Hi everyone

Which one of the 4 following pianos from Ni you like the most & work with the most in your music?









^
I know all of them are different,just curious at what you're using & like most for your music.

* Friendly rules for this thread :

* Feel free to discuss other Ni pianos if you use them in your tracks,but please not from other companies, not interested

* Feel free to discuss about the GUIs for the above 4 mentioned pianos & their tone/sound of course

* Feel free to link a piano composition/track with any Ni piano you're currently using or from the past.

* If you don't want to participate in the discussion,you can simply vote!

Thank You in advance for your thoughts ,let's discuss !

 

Claire is valid, in front of Noire for sure

 

Hello,

Claire sounds the best to me, it's so much better than Noire. One of my favorite pianos. But I can't really use it, because it has distorted notes on high velocities. Has someone a fix?

Noire was my go to piano for practice when it was released. But somehow it sounds a little muffled and dark, i mean the normal one, not the felt piano.

The Gentleman is one of the best upright pianos to me.

I never liked Una Corda, it's just not my sound.

 

I don't see Grandeur and Maverick, making part of the NI Definitive Piano Collection along Gentleman.

 

Out of these I like Noire the most. Maverick is my choice because while it's not the most hi-fi sounding it's just lively. And maybe because I've had it the longest I'm most used to it.

 

Considering both size and quality, I definitely go with 'The Gentleman' (or even EZKeys, AD Keys). After the awesome Pianoteq, I just can't bring myself to use a library bigger than the one mentioned: It makes no sense to me to waste precious NVMe SSD space on heavier piano libraries

 

I prefer non-NI pianos:

- Fracture Sounds Spotlight Piano
- Fracture Sounds Homestead Piano
- Spitfire Firewood Piano
- Spitfire Intimate Grand
- Glencoe Audio Eilean Flannel Piano
- CineSamples CinePiano
- Midiwood Blüthner Style 6 Pro

I got the access to NI pianos via Komplete, but they never convinced me.
I like their particle options tho.

 

Best Piano VSTs of 2025 (Part 1) – These Will Blow You Away!

Best Piano VSTs of 2025 (Part 2) – Even Better Than the First!

 

I enjoy The Gentleman, and though I can play piano, feel that using big ass instruments like Claire or Noire are reserved for pianists and not a simple country bumpkin like myself who bangs out whatever. I also enjoy the bit warmer tone that I hear in my choice of NI thread offerings.

 

For some reason no NI pianos sound right when I play on my Casio Privia. Something weird about how they programmed the default velocity curves. Changing it makes it sound slightly better, but it never gets the same level of expression I get from something like Imperfect Samples, Pianoteq and VI Labs. Anyone here ever had that problem? It sucks because I love the Fazioli (Claire), and the Imperfect Samples version on the sister site has a nasty bug where it triggers notes randomly at around C4+ if you play that range. I'm thinking about giving Claire a new chance, but I never get any of the NI pianos to sound like the demos.

 

Claire, 100%. For me it sits right in a sweetspot where it's not too much or too little anything for my taste, and it's tweakable enough to change that if i want to.

Also i like Faziolis, and Imperfect samples Ebony was giving me trouble at the time Claire came out, so i jumped right into it.

 

Yes, but backwards. I felt Pianoteq and Imperfect Samples weren't sounding right. I don't have a fully weighted keyboard though, NI keyboards are semi-weighted, maybe their pianos are just set up with that in mind.

Never had that problem, in my case it just started randomly reporting some samples as "missing" even though they were right there. Don't know, maybe it's just buggy.

 

I like to use SoundFonts when I only need one instrument, like a piano, and then play it with a SoundFontPlayer: www.producersbuzz.com/downloads/download-free-soundfonts-sf2/top-18-free-piano-soundfonts-sf2

 

It might be a problem introduced by the Extreme (lite) version, I believe. Which is why I don't believe it's Imperfect Samples fault in this case. If I wasn't fighting for space in my SSD I would just keep the bigger version, but that's a lot of real state for a single (or more like 2) piano.

I think I'll give Claire and Noire a second try, maybe I wasn't too into it when I first tried them and now I'm blaming the library. It just seems to be something that happens often in NI libraries for me, though. Maybe I'll report back later in the day.

 

Absolutely no problem... in fact, using SF2 files for sketching or certain styles of game music (even full soundtracks in genres like 8-bit, retro RPG, minimalist indie, or synthwave) isn’t just sufficient: it can be aesthetically perfect!
It’s like the sound is saying: —'I’m not polished, but I’ve got personality!

I still keep, somewhere within my 28 TB of backups, a large, custom orchestral SF2 library I used up until 2014. It was compiled from various sources (Native Instruments, Project Sam, several Akai instruments, Garritans) and whenever I created mockups in Finale, people would eagerly ask me what samples I was using. I’d say, '—Just SF2s... but carefully curated ones.' The brass section, for example, I compiled and edited myself, layering different articulations to add realism. One time, I did a mockup of the Star Wars Main Titles, just the brass section, and at the end of the playback, everyone asked me to make it available!

But definitely, it's something that's been left in the past. The sound reminded me a lot of GPO5 (edited: in fact, just heard a GPO5 version of the Star Wars Main Theme using GPO5, and yep... my SF2 bank still wins by a mile!!!), and that library was quite large (I remember it put a heavy load on Finale, which would choke on certain passages, especially tuttis!!!) Obviously, that's no longer a benchmark for anything these days!

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2025 at 5:45 PM

it's not the list but I absolutely love the sound of NI ' The Giant" . It sounds bigger than any other..more epic

 

Tried it again, after a bit of work and a very long time resaving the nki, it started playing well. Still need to tweak more until it sounds just right, but I finally can play a NI piano without it sounding super soft and dead. Turns out the S88 mk3 velocity preset gets it almost there, I think the rest of it is adjusting the sound settings.

I can easily say now that Claire really is as impressive as everyone said it is. Lovely tone out of the box.

 

Given the field, ya gotta go with Claire + all the updates.

 

It is, I mean the real thing (Klavins 370) is bigger than any other grand.