The story
***UPDATE April 2024: If you love this and my other pianos, check out the UPGRADED versions of them at:
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Yamaha’s hand built semi concert grand with Performance and Ambisonic/VR perspectives.
A new addition to The Experience series, the Yamaha S6 is a hand built piano that’s 7 feet long. Yamaha’s of this vintage are soughtafter for their ability to cut through a mix, as the acquisition of Bosendorfer’s technology has resulted in a slightly different character in the newer Yamaha pianos.
Technical Stuff:
* Performance and Ambisonic Perspectives using 12 microphones capsules
* 7 Velocity Layers to capture the entire piano’s dynamic range
* Ambisonic VR routing
* Action noise AND Damper release triggers
* Half Pedaling
* Separate SFZ files for each microphone pair
Six microphone capsules were used for the Performance Perspective. I used K87 style capsules in an AB array over the strings to capture the brilliance of the soundboard. Each of these mics contain two capsules, and I’ve arranged the Kontakt instrument such that you can adjust the polar pattern of the microphone. You can choose Cardioid or Omni, or anywhere in between by using the slider. I also positioned some SE8 small diaphragm mics in ORTF over the hammers, and it gives you a nice transparency to the sound – much like a listener would hear.
The Ambisonic Perspective also uses six microphone capsules to capture the player soundspace and is ideally used with Ambisonic plugins. Those six mics were positioned in the same array as the F308 library, with Level, angle up, and angle down (XY). Please refer to the Fazioli F308 videos for the VR/ambisonic setups that use the IEM plugin suite to render binaural audio and create the virtual reality space. I’ve also left a readme with basic instructions on this as well.
Besides being a superb piano tone to sample, I also recorded and coded the damper releases. Damper releases are the sound the strings make as the dampers come down and stop the vibration. Since this library also includes half pedaling, it was a real challenge to get the damper sounds to change volume according to velocity, note length, halfpedal, etc. Action noises are much more simple to sample because they basically don’t change volume (or don’t need to). Play around with the Damper releases and discover how realistic it makes the playing experience.
As always, special thanks to my beta testers.
Info on upgraded version here:
The Experience - Yamaha S6
Interface
Reviews for The Experience – Yamaha S6
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Quality
Fantastic sampled piano. This is in my top 4 of all sampled pianos, the other 3 are all commercial. If you like Embertone Walker, Impact Soundworks Pearl Concert, you will like this. In fact S6 Exerperience sounds a lot like Pearl, being a Yamaha concert grand. Pedal down samples are full of resonance. GUI gives useful mixing between the different mics to allow adjustment of the sound to add/remove body & percussive elements. Different from most commercial libraries because its not sampled in a concert hall space. Just all round quality.
CRYSTAL CLEAR, BRIGHT AND INSPIRING
I'm a professional recording artist and have been searching for the perfect virtual piano for many years. Usually in other libraries one or two octaves has a sweet spot of realism, but other parts lack, or the touch sensitivity does not feel properly expressive across the 88 keys. Dore Mark's S6 v1.3 for Kontakt has qualities I never was even able to get at studios with real grand pianos.
I didn't even try the Ambisonic files yet, but already just loading the 'Performance' nki of this S6 was possibly the best virtual piano I've ever played and recorded! It has a brightness, and crystal clear tone that is consistent for the whole frequency range. In fact, it even had some of the best quality low range presence and clarity I've ever tried. Even though I wasn't using the Ambisonic files so far, the S6 v1.3 Performance .nki has an incredible 3D stereo image to my ears, both through speakers and headphones.
I tested using Roland RD-700NX 88 weighted keyboard as the midi controller. Using Logic Pro as my DAW, I was impressed that even if I recorded with Audio preference buffer at 256 and Low Latency mode, (my system is Intel i9 with 64 GB RAM) it worked better than many OTHER piano libraries which would cut off sounds at such a low buffer. Bouncing an audio file, it worked well at 512 and 1024 buffer.
The default settings are very nicely chosen. The only thing I experimented with changing was turning reverb off, to use an external reverb plug in. Though the included reverb is high quality. Even with no reverb, this piano sounds exceptional.
I felt that the seven velocities per key were perfectly chosen for expressiveness. Even while holding down a sustain pedal, I was able to play many varied velocity chords in succession for a more rhythmic and lively, expressive extremely real piano experience and recorded result. In fact I immediately was inspired to record my next single for worldwide distribution on this piano, for release on September 2, 2022.
If I was rich I would invest in Dore Mark as a whole new virtual piano company. He understands the piano both musically and technically, and has definitely put a tremendous amount of time, attention to detail and incorporated much user input for revisions to get some of the most realistic results I've ever experienced from a virtual instrument! I like that the samples are 48 khz, and most digital distributors (and TV and Film) accept 24 bit, 48 khz audio.
Dore's Best Library Yet!
Very nice! I like the feeling of depth, you normally don't get that from most VSTs. Like, the sound is not coming FROM the speakers, but BEHIND.
Also dynamics are quite good. I usually feel the need to fiddle with dynamics, but I did not with this library.One of the Best!
I have used many piano VSTs and this one... is one of the best. I love the quality of the recording, its not to loud, or to quiet, it sound real, and it sounds right. It has a very pro feel and tone.
Simply Great!
Id love to hear more with this, maybe more lid settings, and more peddle.
Another High Quality Piano From Dore!
Dore is building a great catalog of high quality piano samples for Pianobook.
Yamaha S6 is a great addition to that catalog.
While I prefer the "Performance" patch, Dore provides both a "Performance" and an "Ambisonic" perspective.
The controls within the plugin help craft a unique sound that can get the piano to sit just right within your music.
Highly recommend that you join in this "experience!"
