Most playable / realistic (free) piano sample for Zyn / Pi3

Using Zynthian
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I’ve been trying out a few piano samples (SFZ with linuxsampler. and SF2 with fluid), trying to find something nice for live playing. For reference: I’m used to playing the concert grand included with NI Komplete (unsure how high of a bar that is…), through a weighted/hammer MIDI keyboard.

I found really nice-sounding SFZs (the included salamander GIG is OK too), but ran into the CPU-bounded voice limit of about ~16 voices in linuxsampler on the RPi3B+ (seems to a hard limit). The SF2’s under Fluid go up to more voices, but I couldn’t find as nice-sounding ones. Best ones were from Soundfonts4U.

P.S. I’m aware of the included great-sounding Pianoteq, but I’m looking for something free (as in beer).

Are any other pianists using Zynthian for live/realistic playing? If not Pianoteq, what soundfont(s) are you using?

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If you like the Salamander Grand Piano, I have converted this piano to SF2 format for you.
have fun! :upside_down_face:

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Awesome, thanks a lot! :slight_smile:

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Your sf2 salamander is a lot more performant than the included .gig version, really nice, thanks a lot! All it needs is a bit of reverb (I’ve added GxReverb, 0.20 room size).

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I was hoping that this version would fix the problems with Salamander but sadly not:

  • Notes move around the stereo image unexpectedly, e.g. F3 (53) appears panned slightly left of E3 (52). This occurs at various points which is disconcerting when playing scales or similar musical phrases.
  • Reverb changes (apparently randomly) on different notes
  • Acoustic noise / effect suddenly appears at G#5(80)

It is a shame this soundfont has these issues. It is quite good but these irk me too much to want to use it. :frowning_face: I think I have tested this a dozen times and each time am disappointed. (I should stop doing that…)

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Oh! These sins are common to all free sound libraries … :yum:

Unfortunately, many problems in samples cannot be easy fixed …

I recommend disabling the built-in Fluidsynth reverb, it gives out strange sounds and overall this reverb sounds mediocre …

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I use a chain of effects: the “3-band equalizer” and the “МVerb"…
with the equalizer, I make the sound brighter, raising the high frequencies a little…

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Agreed - that makes it better. (I have previously suggested that effects be disabled by default. I might revisit that subject…) I have same chain as you and it sounds okay. I may fork out for Pianotec…

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Also try https://github.com/KaleidonKep99/Steinway-D-274/releases SFZ

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This does not work with the linuxsampler engine…

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Hmmm, I’m sure I had it working, maybe I fudged around with it.

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I tried converting this to GIGA format and it worked. For some reason, the author uses a sample sampling rate of 96 kHz, which affects the final size of samples…

the author also uses a low frequency filter to create visibility of the dynamics layers…

sounds good, by the way…

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How did you convert to GIGA format?

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long and painful … :upside_down_face:

sfz format requires manual correction of all parameters when converting to other formats …

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I broke the piano and put it back together… sorry… :yum:

Plogue sforzando PC and Linuxsampler Zynthian load and execute this preset correctly…

Testing please…

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Legend! Works a treat!

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Hmmm… Uploading via webconf seems to crash (or upset) webconf.

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This is an old mistake … use a USB flash drive …

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have fun! :upside_down_face:

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