Boz Labs NY L 1926 Lite Piano Plugin FREE (reg $19 USD)

[PavlovsCat]

Boz Digital Labs Christmas Sale - the recently released New York L 1926 Lite virtual piano plugin for Win & Mac (reg. $19.00) is available as a free download until December 31.

"The NYL 1926 has a warm and rich tone that fills its cozy space, creating a perfect setting for expressive and intimate solo piano pieces. However, it also has some unique and charming imperfections that add to its personality."

• Full, Resonant, Growly

• 4 Mic Positions

• Small, Intimate Room

System Requirements

MacOS 10.13 or greater (Intel or Apple Silicon)
Windows 7 or greater
Disk Space: 150MB
RAM: 8GB

I can't help but note that small 150MB size of this compared to the full version -- except that the full version page doesn't list a file size, however, the bundle of their two grand pianos indicates a disk size of 8GB. So this is not a modeled piano, but a sampled piano (edit: someone has stated that the dev claims to use modeling in addition to samples, but at 4GB for the full version,   I would consider this to significantly be considered a sample library housed in a proprietary player. I would imagine that the lite version would not have many dynamic layers to be at 150MB compared to its full size counterpart, which I would guesstimate is around 4GB. But it's free and it is likely to appeal to those who don't own the full version of KONTAKT as the library is delivered in Boz's player.   

https://www.bozdigitallabs.com/new-york-l-bundle-lite/

Edited December 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[audioschmaudio]

When a product has the word "Lite" at the end, you know it will be free every two months.

Doesn't mean that it's bad. Just sayin'

Edited December 6, 2023 by audioschmaudio

[Kirean]

Was almost gonna jest something like "Imagine if you paid the intro price..." but yeah, these are lite versions of the ones that just got released.

[PavlovsCat]

One thing I did notice -- after I made the initial post -- is that the Lite version is only 150MB. This is a sampled piano, not a modeled one, so at 150MB compared to the full version at around 4GB, I would imagine that this is probably only one velocity layer or two where not every one of the 88 keys is sampled. Even $19 USD seems high for such a tiny sample library. So my instinct is that the developer just made this version for promos. But for those not concerned with detail, or if you have a machine that can't handle a big sample library and you don't own KONTAKT, you may want to download and install this.  Personally though, I might download it, but I would imagine the dynamics won't be there, so I would likely only download it to figure out if I like it enough to want to buy the full version.

But for detailed sampled piano libraries with multiple velocity layers and round robins, my two lists on this forum has a number of options.  This clearly  isn't a detailed piano library. But if disk space is at a premium, and so is money, this may be worth downloading. I'd be interested in feedback from people who bought the full version of the two Boz pianos for $29 USD. If they were in the KONTAKT format, I would have bought them. But, unless it's a major player, I'm not a big fan of small sample developers who encase a sample library in a proprietary player.  

Edited December 6, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Kirean]

The full blown Piano Bundle is 25.98 bucks at Audio Deluxe w/ their cyber season voucher (applied automatically.)

Edited December 6, 2023 by Kirean

[PavlovsCat]

We need someone with the brutal honesty of Carl Ewing or jngnz to review this thing. 

Influencer faux reviews are useless. People getting free product, looking for more free product, sponsorship for their channel and direct cash are pitch people, not reviewers. That said, influencers are still incredibly important to developers in this industry, they do get people to buy stuff.  

Edited December 8, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Kirean]

I bit the bullet and gave it a go.

I'm not a pianist by any stretch of imagination so my opinion on the instrument/sound aspect is less than zero. That said, the difference between 1926 and 1991 was surprisingly subtle, at least with default settings. 1991 seems to have a bit more bite and punch. I didn't find anything lacking compared to other piano libraries I've meddled with (mainly those that come with Native, such as Noire). 

However, I'll comment on the plugin part:

Installation was painless, but you need to be online to download the samples via the installer (you can choose where the samples go). I think it downloads the sounds compressed and then processes them to their final form. Once you've installed the instruments though, you do seem to be able to activate & use the instruments offline without any issues. The instruments load really quick (compared to Kontakt) and I didn't run into any technical issues. Do keep in mind that my my playing isn't really putting a strain on the system anyway...

I do share Pavlov's pov, as I highly prefer Kontakt myself due to trusting that platform a lot more than custom ones. But, based on this experience, I do get the feeling that Boz might actually give at least a small crap about the end-user experience as they don't seem to treat the paying customer as devil's spawn. Helps to ease the mind that the price of entry was on the cheap side too.

 

[PavlovsCat]

In case anyone picks up that my posts are devoid of humor and have even more typos lately,I came down with a nasty case of COVID and have a fever, burning,  headache,  aches... usually when I get sick my sense of humor remains. Hopefully,  it will return after my headache goes away.  I swear,  it's usually a key part of my personality. 

[satya]

4 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

In case anyone picks up that my posts are devoid of humor and have even more typos lately,I came down with a nasty case of COVID and have a fever, burning,  headache,  aches... usually when I get sick my sense of humor remains. Hopefully,  it will return after my headache goes away.  I swear,  it's usually a key part of my personality. 

Get well soon or will break ur Wurli 

[mibby]

23 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

In case anyone picks up that my posts are devoid of humor and have even more typos lately,I came down with a nasty case of COVID and have a fever, burning,  headache,  aches... usually when I get sick my sense of humor remains. Hopefully,  it will return after my headache goes away.  I swear,  it's usually a key part of my personality. 

Best wishes for health and a speedy recovery to you and your wife Peter!

[Patrick Wichrowski]

Very slow download here

[PavlovsCat]

The dev has a bit of a QC problem. Is it 150MB of disk space or 50MB (note the discrepancy between the system requirements and the Full vs Lite comparison chart)? 

I just can't see anyway to a decent, dynamic piano that's 150MB,  and especially not one that's 50MB.  The dev could have made his 4GB library smaller (while it states 8GB for the full versionin the chart below, that is the file size for both pianos; again the lack of QC on this is concerning), but there's no way to keep it high quality and dynamic and still get to that small of a file size when you're only using sampling and not modeling. I think he should have done what SonicCouture did and took away some details,  but still kept it great quality. I'm not even going to bother downloading it when it's been reduced by that much. Beyond the tone of non. stretched samples it seems a waste of time. I also can't imagine someone even paying $19 for a 50MB piano library in 2023. Nope. Head over to SonicCouture or SoundPaint and get a detailed free piano for free. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Craig Fowler]

3 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

We need someone with the brutally honesty of Carl Ewing or jngnz to review this thing. 

Influencer faux reviews are useless. People getting free product, looking for more free product, sponsorship for their channel and direct cash are pitch people, not reviewers. That said, influencers are still incredibly important to developers in this industry, they do get people to buy stuff.  

I'll give it a go. I bought the bundle.

On the whole, I'm very impressed. These pianos are *not* going to replace my top-tier piano libraries (e.g., VSL; VI Labs), but they fill a niche, particularly the 1926 - and I suspect it'll be right up your alley, Pavlov, because it plays in similar territory to the Piano in Blue library in that we're dealing with a big, old, and distinctly non-pristine Steinway here. It's got plenty of warmth and character to it. Personally, I like it much more than the Embertone Walker, but then I've never got along with the Walker D.

Playability of both instruments is very good. Again, not up to some of the fancier libraries, but at roughly 5% of the price, that's fair enough. The controls are generally well thought out, though sometimes the menus are more hidden than I'd like. E.g., it took a little while to work out where to find the controls for selecting different microphones.

I get a lot more crackles and pops with the Boz labs instruments than I do with other piano libraries at similar buffer sizes, but I suspect there is some optimizing I could do within Boz's player that I haven't yet discovered.

Personally, I have no problem with this not being a Kontakt library; although there are some very good piano VIs available for Kontakt (Piano in Blue; Noire; Hammers & Waves), none of what I consider the absolute best piano VIs are Kontakt based - VSL's Synchron Piano Player is the best of the best, but I also prefer UVI (for Modern U) and Aria (for Garritan CFX). Even XLN's player works beautifully and (to me) is preferable to Kontakt. 

Price-wise, these are in similar territory to the Sampletekk libraries, but they're obviously much more modern. They aren't perfect, but it's hard to quibble with $13 per piano (if you buy the bundle).

[Brian Walton]

18 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

The dev has a bit of a QC problem. Is it 150MB of disk space or 50MB (note the discrepancy between the system requirements and the Full vs Lite comparison chart)? 

I just can't see anyway to a decent, dynamic piano that's 150MB,  and especially not one that's 50MB.  The dev could have made his 4GB library smaller, but there's no way to keep it high quality and dynamic and still get to that small of a file size when you're only using sampling and not modeling. I think he should have done what SonicCouture did and took away some details,  but still kept it great quality. I'm not even going to bother downloading it when it's been reduced by that much. Beyond the tone of non. stretched samples it seems a waste of time. I also can't imagine someone even paying $19 for a 50MB piano library in 2023. Nope. Head over to SonicCouture or SoundPaint and get a detailed free piano for free. 

Haven't used this yet but I wouldn't be concerned about the size vs quality.  He was pretty clear that this isn't strictly sample based and thus why he didn't call out how many layers he was using even in the full product to get it down to a "reasonable" size.

The installer for AAS Lounge Lizard Player is pretty small and that sounds good enough.   

Large single instrument libraries are frankly annoying, and usually the result of many mic positions and things of that nature, not just dynamic layering.

[PavlovsCat]

58 minutes ago, Craig Fowler said:

I'll give it a go. I bought the bundle.

On the whole, I'm very impressed. These pianos are *not* going to replace my top-tier piano libraries (e.g., VSL; VI Labs), but they fill a niche, particularly the 1926 - and I suspect it'll be right up your alley, Pavlov, because it plays in similar territory to the Piano in Blue library in that we're dealing with a big, old, and distinctly non-pristine Steinway here. It's got plenty of warmth and character to it. Personally, I like it much more than the Embertone Walker, but then I've never got along with the Walker D.

Playability of both instruments is very good. Again, not up to some of the fancier libraries, but at roughly 5% of the price, that's fair enough. The controls are generally well thought out, though sometimes the menus are more hidden than I'd like. E.g., it took a little while to work out where to find the controls for selecting different microphones.

I get a lot more crackles and pops with the Boz labs instruments than I do with other piano libraries at similar buffer sizes, but I suspect there is some optimizing I could do within Boz's player that I haven't yet discovered.

Personally, I have no problem with this not being a Kontakt library; although there are some very good piano VIs available for Kontakt (Piano in Blue; Noire; Hammers & Waves), none of what I consider the absolute best piano VIs are Kontakt based - VSL's Synchron Piano Player is the best of the best, but I also prefer UVI (for Modern U) and Aria (for Garritan CFX). Even XLN's player works beautifully and (to me) is preferable to Kontakt. 

Price-wise, these are in similar territory to the Sampletekk libraries, but they're obviously much more modern. They aren't perfect, but it's hard to quibble with $13 per piano (if you buy the bundle).

For me, small devs doing propitary players, it's another plugin to install,  learn and maintain. I have a fair degree of confidence that NI will maintain KONTAKT 5 years from now, I don't have that confidence for a small dev, and I've told that to bunch of KONTAKT devs that have transitioned to making their own players. The other way I look at libraries,  especially piano libraries,  because  I have  a lot of them, is, does this really bring something to the table I don't already have?  I'm not sure that these libraries do and the miniscule Lite version wouldn't seem to give me a realistic idea of the full library.  

The price is super appealing. The crackling isn't. How do you think this would fit in singer/ songwriter and folk rock productions? 

BTW, I only have Embertone Walker D Lite, but I love it (I like it so much I never felt the need to buy the full version).  I have all of the XLN pianos and electric pianos,  but to be completely candid,  I find them significantly inferior to my favorite KONTAKT libraries and rarely use them.  

Edited December 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

54 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Haven't used this yet but I wouldn't be concerned about the size vs quality.  He was pretty clear that this isn't strictly sample based and thus why he didn't call out how many layers he was using even in the full product to get it down to a "reasonable" size.

The installer for AAS Lounge Lizard Player is pretty small and that sounds good enough.   

Large single instrument libraries are frankly annoying, and usually the result of many mic positions and things of that nature, not just dynamic layering.

Yeah, I do wish file sizes were more reasonable with detailed, multiple mic libraries. I get that pros care about all the different mics, but I'd prefer if every one of the huge libraries due to multiple mics had a one mic download version option too.  I recently bought Spitfire Originals Firewood Piano. It only has three velocity layers but a bunch of mic options. I'd rather have better dynamics than mic options. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Craig Fowler]

If it's dynamics you want, Modern U is pretty much unbeatable 🙂

[BTP]

6 hours ago, Craig Fowler said:

I get a lot more crackles and pops with the Boz labs instruments than I do with other piano libraries at similar buffer sizes, but I suspect there is some optimizing I could do within Boz's player that I haven't yet discovered.

I think it's Boz who needs to optimize, not you. I don't get any crackles normally with any other VSTs (I use a pretty big buffer size) but both Boz pianos crackle every few seconds. It's weird though, when I first installed them they worked fine IIRC. And they might work if I change the buffer size but the next time I use them with the same settings they crackle again.

[frankjcc]

I bought the bundle early on and when I first installed, everything worked.  Next time I kept getting these freezes every few seconds.  At first, changing  that "RAM" setting on the GUI from the default low to high got me back going or so I thought then the same thing started happening again until I thought I would just give up or wait for someone to report this issue and I'll wait for the update.  I have all SSD's and some M.2's ultimately I moved the library from my regular SSD to an M.2 and I haven't had a problem since.  I'm sure his player is the culprit somehow.

I bought this just to have an alternative flavor to true pianos for something that's light weight and loads fast.    I have plenty more pianos but this did give me the alternative for that task.  It was cheap enough and it sounds good enough.