Customer Reviews

Native Instruments Akoustik Piano: Sample Based Acoustic Piano

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

FYI, since writing this review a couple of years ago I bought an acoustic piano (a Charles Walter, which is an excellent value in an American-made piano). Everything I said about Akoustik Piano still goes--it's an incredible program. Having been spoiled by the fact that Akoustik Piano is always in tune, I've ended up calling in the tuner/tech about 4x/year to keep my piano spot on.

Here's my Akoustik Piano review:
This review is based on release 1.1.2 (released January 2007). While the version reviewed in December 2005 may have been a "beta" quality release, it's ready for prime time now. I'm running Akoustik Piano as a stand-alone instrument and outputting it to a mid- to high-end stereo system through a USB 2.0 audio interface. It runs flawlessly on my Macbook Pro with the samples stored on the laptop's internal drive. My MIDI keyboard controller is a Kawai ES3 (which works well).

I truly doubt any software "instrument" will ever replace a top quality, well maintained large or concert-sized grand piano. That said, the quality of these samples is truly marvelous. When I go to my lessons and play my teachers' Boston, it only reinforces my opinion that nobody using this program need feel that they are playing anything but a high quality, meticulously tuned and regulated "piano." One precaution, though. I have become a tuning snob since I've started using this program. It's great playing pianos that are simply dead on every time. Once you do, you will realize how many pianos are not--even in professional musicians' homes!!

This program contains 3 sampled grands and a nice upright. The Steinway is the best of the three. Maybe that is because the real thing is so great--it's my favorite among acoustic pianos. Initially I thought the voicing on the Bosendorfer was too bright, but it has grown on me. I like using it for Bach in particular--with the piano "well-tempered." The Bechstein is nice, too, but the D5 (2 D's above middle C) and Dsharp5 are a little bright, which can be irritating. I'm not sure where it fits with my repertoire relative to the Steinway which I love and the Bosendorfer with it's unique and special sound. However, if it were the only grand included with this program, I think most users would like it. The upright piano is fun and sounds neat. I don't play it much except when I am demonstrating the program to curious musician friends, but I can see how some people would find it ideal for their style of playing.

The user adjustments and controls in this program are useful but not overkill. I particularly like being able to change the velocity curve of the keyboard. There is plenty of information on these available at Native Instruments' and other "professional" review sites, so I won't bore you. Of note, though, I have tried some of the non-modern tunings on Bach, and they really work well on pieces written for the "well-tempered" piano. If you're playing more standard repertoire, stick to equal or stretch tuning, though, as the other tunings will simply sound out of tune on Beethoven, Chopin et al.

I did a fairly extensive tryout of Synthogy's "Ivory." In my opinion, Akoustik Piano is a WAY better product. Ivory CONSTANTLY accessed the external hard drive, creating a lot of noise in the process. Ivory's interface allows you to control every aspect of the program's sound--so much so that it is very confusing and difficult to navigate. Akoustik Piano's adjustments are limited to those most important to me. Ivory's Steinway is not nearly as good as Akoustik Piano's. It sounds as though it were recorded through a fog. Ivory's Bosendorfer sounds a little more like the real thing on the bottom end--if you've ever played a real Bosendorfer, you'll know what I mean. Initially, this is very enticing. But I tired of it after a while because the top end of the piano lacked the clarity of Akoustik Piano. Of note, the MIDI velocity utility in Ivory is better than Akoustik Piano's. It lets the user control the minimum, maximum touch on the keyboard and all points in between.

There have been a couple of reviews which compared the two and gave the upper hand to Akoustik Piano but were a little more kind to Ivory (notably Electronic Musician). In my opinion they had to say something nice about Ivory since Synthogy is spending a lot of money on advertising in their pages.

The reason I selected Akoustik Piano over Ivory was that the system requirements are not as demanding, THE STEINWAY SOUNDS GREAT (did I mention the Steinway is really nice?), the controls are easier to use, and it was available with academic pricing (a fantastic deal if you qualify!). If you have a really high-end computer, an extra hard drive (that's quiet) and the Bosendorfer sound in the bottom couple of octaves is very important to you, your decision might be more difficult.

I never tried the initial 1.0 release of Akoustik Piano. Apparently it was pretty rough. Fortunately the Native Instruments improved it and I think it is safe to say that it's the top software piano at the moment. Hopefully they will keep improving the product and maybe add some interesting pianos--ala Synthogy's "The Italian Grand."

This piano takes up tons of hard-drive space, and requires a minimum of 512 MB of RAM to run smoothly (plan to have 1G+ of RAM).

But it's sensational.

I've been after the "perfect piano" since I began playing keyboards in the early 80's. This is it. The way the notes linger on forever...the way they engulf one another without creating a mish-mash of noise, the way the pedal sounds, etc... it's all captured here....beautifully.

I can't say enough. For under $[...], you can have some fabulous pianos at your fingertips.

a sample of it, from a piece called "Spirit of America", can be heard at [...]

It sounds amazing but the file size is so big that even this fancy mac tower can hardly process it.

Bought these grand pianos after reading several favorable reviews for around $75 which i think was a real bargain, especially as they were currently being repackaged and sold individually for a lot more by the software makers.

The pianos are a mixed bag but it was worth it just to get the Steinway D which is a beautiful overall sound.
The Bechstein D is outstanding in the two octaves above middle C and really sounds like a Bechstein here, especially if you are playing fancy Liberace style arrangements. But it's weaker outside of this range.
The upright piano and 3rd grand are OK but nothing special and will get far less use.
The inbuilt reverbs are ok too.
The software is pretty heavy on CPU use. It opens up offering 50 voices but frequently I will drop it down to 40 or less to avoid audio pops. And I don't notice any notes not sounding or cutting off too soon as a result. There is a nice damper pedal sample too for authenticity - just gives you that ultra soft strings ring as the pedal is released.

Previously I was using the grand pianos provided by Reason software which come with the Reason program, and I still use them - as different types of Grand sound suit different songs.
But in conclusion to obtain a very good representation of a grand piano for $75 is well worth the money.

(Refers to Mac installation. Don't know about other systems.) I was very excited to receive my copy of Akoustik Piano, but it has been all downhill from there. The piano samples are indeed lovely, but the software seems to be quite unfinished, at least in the way it works on my system, which is a Power Mac G5, dual 2.0 with 5.5 Gb of memory, running OS X "Tiger" 10.4.3, and Logic Pro 7.1.1. Running as an AU plug-in in Logic Pro, any of the pianos that load will hog all of my 5.5 Gb of memory, while the stated minimum requirement is 512 Mb. The Boesendorfer piano will not even finish loading, returning a "no memory block big enough" message. After the failed attempts to load the Boesendorfer, any attempts to load any other pianos crash Logic. Trying to use any of the reverb "rooms" will also cause a crash. Running as a stand-alone sound module, Akoustic Piano will finish loading any of the four pianos, but still fills up all 5.5 Gb of memory, plus there are loud, unacceptable clicks and pops when playing, and again, attempts to use the reverb will crash it. Clearly, this is a beta product, and Native Instruments seems satisfied selling it as a finished product and using its customers as beta testers. To make matters worse, in the name of preventing piracy, they end up treating their paying customers as enemies with their overzealous protection scheme which requires an authorization code to get rid of a nag screen and a 30 day limit. This is no way to treat paying customers, in my opinion. Furthermore, I was unable to get through the registration process at the web site which locked me out with a "server error" message and now will not allow me to log in, since it never got to the point of letting me enter a password. After repeated attempts to reach Native Instruments for a fix or update or work-around for these bugs, I have received no reply for over 2 days now. The only choice remaining to me is to return this software as defective. I'm not sure what others have experienced, but for my set-up, this software, at best, still seems to be in an early beta stage, and at worst, it is being deceptively advertised. Take the warning! Don't buy Native Instruments Akoustik Piano unless you are willing to pay full price to be a beta tester.