Personally i prefer NI's The Grandeur and it's only 4.90GB

 

I really like Pianoteq 4/5 as well as 4Front's TruePianos. Very good stuff. Pianoteq is the more expensive of the two. Both have a small size.

 

What might be the best-sounding no-cost grand piano is the Ivy Audio Piano in 162: Kontakt download is 5.7 GB; SFZ d/l is 4.6 GB.
If you like it, you can donate to the developer. He also has good libraries of an acoustic drum kit, a female vocalist, and a trombone.

My favorite commercial grand piano library under 5GB is the NI New York Concert Grand, though The Giant is good, both conventionally and experiementally.

 

With piano degree I understand how piano works, for these size galaxy pianos are real the best

 

emotional piano is my fave. i put some reverb on it and its magic at setting the mood.

 

In no particular order:
Acoustic Samples Academic Grand (Converted to 16 bit=600MB) * Check on Audioz well worth checking out!
Galaxy Vintage D (Converted to 16 bit=2.13GB)
Orange Tree Evolution Rosewood Grand (Converted to 16 bit=3.4GB)
And of course Pianoteq 5.3 (No Conversion needed=Almost 0 GB)

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015

The notes just trail off until oblivion. I am impressed.

 

No such thing as a universally best sounding library, but you certainly wouldn't go wrong with Galaxy Vintage D.

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015

The "Ravenscroft 275" from VILabs is the best piano library on the market ;only 5,72 GB (FLAC format).

My 2 favorites piano :

 

I'm very satisfied with Pianoteq so far. Very versatile, easy to use, great sounding, light on resources and modular.
Only disadvantage - it's quite expensive

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015

Pianoteq is certainly not light on CPU. It's actually pretty bad.

RAM you can buy more.
CPU you can't.

Apart from that it's a really nice library to work a piano part, but I don't find it superior to samples for rendering.

 

You can buy/upgrade CPU, why not?

Actually RAM is the issue . 8GB per module is current maximum (but 16GB DDR4 is the future soon), that means 16GB max for most laptops and 32GB for desktops. Those with socket 2011 can however map 64GB and more, as well as workstation laptops can take 32GB.
But for that you need capable CPU to begin with. Dual-core CPUs in most cases cannot map more than 16GB, quad-core 32GB. Only server CPUs (Xeon) map a lot more, usually up to 192GB

Never had CPU issues myself, however I have to admit, it's pretty bad in multithreading, 95% of the time it's using just single core.

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015

ok... I guess it depends on your project, it's both scarce resources. But if you're running low on CPU or start experiencing CPU overloads in your project, Pianoteq is a no-go whereas say, The Grandeur, runs perfectly well.

 

The thing which I find great with Pianoteq is the ability to tweak the sound until you find what's best for your project.

For samples, you need different libraries. Just one can't do the job.

Currently I am working on a piece similar to 'let it go' from Disney, obviously with extreme dynamics, and I have not been able to use Pianoteq proficiently (apart from CPU issues).

 

That's quite strange approach..
When experiencing CPU issues in a project, it's time to start freezing and unloading, not cutting on your arsenal of piano libraries.
What if in that current instant, Pianoteq is the best choice and you won't use it because of the CPU?

For example when you need sound to travel 500 metres per second

 

Native-Instruments The Grandeur Piano its 4.88 Gb

 

maybe not the best modus operandi agreed. It's probably because I am not a big fan of Pianoteq sound.

Have you tried for long enough (on a project) the Hammersmith ? I think it's now the new king of Steinway libraries (much better than older generation libraries like Ivory or Galaxy).

 

Impact Soundworks PEARL Concert Grand is the best for me but .... 35 gbs :D ... Emotionnal piano is good too

 

decide one and insert valhalla shimmer on it .. tweak and fly