Choosing piano library

[Feral State Sound]

Hi folks!

I am looking for a grand piano library because I am definitely not convinced with the sound of my Kawai ES100 ? The one that impressed me the most was Pearl Concert Grand, any other options worth to check before pulling the trigger? 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Feral State Sound

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

Low budget winners would be Addictive Keys and Sonivox Eighty-Eight. The Sonivox is pretty CPU hungry depending on how many features are turned on all at once.

[Feral State Sound]

43 minutes ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

Low budget winners would be Addictive Keys and Sonivox Eighty-Eight. The Sonivox is pretty CPU hungry depending on how many features are turned on all at once.

Not very fan of Sonivox products... I have Addictive Drums and Addictive Keys is an option but the interface of XLN Audio products is a little bit convoluted to me and I don't know how they can pack 5 microphone perspectives in such a small file size, Are the samples compressed using a lossy format or what? Is an hybrid tech of modelled/sampled?

Edited April 1, 2020 by Feral State Sound

[Starise]

I like the C-7 in Sampletank. The CE version of ST was free and it likely has at least one or two pianos in it. I recently linked to a site called pianobook  in the deals thread with an example of a free pianos  sampled and uploaded by a guy named Jon Meyer. HERE.  You will need Kontakt full though.

Addictive keys is a nice piano and I use it sometimes. Haven't tried Sonovox.  You can go big like the one Simeon just reviewed from Embertone over 200gb. Check that out HERE

On the lower end there are some nice bread and butter pianos from Sampletekk HERE They tend to be great for computers that don't have a lot of storage space. 

Pianoteq isn't really a sample library but a modeled piano meaning it doesn't require a lot of disk space and it sounds very good.

Pianos are very subjective and a lot depends on the kind of sound you are after. 

The pianos in Komplete can be hit or miss for me. They are all nice but they don't all fit into mixes well. Hope this helps.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Starise

[Michael A.D.]

2 hours ago, Starise said:

 Pianoteq isn't really a sample library but a modeled piano meaning it doesn't require a lot of disk space and it sounds very good.

Besides the almost instantaneous load time, besides the great sound, the Pianoteq pianos are the most responsive I have ever played.  I also own many other pianos (including all the ones that come with Kontakt complete) that I had purchased before I got the Pianoteq, and I cannot use any of them after being spoiled by the responsiveness that the Pianoteq provides.