It’s not a world away from Classic, though, just another flavour. Subjectively the player may feel there’s more to immediately ‘dig into’ here.
As to whether ‘contemporary’ is a code word for ‘pop/rock’, well, possibly. It combines an interesting AKG C12 & D19 close pickup with Schoeps MK2H room mics. Contemporary: A slightly fuller, more focused and ballsy sound.
There’s clarity, weight and immediacy across a wide dynamic range. You’d hope that mics of that value would produce a great sound, and thankfully they do, with what is quite frankly a stunning piano capture.
Oh, and CFX Concert Grand is big! A mere 16GB installer package spawns a whopping 132GB of samples after decompression, offering every note of the piano sampled full-length at many dynamic levels. Close and ambient feeds can be mixed together and EQ’d in various combinations, with a convolution reverb on hand for even more options. Thirdly, there’s flexibility in the form of multiple audio ‘perspectives’, derived from some tasty mic arrays.
Secondly, there’s an endorsement: Abbey Road Studio One was used for the sessions. With almost identical appearance when running as a plug-in or stand-alone app, CFX Concert Grand’s interface is based around five main pages, with the keyboard, pitch parameters and mixer common to all of them.Firstly, they’ve gone for originality: the single piano that’s been sampled, a nine-foot Yamaha CFX grand, has rarely (if ever) been sampled before. So with CFX Concert Grand (which I’m going to henceforth call ‘CFX’) Garritan have taken a multi-pronged approach. It’s tough for virtual pianos to stand out in what is a very crowded marketplace, especially when mature products like Synthogy’s Ivory have become almost industry standards. There had previously been the Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano, but that’s now discontinued, and what’s on test here is an entirely new product. Garritan’s latest library raises the bar for virtual piano instruments.ĬFX Concert Grand is the first dedicated piano instrument that Garritan have released since being bought by MakeMusic Inc, the developers of the notation app Finale, at the end of 2011.