Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards The Best (VST) Plugin

If you have knowledge concerning VSTs could you please reply with the name of your favourite VST and why?

I think the results of this could be useful, at least to someone like me who has not worked with them enough to have a preference.

Many thanks!

Trying to sort from the most appreciated instrument to the less

The most used VST are VSL (expensive but worth their price), Bechstein Digital Grand (Very nice too, I like the mellow/bright knob which permits me to voice it like I want), Garritan CFX (very close to VSL Synchron CFX… it was not very wise to purchase both. But I bought VSL afterward and like to switch piano - between other VSL Synchron - with a single mouse click !).

I also like Galaxy instruments and especially Vintage D which has some charm.

Ivory are also well appreciated

I have plenty of others, but I admit to use them less.

Thanks for the valuable information Frederic!

You might find it helpful, OP, to duck over to the VI: Control forum and check out the "Ultimate piano comparison" thread in the sample talk subforum.

That said, I agree with Frédéric that the VSL pianos are as good as it gets (I have all of them and was excited to see they took delivery of another upright this week which hopefully means they'll be sampling it in their small stage!).
VI Labs Modern U is fantastic for its realism and playability.
Garritan CFX is glorious sounding right out the box (and actually, I think, quite different in timbre to VSL's offering; I'm happy to have both)
Pianoteq is a marvel of modern programming that gets better with every iteration and is exceptionally playable and customizable.
Noire is versatile and fun.
Simple Sam Signature Grand/Cinesamples Piano in Blue are spectacular 'character' pianos - SSSG has the most wonderful presets if you suddenly want to call up a Keith Jarrett or Bill Evans-sounding tone, and PiB actually *is* the Bill Evans piano from Kind of Blue.
Digital Bechstein is, as Frédéric mentioned, excellent and very tweakable. It's a little hard/unforgiving for my taste and level of skill, but still very good.

There are many other excellent ones, but these are the ones I play most.

And, as I just got an email from them this morning announcing yet another of their 80% off sales, Sampletekk's aging collection of sampled pianos are still fantastic bang for the buck!

We have skinned this cat so many times that it has no more fur.

You should search previous threads. Lots of information.

You will quickly realize the top brands and how personal it all gets.

Ron

I'm using Garritan CFX and Noire the most. Both are versatile and have a solid sound.

You know, some cats are hairless to begin with, right? :-)

(I'm not making any point or snide remark, I just liked your analogy and started thinking about it!)

Does anybody go onto a car forum and just post "what's your favourite car and why? thanks"?

Here is what I like the most:
- all and every VSL, including the old Vienna Imperial;
- Bechstein Digital;
- Embertone Walker;
- Pianoteq;
- Synthogy (Steinway B, and American Concert D).

I don't see a problem with threads like this. New VSTs also pop up all the time, get updated, etc.

I use ravenscroft, embertone, vsl bosendorfer imperial and Bluthner the most. Noire is also very good, but requires a lot of tweaking to sound and play natural imo.

I imagine the answer would depend a lot on whether the goal is to have the best VST for practicing through headphones, practicing through various types of loudspeaker monitors, performing for an audience in your living room, producing a recording, solo versus ensemble, etc.

Here's my entire write-up and thread on Pianoteq:

Pianoteq - Hands On

For an introduction to the VI world, there's just about nothing better than Pianoteq thanks to the extremely low barrier to entry. Download the generous free trial today and get started.

If you're looking to experiment musically, it's just the thing. Pick an instrument and get inspired.

I started with the U4, moved on to a C. Bechstein (which I botched with too much fiddling, but it was fun!), did a year long stint on the NY Steinway D... and now I've landed on the Petrofs!

It's super fun to pick a piano then proceed to make it entirely your own. I only hope Modartt keeps cranking out more instrument packs.

Hello,

Maybe we need to discuss this in a separate thread, but I recently purchased Noire, there is a lot to like about it, and yes, it does require a lot of tweaking. Starting it up with the default 'Basic Pure' I initially thought Noire was an immediate write-off. I have it quite a bit better now, but have a feeling I'm not fully at 'natural' yet.

Would you care to share how you have set up your most 'natural' Noire?

Cheers and thanks!

HZ

Whatever is best for someone certainly depends on specific circumstances, for example which computing facilities are available. Probably the VSL instruments are the most elaborate VI's on the market, but they require a lot more computing power than some of the others.

Since I bought the Galaxy II grand piano's, I have not been playing other VI's much (apart from a bit of testing the new version of Pianoteq), and I may continue to play these three virtual grand's the most. Primarily because they sound good, and they function perfectly fine on my not-exactly-top-of-the-line music PC.

The Synthogy Ivory II Studio Grands sound a bit better still, but unless I kill a lot of Windows services first, they may suddenly loose sound briefly, because of disk activity. I have been playing these two grand's a lot, however.

The Garritan CFX Lite sounds virtually perfect, but too perfect for my taste, and I play it only fairly rarely.

Pianoteq is the one that I hold great hope for, but for me it's still not quite there, in terms of sound realism. (However, it is GREAT for recording MIDI).

For me the modern grand piano's of the vsl synchron series stand tall over everything else, but that means in price as well.

For comparison i own garritan cfx, Embertone walker, synthogy American concert d, Vi labs modern u (and have owned ravenscroft in the past).

In my opinion vsl cfx beats garritan cfx easily.

I personally make a clear distinction between solo piano and a piano that sits perfectly in a mix without murdering it’s default character to sit in a mix. I have three VSL piano’s and the Garritan CFX and 25 others. Most modern sampled grands are great for solo enjoyment but are difficult to control in a modern mix. Garritan is truly bad in that regard. My absolute favorite is the Embertone Walker 1955. Character , open stage imaging instead of muddy clusters in thunderous bass and very good close mics make it easy to sit in any mix. Whereas the others mentioned will eat up to many frequencies and muddying any mix also because of the amount of room/hall implemented in most mics other than the occasional ( not so close) mics. I think the majority here wants the most realistic solo piano and VSL, Garritan etc. will provide you with many things to like. However i have only few libraries that you can truly consider an allrounder.

I have seven virtual pianos. I don’t hate any of them, they all have their strengths and weaknesses but some are clearly better than others.

The ones I have stopped using completely are Synthogy American D. Garret an CFX lite. I used the Truekeys German grand once recently just so that I could have all three movements of Mozart’s K545 recorded using the same virtual piano. But other than that I have stopped using it as well.

Until I switched to VSL’s synchron pianos their older Vienna Imperial was my go to piano and I played it for some time.

All three of the virtual pianos I use now are the from VSL. I like each of them for different reasons, so it would be hard to say which is the favourite. I think that changes depending on what i am playing. But I really like them all and it has been nearly a year now since buying a virtual piano and I still lack the itch for finding something new and special.

They are the Blüthner, the Bösendorfer Imperial, and the Bösendorfer VC280.

With the Lite edition, VSL pianos (Synchron, Vienna Imperial), my old i5-3330 was powerful enough to run them. The only issue I had was with the Bechstein Digital Grand where I had to limit the polyphony, and with other virtual pianos, the memory footprint (with 8GB, I had to avoid other greedy applications in parallel).

I have Keyscape which is hands down the best VST for EPs as far as I'm concerned. Other than the beautifully sampled usual suspects it has some unique models like Custom LA Rhodes, Vintage Vibe Piano, 120 Wurli, Pianet N/T (sounds amazing just like the original!) and other exotic keyboard sounds. For acoustic pianos however, there are far better plugins, some of which were listed in posts before me.

I gotta say though choosing my favorite VSTi and why, assuming the OP didn't limit the question to acoustic pianos only, I gotta say I'm a sucker for YAMAHA DX7 sounds so probably the recent OPS7 I love those juicy FM tones :-)

Salut Frédéric,

You are the only one I have ever seen mention the Bechstein Digital Grand.

Do you think it still holds up to a Garritan or Ravenscroft quality of product and does it really sound like a Bechstein.

They are not exactly giving it away.

Ron