The CD has 12 different versions of the Steinway Grand Piano, 9 regular, for want of a better word and 3 bright variations. On this Roland version the samples come in 32Mb blocks, as that is the limit on the S700 series samplers. So the 128Mb version comes in 4 parts and the 64Mb version in 2, the splits come at g#, so if your piece only called for only notes either side of this you could get away with only only loading in half the samples.

The volumes are as follows:-

32Mb, 64Mb & 128Mb - velocity switched fortissimo & mezzo forte.

16Mb, 32Mb & 64Mb - fortissimo.

16Mb, 32Mb & 64Mb - mezzo forte.

16Mb, 32Mb & 64Mb - bright.

When I loaded up (half anyway) of the 128Mb sample it took me back to my very first sampling experience, a cartridge plugged into the back of a C64, that gave around a second sampling at about 4Mhz, just long enough to do a "boo" and play it back to sound like a grainy Darth Vader or Mickey Mouse, in about 1983 that was considered pretty impressive for a home computer. I think this is then the complete opposite of that experience. The C64 samples were about as poor in quality as you could get, these samples have to be as close to the real thing as is currently possible to get.

For a few years I've considered myself fairly spoiled in the piano sounds department having an Alesis Quadrasynth Plus Piano that has their Piano card built into ROM. Short of a dedicated piano module then that's about as good as you can get for piano sounds, short of the actual thing of course. You know that Quadrasynth "True Stereo" sounds pretty good, or at least it used to. Now there is no way I'm a good enough piano player to do these samples justice so I found a MIDI file and played that instead.

Now if you play the Quadrasynth on its own, its sounds pretty good. That is until you A-B it against these samples. Only then do you realise the quality, clarity, depth of expression, nuances that are possible with this collection of samples. They are simply brilliant, I can't imagine being able to reproduce a better piano sound, simple as that. This is as close to the real thing as you can get. Just sitting there, playing a scale, close your eyes, it just sounds like the real thing.

I also A-B compared against other machines, Kurzweil 2000, Korg M1 & Awe 64, just let me tell you never to call those sorts of piano sounds "realistic". They sound so flat, dull, unresponsive and muddy compared to these samples. It's like taking cotton wool out of your ears. Did I say I was impressed ? Not that these synths are actually bad, they just compare rather badly.

Anyway, the lesser sized volumes I guess are a touch less impressive, very difficult to quantify as the 16Mb versions are still though a whole notch above anything that I could produce on a regular synthesizer and still sound very much like the larger volumes.

The bright volumes, designed to be able to cut through a mix a bit better, may be better suited to non-classical uses or where the piano sound isn't the main focus. Sound, well a bit brighter, not a huge amount, and still of incredible quality.