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| 24-05-08 / 18:28 : Ivory Italian Grand / Pianos performance on G4 (cjed) |
| On Synthogy site we can see that the minimum requirements for Ivory (Itlian Grand and Grand Pianos) are an 1Ghz G4 with 1Go of memory (so the same as for BestService Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection). Then we are ways behind Quantum Leap Pianos, whose PLAY engine can encounter problems even on a Quad Intel MacPro ! In this review from soundonsound about Ivory Grand Pianos collection, we can read : The dual 1.25GHz G4 processor I was using at first seemed more than up to the task, with enough power for 24 or even 36 notes of polyphony, which is often necessary... And about the memory requirements and the provided patchs configurations (many available : 12, 10, 8, 6 and 4 velocity layers - also for Italian Grand) : I found that the six-layer 88-note version (of the Bösendorfer ) with the Soft Pedal samples switched out would load into 512MB of RAM when nothing else was running inside Logic, and I found this had more than enough subtlety for my playing style... Keyboard achieved same conclusions about performances when they did their reviews of Ivory Grand Pianos and Italian Grand : The sample matching is superb: Even with only six layers, I had to listen hard to detect any velocity switching. If you don’t need soft-pedal samples, you can unload them, but I recommend leaving the separate release samples layer loaded, as it adds a lot, in a subliminal way, to the realism. Limiting the number of voices Ivory uses is also an option, as is recording and editing a MIDI sequence using an economy-class preset and then rendering the finished track to disk using the full grand. Besides choosing a patch with less velocity layers and remove (unload) from memory the soft pedal samples, we can also tune more further the performance by setting Ivory's own samples buffer size (set it to Large on a single G4). So 1,5 Gb ram should be ok (if we do a freeze thereafter). We can also set the host sequencer (Logic, etc.) latency higher - that is set 256 or 512 samples - to prevent CPU overload, but it is adviced to choose the min working latency when playing and then set it higher when boucing the whole plugins tracks of a song (not necessary if the Ivory part has been freezed before working with other instruments). The playability of (huge) piano samples libraries is generally not so good compared with a polished expansion card from an expander (or a digital piano) : for example the Roland Complete Piano card provides a more convincing attack (sounding like a real piano) than with Colossus Steinway B patch for example (that in fact isn't a really recent samples bank - 1 Gb). To address these issues the Ivory player adds a velocity range setting utility (that measures the min and max velocities that the keyboard can send), and also a dynamic compression feature. In fact with a few precise master keyboard like the Roland A30, the Roland Complete Piano card (4 velocity layers, 700 samples on 64Mb) performs better when removing the last (highest) velocity layer (and with some tweaking). The two Ivory products include a layer type (pad/piano) patch, that should be as great as Colossus Sundial patch : My favourite is 'Anastring', which gives you that perfect Chariots Of Fire effect, but there are half a dozen other ambient pads to provide the perfect backdrop to your piano stylings over the top. It does of course double the required polyphony, and the only parameter you can control is the relative volume of the pad (±24dB), but I loved it (Ivory Grand Pianos). There’s even a sweet-sounding synth pad layer that you can dial in for a pop piano mix (Italian Grand). Finally Ivory Italian Grand and BestService Galaxy II look complementary, as they provide 4 of the best pianos (italian Fazioli F-308 - hopefully better than the one included in Colossus, 2Gb but less expressive than the Steinway B -, Bosendorfer, Steinway D and Blüthner). There is to note that Ivory Grand Pianos Steinway offers more velocity layers than the one included in Galaxy II (comes from Galaxy 1), and that it includes a Yamaha C7. But the Bosendorfer pianos of both libraries should sound as good (13 velocity layers in Galaxy II, and about the same samples size). Galaxy II also includes a true synthesis / pads generation system, much more powerful. |
| Comments |
I just buyed Synthogy Ivory Italian Grand and was stunned as on my PowerPC G4 MDD single 1,25 Ghz I can play without any problem the fullest piano patch (12 velocity layers, that is 19 Gb and 800Mb loaded in ram, with 2 to 11Mbytes/s stream from my firewire disk without any hit in performance !), and all that with all parameters on (hold pedal samples, release samples, sustain DSP algorithm, included reverb and other effects). |
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