Ivy Audio has informed me that their fantastic Piano in 162 free sample library is now also available in SFZ format, in addition to the previously released NI Kontakt version of the instrument.
Piano in 162 contains over 5 GB of audio samples featuring the sounds of a Steinway Model B grand piano. It’s one of the best sounding free piano sample collections around and it’s great to see that it now also works in freeware instruments such as sforzando (included in our list of the best free plugins from 2013) and Zampler. The library was previously available for use in Kontakt 5 only and the freeware Kontakt Player was not supported.
See also: Free Piano Sample Libraries!
The SFZ version of the library is virtually identical to the previous release, except for the fact that it contains SFZ patches. Keep in mind that opening such a huge instrument patch (over 5 GB in size) can cause memory issues on certain machines. Make sure that you test it first before loading the library in an important project that you’re working on.
All the keys have been sampled with two microphone positions, two round robin variations and five velocity layers per note. The result is an impressive and natural sounding sample library which sounds absolutely great when played solo, as well as in the background of an arrangement. The library is completely free to download and use, however you can support Ivy Audio by making a donation helping their future efforts (more info on the product page linked below).
Is Piano in 162 your favorite free piano sample collection? Are there any other free piano instruments which you use regularly? Let me know in the comments section below!
Audio Demo
Check out the Piano in 162 audio demo:
Download
Piano in 162 is available for free download via Ivy Audio (4.6 GB download size, ZIP archive, 24-bit WAV format).
19 Comments
Hinz n Kunz
onWow,
thanks to Ivy Audio for the effort of providing such a sophisticated piano library for free! The demo sounds so great. Please everybody – donate if you can!
Uralb
onCheck out pianobook.co.uk for “The Experience”, a series of large but fantastic sample libraries (up to 7GB recorded from different perspectives with up to 7 layers per key) of Yamaha, Fazioli and Steinway Grand Pianos a.o. Libraries are available in several formats, but as far as I know each one is available for sforzando at least.
Another fantastic (and way smaller) VST Piano is OT-Piano S – very flexible high quality plugin based on the famous Salamander sample library with great UI at 1GB.
The demos sound wonderful. Excellent share, thanks!
Sylvan
onI was waiting for this. Fantastic!
I’m downloading the sfz version via BitTorrent. There are only 2 seeds atm… But speed is much better than direct download for me. I’ll seed as long as I can after completion.
ANACONDA 143
onHELLO,BEDROOMPRODUCERSBLOG.COM
I CANT CONTACT THEM. CAUSE THERES NO CONTACT ON THEIR SITE.
ZARYHM RAIDER COPIED THIS SAMPLE LIBRARY WITHOUT GETTING PERMISSION.
AND HE MAKE IT AS A SOUNDFONT AND PRODUCE IT AS HE MAKE IT OWN.
wow…the demo sounds so sweet.
Rhys
onHey guys,
I’m running a Windows 7 64bit computer with an i5 processor and 16gb RAM, but I can seem to load it into sforzando. Do you have any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
Mark
onI’m not experiencing any difficulty loading this library into sforzando, but I am seemingly unable to get the volume level past roughly 1/2 the full volume of the track volume (in Cubase 7.5). I’ve turned up the volume knob on sforzando to the maximum, but at 1/2 the average volume, there’s no way I could make use of this in a project. any suggestions?
Hi there. Thanks for downloading the library!
I admit the samples are a bit quieter than they probably should be. I left them almost exactly as they were recorded, which maybe wasn’t actually the best idea. If you need more volume, try putting something like an equalizer or compressor on the instrument channel, then using the volume or gain function of that plugin.
Problems like these are why the library is free. I’ve learned a ton in the process of building and distributing this thing, and future libraries will require much less updating and fiddling.
Let me know if you have any other questions or recommendations!
City Dwella
on@Mark
Are you maybe using the Ambience Set of the Samples? The Close Set sounds allright to me, the Ambience one is of course a bit quieter and “darker” sounding. Using it in Cubase 6.5 and I cannot reproduce your complaint.
@Simon
In your Kontakt version from the screenshot it seems like one can mix the Ambience and the Close Samples. Is something like this realizable in SFZ (generally asking) or is this one of those things where SFZ reaches it’s limits? Just curious to know!
Greg P
onFor those with modest memory requirements:
Convert the .flac samples to high quality (~350 kbps) .ogg files (a lossy compressed format supported by sfz).
After converting, the Ambient and Close samples each only take up ~850 MB .
#1. For Flac to Ogg batch conversion (took 1 hour), I used:
SoX
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/files/sox/14.4.1/sox-14.4.1a-win32.zip/download
A. unzip Sox to folder (i.e. Desktop\sox)
B. open cmd prompt in folder containing the sfz mappings (samples are in subfolder(s))
C. at cmd prompt enter: FOR /R %I IN (*.flac) DO c:\Users\greg\sox\sox “%I” -C9 “%~pnI.ogg”
D. Wait a while (~ 45 min?)
#2. Replace all “.flac” entries in both the Ambient and Close sfz mappings to “.ogg”.
#3. Open in plogue Sforzando (or other sfz player) and enjoy with RAM to spare.
-Greg
Juan
onthis is such a brilliant idea. Now i can run either patch without problems on my 4 gb laptop! thank you. I used reaper for converssion but the concept is exactly the same.
olak
onThe SFZ download torrent does not seem to work any more. Any suggestions
danijel kostic
onnow it will work again
danijel kostic
onups, two years later…
ezequiel
onthanks