Review: Piano V Virtual Instrument by Arturia

After we’ve checked the new organs (B3 V and Farfisa V) from the new Arturia‘s V Collection 5, now, lets move on and check some of the cool features in the new Piano V virtual instrument.

This new addition is so cool and so unexpected (at least to me), that I don’t know where to begin with. First of all, this is some serious modeling!

We’ve got two main sections in this virtual instrument in order to shape the sound. The first one is “Action”, and here, you can select the Piano tuning, which basically lets you choose from different types of grand and upright pianos.

There’s the Classic Upright, the Concert Grand, the Glass Grand, Intimate Grand, Jazz Upright, Metal Grand, Piano Bar Upright, Pop Grand and Pop Upright to choose from. Below that, you can go deeper in the sound generation process and tweak some parameters like the strings global tension (that’s the tuning), the dynamic range and hardness of the hammer, hammer position, unison detune (strings for individual notes detuned once against each other) and stretch tuning.

You can easily create a honky-tonk piano from a concert grand by just tweaking a couple of knobs.

You can add real-world noises like pedal noise, hammer noise and key release noise, and also fine-tune some of the piano mechanics like the lid position and the soundbar resonance, so, you can really shape the tone with some adjustments. Also, in this section, you can adjust the velocity curve so the dynamics really match your controller and your playing.

Next, there’s the Mix page, and here, you can change the mic setup from A/B to A/B studio, X/Y close, and X/Y studio for the grands, and A/B, Decca-tree and Hybrid for the Uprights. In Each case, you’ve got four mics: 2 close mics and 2 room mics. You can go deeper with the built-in mixer that lets you adjust pan, volume, and mute individual mics.

Next you’ve got some unbelievable room modelling with quite a few options: Abandoned Warehouse, Acoustic Concert Hall, Classic Concert Hall, Glass Room, Home Studio, Jazz Room, Large Studio, Modern Hardware, Piano Concert Hall, Resonant Recital Hall, Small Piano Room, Sweet Large Space, Sweet Plate and Wooden Room. Pretty much all recording scenarios are covered here. Of course, you might wanna keep tweaking the room, so, there are controls for Dry/ Wet, Room Size, Duration, and Decay.

Finally, you’ll find the master section with a 3-band EQ and a gain output stage. As you’d expect, you can use the MIDI learn function for, almost every knob and pedal.

Now, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars for an awesome Piano recording. This has your options pretty much covered!

Piano V from Arturia is available as a Standalone and also as VST 2.4 (32-bit and 64-bit), VST 3 (32-bit and 64-bit), AAX (32 bits with PT 10.3.8, 64 bits with PT 11), Audio Unit (32-bit and 64-bit) plugin format.

Download Link: Piano V | V Collection 5

Update: Arturia V Collection 6 Released!

[author image=”https://www.producerspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/piggy-sounds-logo.jpg” ]Rafael Hofstadter is a recording and mixing engineer and sound designer with 10+ years experience in playing and programming synths, recording, mixing and producing pop/rock/folk albums. He also runs piggysounds.com.[/author]