Native Instruments Akoustik Piano RTAS Mac

I've been making music for a long time. I mainly play violin and piano.

I use my own piano for recording pure but when it comes to electronic music, a piano sampler can save the time spent for mic setups (and some angry neighbours - i record mainly at night).

I am using a machine with 2 Gb ram. I use Studiologic SL 990 Pro as the midi controller. For me, this one of the best midi controllers which give a good piano feeling.

I had no problem in installing or using. The stand alone program is pretty straightforward, same applies to vst or rtas. The computer graphic piano on the interface is pretty bad. I would prefer a real piano picture there. Also if you change the environments you notice the UI graphics are too unrealistic. It only took some time for me to find the advanced options. That's because of the unmeaningful icons in the GUI.

I was very impressed when I heard the Boesendorfer sound at the demo recordings on the website and I bought the software immediately after that but I think that is only a demo! The sustain pedal is very badly implemented. The hammer sounds of the keys are also a very bad quality. Overall the resonance board is also emulated very bad. good samples when you press individual notes, but when it comes to playing this is not what you would expect. Even the version 1 of the Steinberg Grand has a much better quality than this one.

The expression is bad and the velocity has only a few presets, none of which suit well to my setup. It would be better to be able to draw the velocity like Steinberg Grand did. the EQ is a plus but thats all.

I can not say this product is terrible. Obviously it is better than many sampled piano sounds out there. But what I expected was more than just a few dosens of samples. Press a high note when the pedal is pressed and you will understand what I mean.

The pedal noise couldnt be emulated worse. Simply bad.

It is not worth the money (400 eur here). This is not a good piano emulation. It is no where close to 'realistic'. The resonance of the other strings should be much better emulated to give a better feeling.

I hope it gets improved with another version. I am disappointed as of this version. I am simply returning this product back to where I bought it.

Installed on a Mac Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz, 768 RAM. Sample libraries installed on Lacie 7200 RPM 80GB external firewire drive. In other words, my setup surpasses their minimum requirements. Inteded to use it for classical music.

Interface is easy enough. First set of instillation DVD's were corrupt. They sent me new ones. MIDI setup is as easy as your hosting devices make it. The manual is very easy, straight-forward, but lacking in certain important info, like polyphony, and specs in general.

The piano sounds themselves are superb. The playability is aweful, especially the pedal dynamics. Maximum polyphony of 50!!!??? You can get a Casio with more polyphony. And the notes tend to cut out abruptly, as opposed to seamlessly blending/fading out like on my Yamaha P80. Also, you can't depress keys without generating a pitch sound, no matter how lightly/slowly you go. (This technique is useful when sustaining many notes in a run, and then depressing ony a select few notes while releasing the sustain. This cannot be accomplished with Akoustik Piano.) You can adjust the velocity curve and dynamic response, but these don't resolve the aforementioned problems.

Basically, if you use the sustain pedal sparingly, or your music is not complicated, it will suffice. But don't even think about playing Rachmaninov with this software.

I'll give it a 3 just for sampling the notes well. But the flawed playability ruins it.

The folks at NI probably realize by now that they released this prematurely. There's plenty of R&D left to do. There's no reason for notes to cut out abruptly, maximum 50 notes of polyphony is insulting, and the pedal dynamics are entirely unrealistic. This software is fine for the hobbyist. Professional pianists should avoid it like the plague. Makes me appreciate my Yamaha P80 more.

Moral of the story is...

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!!!!!!