wouldn't run without it.
I understand the need for security and fighting piracy, but it is frustrating. At the very least they should include in the software if you HAVE to have it to run the program. At the very least, make sure it's listed clearly so people know before they buy it.
Besides the added expense of the software, the ILok takes up a USB port that usually contains my back up drive.
If I had known this ahead of time, I probably would have gone with the acoustik pianos.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
great sound but ilok was a nightmare May 07, 2009
By Gregory Allison
I had an ilok nightmare...The following is an excerpt from what I emailed to the ilok folks...
"I got a message during synchronization that my active x was not initialized. After about an hour of watching the little arrow go by and not wanting to touch the browser or interrupt the synchroniztion...I finally clicked on the "click here" on the error message....then went through this same loop again...I am wondering if I messed up the $50 ilok because I interrupted the synchronization...."
I was able to get through the ilok maze. It was not easy. My email was not returned...
I have used this VST now for 6 months. I now find the Bosendorfer sounds to be unsatisfactory. At first the bass resonance was very attractive but the upper register notes die too quickly which is a fault of numerous piano sounds. The German Steinway sound is very good but you have to work with it. It sounds best with more sustain pedal.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Great Piano Sounds, but iLOK makes this a NOGO May 03, 2009
By Studio Owner
"GetReal"
I hate iLok. Period. As a record producer and studio owner I own hundreds of software titles. I try my best to use only legitimately registered software with proper licenses. Having to use iLok is not only a huge inconvenience, it is a disgrace. Because so many people have stolen the use of software, today, honest people are penalized by forcing us to use this shameful system. Companies like Synthogy (makers of Ivory Piano) should be shamed for penalizing the honest because of the dishonest. Synthogy has a full challenge/response system in place that worked from day one. For some reason, Mac users wanting to run Ivory with Leopard were required to change over to use iLok. I begged Synthogy for the ability to choose one or the other, since the challenge/response system was already in place. They refused. They jumped on the iLok Big Brother Bandwagon, no doubt, to alleviate Customer Support calls to support challenge/response. Suddenly, competing piano software sounded so much nicer than it used to! Shame on you, Synthogy. I hate iLok!
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