|
Extensive piano recordings of the Bösendorfer 290 Imperial
 
"I can wholeheatedly recommend Vienna Imperial to anyone who needs a top-quality sampled grand..." – Sound on Sound.
"It´s difficult to find fault with a virtual instrument as impressive as this. It´s a brilliantly authentic virtual piano suitable for both studio and live performance." – Music Tech (Rating 9/10)
"Vienna Imperial is one of the most consistent sampled pianos we´ve ever tried..." – Computer Music (Rating 9/10)
"Is this the best-sounding sampled piano available? Put simply: yes. A truly universal piano solution." - Future Music (Awarded the FM Platinum award)
The sampled Bösendorfer 290 Imperial was outfitted with CEUS technology, enabling the most precise and by far most extensive piano sample recordings ever conducted in the history of music technology. 1,200 samples per key paired with a powerful proprietary piano engine and an easy-to-use interface make the Vienna Imperial the most realistic sampled piano ever created.
Thanks to the CEUS technology the velocity range of the grand could be exploited to an unprecedented degree. Up to 100 velocities were recorded per key and playing technique, i.e., with and without pressing the sustain pedal, and alternatively with the soft pedal down. There are simply no audible steps between the singular velocity layers, and every single key has its own authentic velocity curve.
Bösendorfer’s computerized grand also allowed for another innovation, the recording of perfectly timed release samples, depending on the length of the note played by the user. The Vienna Imperial reproduces totally natural release sounds, most audible when playing short staccatos in the lowest range.
No less importantly, the Vienna Imperial is very easy to use. The Basic View of the user interface offers a choice between three recording positions, close, player, and audience. The Advanced View gives the user quick and easy access to more control options such as convolution reverb, EQ, pedal noises, stereo width, MIDI sensitivity and more. Under the hood of the slick user interface is a new proprietary piano engine that has been specifically designed to drive this massive amount of sample data and processing power. The new engine also supports sympathetic string resonances in two variants – sympathetic resonances of individual strings (pedal-up) and of all non-damped strings (pedal-down).
Like all Vienna Instruments collections, Vienna Imperial is a sample-based virtual instrument that ships in the formats VST (OS X, Win XP/Vista/7), RTAS (OS X) as well as AU (OS X) and also works stand-alone. The software requires Intel processors on the Mac and doesn’t run on older-generation PPC Macs.
|
 |
