Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Picking up Garritan CFX again, my thoughts

Hi friends!

First of all, I want to say a thank you to PW, and in particular the Digital Piano Forums. My music-making days are very colorful thanks to these wonderful VSTs, and it's made the experience of playing / practicing as enjoyable as the listening. And this community has fueled my digital piano playing journey.

On to the subject of what I'm sharing. Because I needed to film myself playing piano solo, in particular a Mozart piece a few months back, I decided to return to the Garritan CFX. For one thing, the ambient microphones have a very welcome sound, and the treble notes have a brilliance to them that I desired. After reading through various forums and experimenting with Harpuia the multitude of options, I decided to work with the Classic_Full perspective with tweaks to the panning of the microphones, a change in the velocity curve as well as the mixing between close and ambient signals. As it turned out, the sound was very welcoming and it sounded like I was playing in a concert hall. What's more, it helped kill off the hiss I was experiencing when having the microphones to their default positions.

Then a few days ago I tried the player mix. The piano sounded warmer and more lyrical, but because of the swopped close and ambient mic signals, I had to work around it a bit. So far, I haven't found a mixing option I liked -- the close microphone had little room ambience and the ambient mics, when mixed in with the close in certain volume settings, make the piano sound nasal, especially the mid range. Since I'm not good at the SFZ program language, or any programing language at all for that matter, I will need to find a way to fix the problem.

Running the standalone player in 2 instances does not work on my end, as there's a slight delay between the midi signals sent to the two instances, that it will make the phasing problem worse.

But so far, I like the tone color this perspective gives. Some notes reminds me of the Bosendorfer 280VC demos I hear from VSL and other users.

Have anyone on this forum read the SFZ file and figured out what some of these things mean? This would be interesting to see.

Anyway, that was a few thoughts I have after playing the Garritan CFX for the past month. Its playability and beauty in shaping melodies and phrases is really refreshing to me, and I love the feedback I'm hearing from my Rokit5 G4 monitors.

So much for now. Have a good one!

David

I don't recall delay issues running multiple instances of Garritan CFX but I doubt it was optimised to run that way.

However, some DAWs have good multi-core support, which resolves some performance issues of pros running multiple VIs concurrently. I thought DavidB recently posted that DAW trick for VSL (multiple mics).

So, rather than run 2 instances of the Garritan CFX stand alone player, kindly try running the 2 instances of Garritan through a DAW like Reaper, Logic Pro, or Cubase. No guarantees but it is worth a shot.

Have you tried using your current Classical preset for live playing, and record using only the ambient mic?

Why run multiple instances?
I run the Player close up mic set mostly in its default mode; I leave the mics balanced as is, and simply boost the bass EQ.
I maintain Audience perspective because I think Performer perspective introduces a little phasing. Half pedal should be turned turned on, and release levels put at around 10:00 AM. No reverb needed. Pretty straight forward.

I see. I'll need to think about that, as I've been DAW-less with my piano VSTs. Thanks for your suggestion, newer player!

Hey, that's another idea! I'll give it a shot. The close mic in the player perspective do lend some warm colors to the CFX, I think!

Yes, it's a very different sound, more distant. I like it in some romantic stuff, but the clarity in the close mic is always good, especially to hear myself practice.

Good point.

The question of the close & ambient mics in Player had flipped stereo channels was from a very specific usage scenario. People just using the KU100 dummy-head mics alone for a binaural effect with headphones (player-ambient mics solo, with no close mics). Running just two stereo mics (left & right) there are some natural recording effects (e.g. phasing).

So are the L&R channels incorrectly flipped? There is no clear answer. Some here agreed and some disagreed. And even the lead engineer of Garritan CFX (Jeff Hurchalla) chimed in.

Using both close & ambient mics, everything seems to even out, so the player perspective (running just one instance of the Aria) is quite popular here.

EDIT- The binaural effect is underwhelming in my opinion. I think this is because there was a live piano player. The dummy head was moved above and behind here, so not optimally placed. And her body interfered a bit with the sound. This really matters only for people using headphones with just the ku100 mics looking for the binaural effect. Does not matter for those using both mic sets of player perspective.

That's what I'm looking for -- a mix of the close and ambient mics so I can hear the natural hall as well as getting some clarity from the close microphones. But with the stereo channels flipped has an odd effect on the stereo mix of the two microphones, thus I'm still searching for a blend of clarity and natural hall reverb that will give some directional detail as well. It's an interesting experience.