In the last months I had the opportunity to test different pianos on different hardware:

Yamaha Motif:

Concert Grand, S6, S700, CP1, Epic Grand, Kawai EX…

Korg Kronos pianos

Roland pianos

Montage pianos

Ivory Grand
Ivory American D

Ravenscroft 275

Addictive keys

Summary:

The Yamaha Motif pianos are good, but they have reached an age. Nevertheless, you can achieve good results with different settings.

The new keyboards such as Korg Kronos, Yamaha Montage, Roland etc. have a completely new generation of pianos, certainly also due to the good hardware filters and the elaborate samples.

However, I like the Piano libraries from Ivory and UVI the best, which are ultimately very balanced in the MIX. The libraries are also excellent for the solo pianists because they use high quality and balanced samples.

For certain specific styles with an organic and characteristic sound, the piano library from Addictive Keys would be also sufficent.

Finally, one can say that the tastes are very different.

Once an adepter said that the musical instrument only sounds as good as you play it and thing this is true.

Wish everyone a happy new year !

Wolfgang T. - 27 December 2019 03:12 PM

However, I like the Piano libraries from Ivory and UVI the best, which are ultimately very balanced in the MIX. The libraries are also excellent for the solo pianists because they use high quality and balanced samples.

Ivory 2 has a minimum hard drive space requirement of 22GB.  So with at least 22GB of samples, Ivory is going to sound more detailed than most.  Workstations can’t compete.

You’re comparing apples and oranges by comparing various workstation pianos with luxurious VST multi sampled pianos.

Does anybody know the actual size of piano waveforms in the motif?  I bet they are tiny by comparison, and from that, you get very usable piano voices.

As for fitting pianos in a mix, that depends on everything else in your mix, and how you mix.  That’s a totally subjective thing mix by mix and person by person.

Whatever works for you, is great, for you.

For those who want to work within the MOX/MOXF, here’s a support article on tweaking piano sound:
http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/learning_to_customize_a_piano_sound

(Similar information for XS/XF users is here:
http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/learning_to_customize_piano_voices_to_your_playing_style)