CineSamples Abbey Road Classic Upright Pianos Farewell Sale

[cclarry]

Normally $199 - $69

https://cinesamples.com/product/abbey-road-classic-upright-pianos?mc_cid=6f96ef65bf&mc_eid=08030af076

Edited April 17, 2020 by cclarry

[Fleer]

Farewell sleep? Why? New and better coming? If not, been wanting this for some time now. 

[simon]

wonder if the "abbey road" licence has run out ?

[Fleer]

That could be the reason indeed. Then I’d better get it. 

[Fleer]

Found a post by Funkybot over at VI Control. I'm not buying: 

"For me it's Cinesamples Abbey Road Classic Upright Pianos. There's probably no sample library I want more than these particular pianos (Mrs. Mills and Challen anyway) sampled well, but this isn't it. Problems with the library include:

1. Pianos are out of tune (I understand you don't want these perfectly in tune as the chorusing is part of the effect, but center frequencies are off)

2. Inconsistent sample start times. They kept some of the action noise at the start of each note, but the duration of the noise (pre-note) wildly varies from note to note so it just sounds sloppy and feel terrible to play. My guess? They didn't feel like editing each sample manually, so just loaded the recordings into a batch job, set a single volume threshold, then pressed the "Batch Process" button to automatically trim the samples and left it at that.

3. The biggest sin? The TERRIBLE velocity mapping and sample selection. These were just poorly sampled from the get-go by someone at Abbey Road (Cinesamples support confirmed that they did not make the samples), and Cinesamples put absolutely minimal effort into selecting good samples and mapping them for smooth playback. Every single key has the same number of velocity layers, that are distributed at the exact same velocities, indicating to me that the pianos were just put into some batch mapping program. So not only do you regularly trigger what's a poor sounding sample, they didn't do anything to smooth out the response.

It doesn't have any of the piano-specific features you'd expect to see in a $200 library either.

What does it do well? The pianos are THE exact piano sounds you hear on everything from The Beatles, and Zombies to Elliott Smith, which you just can't get from other libraries. And they offer a few microphone positions. But overall, I would not repurchase it. Wish someone who could do pianos well could work with Abbey Road to make a much better version of these instruments."

[Fleer]

But I’m still on the fence. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Dang. 

[synthmeister]

They are recognisable!

[Fleer]

Well, I caved, due to this post at VI Control by a man (CGR) who sure knows his pianos: 

“I have the Cinesamples Abbey Roads pianos. I first experienced playing the Abbey Roads Challen upright on a recording session. The producer had tried a few different sampled pianos and we all decided this had the best tone for the track. I didn't have any problems putting down my part with it using my Yamaha CP4 stage piano, although we had to do some MIDI timing correction, due to the slight latency and variation - not a big deal though.

I ended up buying it on sale last year, and am happy I did. They sound very authentic and raw, and the different mic positions give a big variation in ambience and image so I most times don't need to reach for extra reverb to give them depth. They do play like old pianos and in my opinion that's OK. If you can adapt your playing to them (just like with a real acoustic piano) and play to their strengths the results and authenticity of tone & character can be hard to match with any other sample piano I have.”  
 

Edith: and they sound pretty, pretty good

Edited April 18, 2020 by Fleer