Synthogy Ivory

I'm a professional musician and jazz pianist.
I was looking for years for good piano sounds which I can mostly use for recording sketches.

Years after my last search, featuring a new computer (Core2Duo 2GHz with 2GB RAM and 250GB RAID) I got back to sample the market of piano sounds. I was simply amazed.

I'm using Roland SC-D70 as a soundcard and Roland DS-7 as monitors, which were practically built for this product.

It's a very simple application. I never understood the 5000-knobs samplers which expect me as a musician to be able to operate them.
I want very good factory presets, with reasonable ways to change parameters, or create my own setup.
On this field, Synthogy got it just fine.

2 things for Synthogy to work on:
1. I needed to define my soundcard's buffer size lower in order to make it work smoothly, also I changed the buffer size menu to "large" on the main window.
Add a test application which detects the best features for the system, and spare it from us.
The manual is good, and had good suggestions on how to solve my problems.

2. I'd rather have an option to choose how open is my piano lid (yea, I'm a pianists - give me a piano to work with! :-)

It sounds amazing! Regardless if you use it as a part of a band or a solo piano, you get full and rich sound - the best one I've ever heard in my life from such an application, and probably one of the best ones I'll ever hear.

I compared it to few piano sounds from CDs I got (Keith Jarrett and some other guys which use Steinway pianos), and I'm not sure if I can find any difference between the real and this piano. sometimes the Ivory sounded better than the real one.

I use the most "expensive" Steinway preset (10 samples for each note) with all the features (release, soft pedal, EQ, reverb) for solo piano, or without reverb for band recording.

I'm using Yamaha P120 as my keyboard, which I love its touch - but it's simply the first time I "communicated" with an electronic instrument. It simply came alive. I felt like I'm playing on this real piano, and sounded like that!

They also let you choose the stereo picture - whether it for the performer or the audience! crazy people. I love them.

It cost less than a Steinway D9 piano, and sound not less good as the Steinway. I think it says it all.

I chose this one because of its phenomenal sound samples on its web site, and I think that I got even better sound then on their site.

On 1.6 they added a stand alone version which is great, you don't need to open up your Cubase for it - just open the Ivory for playing.

My CPU usage is very low using it, but I guess that the fact that I'm using monstrous PC has its impact.

To sum it up - I'm not sure I'll bother going to a studio for my next piano solo CD - there isn't any CD recorded around which has such a rich piano sound and as I got using a simple preset with simple tweaks.

I have been playing for 20 years. I started both piano and guitar at roughly the same time. I am not a professional, I like to play in part time bands from time to time and I really enjoy home recording. I began working with midi very shortly after I started to play piano. I have worked with some of the first versions of cakewalk and cubase and I currently use Cubase SL 3.0. I own a Kurzweil PC-2R that has the triple strike piano. That was my favorite piano sound until now. I also like the sound of the Yamaha P-200 (now the P-250 or CP-300). I always search for the best piano sound and I have even bought a few Piano sample CD's over the years (I have an Emu E-6400 sampler as well). When I started playing piano, I took classic lessons on a
real piano and I know the feeling that a real piano can give (not to
mention the inspiration).
My computer is a custom made AMD64 3500+ with ASUS motherboard, 1 gig
of dual channel DDR RAM, Seagate 100gig ATA100. I have
a soundblaster audigy 2ZS Platinum Pro soundcard and Event Project
Studio monitors. So, in other words, my equipment is definitely not
top of the line by today's standards (July 22, 2006). I am running Windows XP service pack 2 and I also have disabled the virtual memory.
This review is for version 1.52 of Ivory.

I found the interface easy to use. If you are used to the basic concepts of number of voices, eq settings, reverb settings, velocity
settings (velocity curve) then I feel the interface should be fairly
straightforward. There are also things like resonance level of the soundboard, enable or disable soft pedal samples, etc, that I feel
someone that has knowledge of a real piano should understand. If not,
you can simply tweak the parameter and listen to the result. There
are many presets to choose from and start with as well. What I really
enjoy is the fact that you have small, medium, and full size versions of
the pianos and you can change the number of voices. For my computer,
since it isn't the latest and greatest, I had to use the medium size
6 velocity layer piano presets with about 32 voices. The voice
stealing mechanism is really really good, so I didn't miss the fact
that I couldn't max out at the max level (I think it was 192 voices
or so).
At first, when I loaded the software that came in the box (version
1.5 I believe), I had an issue with the mixdown of the VST midi track
into an audio track. In the audio track, the notes were being prematurely cut off (they didn't decay properly). However, when I uploaded the 1.52 upgrade, it fixed the issue. So, please be sure to get the 1.52 (or later) upgrade.
So, with my setup, I was able to use the medium size 6 layer piano without too many issues. I did not use Ivory with too many other VST's, however. I did get a little bit of a skip/pop every now and then when I was playing very fast with the sustain pedal enabled, but I am also using an ATA100 hard drive (which I used only for Ivory and nothing else). I am planning to go to SATA and possibly even SATA raid. I am sure that some of the skips/pops came from the hard drive access.
I think this is the most challenging part of the setup, making sure you have a fast hard drive, 7200 RPM SATA or even better SATA RAID.
I have 2ms delay on the SoundBlaster Audigy ASIO drivers, so the delay was not too much of an issue. I think it might be a slight bit faster if I connect directly into the Kurzweil PC2R rack module, but really really hard to tell. And I suppose if I got a better sound card or faster CPU it might be even better.

This thing is absolutely amazing. I have searched for the best piano
sound for a while. I love my Kurzweil PC2R Triple Strike Piano and
when I found out that the engineers who created that Piano sound went
to form Synthogy, I had to get the software. The software is around
40gigs of samples!! Compare that to today's best piano modules (the
most I can image would be 64meg or 128meg), you get the idea. They
state that each sample is non-looped which is pretty incredible.
Also, this paired with the a DSP engine that calculates soundboard
resonance in real time (which I think a lot of the newer Yamaha electric
pianos do as well) makes a very lush and realistic sounding decay,
especially when you use the sustain pedal.
The stereo imaging is wonderful and there are actually two options, one for how the piano would sound as a performer and the second for
how the piano would sound to the audience. It also has a control for
stereo seperation and how wide you wide you want the sound field.

If you love the piano and want to get the most realistic piano sound,
the I don't think you can get better than this. However, you need to
make sure you have a fast computer, lots of RAM (I think that my 1gig
was the mimimum recommended, I have actually ordered another gig), and
you need a fast hard drive (7200rpm or faster SATA 150 or higher) and
the drive probably needs to be dedicated to this application. I was
not able to use the maximum size piano presets and number of voices
with my setup, however I also don't have top of the line equipment. But, I was happy to use the smaller to medium size presets, the sound is
still many levels higher than my Kurzweil or any other piano module.
So, bottom line, if you want the most out of this, you need a really good PC, but even with a decent PC, you can still use the smaller to medium size level pianos and the sound is still incredible.
I am only going to use my Kurzweil now for live performance, when I practice at home or record I will be using the Ivory from now on.

I'm using Ivory 1.5 on Mac OSX in ProTools 7.1.

The interface and copy protection are fine. It's easy to get a great sound from this.

The only time-consuming issue I've had is getting the velocity curves "just so" on my controller and in Ivory. I'm still working on this...

It's a bear on the disk drive. You'll hear it chugging away at the disk all the time with dense enough settings (e.g., 10-layer piano plus soft pedal and release samples). It took some tuning to get the red disk icon to stop appearing.

Sounds great. The most expressive piano VI I've ever played. Latency is as low as any VI in my rig.

I typically remove the built-in reverb as I don't need this load on my system resources. I can add a better reverb later.

It's a great plug-in. I really appreciate the quality of the piano sounds. (I don't really care about the synth layers and reverb.)

My only real complaint is the difficulty in getting the velocity curve to be enough like a "real" piano and the pounding on the disk.

I've tried NI Akoustik Piano, several different piano sample sets in Kontakt 2, etc. None of these compare well with the responsiveness of the VI and quality of the Ivory samples.

I've been making music for 20 yrs. I play keys/vox. I use the Ivory 1.5 (May 2006) and use it with Protools 7.0/Windows. I write soft rock, worship, classical, instrumental. I run WXPSP2, 3.4G Pent4, 2GRAM HP laptop, use headphones and Genelecs..

Interface is not completely intuitive but if you play around and read the manual, you're fine. Copy protection not a problem. Installation is good but GET A DEDICATED 7200 40G drive (or drive partition). >>>> Put it in it's own partition<<<. Go firewire and avoid USB. Firewire is clocked slower but transfer is much faster believe it or not. Dont use boot, don;t use old slow, don't use USB drive.

Ivory and Protools 7.0/Windows. WATCH OUT! If you're loading other plugins, load ivory first! IF you you have to create a new Protools session, do it to make sure Ivory is loaded first. Save your session frequently, changing pianos frequently causes Ivory to crash your ENTIRE COMPUTER. Bear in mind, Ivory crashes ALOT so be careful!

For sound quality, it can't get better than this. All the Ivory pianos are fabulous. The only thing that would make it better is to very slightly detune the notes individually to add the "imperfect" affect of a real piano.

Samples/sound-quality can't get better than this. Very heavy CPU, memory, hard drive, unstable software on Windows/Protools 7.0 but worth the headache if you want unbelievable piano sound.

Used with DP 4.12, and Logic Pro 7.1. I have the latest version of Ivory (as of June 05). I use a G5 with dual 2 G. I have Mackie HR824 monitors.

I do a variety of styles of composition & production.

The interface is simple, logical, eligant and complete. You have the ability to save your favorite settings in presets. The controls give you lots of options to add greater realism or throttle down the power requirements as needed for your application.

The sound is excellent. They did a very nice job of capturing the glory of these 3 marvelous instruments. The sounds are in 32 bit. The pianos play with up to 8 velocity ranges. The soundboard resonance simulations are very credible.

I urge you to read the product descriptions and listen to the demos. They are magnificant. And playing them is really a wonderful experience!

My only complaint is that, while the marketing materials claim that the stereo samples are "Phase Perfect", they are not perfect. These stereo samples when dialed/summed to mono exhibit phase anomalies in the critical mid range of the piano (--typical of most piano recordings and samples). I believe they were careful to minimize these phase issues, but they are far from "perfect". SEE BELOW...

I think Ivory is an excellent value and I will use it whenver I need a good piano sound.

I contacted the company with several questions and they gave me generous and friendly responses in two days.

I mentioned the mono phase problems and explained why a mono piano is useful for live sound and for some broadcast work. They said they would consider releasing a mono version in the future. I guess they need to see of there is a market for it.