Garritan Authorized Steinway Basic
Contents
1. Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Pages Next up is the Space tab It is divided into four modules Sustain Resonance Sympathetic Resonance Tone and Ambience Each of these can be separately enabled or disabled and has module specific controls All of these are disabled by default Both resonance controls are DSP based as opposed to sample switching based and simulate the complex interactions between strings within the piano Each control has a wet dry control to govern the amount of the effect that will be present Sustain resonance is operative when the sustain pedal is pressed down and simulates the excitation of the strings when the damper mechanism is lifted off them Sympathetic resonance occurs when the sustain pedal is off and simulates the excitation of new notes by harmonically related notes due to the way sound energy travels through the mechanical structures of the piano In my book these modules are one important key to making the Garritan Steinway sound and behave more like a real piano Disable them at your own peril or for possibly for special effects The Tone control is a simple equalizer providing 24 dB of gain in the high mid and low areas of the frequency spectrum While I d be more inclined to use a plug in EQ in a DAW environment this module may be useful for quick adjustments It may be more useful in the standalone version not so much for solo use of the instrument i2. Review Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Piano Basic by Rick Paul 30th July 2009 Like most longtime piano players I ve played a wide variety of pianos in the almost four and a half decades since I started playing While I ve never had the pleasure of owning one myself the pianos I have most enjoyed playing over the years have invariably borne the name Steinway amp Sons For me it comes down to the feel of the action and how that translates to the expressiveness and tone of the instrument I ve played everything from expressive classical music to Jerry Lee Lewis style rock and roll on the instruments T ve used and Steinways simply seem to do it all well without my having to work around issues of feel tone and volume By contrast each time I play one other extremely popular brand of grand piano I feel like I have to coddle the instrument to get anything other than bright loud sounds out of it When it comes to electronic simulations of pianos be it synthesized modeled sampled or some combination thereof Ihave also generally gravitated toward those fashioned after Steinways While playing these sampled instruments was nothing like playing a real Steinway thanks or no thanks to a combination of controller keyboard considerations and sample library limitations these products nevertheless came as close as Id been able to get within the electronic realm Even if Td been able to afford a real Steinway for my living room I m not s
3. You might wonder why I didn t use it on the other five tracks In one case there was no acoustic piano on the recording at all and the other mixes were already final with only mastering needed and I had a short deadline The Garritan piano ended up going on every single track that was new or that needed remixing and I even ended up remixing one or two of the tracks expressly so I could include the Garritan piano Closing Notes Back when I first started considering the possibility of reviewing the Garritan Authorized Steinway I d more or less assumed Garritan would want to put the Professional Edition up for review given it would seem to be the flagship product in the line However I was also short on hard disk space and that product requires a fairly big chunk approximately 67GB for the 24 bit version of it and I was not in a good position to add an extra disk at that point When Garritan actually ended up offering up the Basic Edition of the product for review I had mixed feelings First there was a bit of relief in that I could install the product without having to buy a new disk or kick other products off my disk to make room However there was also some degree of disappointment thinking Td be using a cut down version of the product designed to fit in way less disk space and come in at a 99 price point and wondering what Td be missing out on as a result At this point though while I really can t say what Tm missing out o
4. may be ones you ll want to tailor to the needs of a song or recording For now suffice itto say that this is one piano we pianists can actually tweak to our needs without having to ourselves be qualified as Steinway master technicians or even piano tuners If there is any slight downside itis that you may find yourself wanting to tune some of the Garritan Steinway s parameters such as sustain and sympathetic resonance which are turned off by default prior to going hog wild just playing the thing Otherwise you may initially miss out on some of the key characteristics that set this piano apart from the pack I really wish Garritan had chosen a default preset that already used the maximum polyphony and which had both forms of resonance turned on with solid default settings for the microphone position perspective supplied This would allow us to more quickly get to just playing the instrument though I suppose it might also make it less likely we d dive into tweaking it since most of us aren t accustomed to serving as our own piano technicians Okay so there s a little more involved in getting started with the Garritan Steinway than simply sitting down at a piano bench However once you ve got the basic settings how you like them and do remember to save those as the default for your subsequent sessions the experience is about as clase to playing a real piano in the room of your choice as you can get at least outside of actually sitting
5. difficult or impossible to tune or to tune the piano to a recording that isn t tuned to the same tuning reference you re using perhaps due to use of a varispeed control Speaking of tuning references next up is the Region control which provides a menu of eleven different tuning references named by their usage mostly Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Pages various regions of the world though some are historical references and the frequency in Hertz to which the A above middle C is tuned The default is the common International tuning that sets A 440 Hz Last but not least is the Tuning Type control with its related Center note control By default the tuning type is equal temperament the most commonly used modern system whereby an octave is divided into twelve equal sized semitones While this system has been used almost exclusively in modern Western music itis actually a relatively new development and was not used back when some classic composers like Bach Beethoven Mozart and others were creating their works There are various other temperaments that were used in different places at different times Using another temperament such as one that has specific historical significance related to a piece of music that was composed using it can allow hearing the piece in a manner that more closely approximates the composer s intentions The differences between temperaments are well beyond the scope of this re
6. e since the instrument sounds great straight up but for cases where the instrument is being played in a band context where the controls may help it sit better in a mix The Ambience module integrates the Ambience Reverb which you may recall from the plug in of the same name from earlier Garritan products within the Garritan Steinway s interface A dozen useful presets are provided along with several controls to adjust the results to your liking Of course there are the obligatory wet and dry controls in the form of independent sliders here Having independent controls allows using the Dry slider as a volume control while the Wet slider can then be used to set the level of ambience desired This is particularly useful in the standalone instrument Additional controls include knobs to set decay time diffusion room size pre delay time and stereo width of the effect All of these are included in the settings provided by the presets and have the typical meanings you d expect if you re familiar with other reverb processors Another parameter that is stored in the presets is a knob called Variation which creates new variations of the same room without affecting the other parameters The user manual suggests this might be used for example in the case of unpleasant artifacts in the current setting where a new variation might avoid those artifacts A final knob whose value is not stored in the presets is Quality Tt is used for tradi
7. kind of quality it is an absolute steal Rick Paul is a singer songwriter living in Southern California You can contact him at http www RickPaul info His new album Love Holds On features the Garritan Authorized Steinway on 7 of its 12 tracks and can be found on CD or in digital download form at most popular digital music outlets see http hwww RickPaul info rpstore html for the latest list Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Pages
8. most pianists who have played keyboards with limited polyphony have occasionally experienced times when things started sounding funky in dense passages with sustain pedals during glissandos and in other similar circumstances Setting a high value just seems like insurance against that sort of thing The Velocity Curve control provides five fixed curves that the user manual calls Darkest Dark Linear Bright and Brightest These simply look like lines Linear and curves the rest on the product but the visual gives you an intuitive idea of how they work While some might prefer the ability to tune things more finely in this area others will appreciate the simplicity of just trying out the various curves to see which gives the most natural performance with their specific MIDI controllers On my controller a Roland Rhodes MK 80 I found the default linear curve a bit softer than Iam used to for a piano s response though T d likely get used to it and adapt were I playing it that way for an extended period Going one curve into the bright range felt more like what I was used to and yielded the best results with recordings Td initially made using various other sampled pianos From reading a number of messages posted in the Garritan Forums there does seem to be a common experience of the Garritan Steinway s playing softer than other sampled pianos so perhaps my observation isn t as specific to my controller as I might have initially expected
9. around is very simple as described above Those issues aside once the V1 03 software was installed and running the software performed like a champ I did not find it to be overly taxing on my CPU nor did I have any other problems with it be it in the area of reliability or in the area of not behaving according to my expectations Much more significantly the Garritan Steinway is a pleasure to play It s hard to explain but somehow the keyboard feel to sound connection just seems more like a real piano even on the same keyboard controller being used for other sampled pianos than other sampled pianos T ve tried While I haven t tried all the sampled pianos on the market by any means e g Synthogy s Ivory is the most notable exception I have tried and used a number of fairly popular and well regarded ones As best I can guess at the reasons why the Garritan Steinway may feel more real Id venture it is likely a combination of two key attributes First is the smooth velocity response which parallels my general impressions of real Steinway pianos over some other prominent brands Second is realistic modeling of the interactions between the components of the virtual piano in the form of sympathetic resonance and sustain resonance I wouldn t go so far as to say it is like playing a real acoustic piano no less a real Steinway Model D However it would be very interesting to try it with a much better more piano like keyboard controller
10. dalone version After choosing the MIDI part for my keyboard controller selecting the Audio Device API MME DirectSound or ASIO you ll generally want to use ASIO for low latency but it s nice to know there are other options for scenarios where you don t have an audio interface with ASIO support the specific audio device from the options available for the selected API a stereo pair of outputs sample rate and sample buffer size corresponds to latency and effects performance I was ready to play Well almost 1 was mildly disappointed that the Garritan Steinway Basic which only has one basic sample set owing to its having only one microphone perspective did not load its samples by default I had to first choose the microphone position from the one and only choice available on this model Basic This no doubt relates to the same player s being used for the more advanced versions of the Garritan Steinway Thankfully it is easy enough for the user to rectify this after setting things up the way he or she wants them There is a Save As Default command in the File menu to force the automatic loading of the user s preferred configuration on subsequent starts of the standalone software There are a number of additional parameters that can be adjusted that we ll get to below Some of these such as velocity curve and polyphony may be ones you ll want to configure consistently to suit your platform needs Others such as ambience parameters
11. down to play a good acoustic piano in a good room The perspective you ll hear with the Garritan Steinway Basic is incorrectly identified in the user manual as the Close as in close audience perspective but is actually the Under Lid Perspective For those interested in the audio engineering side of things this perspective is inside the piano body using two Schoeps MK4 microphones in a spaced cardioid pair One was placed between the mid range and treble strings and the other was placed between the mid range and bass strings Given that the Steinway Basic Edition only has one perspective this seems to me to bbe the best choice It is always easier to add ambience than it is to subtract it and having this inside the piano perspective makes it easy to use the Garritan Steinway s Ambience section or an external reverb to place the instrument in the virtual room of your choice The standalone version of the Garritan Steinway software provides two additional capabilities beyond simply being able to play it and tweak its settings A MIDI file player makes it into a player piano while an audio file recording facility adds a hard disk recorder to record your performances or those of a MIDI file being played I would have also have loved to have a MIDI file recorder to take doodling played in standalone mode and import it into a sequencer later with full editing capabilities but that would have required much more complexity on the player
12. e expected information on the program itself the manual provides brief histories of Steinway instruments and the company itself information on the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall detailed information on alternate tunings written by Wendy Carlos Steinway quotes from famous pianists and even an exhortation to practice your instrument The only minor complaint I have about the manual is that it s a general manual for the Garritan Steinway not specific to the Basic Edition of the product This results in some coverage of features that are not present on the Basic Edition Product and the manual does not always note where this is the case While covering the general product is a reasonable approach to economizing on an otherwise relatively luxurious document it would have been nice to have features that aren t in all versions of the product flagged as such to prevent potential user confusion The Garritan Steinway supports Windows XP and both 32 and 64 bit editions of Windows Vista on the PC It also supports OS X for PPC and Intel 32 bit and 64 bit on the Macintosh Detailed system requirements can be found on the Garritan web site Plug in formats supported include VST and RTAS on both Windows and Macintosh and AudioUnits on the Macinotosh under OS X only Of course in addition to the computer oriented requirements you ll also want a suitable MIDI keyboard controller especially if you are wanting the Garritan Steinway to feel as much like a real p
13. e including the maximum amount of memory to be dynamically allocated for the instrument the amount of pre caching space and the quality draft or normal modes Given the lack of documentation on these parameters Tad guess they are meant to be left in their default state unless Garritan s technical support people suggest otherwise in the course of troubleshooting an issue on your system Of course I couldn t resist playing around with these myself though I noticed no practical impact other than when setting the quality to draft mode Perhaps this is because I wasn t taxing my system sufficiently to need to stray from the default settings Playing Around T got off to a somewhat rocky start with V1 02 of the Garritan Steinway Basic software While I could already sense that it played much more like a real piano than any of the sampled pianos Td tried to that point there were a few issues one with an easy workaround and the other being much more difficult to avoid The tough one was the software s responding inappropriately to a quick series of sustain pedal up down events Rather than turning the sustain off after the last pedal up event sustain rang out most likely due to the rapid series of events being misinterpreted as the start of some proportional pedaling but without seeing or at least reacting to the final sustain off event The good news is that problem was resolved with the V1 03 update to the software The one with the easy w
14. end Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Pages Of course you can always use the plug in version of the Garritan Steinway within your favorite sequencer if you want to record your performances as MIDI data The main differences between the standalone version of the Garritan Steinway and the plug in version are the lack of MIDI file player and recording facilities which would of course be supplied by your DAW in plug in mode The plug in version also does not require configuring audio and MIDI interface parameters since that information is handled at the DAW level It should be noted that the plug in also does not load its samples by default nor does it provide the equivalent of a Save As Default command to change that on subsequent loads of the plug in However most DAWs provide the ability to save plug in presets Thus you will be able to save your favorite setup as a preset and reload it after loading the plug in Views from the Bench This version of the Garritan Steinway may be called Basic but there are certainly a number of things some pretty darn advanced you can do to tweak it for your needs The tweaking possibilities are accessed through four tabbed sections in the product s interface Let s take a closer look at each of the sections The Main tab provides access to microphone position presets mechanical noise polyphony and velocity curve Note that the Basic Edition product only provides o
15. iano as possible In addition to typical keyboard size and feel considerations such as an 88 key keyboard with a piano like feel a continuous controller pedal will be needed if you want to take advantage of the proportional sustain pedaling You ll also want an addition pedal which can be on off only for use as the sostenuto pedal If you re using the Standard or Professional Edition of the Garritan Steinway you will also want ane more pedal for use as a soft pedal began my testing with V1 02 of the Garritan Steinway Basic then upgraded to V1 03 when it was released about a month and a half later Most of my testing was performed under SONAR 8 0 2 and SONAR 8 3 1 though T also tried several other host platforms when troubleshooting some initial problems found with the V1 02 software The test system had an Intel Core 2 Duo E6000 processor with 4 GB of RAM and Windows XP Home SP3 fully Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Page patched to latest Windows Update levels The audio interface was the E MU 1820M with V2 0 DAS drivers and PatchMix software Let s take a closer look Getting Started The Garritan Steinway offers both plug in and standalone operation Being a piano player who is used to just walking into a room and starting to play rather than having to setup up and or adjust an instrument first like guitar players drummers and wind instrument players generally need todo stated by firing up the stan
16. n i e other than on paper by reviewing this lower end version of the product I can say I don t fee like Tm missing anything Sure I know there are no soft pedal Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Page samples in this version of the instrument However about the only times T ve used the soft pedal on a real piano were when I was trying to be particularly quiet for noise purposes not because I needed the soft pedal for musical purposes It may well be that 24 bit samples have something better going for them than the 16 bit samples in the Basic Edition and or that the sampling of every note instead of every other note as in the Basic Edition makes a difference Nevertheless Tm not hearing any weaknesses in what the Basic Edition is doing in response to my playing or in my recordings The additional mic perspectives might be useful in some cases but Id mostly use the under the lid perspective in my recordings anyway using an external reverb for any room space considerations to censure that other instruments in the recording could be placed in the same virtual room Of course it might well be that at some point in the future FI sit down with the Professional Edition play it for a while and instantly have an aha moment that tells me exactly what I ve been missing In the meantime though ignorance is bliss and I m extremely happy with the Garritan Authorized Steinway Basic Edition And at only 99 for this
17. ne usable option for Microphone position However this is how you will access the sample loading function the first time you use the standalone version of the product and any time you want to load samples in the plug in version without using a DAW level preset The Mechanical Noise control allows setting the level of pedal noises over a 0 99 range With the Steinway Basic Edition the level of pedal noise even at the control s highest setting is subtle enough that you ll likely have to listen closely to hear it in the context of a mix or even relatively dense solo playing In fact even just playing the pedal with no notes going it was relatively difficult to hear on one set of speakers I was using though it was much more apparent when I put on headphones That is probably as it should be because the better maintained a piano is the less likely you are to hear pedal noises However where you are in relation to the piano and the pedals will affect the noise you hear so it would be interesting to hear the differences in this area with the additional mic perspectives available in the higher end editions of the Garritan Steinway The Polyphony control allows setting values from 8 to 128 notes Unless you re experiencing a CPU power shortage though my inclination would be just to set it at 128 notes and leave it there I know we only have ten fingers and one might think the default setting of 32 notes would be more than adequate However
18. ng off the quality of the reverb processing with the amount of CPU used by that processing The differences here can be quite noticeable so this is another case where I d suggest leaving the knob set to 100 unless CPU performance becomes an issue The Tune tab contains four sections and five controls that allow a huge amount of flexibility for adjusting the instrument s tuning Im going to start from the right side of the interface for the Tune tab because for most users of the Basic Edition of the product I d venture the controls will see more frequent use as we get closer to the right side of the tab On the far right is a Transpose control which allows transposing the instrument 12 semitones i e up to one octave This is the control you ll use if you need to make a MIDI sequence authored with a piano module that lays out octaves differently across the range of MIDI note numbers fit the range of the Garritan Steinway Its also the control you d use if you d rather play that piece written in G flat in G or F or if you just need to play some sheet music in another key to suit a singer and don t want to transpose in your head Just to the left of that is a Fine Tune knob This allows tuning the instrument s notes up to 50 cents in either direction if you need to go farther than that you could use the ranspose knob in conjunction with the Fine Tune knob This might be used for example to tune the piano to some other instrument that is
19. orkaround was that I was getting audio artifacts similar to what I ve heard when a sampler that uses disk streaming can t keep up in servicing samples to the audio playback engine These artifacts only occurred when using the product as a plug in and as I found after some further troubleshooting only in Cakewalk products I tried several versions of SONAR along with ProjectS V2 and Kinetic The versions of Cubase LE and Ableton Live Lite I had did not exhibit the issues On further inspection this issue only occurred if the plug in window was open or minimized not when the interface was closed altogether Thus it was easy to work around the problem by closing the Garritan Steinway plug in after making any settings adjustments That issue was still present in the V1 03 update Sometime later the SONAR 8 3 1 patch update arrived and that seems to have at least greatly reduced the audio artifacts issue though I don t believe it has entirely eliminated it I suspect the issue is more likely a Cakewalk Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Pages issue than a Garritan Plogue issue However I also suspect whatever the Garritan Plogue player is doing in the plug in interface may be taxing SONAR s multi threading logic in a way that I have not seen with most other plug ins though I believe there are at least a few exceptions This issue is may very well be system specific but if it affects you the good news is that the work
20. ry only and hence includes only a PDF user manual Since I did not test the Professional Edition or Standard Edition all further Garritan Steinway references in this review refer to the Basic Edition though many of the references may also be applicable to the higher end products The Basic Edition of the Garritan Steinway provides a single close miked under the lid perspective for maximum flexibility in different recording contexts Sustain MIDI CC 64 and sostenuto CC 66 pedal support are provided and proportional pedaling is supported with a continuous sustain pedal controller Sustain resonance and sympathetic resonance are supported via convolution based DSP modules while sample based mechanical Le pedal noises are also available and adjustable To tailor the instrument to the needs of your setup and recording the Garritan Steinway also provides multiple velocity curves adjustable polyphony a selection of historical tunings with Scala file import to allow additional possibilities a 3 band equalizer and an integrated Ambience reverb Garritan s new ARIA Sample Player developed in conjunction with Plogue Technologies is included and handles all under the hood duties Both plug in and standalone operation are supported with the standalone version of the product also offering MIDI file playback and audio file recording The user manual is a 98 page PDF file with bookmarks for quick navigation In addition to information on th
21. to see how much closer it comes in that scenario The closest I came there was trying an early version of the software out for a few minutes with headphones on a Yamaha 90 ES at Winter NAMM 2008 I remember its feeling quite good there but that was a long time ago Besides simply playing the Garritan Steinway including recording some new tracks with it I also used the plug in version for re rendering a number of tracks T d previously recorded using other piano modules including the original Nemesys GigaPiano the Best Service Galaxy Steinway 5 1 and Native Instruments Akoustik Piano The styles of the songs in question ranged from modern pop rock to adult contemporary ballads from a country shuffle to a funereal Celtic song In all cases I preferred the results from the Garritan Steinway despite other modules having been used for the original tracking The main thing I noted in making that translation was that I had to use the Bright velocity curve in the Garritan product to get in the same general ballpark on touch as the other products In some cases I also processed the Garritan Steinway differently than the other pianos to make it fit properly in the track I consider that to be tantamount to the need to process different pianos differently though and I never had any issues in fitting the Garritan product in my recordings All in all I ended up using the Garritan Steinway on seven of the twelve tracks on my soon to be released album
22. u ll have to read the rest of the review though to get the full picture Background The Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Piano models the Steinway Model D concert grand piano Steinway amp Sons handpicked the piano and also supplied one of their most accomplished master technicians to attend to the needs of the piano and otherwise participate in the Garritan recording sessions Those sessions were carried out in Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 30 2008 Paget the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy New York That venue is noted for its acoustics and has played host to performances by many renowned piano players in its well aver a century of existence We will be covering the Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Piano Basic Edition While I will for brevity be referring to this as simply Garritan Steinway in the remainder ofthis review itis worth noting that Garritan also offers Standard Edition and Professional Edition packages You can find the full comparison of the three versions of the product on the Garritan web site at bitp garritan com steinway_comparison html In a nutshell though the Basic Edition s more expensive siblings provide additional microphone perspectives soft pedal samples multiple stage tracking release sample triggers and a larger and higher quality sample set They are also available as boxed product with a printed manual whereas the Basic Edition is available for download delive
23. ure T d have the facilities for recording it well Thus you could say that my optimal situation would be to have a real Steinway piano to play for enjoyment and practice and the best simulation I can find for recording Enter the Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Piano keying on the authorized part My first temptation when hearing of Garritan entry into this crowded field may have been to wonder if the world needs yet another sampled Steinway grand However that authorized part which signifies that Steinway amp Sons not only blessed and lent its name to the product but also participated heavily in the product s development was intriguing Was it just a marketing ploy or could it be that this virtual piano would be different enough from all the others to warrant its being an Authorized Steinway while the rest were just samples of Steinway pianos As eager as I was to get my hands on this instrument it would take quite awhile for that to occur Garritan initially announced their venture to create this instrument at the 2006 Winter NAMM show I finally got a very few minutes to play it at the 2008 Winter NAMM show but that was really just a tease It wasn t until late January 2009 that I finally received the downloadable Basic edition of the product which I have since used on a number of my recordings in addition to playing it simply for fun I can tell you up front that this is not just another sampled Steinway piano Yo
24. view but for example a given temperament may attempt to make the sounds for certain notes and intervals more pleasant at the expense of the sound of other less commonly used intervals The Garritan Steinway user manual has some excellent background information on the sixteen preset temperaments provided with the Garritan Steinway Basic Since those are provided as Scala files which are simply loaded into the instrument to set the current tuning type users can also create additional tuning types if needed The Center control sets the base note of the scale being used Note that the Garritan Steinway Basic V1 03 has a bug in the display of the tuning type While it loads the Scala files correctly it does not update its display of the currently loaded tuning type Garritan indicates that this bug will be fixed in V1 04 of the software which should be coming soon as of the time of this writing The final tabbed section of the Garritan Steinway s user interface is the Info tab This screen provides information and controls primarily intended to be used for technical support and the user manual generally does not discuss their meaning or use There are License and Support buttons which display the graphic license card and take you to the Garritan biz web site respectively as well as a number of informational fields some fixed and most providing real time feedback while the instrument is playing a piece Three parameters are also tunable her
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