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IK released Pianoverse piano virtual instrument

jdg78 said:
I also picked up a one-month subscription and have been playing around with each of the available models for the past few weeks. Overall, I would say that these are quite solid and may be a very good option for many, although I would not consider them quite in the top-tier for solo piano (which for me would be VSL and Garritan).

On the plus side, the pianos are well recorded - very close and dry with good presence. The 2 mic positions provide a nice contrast without going overboard. The GUI is attractive, thoughtfully laid out, and can be expanded to fit the full screen, something which is still relatively rare among piano VSTs.

I can't say I'm all that wild about the built in space/reverb engine - the different room options are serviceable enough, but the overall effect isn't entirely natural sounding to me.

Playability is good, but not quite as smooth, responsive, or dynamic as VSL/Garritan. Could've probably used a few more velocity layers and/or some more gradual blending of layers. Pedaling is decent. Strangely, I've heard others complain that the soft pedal effect is too strong, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all in my setup. When I press the soft pedal it very clearly engages on the GUI (virtual pedal goes down and soft pedal sign lights up) but there is absolutely no change in volume or timbre that I can detect. Not sure what the issue is, but it's rather disappointing.

Among the various models, I think the Yamaha Concert Grand and the Bosendorfer 280 sound the best. The Steinway sounds curiously veiled to me - for some reason it's not quite as clear and present as either of the other 2 grands. The upright is also quite nice, as good as any other sampled upright I've tried.

All in all, I'm glad I gave it a try, and it could be a good go-to resource for many, but I don't think it quite makes the cut for my particular needs. But I may visit it again if they keep making improvements, and I'll be curious to try some of the other models when they come out.
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Best summary I have read so far. :emoji_clap:
I can fully agree.
 
jdg78 said:
... The upright is also quite nice, as good as any other sampled upright I've tried. …
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Since there is not much difference between a real Yamaha U5 and the U3, I would be interested to know if you know the VILabs Modern U (Yamaha U3). From my point of view, it's in the top tier of upright piano VIs. I can't believe that the Pianoverse Y5 (Yamaha U5) can compete with it.
 
horowitz said:
Since there is not much difference between a real Yamaha U5 and the U3, I would be interested to know if you know the VILabs Modern U (Yamaha U3)
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I haven’t tried the Modern U, but I’m not all that interested in uprights in general. The few that I have (Hammers and Waves, NI Gentleman) came bundled with other models I was more interested in.

I’ve heard good things about Modern U terms of playability and realism, and have considered purchasing it a few times, but I can never justify pulling the trigger. Whenever I hear sound clips it sounds unmistakably like an upright, and I know I would rarely if ever use it.
 
I subscribed to test out these new pianos and enjoy playing around with them.

I don't feel they are in the same league as the more realistic VSL pianos. (and tbh, those don't come close to sitting at my acoustic Hamburg D).

But especially the Yamaha is great to sketch with. Very clean and responsive, cuts through anything else that's playing, and lends me enjoyable clarity and precision.

I am looking forward to the next batch and hope they get released soon. I'm especially curious about the Fazioli and Hamburg D.
 
horowitz said:
Since there is not much difference between a real Yamaha U5 and the U3, I would be interested to know if you know the VILabs Modern U (Yamaha U3). From my point of view, it's in the top tier of upright piano VIs. I can't believe that the Pianoverse Y5 (Yamaha U5) can compete with it.
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They sound quite different. To me the U3 (ModernU) sounds quite clinical compared to the U5 (Pianoverse) which sounds fuller and warmer to me. The U3 has more dynamic layers, more mic perspectives and the mic perspectives can be blended. But I really dig the sound of the U5 and love the way staccato sounds on it.

I on the other hand am really curious how the Pianoverse U5 compares to the Ivory II U5.

I'll render some MIDI's from the comparison thread on the Pianoverse U5 and the ModernU U3 and post those.
 
eagle007 said:
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I on the other hand am really curious how the Pianoverse U5 compares to the Ivory II U5. …
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I'm sure Craig (@CGR) owns the Ivory II uprights because he has often mentioned the Hume upright (part of the bundle) in posts, but I haven't read anything about the U5. I don't think he has the Pianoverse Y5 because he hasn't written anything about it here on this forum.

eagle007 said:
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I'll render some MIDI's from the comparison thread on the Pianoverse U5 and the ModernU U3 and post those.
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I own the Modern U, so demos would be great to estimate whether it's worth buying the Y5.
 
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horowitz said:
Perfect? Really? Sorry, don't be upset with me. Nice joke. ;) It would be the perfect piano for you, which I respect!

For me, there can never be a perfect piano VI, nor will there ever be. A "perfect Piano VI" would not be distinguishable from a real instrument in a blind test. Just the vibrations you feel in your fingers and from the pedal in your foot is something no VI can offer. Of course, with the right amount of effort, many things can be brought closer to a real instrument. And this also requires first-class technical (and very expensive) equipment on the side of the user. I have over 120 piano VIs (including all VSL full) and none of them can replace the playing experience of a real piano for me. Never!

I think the Pianoverse pianos are really good for the price and I share your criticism, but they are not in the top tier for me. All this from the perspective of a solo player, which I am.
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I don’t know why you bother to even compare real pianos with a sampled pianos. we are not talking about real pianos.
 
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star.keys said:
I don’t know why you bother to even compare real pianos with a sampled pianos. we are not talking about real pianos.
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OK, then just compare them to other piano VIs.
I list here some weaknesses that the Pianoverse pianos have compared to other piano VIs and therefore they are not perfect for me. But maybe you don't care about that. You might not need a good soft pedal, sympathetic resonance, better playability, better pedal decay, more dynamic range, smoother velocity layer transitions, etc.
I still stand by my opinion that there is no perfect piano VI and of course there is no perfect (flawless) acoustical piano. But everyone can find his or her "perfect" piano VI. ;)

If these are the perfect PianoVIs for you, I don't disagree. For me they are not. But they are among the better piano VIs, have a very good user interface and I like them!
Have fun with the Pianoverse pianos and I mean that seriously!
 
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CGR said:
Onto it. Will post some audio soon in the appropriate thread (this is an official IK Multimedia Commercial Announcement thread).
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Ultimate Piano Comparison Thread

Yes, I can hear the improvement. Not as 'spiky' sounding – more cohesive and a little fuller sounding in the softer dynamics. Interested to know what tweaks you made. What did I do? I measured the volumes between the velocity layer transitions. Some of the differences were up to 3dB, although...
vi-control.net vi-control.net
 
star.keys said:
Nice Steinway and Yamaha. If you guys fix tuning issues within the top 3 octaves, I will happily trash all my VSL Synchron pianos but until then, I need to unsubscribe because anything above C5 is practically unuseable to me. You had almost perfect pianos if you had not overlooked this issue, which is very basic and I'm surprised how you let these untuned notes getting sampled.
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Have you reported the tuning issues you are experiencing to the team?
 
horowitz said:
OK, then just compare them to other piano VIs.
I list here some weaknesses that the Pianoverse pianos have compared to other piano VIs and therefore they are not perfect for me. But maybe you don't care about that. You might not need a good soft pedal, sympathetic resonance, better playability, better pedal decay, more dynamic range, smoother velocity layer transitions, etc.
I still stand by my opinion that there is no perfect piano VI and of course there is no perfect (flawless) acoustical piano. But everyone can find his or her "perfect" piano VI. ;)

If these are the perfect PianoVIs for you, I don't disagree. For me they are not. But they are among the better piano VIs, have a very good user interface and I like them!
Have fun with the Pianoverse pianos and I mean that seriously!
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Glad to note that we have reached consensus :)
 
I've kept pretty quiet here until I had a chance to really put Pianoverse through its paces. Here are a few thoughts:

1. These pianos (especially the Yamaha) shine more in a mix than solo.
2. I hear the tuning issues (especially on the Yamaha), and I hope those can be corrected in an update.
3. I really feel that these pianos will gain a depth of tone with the ability to combine both recorded mic perspectives (like the VI Labs Ravenscroft 275 - where you can mix all 4 sets of mics). @IKMultimedia - would you please ask the dev team if this is possible.
4. Pianoverse is surprisingly light on resources on my system - both standalone and in Studio One 6.5. If this is how B-3X v2.0 will run on Windows 10, I'm excited!
5. Pianoverse would benefit from a general UI scaling option (50%, 75%, etc.). I know that it is resizable, but I am visually impaired and need to run Windows at 150%, so a way to make the UI smaller in relation to that would be great (again - @IKMultimedia - would you pass this on to the devs).

I'm enjoying Pianoverse so far, and I plan to use it on a live gig tomorrow night, but I still prefer the Ravenscroft 275 for most of the styles I play (perhaps out of familiarity alone at this point).
 
IKMultimedia said:
@mikehalloran - what is your ticket number? I would be happy to have our Support Manager take a look.
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I’ve not forgotten about this but since I posted, I’ve done some testing and I’ve replaced my iMac Pro with a Mac Studio. My Support Ticket Opened [#8951468].

The correct response all along should have been for me to delete everything and reinstall Total Studio Max 4 from scratch. It solved the initial problem (Beats)but revealed two others that need to be solved:

The IK Product Manager does not allow installation of all the products included in TSM4 Including Miroslav 2 and Syntronic 2. I should not have to pay $25 to reinstall products included in my update. I can attach screen shots showing all this.

The other issue is that many of the individual installers do not work over macOS 13 Ventura—the Terminal trick doesn’t work either. This is true for both my intel and Apple Silicon Macs over Ventura. The 17 Miroslav installers work over Catalina on my ancient 2012 MacBook Pro, by the way. Although IKM should fix this, I don’t care as long as the Product Manager let’s me install everything I paid for.

Thanks for any assistance you can offer.

Edit: Since posting the above, I have sent a new reply with screen shots to [email protected]. If you want to see any of those, let me know.

Update: Since last week, Support has enabled downloading of all of the libraries that should have been enabled when I purchased. This solved most of the problems leaving one and it's minor.

Version 1.0.9 of the IK Product Manager has a problem installing four of the Syntronic 2 libraries and the stand-alone installers don't fix thjis. The Syntronic 2.app can load them but SampleTank cannot (making this merely annoying now). I verified this on two clean installs: My new M2 Ultra Studio with 8TB storage onboard and a 2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina with a 2TB SSD inside that I set up as a test machine for this purpose.

I should be surprised that IK Support doesn’t know where the default installation is on a Mac (that they didn't know turned out to a big part of the problem) but after what I’ve been through, “surprise” has left the building.

In the words of Bob Dylan, "It ain't me, Babe. I said, 'No, no, no, it ain't me, Babe'…"
 
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eagle007 said:
I think IKM has a very expensive internet provider for their services, as you also still need to pay for downloads after 180 days (though I do not think that OVH Hosting is that expensive).
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We do use a top-tier CDN to distribute our sound libraries. However, I buried the lead since we have removed the sound reactivation with the current update to IK Product Manager so you no longer need to worry about the 180 day period or Sound Reactivation Credits any more!
 
IKMultimedia said:
... I buried the lead since we have removed the sound reactivation with the current update to IK Product Manager so you no longer need to worry about the 180 day period or Sound Reactivation Credits any more!
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Support did extend all my sounds downloads to what they should have been when I purchased—good. I now see that the time limit is gone with Project Manager v.1.0.10—even better.

That did solve most of my installation problems but not all. Some of the Syntronic and Syntronic 2 libraries do not install properly and cannot be called from SampleTank 4. This is not a Mac Ventura issue, however. I did clean installs over Catalina on my 2012 MacBook Pro and over Ventura on my new Mac Studio. The results were identical and the update from v.1.0.9 did not change a thing on either machine. I let Support know of this ten days ago and have heard nothing back.

There is a workaround, however, and that is to load the stand-alone Syntronic and Syntronic 2 apps instead of SampleTank. It would be nice to hear back from Support to know if they're even looking at it.
 
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