Nord User Forum

EDIT:

For me, an indie/ambient/folk type (favorite bands: Azure Ray, Ida, Copeland, Daughter, Ingrid Michaelson, etc)... I think the Black Upright is my favorite (used to be Queen Upright). That, Studio Grand 2, Rain and Blue Swede are the ones, I think. The Grand Upright is also incredibly impressive, and a perfect mix of an upright sound with grand clarity.

I don't use most of the Grands as much... Lady D is really nice but I keep going back to the Studio Grand, Imperial or Velvet... also the Bright Grand is perfect for live use. The Uprights though... man... they're definitely it.

I do a lot of home studio stuff, and all those pianos sound great through a crappy set of Behringer MS16s, or a decent 2.1 computer speaker set with subwoofer... I never use EQ... they all sound great without it (recorded, or through a pair of JBL EON612's).

What do you guys think of the newest pianos? Royal Grand, Italian, Bambino, etc?

Royal Grand is the pick of them IMO. More character and transparency. Plays beautifully on my NP3
Next are Italian,Velvet and Grand Upright

The new Royal Grand is nice, and the Italian and Silver are great too. But I keep coming back to the Bösendorfer Imperial (in L version as I find this a bit smoother than XL), this is still my favourite for solo piano. (With others, this is an entirely different story, and depends a lot on amplification.)

Grand Imperial is my favorite. XL, with String Res and Room reverb at 5. The Fazzioli is too 'happy' for me, don't know how else to describe it. Sometimes Silver Grand for something like Billy Joel (more of a 'stage' sound). I don't use the EQ settings, and listen through either Ultrasone Pro 900 headphones or JBL LSR 305 monitors.

I wasn't sure I would like this new Royal Grand since it was sampled differently from the others using what appears to be a HATS system with dual mic, but WOW the S6 sounds fantastic!

Definitely sounds better than my CP1's S6, and more expressive. I think this is my favorite piano now. I use the Studio2 (C7) and LadyD often in my playing. I am not much of a Fazioli fan as I don't like piano's that have sort of a banjo sound in the mid-range. Long time ago when I tried those synthentic modeled virtual piano's from Synthopia(? was it?) I hated the sound.