Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Synchron Fazioli F308 from VSL in the near future?

VSL now has F308 in their possession. The 4 pedal model!
Considering that they are not into live music, my guess is we can expect Synchron F308 VI in not very distant future!

Here is correct video link:

I'm going to go with my personal narrative that they saw my library and thought they should copy it.

That will certainly be interesting if/when it comes out.

There seems to be some kind of error w/ the video playback, at least on my computer.

In any case, a new VSL piano would be interesting. Though I have to say, the few times I've heard Fazioli grands played in recordings I have not been overly impressed with the tone, which struck me as rather hard, flinty and lacking in warmth.

But I've never heard one in person, so the blame for this may lie more with the recording quality than the instrument itself.

The new video link is working.

Anyway, sounds nice enough in the video - will be interesting to see what they do with it.

🙂👍

World's "tallest" piano? Surely, not compared to an upright

Am hoping for another upright first...they posted a picture of one being unloaded around Christmas time!

Honestly, would also prefer another smaller grand over a biggie. But let's face it, I'll end up buying whatever pianos they put out if I can get them on sale and with vouchers!

I would love to see Chris Maene straight strung over anything else.

Agreed - they’ve got modern grands pretty well covered at this point, so yet another one isn’t the most exciting prospect.

Personally, I would love to see them do more vintage pianos like the Bluthner, as they often have a more interesting variety of tone and character compared to modern instruments.

Most of the vintage/character VSTs currently available seem to be geared more for production work, and tend to fall short in terms of sampling depth and playability.

+1

This is exciting. Nobody is as comprehensive as VSL.

I hope they include actual una corda samples this time, as that’s the only thing missing from their previous Synchron pianos. Their softening of the samples to emulate una corda is presentable, but true una corda is one of a kind.

I think it’s a nice addition tonally, also. Steinways, Bosendorfers, & Yamahas are all very distinctive sounding instruments & the Fazioli is distinctive as well. Less bright than Yamahas, less ring & harmonic clarity than the Steinway, and less of the crystalline tone & glass like treble sound of Bosendorfers. A bit more muted, but still capable of competiting with those other distinctive brands from pppp to fffff, with a sound that is very pure, clean, and direct.

I’d be interested to try it.

Yes U.C. is sorely missed. I suppose the prospect of doubling the instrument size is horrifying (even for only one pedal position). But surely it could be an optional upgrade for a nominal fee. The sampling is done by robot and it'd be edited together with T.C. samples for each key. So let people choose if a 500GB piano sounds reasonable to them.

One thing I've wondered about VSL and the "flagship" sample VSTs is how they're going to handle the fourth pedal. They already have dozens of samples per key for different velocities plus pedal samples for sustain, plus una corda samples, and this takes up multiple gigabytes.

Now with the addition of the fourth pedal, what are they going to do? Are they going to have a full set of samples with the fourth pedal down? Are they going to have full samples plus fourth pedal plus una corda? Are they going to have full samples plus fourth plus sustain? What about combinations of the fourth pedal sustain plus una corda plus sustain together, at different velocities? Different release samples for all combinations above? Or are they just going to model part of it?

How would they do it with Steingraeber's Sordino and Mozart rails?

One of the problems with really detailed samples is that it gets geometrically more complicated as you add features. Sure they can drop the number of samples, or maybe use modeling/filters for some of the effects, but I think in the future, modeled VSTs are probably the way to go.

No problem with the 4th pedal implementation.
It does not alter the sound but changes the ratio from key to hammer travel.
In VST you just switch to another velocity mapping - done.
The change in key feel is a different topic.

-Rhodes74

Forth pedal samples can be ignored completely during the sampling process. All it does is move action to hit same strings with less impulse/velocity.
If there is DP with 4th pedal (which does not move keys, of course), the technical implementation would be to reduce the read velocity by some fixed factor.

The keys drop and the hammers raise as well, in the end there are likely velocities you can hit with the 4th pedal that you cannot without. I think for ultimate realism you may need to sample the p-ppp range with the pedal down (and then again with the una corda and sustain pedals as well).

I'm hoping they will add UNA CORDA samples to their pianos. That's it!!!

This! The excuse that VSL gives is “una corda is rarely used”, but the reality is, una corda sampling would require them to essentially sample the entire instrument all over again with the una corda pedal down, the same way they did with the una corda pedal up, and that would double their time and double the samples. That, in my opinion, is the real reason for such a decision, because I can hardly see describing una corda as “rarely used”.

As comprehensive as they are, and we all appreciate that, I’d like them to take that extra step and do una corda sampling, as just say you say, add as an optional upgrade, the same way they do their Standard & Full version.

500 GB may be a lot, but to those of us who use these Synchron pianos, that are extremely expensive, take up huge amounts of space, & require fairly high-powered computers, I think it should be clear we wouldn’t mind 500 GBs if that gets us closer to our pursuit of authenticity.

Really hoping for that. I can’t see how anything could be a VSL Synchron piano with una corda.

And if the una corda is omitted because it is rarely ever used, just think about that entire FaIoli 4th pedal...