We attempted to sample this piano deeply (10 velocity layers, 2 note round robin) but in the end, round robin was only partially captured, while the velocity goals were met. Unlike most piano libraries that just record one or the other, the piano was sampled with both sustain pedal open and closed, increasing the library's size, but allowing for more expression while playing.

Once the notes were recorded, the laborious task of processing them began. Noise was removed and the piano was eq'd and compressed - yes, this is a heavily processed plugin. The end result is an EXTREMELY PURCUSSIVE and LOUD piano library that will cut through your mix. This is not a pristine, clean plugin, and the notes can be quite hard hitting! We feel this adds to the percussive nature of honky-tonk style piano playing. Although we've cleaned up the notes quite a bit since the VST's initial release, we feel that too much cleaning-up starts to destroy the sound and feel of the plugin.

This piano plugin can be a great addition to your collection, as it fills a nice niche in the world of sampled upright pianos. If you need to make demos or recordings of ragtime music, or just need a generally purcussive piano, this virtual instrument is ready to become the newest member of your VST, AU, or AAX arsenal.

Release Notes.txt - Manual.pdf - Versions and Compatability List.txt

The VST, AU, and AAX versions include 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 (depreciated) Kontakt version. Real-time sample rate conversion (through cubic interpolation) has been added to the AU, VST, and AAX versions in order to support sample rates of 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz natively. Because of the solid VST/AU/AAX code base and - and compilation of the code to not need external .dll's/objects/libs - you can feel confident that the VST, AU, and AAX versions will work just as well as the (depreciated) Kontakt version.

Why develop VST, AU, and AAX versions at all? Although a great piece of software, the Full version of Kontakt (required to run 3rd party sample libraries) is expensive. Developing VST, AU, and AAX versions 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, Protools, or Audio Unit plugin, and you will find some useful things like reverb, lo-fi, and chorus built into this plugin. The VST version is based on VST 2.4, and should work in nearly any modern version of 32 or 64 bit version of Windows and OS X 10.9 or later. The Audio Unit version is compatible with OS X 10.9 or later and is compatible with 32 and 64-bit DAWS. The Protools version is 64-bit and requires the full version of Protools 10 or later. The download size for all versions is 2.9 GB, and unzipped the library takes up about 4.2 GB. We use Amazon for file serving, so you can rest assured your download will be fast and smooth!