If you can't haul a Steinway grand piano into your studio apartment (or apartment studio), the next best thing is Garritan's new Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano, Professional Edition software, developed in collaboration with Steinway & Sons, maker of the world's finest pianos.
The music world has long acknowledged the Steinway piano as the benchmark for excellence in engineering and craftsmanship, and Steinway & Sons has recognized the need for a virtual Steinway piano that would come as close as technologically possible to the beauty and complexity of this legendary sound. Steinway & Sons was directly involved in the development of this virtual piano and chose Garritan to accomplish the extraordinary technical and artistic challenge in setting a new standard: a virtual concert grand piano with the unmistakable vibrancy and tone of a true Steinway Model D Concert Grand piano.
The Professional version offers the most features of the superb Authorized Steinway Virtual Piano series and is ideal for professional studio and live use. It offers five different listening perspectives, including a player perspective from the bench, a classical recording perspective, an under-the-lid perspective, a stage perspective and a close audience perspective. The Standard version, which was recently released, offers two perspectives (a Basic version for students will be available soon).
Meeting Steinway's demanding standards in every aspect, the Garritan Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano uses unique technological innovations to provide unequaled realism -- flawless tuning, multiple listening perspectives, complete resonance modeling (both sustain resonance and sympathetic resonance), virtuosic pedaling (damper, una corda and sostenuto), soft pedal samples, multi-stage natural-sounding releases, adjustable-velocity actions, adjustable mechanical noises, historical tunings and Scala file import, MIDI playback and record in standalone, ambience reverb, 3-band EQ, proportional sustain pedaling, Graceful Copy Protection (no dongles or challenge response) and superb responsiveness and playability. This high-end user experience is rounded out with an aesthetically pleasing interface, with simple, user-friendly controls, and presented in beautifully elegant packaging.
Powered by the robust and reliable ARIA Player, the Garritan Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand runs on these platforms: Mac Intel OS X 10.4 and higher and Windows XP/Vista (both 32 and 64 bits), stand-alone and plug-in (VST, Audio Units, RTAS), as well as supported notation programs.
Check out the software in action.
If this gives you shivers (as it did for us), then you may want to visit the official Garritan website. List price for the Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano, Professional Edition is $399.00US.
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