Test Steinway D Grand piano

petr14 · Post by **petr14** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 9:18 am

The Steinway D Grand piano is the new piano for the Pa5X from WavesArt. It is an emulation of the top-of-the-line German D Grand piano, which is a large, 9-foot, concert grand that costs $217,000. Its conversion to the Pa5X has received due diligence. Has 6 stereo velocity layers sampled per semitone, 2 stereo velocity string resonance, 2 velocity layers string release or up/down pedal fx. The result is a compressed sound bank of 1040 Mb. More details are on the WavesArt website.

When I bought my previous piano from WavesArt, a Yamaha CFX, I was rapturous. I had never heard such a beautiful sound from an arranger before. Hearing it was a pure joy. So I was curious to see what the new Steinway D Grand piano would bring.

And I was not disappointed. Again, a very beautiful sound. Especially in the deeper positions there is a beautifully distorted warm rumble and I like it better than the Yamaha. The mids are good on both. On the other hand, in the treble I like the Yamaha better, it's kind of sweetly ringing, the Steinway has a quieter sound. But the sound is hard to describe and is a matter of subjective taste. So my son prepared a sample. It's better if you listen to it yourself. The sound of the samples is recorded on Pa5X and is not modified in any way. At higher volume you can hear a slight noise, this is noise from the microphone, not the pianos. When playing the final tracks the microphone has been turned off and you can hear the clear, unaffected, sound of the Steinway piano.

In the demonstration they are compared:
- Steinway D Grand piano (WavesArt)
- Yamaha CFX 9 (WavesArt)
- Italian Grand (Korg, factory)
- Japanese Grand (Korg, factory)

The final tracks will be
12:10 Hijo de la luna
14:45 Once Upon a Time in the West.

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The Steinway piano is louder than other pianos, both Yamaha and factory. On the one hand, I'm glad, because when playing with styles, the piano sound tends to be easily drowned out, it doesn't assert itself well, and you have to lower the volume of the player. I've always wondered why Korg has those pianos so quiet even at maximum volume settings. It's better with a Steinway piano.

But on the other hand, it's not ideal for soloing because there is no expansion of the piano dynamics, just an increase in volume, and the quiet tones are louder. As a result, it is impossible to play pianissimo. I don't consider it a flaw, but a feature that is an advantage when playing with style.

But since nothing is perfect, I would have one criticism. In fortissimo the volume is unbalanced, there are a lot of boosted mids that drown out the higher notes. If the player needs to accentuate the higher notes, he has to play quieter in the mids compared to other pianos (including Yamaha), otherwise the highs don't stand out.

In conclusion, I would rate the Steinway D Grand piano as a wonderful sounding piano, good for playing with styles that have a bit louder mids than I would like. At least with my Korg PAAS sound system.

It is not ideal to try piano sounds on a Pa5X 61 synth keyboard. Further tests were done on a Korg Kronos 88 with a RH3 hammered keyboard and connected to the PA5X with a midi cable. These demos are just sound samples. The recordings were again made by recording the sound directly on the Pa5X.

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To compare the Steinway D Grand piano with other pianos on the Pa5X, 7 audio recordings were made with different piano sounds from one midi recording.

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AntonySharmman · Post by **AntonySharmman** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 10:42 am

Thank you and your son Petr for this review , you did a great Job.

I have embedded your son's video demo of main songs in Steinway D main page ...

) so every criticism is very helpful due to address possible flaws.
The truth is that I target here Pa5X 88 keybed so initial Scaling , Velocity & AMP parameters were made with Kronos 2 88 keybed ,
so I will evaluate precisely parameters in both Weighted & Semi-Weighted keybeds.
This piano has 6 velocity layers and in your Pa5X 61 demo looks like to hear only the three upper velocity layers ...

The great advantage of this Steinway D is that it has the longest Decay time of all other pianos in high notes and cuts off the mix
of single notes melody with longer duration like eights or quarters in styles.
For instance play over C5 single notes of half's in Steinway D & CFX to see the difference in Decay time !
This is an alternative brighter grand piano with different character than CFX for pianists , especially for block chords & Jazz.

This initial demo was made on my Pa5X 76 keybed and the same I had done for Yamaha CFX for comparison.

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petr14 · Post by **petr14** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 3:48 pm

I did another piano comparison, this time including the Berlin Grand piano on the Korg Kronos.

This time both the Kronos and Pa5X were plugged into a mixer and the recording was taken from the mixer output.

The first recording is with Master Effect on and the second with Master Effect off (on the Pa5X).

1 - Korg Kronos / Berlin Grand piano (factory, Korg)
2 - Korg Pa5X / Steinway D Grand piano (WavesArt)
3 - Korg Pa5X / Yamaha CFX 9 (WavesArt)
4 - Korg Pa5X / Italian Grand piano (factory, Korg)
5 - Korg Pa5X / Japanese Grand piano

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