Imperfect Samples' upright piano + Crysonic Spectraphy LE = AMPLIFIED AWESOME!

When you immerse into the world of computer music, you'll quickly find yourself in a vast audio candyshop. There's so many sounds and not enough time (or desire) to explore them all. Some people have too many tools and never get around to actually making music, because they're stuck tweaking. (A parallel to the Star Trek: DS9 ep where Sloan tries to lure Bashir to explore the contents of his brain and trap him there.) I can't claim I try to strike a balance, but I do like to share gems that may be overlooked, underrated, and make you shine.

Imperfect Samples' Braunschweig Upright Piano

This unique collection is certainly one of those gems. It's been on my radar for a few weeks, where I heard it got a "pro" update with more layers and a different mic perspective. Earlier, my reluctance framed itself as: "Do I need another sampled piano?" I <3 Native Instruments' Akoustik, from which the Steingraeber und Söhne upright is terrifically expressive: the key release and pedal samples add so many little nuances. But I still wanted to find something that sounded, well, imperfect. Beyond the overused label of "character", I figured I could go for some detuning (chorusy warmth), clunking, and clickiness — not the same board Elton John would rock out on, but perhaps something for a moody film, or the cold winter nights ahead.

The Braunschweig Upright Piano non-pro version, which I acquired, is about US$60. It's a good price for all the craft that went into it. The currency gets converted from GBP when you buy through PayPal, and creator Matt Stedeford sends you the link within 24 hours — it's a manual process, which will be temporarily problematic if you're into instant gratification, but it feels homegrown, like the samples themselves. Many reviews pit the bullet-pointed tech-specs of one piano vs. another, but since I understand an effective review is meant to (1) express my opinion clearly and (2) help you make a buying decision, I'll stick to actual usage.

After a few hours, Matt sent me an email with the download link to a 2.5 GB archive split in 2 parts, and I used my Firefox download accelerator, to slurp it down. Soon enough, I had the archive extracted, and fired up Kontakt 3 (which I bought as part of the Kore 2 + Komplete bundle) to load the instrument set. After some enhancement (more on this in a bit), I began playing:

My eyes closed and tried to pinpoint where I'd heard a sound like this before. Unquestionably rich, with a strong bite when attacked hard — tough to describe in words, but you can hear for yourself. It also carries emotional depth for me, because it sounds like ivories I pounded in festival practice rooms and music schools years ago. My lil' improvisation was inspired by Sylar's Theme (from Heroes), Italian giallo, and a tiny hint of George Winston come Xmas, so if you noticed lines of influence, it's deliberate.

And it sounds real. Like if you were in the room with me. Stereo separation is nice. No additional reverb has been applied, but a couple things beefed up this recording:

1. Punchy sub-bass harmonic enhancement as I found the default too weak. It's natural, but didn't give me the low end to match the solid "pillar" feel @ 1:30 I got banging around.
2. A limiter at the end of the signal chain, specifically SpectraPhy LE. Let me go more into depth…

Crysonic's SpectraPhy LE

While Voxengo Elephant's often touted as a great value choice (and it certainly has many choices in its option-laden interface), I love the clarity, simplicity, and sheer warmth SpectraPhy LE gives me for maximizing volume. The moniker "LE" is a bit odd, because it derives some features from the full SpectraPhy, but the interface is completely different. However, in all its orange glow beauty, it resembles something you'd find on the dashboard of a futuristic vehicle — if you could drive and make beats at the same time!

If you're mastering piano recordings, the sheer weakness of most limiters is that they distort too audibly on acoustic instruments, despite inaccurate claims boasting of a "transparent, open sound". An authentic piano performance can be both delicate and thundering, and after having tested over a dozen limiters, I've come to the conclusion they're simply not well-equipped to deal with such vast dynamic shifts with isolated instruments. Sure, you could add a compressor earlier in the chain, but if you're not a seasoned veteran, then you have to fiddle with that and run the risk of squashing your final sound in pieces. Some of my piano recordings exhibit this flaw before I learned about Crysonic. It was a long time coming, because they don't seem to get that much press (like Imperfect Samples), but I've purchased their Mac Pack @ US$75 whose sale was supposed to end yesterday. It includes SpectraPhy LE, Sino V2 (a stereo image expander/narrower), and nXTasy (analogue harmonic saturation). I haven't used the latter two much yet, but if SpectraPhy's quality is anything to go by, I will be wowed in the Christopher Walken sense.

As I was saying, SpectraPhy LE deals beautifully with the problem of limiting fragile material with force: the usual attack & release sliders are there (but whose inner workings differ somewhat from other limiters), but the one highlight is the Smooth knob, which tames those transients. I don't know if there's a single proper way to use it, but here's how I did it: I dragged the In Threshold slider down to -12 dB to really bring levels up (more than is "typically safe" for piano), and played my recording through. Sure enough, I heard some ugly distortion during the louder, bass-heavy passages — something that always makes me cringe. So I turned up the Smooth knob, and kept playing those passages to adjust. I eventually got a great balance at 6 dB. I also adjusted Attack to 5 ms for a rounder sound, and left Release at 20 ms. And… it's pretty simple, as I said!

The end result, as you can hear above, has a pretty meaty waveform, but it's not squished to heck either. It also makes it evident how most other limiters are a poor compromise, taking too much edge off of fortissimo strikes in order to gain volume. Furthermore, Spectraphy LE really brought out some of the ambient noise present in the Imperfect Samples piano, and it's not unpleasant hiss or hum, just a nice coating that makes the recording sound alive.

If you're wondering: I haven't been able to get Voxengo Elephant or even the much pricier Waves L2 (out of the running for most musical enthusiasts) to perform this exquisitely with isolated nstruments. Despite so much marketing fluff that reads the same, lesser limiters may do other things well, but they simply didn't stack up for my needs.

When I got the Crysonic plugins, they arrived in an somewhat-unorganized archive: before I got the Mac Pack, I asked if I'd also get PC versions included with that. All plugins run on Windows but only a few are also available on Mac. More are forthcoming, for those of you like me who work cross-platform. The answer from Simone was "Yes!" Oddly enough, Sindo V2 requires activation while the other two don't, so I wish they'd have an unified installer and authorization process.

I've also been using SpectraPhy tech for mastering my video tutorials, so if you're wondering why my voice sounds so great and possesses such presence on my recent duo of Mac tuts, like this:

that's why! I'm really pleased.

We live in a wonderful age. It amazes me that I can send funds electronically, wait a few minutes, and have a whole new piano in my hands. And not just that, but also a means to make my performances sparkle.

Final thoughts about both of these fine products

(Final for this review. I anticipate sharing more as my adventures continue.)

Imperfect Samples' upright piano doesn't appear to have integrated sustain pedal sounds, meaning when you press up and down on the pedal, it doesn't thunk and wheeze as you'd expect it to. This is a small disappointment, and I hope I've missed something. There is instrument bank containing various piano FX including pedal sounds, but I'd prefer to have something I can perform with live, as opposed to after-the-fact editing. Creator Matt has been nothing but responsive and cheerful to my emails, so I'll ask him.

I can't think of any specific improvements for Crysonic's Spectraphy LE beyond what I've mentioned above; I don't want it to become a complicated behemoth, but a DC offset filter could be handy. However, I do have a problem in Sony Vegas in which I can't use more than a single instance at once without the app freezing. This is obviously problematic for multitrack recording, and I've already sent a support request and am waiting to hear back.

Both Imperfect Samples and Crysonic deserve better marketing and publicity: reviews on both were hard to find (which is why in part I'm writing this), but I'm glad I made the decision to buy them. I adapt quickly to new tools, but I'm hoping these will continue to last me for a long time.

If you get one or both too, let me know what you think!

Tagged as: General