« Lightweight, versatile  »

Native Instrument's New York Concert Grand is their standard sampled piano, that comes with their Komplete instrument line. Individually, it is a great sampled piano, with contemporary sounds, that work wonderfully with pop and modern music. The samples are stereo, and it is recorded with multiple velocities: a must for any professional, quality piano sound. Also, the samples here aren't ridiculously big like they made be with Ivory or other professional digital libraries; a couple hundred megabytes of data is all that is necessary here. Native Instruments does a great job with their samplers, of realizing high quality, high-memory sound, but not overdoing the samples, keeping the synths relatively lightweight, and very versatile. They work great live, like on my MacBook Pro, which I use for live shows for my band. The piano sounds great there, and it doesn't tax my computer's resources at all.

The New York Concert grand synth runs inside Kontakt 4 or Kontakt 5, and it includes a few great parameters that you can adjust. The tuning can be adjusted, from over 8 different specific tunings, including stretch, equal, pure, and harmonic. I personally don't have a preference for these, but some pianos are tuned slightly off from the true tunes, and this option lets you modify that. There is also a control for the resonance during sustain, noise controls for the keys and sustain pedal, and you can even move the lid position. You can also adjust how dynamic the output volume of the piano is, essentially acting as an internal compressor without actually compressing. This is great for my live shows, when I want to send the house a relatively constant volume of piano, but without the artifacts of using an actual compressor.

Overall, this is a great, versatile piano sampler that any modern musician can use. Be sure to check it out!