The Kontakt version of Adam Monroe's Austrian Grand Piano is cross-platform, and is maintained by Native Instruments, all the programming and effects being done through them. Some simple scripting is done by us. The VST and Audio Unit versions are another beast entirely, and the programming falls entirely on AdamMonroeMusic. The goal in any sample library that is also a VSTi (virtual instrument), Audio Unit, or AAX plugin, is to attempt to match the performance of the Kontakt Player. With this library, we feel like we have done just that.
The VST, Audio Unit, and AAX versions includes updated, high-performance algorithms that have been improving with each new virtual instrument released by Adam Monroe Music. For example, the buffering algorithm is double-buffered and multithreaded, which means that buffering performance is fast, even on slower computers, and even in lower latencies. Voices are held and iterated over in a pure, C-Style array. Memory use is comparable to the Kontakt version. Because of the solid VST/Audio Unit code base and, you can feel confident that the VST, Audio Unit, and AAX versions should
work just as well as the Kontakt version.
Why develop a VST, Audio Unit, or AAX version at all? Although a great piece of software, the Full version of Kontakt (required to run 3rd party sample libraries) is expensive. Developing a VST and Audio Unit version that anyone can use does not add significant time to the development of a piano sample library - most of the time is spent sampling and processing the samples - so it's a real no-brainer.
Audio engineering is a large part of creating a VST or Audio Unit, but the sounds of this ground piano have barely been processed. A little of the mid and high frequencies were rolled back in the piano's lower range, and the samples were denoised, but other than that, this library is nearly a direct translation of the sound of a 100 year old Austrian Grand Piano.