dafduc said:
Not a fan of the HALion grand. And what's this about new software, end of 2003? That doesn't sound promising. Got a price? Seems definitely aimed for the home crowd, with sequencing, rhythm, karaoke (eesh!), etc. And no mention of sample rate / bit rate.
Plus it's Wersi. Those guys are weird.
Longer recital about Wersi
We are agreed about particular quirkiness of Wersi.
But I'm glad they do exist. In fact, it makes me happy that with GEM such parallel development exist and are making their own technologies.
Back in 1991 when Wersi Grand Piano came out. Everyone at the best was struggling with 24/32 voices (synthesizers). And this Grand came with 64 voices!
Like GEM over the years they climbed with such polyphonies that today only soft gadgets (PC/Mac) are capable of. I've tried that piano, and it was really way better then anything offered those days. In terms of resonance and control it was the most realistic simulation I've heard that year.
If you check those demonstrations I've posted about
Promega3 there is very concrete technical reasons why for example they offer one notch more realistic digital piano than competition. Clearly, domain away from just making importance to quality of samples, much more extended in nature of piano as instrument itself.
I've had short presentation of
Wersi Louvre
My cheesy 80's nostalgia forces me to link this live video demo - although it belongs to present decade - somehow reminds me of 80's :
Louvre (2.7MB)
But, seriously, it is dangerously powerful machine. I would like to see anyone who wouldn't like to spend a few hours toying with this fun.
As for the latest GigaPiano, wont claim anything until I have chance to play this piano. Those samples + virtual modeling + Wersi = who knows?
All those soft pianos sound good and great at times. But when I compared them to my own best samples for EMU/Akai/Kurzweil most of them become not so special. But I must admit, B290 sample is really something special.
I've omitted the German site because I thought would be problem for others to read details.
Wersi homepage
From what I've heard, they do offer latest upgrades (OS) but since I'm very little involved with Wersi, really can't say to what extent. If you check the groups about concrete instruments, you would hardly find anything. They are very closed about their technology, which is not rare case of that industry.
I expected not many people would even post, save alone share their experience about Wersi. From what I see their marketing in states is very dimmed. Stories from users are also very contradictive. Some offer only the praise and would never think of any brand, while others mention arrogant and nonexistent support (no mail replies, returning calls)
Price of GigaPiano is not too pricey.
You can list prices for most of the models here :
prices
Just for your own health's sake, try not to look at price of :
SCALA GS 700 
