Art Vista Virtual Grand Piano

I've been playing jazz/blues piano for 15 years--I have no connection with Art Vista. Use a Kawai MP9000 as a controller--great acoustic feel.
I run the Virtual Grand Piano version 1.0 (VGP) in standalone, or in Cantabile, a great new low-cost vst host for pc's. My computer is a Gateway laptop (Windows XP), Athlon 4000+ with 1GB ram and (4200rpm?) hardrive. Use an Echo Indigo soundcard and Sennheiser 580 headphones. M-audio Uno Midi-USB interface.

The interface is easy to use. A lot of basic and special presets in 4 velocity settings. 2 eq knobs, reverb, Width, Compression,Tune,Pan, and Volume knobs. These are mostly useful for changing the sound so you can use it live--the eqs can take out some of the bottom end resonance. Taking the width down to 40% also helps when playing live. Presets do take about 30 secs each to load--samples are loaded new each time for some reason.

Wow! The best software piano I've tried through headphones. (I've tried Ivory, Akoustik Piano, PMI Old Lady + Emperor, Vintaudio C7, and others). This is the ultimate jazz/blues piano in my opinion. Sampled off a 1960 Steinway B, the sampling is the only one I've heard that actually creates a very real illusion of actually sitting down and playing a real piano. And big concert grands like a Steinway D have too "serious" a tone for blues/jazz. Gospel Medium(wet) preset is my favorite--best dynamic range. Recorded a bit back from the strings so you get the true piano sound reverberated through the soundboard and case-- no "plunkiness" like Akoustik and Ivory to some extent. Very warm sound but on Gospel and other presets it's very dynamic and playable.

I'd rate this 10/10 especially considering that it's much less expensive that Ivory/Akoustik. I just love the sound--mellow and dynamic at the same time (on the Gospel preset). The ultimate Blues software piano, in my opinion. If you want to play blues/jazz this beats anything out there right now. Definitely try this before investing in Ivory and *especially* Akoustik. Those are big concert grands in perfect tune recorded *very* close to the strings--don't work well for blues/jazz IMO. There was an Electronic Musician article comparing this Ivory/Akoustik and others. I don't think they spent enough time with it to check out all the more dynamic presets. Said the middle range sounded canned? Duh, that's the sound of reververation in the cavity of the instrument. Rated Akoustik the best? Come on! Akoustik is great if you want a perfectly pristine recording of a nail hammer pounding a string 1 inch from your ear!