Synthogy Ivory Piano, anyone tried this? Options

[citypigeon]

anyone tried this? hows it compare to the NSG bosendorfer and steinberg grand?

[groovetonic]

I just recently purchased Ivory. I've tried a lot of different samples and virtual pianos and I have to say this is by far the best sounding virutal piano instrument I have ever tried. Highly recommended.

I haven't tried NSG bosendorfer but comparing to the Grand, Ivory's samples (to me) sounds more natural or organic. Plus I had a difficult time getting the plugin to not choke the disk streaming to the point I couldn't really use it for a real project.

Another thing I like about Ivory is its simple UI. It's very easy to customize the sound to the way you like very quickly.

[citypigeon]

I haven't tried NSG bosendorfer but comparing to the Grand, Ivory's samples (to me) sounds more natural or organic. Plus I had a difficult time getting the plugin to not choke the disk streaming to the point I couldn't really use it for a real project.

thanks for the reply,
....you mean the grand choked or ivory?- i'm pretty much getting the ivory anyway- the only thing thats
worrying me is whether i need an extra hard drive to go with it- i'm already running symphonic orchestra gold
on my main drive (160GB - G5 2Ghz dual) and have so far avoided having to get an extra drive ... but i've
used 50G now and the ivory is about 30 so i think i might have to buy the drive at the same time


hows the reverb on it?

[groovetonic]

Sorry for not being clear....
I meant the Grand chocked. I have the exact same machine (G5 2Ghz dual) btw.

The package comes with 8 DVD discs and yes, it's about 30gb total so if you don't have that much space left on your HD, then obviously you'll need to purchase a new drive.

The reverb is ok; it's usable but I usually turn it off since I have better reverbs (SpaceDesigner, TL Space etc)

[Jaysee]

re 'Ivory' t's got a rave review iin this months Sound on Sounnd magazineyou might wish to read.....I'm sorely tempted myself!, JC

[deranged]

Okay, I joined this forum this evening to hear what people thought about IVORY. I haven't worked with Grand, though I've thought about adding it to my sounds.

My experience with IVORY: I upgraded my computer because my old G4 iMac just couldn't handle it. So on my new G5 iMac I maxed it out with 2GB RAM and it runs brilliantly.

I have to say that I am most impressed with the Steinway samples, with the Yamaha coming in second. Sadly, the Bosendorfer is the most disappointing of them all. I especially looked forward to it since I played an acoustic one for a while years ago.

There's not much to IVORY's software, it's rather simple in fact, but I can't seem to do anythng to make the Bosendorfer sound better. The tops and the bottoms are great, but the mids seem twangy and muffled, especially when playing a complex chord structure.

Has anyone been as disappointed with these Bosendorfer samples? Changing velocity tends to improve the voicing some, but it still doesn't help the problem.

[hahaworld]

Okay, I joined this forum this evening to hear what people thought about IVORY. I haven't worked with Grand, though I've thought about adding it to my sounds.

My experience with IVORY: I upgraded my computer because my old G4 iMac just couldn't handle it. So on my new G5 iMac I maxed it out with 2GB RAM and it runs brilliantly.

I have to say that I am most impressed with the Steinway samples, with the Yamaha coming in second. Sadly, the Bosendorfer is the most disappointing of them all. I especially looked forward to it since I played an acoustic one for a while years ago.

There's not much to IVORY's software, it's rather simple in fact, but I can't seem to do anythng to make the Bosendorfer sound better. The tops and the bottoms are great, but the mids seem twangy and muffled, especially when playing a complex chord structure.

Has anyone been as disappointed with these Bosendorfer samples? Changing velocity tends to improve the voicing some, but it still doesn't help the problem.

Hi,

I've had lots of trouble with Ivory, but I can't figure out if it's the software or the machine. I have a pre-intel G5 Quad with 4.5G RAM and an external 500G LaCie Hard Drive. It's the second hard drive I've tried installing Ivory on, and I still get dropouts, pops and clicks. I've contacted Synthogy and they tell me that I should not have any latency issues at all with this setup. No one at the Apple Genius Bar in my hometown seems to know what the problem is either. Someone in a forum told me to install the samples on my main internal hard drive, but Synthogy doesn't recommend this. Any ideas? I'd really appreciate any help I can get. Thanks!

hahaworld

[Mark David]

Hi,

I'm also having great problems with Ivory on my new Laptop.

I basically use my laptop, a presonous firebox, Ivory, Cubase LE, and Finale, but the main reason a bought all this gear was to use the pianos from Ivory. I sold my Yamaha Motif 6 to buy this gear.

The laptop was working relativelly fine with the Yamaha 7ft, without the foot pedals and other things, but I couldn't run the Steinway or the Bosend. without having problems. So I bought me a new Dell Laptop thinking it would solve my problems just to find it is worse than the old, slower computer.

My new Dell has this configuration:

120 GB HD
3 GB RAM
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.2 Ghz
7200 rpm

I instaled the Presonous Firebox first, than I installed Cubase, and last I instaled Ivory, could that be my problem, the order of instalation?

I use from the Firebox to the laptop a 4 pin firewire they say is a firewire 400, and I heard that the firewire 800 is best, could that be the problem?

Could I be having problems fixing my latency, or sample rates, or buffer size configurations?

My HD has 50 GB of free space, and it does not seem like the problem is memory, when I play the piano and it starts cutting off the "slow disk" message doesn't show up but the red light blinks on the firebox very rappidly.

I downloded from Synthogy's site the VST Standalone version, could it be that I need the RTA version?

Any ideas?

Thank you very much,

Mark David.

[Jim Hoyland]

We have a couple of these at work, and boy are they power hungry.

Firstly, what speed is your internal HD? It really needs to be at least 7200 rpm. Ideally the Ivory samples should be located on a separate drive altogether as it streams a vast amount of sample data. Even with this, when using Ivory in a complex arrangement we often have to do our piano programming on an alternative plug-in (EXS24 for example), then transfer the midi parts to a new arrangement, sort the settings and sounds for Ivory before committing it to audio and transferring the resulting part back into the full arrangement. To be honest, this is a royal pain in the rear, but the results are usually so good that our students calm down once they hear a full mix.

I don't think you need the RTAS version as this is for ProTools and Cubase only supports the VST standard.

Also, keep checking the Synthogy site for updates. The last Mac update improved performance by about 50%.

[Mark David]

HI,

What is so frustrating is that people with a much slower computer have no problems and what I read is that all they do is install and play.

Could it be that my old and slower computer works better with Ivory because its HD was partitioned and 80 GB of it was for Ivory?

Mark.