I don't know Ivory yet. But I'd check this beautiful Bosendorfer 290 for EXS24, by PMI. It's my favourite. http://www.postpiano.com/products/prod_iteminfo.php?id4&subCat=B%f6send or fer+290 To me, having the library "inside" the EXS24 is better than using a third party plug-in. By the way, they're also making a special stok cleaning sale: http://www.mijnwinkel.nl/shop8272/c5/

> I don't know Ivory yet. But I'd check this beautiful Bosendorfer 290 for > EXS24, by PMI. It's my favourite. > > http://www.postpiano.com/products/prod_iteminfo.php?id4&subCat=B%f6send or > fer+290 > > To me, having the library "inside" the EXS24 is better than using a third > party plug-in. > > By the way, they're also making a special stok cleaning sale: > http://www.mijnwinkel.nl/shop8272/c5/ For those considering Ivory, do yourself a favor. Open four browser windows and play the below linked demos side by side and decide for yourself what suits your style. Grandioso Bosendorfer 290 http://www.postpiano.com/products/demos.php?id4&subCat=B%F6sendorfer+29 0 Ivory: http://www.synthogy.com/demo/index.html PMI Old Lady http://www.postpiano.com/tests/Index.htm White Grand: http://www.sampletekk.com/wgresource.php?PHPSESSIDÅ3e7abdb34a234d49f4b b996 1108023 Happy shopping, James

James Ryan [mailto:jeryan@...] >For those considering Ivory, do yourself a favor. >Open four browser windows and play the below linked >demos side by side and decide for yourself what suits >your style. >PMI Old Lady > http://www.postpiano.com/tests/Index.htm Sweet. With all the hype I thought for a second that Ivory could put Michiel Post out of business. Silly me... Herbert Boland www.herbertboland.nl .:. Composer and Sound Designer .:. www.zepmusic.com .:. Open Songwriters Network .:.

After the recent discussions, I tried the playable demo of the Old Lady and the 135MB sound font version of Akai's free Splendid Grand Piano (exact setup s. below). I intend to get a relatively cheap replacement for a "physical piano", i.e. I want to play it "live". With both pianos I got lots of clicks while playing. With raising the I/O buffer size, I could get lesser clicks at the cost of increasing latency. This led me to the following questions: - What is the main bottleneck for playing (streamed) samples live: CPU speed, RAM size, disk speed? - Are there any optimizations I can make with my current setup? - Is it possible at all to play a realistic (e.g. streamed) piano sample live without clicks and with an acceptable (very low) latency? - If yes: What changes to the setup would be needed (a new G5 DP is already in the pipeline)? This is the setup, I used: - G4, 400MHz, - 448MB RAM - HDD: 80GB, 7200rpm - Logic 6 Pro 6.4.2 installed on boot volume - OS X 10.3.6 - RME HDSP with Multiface - amt8 via usb - Motu MidiExpress via Stealth Port - Doepfer LMK2+ via amt8 Audio Driver Settings: - Core Audio selected, other drivers off - 20/24 Bit Recoording: off - Software Monitoring: off - Process Buffer Range: Large - Larger Disk Buffer: on - Rewire behaviour: Live mode (Rewire not used) - I/O Buffer Size: tried values between 256 and 2048 - 64 Busses: off - Universal Track Mode: off - Scrub Response: Normal Both samples were imported to EXS24, Old Lady demo to be imported was in GigaStudio format. Thomas

Sad to say, its hard to imagine using a system like this with libraries this big. There comes a point when it just isn't possible to efficiently do what you're trying to do without a significant upgrade. Typical systems these days are dual processor G4s or G5s with at least 1ghz speed, and a gig and a half of memory or more. I can tell you that The Old Lady runs flawlessly on my dual G4 1.25Ghz Mac with 2 gig memory. It is my firm belief that the software of the present and future is counting on our immediate if not quite soon upgrade to the biggest muscle machine we can afford. That's the only way if software is going to continue to do the marvelous things its doing. James

Am 13.11.2004 um 17:44 schrieb James Ryan: > Sad to say, its hard to imagine using a system like this with > libraries this > big. ... > I can tell you that The Old Lady runs flawlessly on > my dual G4 1.25Ghz Mac with 2 gig memory. Thank you for this information, James. Does this mean, you can play it live with very low latency? Thomas (P.S.: I'm still speculating how this works. The whole sample set is too big to be kept in RAM. So there has to be disk access in response to the live playing. How much memory is needed for the beginning part of every note's sample with a maximum seek time duration times 10 fingers times number of different samples for velocities...)

> From: Thomas Jaensch <georg.faustus@...> > Reply-To: <logic-users@yahoogroups.com> > Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 23:42:20 +0100 > To: <logic-users@yahoogroups.com> > Subject: Re: [LUG] Most authentic Piano: Clicks while playing live > > > > Am 13.11.2004 um 17:44 schrieb James Ryan: >> Sad to say, its hard to imagine using a system like this with >> libraries this >> big. ... >> I can tell you that The Old Lady runs flawlessly on >> my dual G4 1.25Ghz Mac with 2 gig memory. > > Thank you for this information, James. > Does this mean, you can play it live with very low latency? > > Thomas > > > (P.S.: I'm still speculating how this works. The whole sample set is > too big to be kept in RAM. So there has to be disk access in response > to the live playing. How much memory is needed for the beginning part > of every note's sample with a maximum seek time duration times 10 > fingers times number of different samples for velocities...) I'm far from a concert pianist so I'm probably the last person to ask. In my experience though, I find the latency to be almost unnoticeable. The EXS is very efficient in this regard and streams the samples with it's "virtual memory" selected in EXS options, i.e. Keeps a small portion of the sample in memory to get a very quick attack, then streams the remainder as needed. How much memory is used for the little note "chips?" No clue, but I currently have several VSL horn instruments, violins, violi, RMX, Trilogy, and a spare drum kit loaded and I'm still running at about half capacity. James