After several days with this unexpected new piano library, I am totally in love with it... if only I could actually use it for dependable work. I am hoping someone can tell me what I can do make it work on my system, as any orders for upgrades should be done ASAP in order to arrive in time for making maximum use of this library during the holiday week.

I have written up very detailed reviews in other forums, and at this late hour, do not have the energy to write yet another review, so will just summarize and say that this is the first Steinway library that makes me feel that I am sitting at the piano and not playing computer samples. It took a lot of work to get the settings I like for an intimate sound suitable for jazz, but I am 100% of the way there now, with no further tweaks needed. :-) The mids in particular, are so articulate and clear that it also prevents mud in the lows and overly harsh high notes.

Briefly, I am using the Royer Ribbon Mic, Neumann Tube Mic, and Sennheiser MKH 8040 mid mics, in decreasing levels for the blend. I'll write up my detailed settings later. I was "almost there" on Sunday but then found even better advice at Piano World, then fully refined and finalized my settings for jazz and chamber settings.

The performance issue is a blocker. I need to be confident that whatever I order tonight or tomorrow is highly likely to solve the problem. Even if I remove all pedaling, I still get glitches and audio gaps due to the CPU spikes, and that is after doing everything possible to opitimize performance. It gets worse if I have Continuous Damper vs. on/off, but like I said, some stuff chokes regardless of pedaling. So I am convinced my system needs a boost.

Last summer, my 2010 MacPro died a sudden death at the start of a five day holiday weekend, so out of desperation I bought a brand new 2017 iMac Pro, top-end stock model, as I had immediate deliverables. So I am more limited in what I can do with upgrades than before, but it is also a more modern machine so that helps some.

I have not yet upgraded the RAM from the stock 8 GB. I notice with the three mics selected and Reverb turned off, it takes upwards of 20 minutes to load, and fills about 0.9 GB of RAM. So I'm hesitant to assume ordering 32 GB of RAM tonight is all that I need to do to make the CPU glitches go away, as I doubt I'm hitting that limit yet.

The iMac 18,3 has a Fusion drive, which is hybrid SSD. I only use it for apps and stuff that isn't happy elsewhere, just as wth my previous computers. And I couldn't find a way to partition it; I think the "Fusion" technology prohibits that as the OS manages a lot of complex ways in which the drive gets divided up. But I have plenty of space and could fit all of my Synchron libraries there. I just don't know if that's advisable; I always keep data and libraries off the system drive.

I am using a 10 TB G-Tech hard drive connected via USB3. I am less concerned, for now, about the load time, than whether the CPU spikes may also be related. I figure once the personal preset is loaded, that everything it needs is in RAM and that the storage device for the library itself is no longer relevant. Is this correct?

This iMac's CPU is an Intel Core i5, 3.8 GHz, 4-core single processor machine, with 256 KB of L2 Cache per core, 6 MB of L3 cache, and is still running Sierra as I have been mid-project for too long to yet risk going to High Sierra and then Mojave.

It is surprising to me that I'm the only one to have had performance issues. I didn't run into this with the CFX, but I haven't used that one much yet either, as Yamahas are not my favourite pianos. It's the best Yamaha I've ever heard though, so I knew I would want anything else that is done for this new platform.

Mark,

you're limited by your HDD's. The Synchron Piano, along with any modern library, needs an SSD to perform well. Only a very small portion of the samples are loaded into RAM, the rest are streaming directly from disk.

Using an external TB3 SSD drive would be optimal in your situation, that will take care of your glitches and take your load times down to a few seconds. On an internal SATA SSD I can load up a preset with 3 mics within 5 seconds, and using an internal Intel Optane 905P PCI-E drive I get the same thing loaded in about a second.

Martin, thank you so much for clearing that up. It's the internal workings that I can only guess at!

Now I just have to decide whether to buy an external SSD or temporarily move things to the Fusion drive and re-evaluate -- I guess I can copy the libraries and just find out, then delete if it doesn't help (much).

I'm hesitant to buy another external drive just because I don't like daisy-chaining -- it's the main reason I freaked when I had to go from a MacPro to an iMac (the so-called "trash-can" edition of the MacPro requires external drives so had limited appeal to me when my 2010 model died).

I could, however, "time-share" one port with the Time Machine drive, which I usually turn off during recording anyway (except when I forget -- so this would be a better way to remember!).

I appreciate you giving such a complete yet concise answer. I think it will help others besides myself.

The TB3 ports you have on the iMac Pro should provide 40Gbps bandwidth each - which is plenty enough for a few drives to share. USB-3 (as you are using for the 10TB HDD) is 8x slower at 5Gbps.

I'm not aware of the exact details of port sharing on your Mac Pro model - it could be that some ports share resources. 

Definitely an SSD is the way to go, and SSD prices have dropped dramatically in the last six months, so this is a good time to buy.

In regard to experiencing the problem on the Steinway but not the CFX: it's apparent that the Steinway is significantly more demanding of the CPU.  With the same number of mics (and both sample sets on the same SSD drive), I can run the CFX at a lower latency without artefacts than the Steinway.  I'm not sure why that should be;  perhaps Martin can comment?

Thanks; when I bought this box last summer, the TB3 HDD drives they had at Fry's were WAY slower than the USB3 HDD drives, and FAR more expensive. They said the ideal was on paper only but might be met within a couple of years, and it seems that is now the case when I look at newer TB3 HDD drives, and that they are now price-comparable with USB3 HDD drives (which is now on the way out) or cheaper. 

I'm not going to experiment with the internal drive as it identifies itself as an HDD under system specs, so I doubt any sector of that "hybrid drive" really and truly behaves (performance-wise at least) like a real SSD.

I'll check TB3 SSD drive prices and capacities after my rehearsal tonight, and place an order. At least 2 TB for sure, and way more if the price scaling isn't exponential and is instead rewarding vs. punitive.

Hi mbrylka, 

Thanks for your detailed report.

The best idea with specific troubles/requests is to contact us directly via support@vsl.co.at, this way you will get the fastest answer from one of our team members. 

Of course I'm already checking what could cause this. 

BTW: Forum language is english, and we're doing our best to stick to that. 

Best, 
Paul

Hi Markus,

A new version of Synchron Pianos, 1.1.1127, is already available!

That should work now!

Best,
Paul

I installed the new version from today immediately and.... 


IT WORKS NOW !!!!

what a great support, no fear of blurps again, the engine keeps working, many many thanks. :-)

Kind regards, Markus

Synchron Pianos isn't allowing me to select multiple keys in the edit window. Only one at a time. Am I doing something wrong or is this by design? Thanks.

God Bless,

David

Hi David, 

Thanks for your input! Seems like you discovered a bug there, Shift drag should add notes to the selection. 

We will have that fixed with the next update. 

Best,
Paul

@Paul said:

Hi David, 

Thanks for your input! Seems like you discovered a bug there, Shift drag should add notes to the selection. 

We will have that fixed with the next update. 

Best,
Paul

Something else I noticed and I'm not sure if this is by design is that the individual note Dynamic Range in the edit window starts at 100% and goes down to 0, but not up to 150 like the Global Dynamic Range does. So with individual notes you can only increase the intensity and not decrease the intensity. 

Of course the Dynamic Range decreases the higher you go and the individual note range can't be decreased at all. Thanks for the help. 

God Bless,

David

Hi David!

This is Konrad, part of the development team. Thank you for paying close attention and reporting right back to us! This is very valuable information :-)

Both things you noticed are actually by design:

Note selection: We changed that from previous versions, so you can only select multiple notes when holding down the Shift modifier. This has the advantage that without holding any modifier you can actually play the on board keyboard. This wasn't possible before actually. 

Dynamic Range per note: There are two values that need to be considered there as you already noticed. The global value and the per note value. The value that is applied depends on both settings. Those two values are multipled to yield the final result. So ...

• If the global value is set to 100% , but the key value is at 50%, the resulting dynamic range will be 50%.
• If the global value is set to 50% and the per key value is also set to 50%, the resulting value will be 25%. 
• If one of the values is set to 0%, the resulting value will also be 0%

So if you want one note to have a range of 150%, set the global value to 150%, and the note value to 100%. If you want another key to be at 100% again, set that key's value to 66%  (while still having 150% applied to the global setting).

When thinking about it, we should probably make that behaviour more clear in a future update.

I hope this clears things up a bit. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

All the best!

Konrad

@Another User said:

Dynamic Range per note:...When thinking about it, we should probably make that behaviour more clear in a future update.

Yeah, I would agree. It's not very intuitive the way it's currently setup. 

The biggest problem I'm having with the Steinway is that the midi sensitivity is way too high at "0." It's like I'm banging on the keys when playing normal. It's too harsh for my ears. However, when I bring the midi sensitivity down to something that is tolerable "-25," then I lose the dynamic range of the piano when I do want to play loud and it ends up being neutered. The CFX doesn't have this problem. The midi sensitivity with that is fine for soft, normal, and loud paying.

Is there anyway to change the midi sensitivity on the Steinway so it's more like the CFX with the next Synchron Piano update? Thanks for the help.

God Bless,

David 

I can't get the pans to work in Logic. Is there a fix on the way?

Hi antcarrier, 

Which version of Synchron Pianos, which OS, which version of Logic? 

Please include a quick screenshot that shows what you are changing... keep in mind that there is a reverb on top of the mix (on the right side of the mixer). 

Best, 
Paul

@Paul said:

Hi antcarrier, 

Which version of Synchron Pianos, which OS, which version of Logic? 

Please include a quick screenshot that shows what you are changing... keep in mind that there is a reverb on top of the mix (on the right side of the mixer). 

Best, 
Paul

I have emailed support. Thanks Paul.

Running Synchron Pianos in Digital Performer 9.5 on macOS Mojave 10.4.2, if I have multiple instances of the plug-in, the status bar at the bottom is the same for all, which is kind of weird.

For instance, if I load the Steinway on one, and then the Yamaha on the other, the status bar on the Steinway instance updates to match the Yamaha instance, and vice-versa, regarding number of active voices and memory/samples.

This is with the latest Synchron Pianos update from a few days ago.

Also, certain focus events when going from other apps back to the DAW, cause either a reload or an update of the status bars (simultaneously, ending up matching the one that currently has mouse focus).

It is hard to know if it is actually reloading samples now that I have finished my careful incremental upgrades of macOS to Mojave, internal RAM (now 64 gB) and external storage (now a 2 TB SSD), as everything is so fast now.

But at least the two instances properly maintain the correct settings and piano reference.

Or maybe not, as I noticed just now that the Play page refreshes on the other instance to match the one currently given the mouse focus, so when you go back to it later, the settings are wrong and you have to reload your preset.