Native Instruments NI AkouStik Piano Software Synth

Saturday, 23 June 2007

Being predominantly a piano composer, I compose most of my songs in piano. Only of recent years, especially after I released the Piano Spa series, have I decide to invest in a dedicated piano software sampler. For the past few years, I used the Steinway piano patch in the Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO) collection which sounded quite fine. But it still lacks realism that I expect from the piano. I have always been skeptical with piano samplers. Having listened to test samples of many hardware and software synths, I have only one conclusion: nothing beats the real thing, so what's the point of buying an expensive piano synth but ended up getting not-so-real sound, when my current piano sound suffices? Deciding between Synthogy Ivory and NI Akoustik Piano was tough. I was leaning towards Synthogy but was put off by the extremely large sound samples. NI Akoustik Piano has one advantage, that is, it uses the Kontact engine which I am very familiar with (Garritan also uses Kontact engine for the GPO and Stradivari Violin). So once I opened the software and installed the Akoustik Piano, I started making music without a glitch. There is one misconception that really needs clarification, that is, a recorded piano can never sound like a live piano. The piano is a very complex instrument to emulate and record, because it's not only the sounds of the notes you need to capture, but the resonance resulting in hitting that one note. There are about 230 strings inside a piano, and when you hit a note, all other strings resonate together. Recording live piano has always been a technical challenge for sound engineers, because the piano is so huge and different mic positioning produces different tones. That is why it is impossible to get that kind of realistic-sounding feel from even the best piano patches out of the box - you need to tweak the output. Akoustik Piano provides some features unavailable in many piano softsynth. It emulates key noise, pedal noise, sustain resonance, release resonance, and allows you to control these parameters to your liking. You can also adjust the grand piano lid position, the reverb type, mic position. In other words, you can create your own piano acoustics easily. This is the reason why Akoustik Piano may not seem to create the out-of-the-box realistic-sounding feel that many people might expect when they purchase this product. With these multitude of configurable variables, it is also not possible to compare with other similar products like Synthogy Ivory, since you are free to alter the soundscape of the piano. The advantage of Akoustik Piano over Synthogy Ivory is its simpler graphical interface, 4 piano models and a more efficient sample (14GB as opposed to 40GB). The Ivory may have greater customisability and definitely has more samples to make it worth the price, but very often, computing efficiency is more important so that you don't risk running CPU problems or latency when playing. Instead of claiming how good Akoustik Piano is, here are the music samples of my Steinway piano sampler from GPO and the Akoustik Piano sampler from NI. The Steinway sound has been processed with external reverbs in order to hide the flaws of an 'unrealisic' piano, while the Akoustik Piano uses settings within the softsynth. Both songs are sentimental numbers - I don't compose bombarstic virtuostic stuffs. But I feel it's the soft touches that brings out the beauty of the piano. Tian Ya Hai Jiao (GPO Steinway | NI Akoustik Piano: Concert Grand D ) Tong Hua (GPO Steinway | NI Akoustik Piano: Concert Grand D )

 

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