There's been a lot of talk about the piano sounds of korg triton so I decided to to do a small comparison. I took a small midi-sequence from jordanrudess.com and put it through my triton classic. Sound is recorded with m-audio fast track pro straight into reaper and no effects or editing done afterwards. There are 6 piano sounds, which some have external samples and some have internal samples.
I would like to know which of you think of these is the best and worst and just for fun you can try to guess which one is internal and which external and also from what source the external samples might be from
Korg Triton Classic 61-keys, Native Instruments Kore 2 (SW&HW)
Download my EXB-PCM08 EMULATED .pcg file in the downloads section and add that to your soundset. I use those exclusively. There are two in there that I think are very good.
Nice demos. Great that you made them all the same riff for comparison.
In my opinion each must suit at least one purpose, as a stand-alone piano sound for the bit you've posted I like the first, but #3 is not bad, either. To my taste, for this phrase I least prefer #6.
I liked #4 the best - it seemed to have the most presence, and sounded the most convincing, especially in the highest and lowest ranges... and i think #1 and 3 were internal samples
piano #1 is internal samples tweaked in a great way by mchale! It is the exb. emulation on the download section.
piano #2 is a sampled version of the kurzweil triple strike downloaded from the Space4Keys (the smaller one) and it is the classical version of that sound
piano #3 is the internal Triton factory piano
piano #4 is the great awesome Steinway emulation sample-set, which I love and think that it's awesomest piano sound that I have this far on my triton
piano #5 is a combination between piano #2 and piano #5
piano #6 is the same sample-set as the #2, but this is the rock version
Korg Triton Classic 61-keys, Native Instruments Kore 2 (SW&HW)
McHale, congrats to the tweaking - to me your work sounded the closest to a classical acoustic piano.
What were the most significant tweaks you've done? I'd like to do something similar on the Trinity internal sample, since I noticed that EQ is set to madness and the FF sample is not used anywhere in the factory patches. Just a bit of EQ-ing made it already much better, but I'm not a hell of a sound designer - so some advice would be really nice.
Did you A/B it to some point of reference while in the process of tweaking? Any hints, insights, etc. would be greatly appreciated!
It's been a LONG time since I did that. I also don't know which Piano from the emulated EXB-08 he used in the demo.
I can tell you which ones are my favorites though:
000 C. Grand Piano
001 Euro Grand [VS]
I use C. Grand Piano for EVERYTHING piano-related live. I went with the M50 for piano for a little while but after I heard a recording from the mixer, the piano sound from the Triton cut through more and sounded better IMHO. I also personally believe that it sounds better than the EXB-01 and EXB-08 which I owned both of. The M50 piano just sounded muddy by comparison in the mix.
Since releasing that, I've tweaked it quite a bit for my personal use and I also tweak and save it for every song we do. So if I do 15 songs with piano in them, I have 15patches that all use the same patch as a base but many will be tweaked (EQ, attack, effects, etc).
Most (if not all) of the patches in the EXB-08 Emulated are exactly as Korg released it with me just substituting stock samples for the samples that came on the memory chip. I did learn a few things about programming by going through their patches. A cool trick that was better explained to my by Jerry is one that I use a LOT now. When I get home, I'll take a picture of the screen so I can explain it better. I'm nowhere near gear or a camera at the moment. It's quite simple to do.
I do recommend every Triton owner to try the Emulated EXB-08 and try them out (definitely try the two I referenced above). They are very convincing and if played properly, would fool more people than you think. I grabbed a midi file of Clair de Lune and recorded it with "C. Grand Piano" and most couldn't tell it wasn't a person who recorded it and it wasn't a real piano. That's good enough for me since those are the people we play to every weekend.
I will not use or depend on loading samples (or sequences) for a live show. Too much potential for disaster if the keyboard reboots or gets unplugged or powered off. I stated in another thread that a friend of mine had his media stolen TWICE during two different shows. His whole show depended on them and it was difficult to finish the shows.
yeah sorry Mc, I didn't mention it, but it is the 000 C. Grand Piano And I think it is great I'm not sure if it is just in my head, but I think that the steinway sample set is the best one, but this one is my absolute favourite if no external samples are used, so it is my back-up/jamming piano for occasions when I don't have the time to load samples or something goes wrong and I'll have to go with the stock rom Absolutely awesome!
Korg Triton Classic 61-keys, Native Instruments Kore 2 (SW&HW)
I still think the best piano sample out there is William Coakley's Perfect Piano. I don't think there's anything remotely close to it in terms of quality.
I spent a few months on my own sample set where I took Akai's free 128 MB Stereo Steinway sample set and sat with a 9' Steinway, my Triton, and a spectrum analyzer. I used a new stereo sample for every 3rd key. When I have to record and a good classical piano is important, it's the one I still default to.
But honestly, Korg's programmers did all the work on the piano programming for EXB-08. I basically modified it to use the piano samples stored in ROM and very few minor tweaks.
This was a great comparison though. Thanks for it.
The Wiliiam Coakley sample set for Triton is bloody expensive though.
Anyway, I agree, I think you're emulated PCM08 is pretty much the way to go for playing live because no samples to load and it sounds perfectly great enough to sit in a mix. I have more complaints about the feel of the keyboard for playing piano parts, then the actual sounds themselves..
It's 'funny' how some of these patches from the emulated PCM08 (pcm08-emulated.zip - EXB08.pcg) sound so bad (or at least so strange) on TR, I believe it's because they have been build with a chain of effects, no ? (and TR/LE only support one FX)
For example "C. Grand Piano" is just terrible, can't explain.
Even more strange, the patches from "exb-pcm-08.zip", when loaded, don't play the piano part, only a silent is heard. The patches with only piano, total silent. I can't figure out why ... for example, patch "Piano&AnaStrings" I hear the strings, not the piano. Any clues why this happens ??
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