IK Multimedia Pianoverse

IK’s sampled piano instrument aims to be more than just world-beating...

Boasting ‘robot‑assisted sampling’ of the world’s finest pianos, IK Multimedia’s Pianoverse aims to be ‘the only piano instrument you’ll ever need’. Full marks for ambition, then, but in a world that’s not exactly starved of sampled pianos what does Pianoverse have to offer that others don’t? Except for robot assisted sampling, of course...

At the time of this review there are five piano options available with three currently in development and more planned for the future. The pianos currently available for Pianoverse are the Concert Grand YF3 (sampled from a 9‑foot Yamaha CFIII concert grand piano), the Royal Upright Y5 (from a Yamaha U5 upright), the Black Diamond B280 (a 9‑foot Bösendorfer 280 Vienna Concert grand) and the NY Grand S274 (sampled from a 9‑foot Steinway & Sons New York D‑274 concert grand).

The most recent release at time of writing is the Gran Concerto 278, sampled from a 9.5‑foot Fazioli F278 concert grand piano. Scheduled for release are the Hamburg Grand S274 (a 9‑foot Steinway & Sons Hamburg D‑274 grand), the Liberty Upright (sampled from a rare Koch & Korselt upright grand piano) and the Black Pearl B200 (a 7‑foot Bösendorfer 200 concert grand).

You’ll need to download the IK Product Manager for installation, adding Pianoverse itself from the Software tab and then installing your purchased pianos from the Sounds tab. These pianos are not small due to the immense detail that has gone into creating them — they currently range in size from 24GB to 32.6GB (which required investing in yet another external drive).

Upon opening you’re met with the browser menu, showing your installed pianos on the left and the presets to the right. There are 25 presets for every piano and each is tagged according to mood, genre and various other characteristics so that you can use the filter in the centre column to quickly find your perfect sound. You can also mark your favourites here for faster recall. User slots are only limited by the space on your hard drive.

In order to accurately capture the full dynamic range of each piano, IK Multimedia developed a robot ‘finger’ to press on the keys at different velocities...

The Robot Finger

The first thing that strikes you about the main piano samples is how dry the recordings are. All pianos were sampled using close‑range miking, either using DPA or AKG microphones. A mid‑distance or coincident option was also captured using either Schoeps or DPA mics.

In order to accurately capture the full dynamic range of each piano, IK Multimedia developed a robot ‘finger’ to press on the keys at different velocities, with the data being fed back into their own, specially created software. The robot had to strike the key in a manner that achieved maximum realism while fully capturing the dynamic curve of each note. This is a technique previously used by digital piano manufacturers, although in the interests of avoiding unnecessary sample content and taking up more hard drive space, the team chose the samples for each piano individually, adding the ones where a “just noticeable difference” was detected by the recording software and incorporating round robins, thus offering very playable pianos that don’t use excessive processing power.

The Piano Panel

Once a piano is selected, you’ll come to the main screen, referred to as the Piano panel. The centre displays a representative image of the selected piano, with a visualisation of the notes depressing as you’re playing them or running a MIDI track — always a great way of creating cheap YouTube videos.

The two menu panels at bottom allow fast access to master functions such as tuning, transposing, Space volume (more about that later), tone and compression. Also present here is a velocity curve, handy for bringing out that bottom‑end growl if you’re playing from a less‑responsive controller. The second menu allows you to alter piano mechanics, such as hammer, pedal and key release noises. While mechanics have been included in other software pianos, the detail here really adds another level of realism.

To the right of the panel is a diagram of the three piano pedals — soft, sostenuto and sustain. These responded instantly to the digital piano that the software was being tested with, and for controllers that offer the option to have three pedals connected, you can easily allocate CC67 (soft), CC66 (sostenuto) and CC64 (sustain) to fully benefit from this feature. One of the most appealing aspects is the ability to use half‑pedalling, which allows for a much more controlled performance.

Having such dry piano samples means that you can easily drop them into different room spaces and the result is that you have a very clean and realistic sound in whatever setting you place it in.

Choose Your Space

The next tab along on the top left takes you to the Space panel and it’s here where things start to get really interesting. Having such dry piano samples means that you can easily drop them into different room spaces and the result is that you have a very clean and realistic sound in whatever setting you place it in.

There are 30 spaces available. Indoor spaces include various studios, practice rooms, stages, cathedrals and more, which proved to be highly usable on the various test tracks. It’s when you apply the outdoor spaces that things start to get a little crazy, with cinematic effects that include sand, ice and glitches. Some of the more complex spaces have additional settings that allow you to control the levels of these ambient elements.

Thirty indoor and outdoor Spaces are available, some with adjustable parameters.

Tweak Your Sound

The Mix tab displays a channel strip that allows you to choose mic positions, set EQ and compression plus fine‑tune your Space. For the mic positions, you can select between close and either midfield or coincident, depending on the piano. Dropping the mic levels and the stereo width pushed the piano back into the reverb nicely to place it in a bigger space.

The tone can be adjusted using either 10‑band graphic or four‑band parametric EQ and you can choose between four different compressor types. There’s Modern (VCA), Vintage (FET), British (modelled on the SSL G‑type Bus Compressor) and Vari‑Mu (modelled on the Fairchild 670 limiter). EQ and compression can similarly be applied to your Space. If you’re using Pianoverse standalone these options are a great addition and they really showcase the pianos to maximum effect when used within the presets.

A flip button here inverts stereo image, which makes a lot of sense as it switches you to being in the audience rather than listening from the perspective of the performer, although it can be a little disconcerting to play in this mode.

Run three effects at once from the 10 available and modulate further with LFOs.

The final tab on the top left opens the effects panel, where you can select up to three global effects at a time from the 10 available, including saturation, drive and a granular delay. Effects can be further modulated using two envelopes and two LFOs. Just add Shimmer, Plate Reverb and more, combined with the outdoor Spaces, for some epic cinematic soundscapes. Parameters within the Space, Mix and Effects tabs can be automated, plus you can right‑click on buttons to assign CC controls.

Testing, Testing

Testing it out fully was going to require working in a few different genres using the various pianos. The NY Grand in the Vintage Studio Space blended perfectly into a jazz trio setting, while the Black Diamond in a Cathedral setting worked well for classical. While there’s no felt piano available for more ambient pieces, there are plenty of options for muting the tones including closing the lid, and again Black Diamond worked well here.

As expected, pop and rock pieces benefitted from the brightness of the Royal Upright and adding a little chorus gave it more of a boogie vibe. If you’re creating dynamic soundtracks then the Fazioli or Yamaha grand would more likely cut through the mix better, although you would probably want to bypass the internal effects and place the piano in the same space as the rest of your orchestra.

Pianoverse definitely has the edge and felt more alive and organic. It also has the added bonus of sostenuto, half‑pedalling and an extra level of realism from the really well‑sampled piano mechanics.

As a final test, I called up two other popular pianos into my DAW, gave them similar settings and used a digital piano as a controller. While the other two pianos are very usable, Pianoverse definitely has the edge and felt more alive and organic. It also has the added bonus of sostenuto, half‑pedalling and an extra level of realism from the really well‑sampled piano mechanics. While some might miss the ability to blend mics, it performed so well in each of the genres with the numerous editing options already available that it didn’t feel as though it was lacking in this area.

If I had to pick favourites, it’s a tough call but probably the NY Grand for jazz and the Black Diamond for classical, cinematic and ambient, but it is purely personal preference and each one of these pianos has its place.

Could it be improved in any way? As someone who likes to play for enjoyment it would be wonderful to have a binaural recording, and a felt piano would be a nice addition to the collection in future. But Pianoverse is already on its way to becoming the new favourite.