Why there are no VST with Kawai samples?

HeartKeys When I tell folks about Kawai, they have no idea.

We all live in different environments, have different friends and networks, but for folks who have no pianos, have no interest in pianos, within my world, almost none know about Kawai and most all know about Steinway and Yamaha.

By “know” I mean whether they’ve heard of it… that said they seldomly know of any other brands either.

This is coming from me, who owns a Kawai, so it’s fair to say I’m not being biased here I certainly wish Kawai was more known and renowned.

johnstaf Steinway is a famous brand. Kawai isn't a high-profile brand amongst the non-piano-playing public. Steinway is more like Fender.

Gombessa I think the enthusiast digital piano market skews heavily in favor of Kawai (when you consider the multitude of acoustic piano makers, AND the digital makers who just offer an unnamed Steinway sample/reference), and because of that, many more digital players know of and appreciate Kawai, and would love a high quality SK-EX VST.

Agreed. And, it’s their acoustics I was referencing when I spoke about Kawai’s market hold. In the digital world, Kawai is a power player. In the acoustic world, they’re solid…but they haven’t yet caught up to that name-recognition/household-name status of Steinway and Yamaha. And because VSTs tend to be aimed at capturing acoustic instruments, then naturally the most popular acoustic instruments would be the ones to get sampled.

Interestingly, I think Kawai could catch up to the other brands, but I think their main issue is two-fold: a lack of wholistic focus on their prestige/history/legacy and a lack of a centralized identity.

Sadly, for better of or worse, the acoustic piano world is heavily focused on “prestige” - whether real or manufactured. If you don’t have the omnipresence of a Steinway or Yamaha, you need to lean into the factors that makes your brand special. Bosendorfer, Bechstein, Bluthner, and many others did it for years - focusing on posturing themselves as the savoir-vivre/cognoscenti’s piano, leaning into their history, nationalistic overtones, unique colors/tones/timbres/woods/methods/blah, blah, blah lol. Kawai really only seems to do this these days with the Shigeru Kawai line. Meanwhile, their regular main Kawai line - the one they push the most - seems to have been relegated to averageness. The regular Kawai website seems looks plain and bland, like a Target website. Their in-person advertising is equally tepid.

Also, for many years, most of the piano brands kept everything under a single names. They separated the levels of their instruments via model names and numbers (e.g.Model D vs Model A, CFX versus GC, 290 Imperial versus 200). Even with Yamaha, another piano maker who also does digitals, everything is centralized - there’s just plain Yamaha. You want luxury, you got CFX. You don’t, you go GBK1. With their digitals, same difference: luxury is Avantgrands, top of the line is Clavinova, then there’s everything else. But the pride, prestige, & the name recognition of the Yamaha brand, still carries regardless and is central on everything. Meanwhile, with Kawai, there’s K. Kawai (for Koichi the father) but only on their grands, there’s plain old Kawai on their digitals and uprights, and both these lines seem to lean into plainness with how they are marketed. Then there’s the luxury Shigeru Kawai brand which gets all the prestige, but has a completely different logo (that doesn’t even look like Kawai). They roll out the red carpet for that line, but the other Kawai lines are kinda meh. There’s even some slightly confusing overlap with the naming, as there are plain EXs, but also SK-EXs. It’s too much.

I’d love this to be centralized.

Just make it plain old Kawai. Or combine the two: Koichi Shigeru KAWAI. Something. But they need a central brand and a central identity. And the entire brand needs to be wrapped up in history, prestige, and beauty. Look at how Bosendorfer associates themselves with Vienna, and using the finest Austrian wood, and being the heart of the Viennese people and ties itself deeply to the culture. Sad as it is, the classical worlds eats things like that up. I’d love a centralized Kawai that leans into that, too. Build the mythos. Tell me the wood is straight from the forests of Mount Fuji . Hype up the story and mythos around the entire brand, the history, the culture, and the prestige, the way they do with the SK line. And, of course, start throwing some instruments at the competition circuit and the concert halls, the way the other brands do.

The top instruments need to be slathered with the same luxury and prestige they reserve for the SK line. And start pitching them with the same pretentiousness the other brands use lol. And of course, there would be the lower-tier and affordable models. But do it how the other brands do it: get you in their dealer house with their prestigiousness, and if you can’t afford their $200,000 instrument, they take you into the separate rooms with the mid-tier, entry-level, uprights, and digitals. In that way, they maintain the “prestige” factor, but still don’t lose out on all customers.

Pantonality What do you mean no Kawai VIs. This one's kinda new and a bit spendy, but the demos I've heard are universally excellent.
https://premiersoundfactory.com/piano-premier-kawai-legend/

I shouldn't be too hard on you, I asked the same question on another forum: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/shigeru-kawai-sk-ex-anything.146761/
That thread has grown to 9 pages and referenced a number of Kawai virtual instruments, including the one referenced above.

Steve

Great point.

I think it’s more fair to say “there aren’t many Kawai VSTs”, and/or, there aren’t as many as the VSTs for the other, more well-known brands.

There’s definitely some. They just don’t get the kind of attention or have the kind of numbers as, say, a Steinway or Yamaha centered VST.

dore_m Let me provide a different perspective.... I just started selling my piano libraries, and guess which one (by far) sells the best? Steinway. Does the Yamaha sell well? Yes, it sells, but not nearly like the Steinway. Does the Bosendorfer sell? Yes, but not nearly like the Steinway. Name recognition is extremely important, and I think Kawai, in terms of name recognition, ranks behind those three - so no one spends time to promote them.

Great context from an actual VST maker. And I think the same trend seems to play out with other VST makers as well.

Taushi

Kawai’s logo/ font also does a disservice to its quality, from an eyeball test. It looks worse than generic to me. I’d also say some other fonts, such as C. Bechstein also look generic, but their gold color looks excellent, as well as that crown thing.

And Yamaha’s font is pretty bland as well but it’s also gold and the logo looks pretty cool to me. At least compared to Kawai’s nonexistent one

WieWaldi The Premier Sound factory library I referenced above is a very professional VI being sold for pretty serious money ($250 ain't bargain basement pricing) and it incorporates some technologies that are unique and extend midi technology. It's sampled at 96 kHz 24 bit and a "key striking device" was used in the sampling process. There is also a process to exceed the maximum velocity wall (midi velocity of 127). I have copied in text from the web site that explains this is more detail.

"As you know the maximum velocity of the standard MIDI is 127. However, if the sound of a real piano played with full force is assigned to 127, it may frequently occur depending on the type of MIDI keyboard, resulting in a strangely stiff and unnatural piano sound. On the other hand, if “moderate strength” is assigned to 127 in anticipation of this, you will feel like you need a stronger touch, especially in classical music.

KAWAI Legend proudly cleared this problem. Regardless of the keyboard, if it has aftertouch after detecting a keystroke of velocity 127, our patented Velocity+ (VelocityPlus) feature engages a new functionality that effectively achieves a new maximum velocity of 254(127+127). This is done by detecting an overflow of velocity intensities of 127 by aftertouch (within 20 msec) and replaces the original 127 velocity sound with an extremely natural “limit-breaking sound” which is played according to the overflow degree. This product is equipped with three additional limit-breaking velocity layers after exceeding 127. It is also possible to monitor the value of Velocity+ in real-time.

I don't own this library yet, but the demos sound extraordinary. I plan to acquire this at some point and hope there may be a Black Friday sale. At $250 it costs more than the Garritan CFX but with the extra velocity layers it could easily be worth it.

Steve

WieWaldi I am not involved in any way with Premier Sound Factory. I asked them about the extended velocity feature. It uses the after touch signal to bring in the additional velocity layers within a matter of about 20 milliseconds, but I didn't ask if the feature was polyphonic. 20 milliseconds is plenty fast given the complexity of a piano's sound envelope. My guess as to why this wasn't done earlier is the requirement for Kontakt 6. I don't honestly know but suspect the capability was added in that product release. I have Kontakt 6 but none of the libraries I own requires it. Regarding the demos I would suggest going to the VI-Control thread I referenced above because a number of folks there bought the library and produced recordings that exceed what the company itself was capable of. I don't know the reason why that would be, it just is. Whether the library is worth the price they're asking I don't know, as I said above I'm waiting for a Black Friday or other sale because I don't really need another piano library. I respect Kawai and have played and greatly enjoyed some Shigerus (SK7 being the biggest) but not a SK-EX.

Gombessa The StudioLogic Numa X GT also does channel aftertouch, IIRC. I would love to see a premium hammer action controller with polyphonic aftertouch, but I'm not holding my breath.

Who wants to wait 20 milliseconds for the VST to choose a velocity?

Rob Ok, not premium, but the Komplete Kontrol S88 Mk3 meets those requirements.

I know, it's so close! If they do this with a premium action I might consider ditching my CP88.

johnstaf Who wants to wait 20 milliseconds for the VST to choose a velocity?

Good question. I wondered if it would start immediately with the 127 velocity sample and crossfade to the AT samples after 20 ms, but if it's a global delay before initial sample playback, that would be a no-go for me. Too bad there's no trial available.

Gombessa It starts with the 127 max velocity, and then swaps it out real-time after 20ms with a 128, 129 or 130 velocity sample.

It's another thing that kind of feels like a kludge. Will it work?

The attack phase is very important in the perception of timbre. I think something like Pianoteq could be very good if they used sample attacks.

Gombessa And not to dogpile, but typically the highest velocity of 127 is supposed to be a crashing, unmusical fivetissimo anyways; one that a pianist would not normally play except for the absolute most strident, violent strikes. So if you have a velocity 127 sample, and need 3 additional velocities above that, you might as well have made the 127 a velocity-120 strike instead, and placed the additional three velocities at 123, 125, 127.

Definitely. On my FP90 it's quite difficult to reach 127, just like it's difficult to max out an acoustic. I like the way VSL samples the fffff levels.

johnstaf I think something like Pianoteq could be very good if they used sample attacks.

Absolutely, hearkening back to Roland's old SuperNatural Piano - sampled attack, modeled decay/resonance.

Come to think of it, I think some people have done exactly that - use a sampled piano for the initial attack, and blend in PTQ for the resonance/decay.

Gombessa It starts with the 127 max velocity, and then swaps it out real-time after 20ms with a 128, 129 or 130 velocity sample.

It's another thing that kind of feels like a kludge. Will it work? Dunno, maybe. It would be easy to test with a MIDI script - strike a note at velocity 50, have it play the 50 velocity as well as a muted strike at velocity 60-70, and then 20ms later mute the velocity-50 strike and mix in the velocity-60 one. Can you notice a difference? Is it unnatural to have the extra volume/bloom come in a fraction of a second later? I have no idea. But I do recall enough people complaining about the sample volume increasing on the old AvantGrands when the sustain pedal is pressed, so I suspect that at least some people may notice the effect.

And not to dogpile, but typically the highest velocity of 127 is supposed to be a crashing, unmusical fivetissimo anyways; one that a pianist would not normally play except for the absolute most strident, violent strikes. So if you have a velocity 127 sample, and need 3 additional velocities above that, you might as well have made the 127 a velocity-120 strike instead, and placed the additional three velocities at 123, 125, 127.

I came for the explanation, but stayed for "fivetissimo".

This is very interesting.

Would we notice the volume increase after 20 ms? Some people say they can't hear delays under a second, but others can. I'm in the latter camp. And for others who can hear those delays, would it, indeed, sound like that unnatural blooming people complained about with the Avantgrands? Because that wouldn't be ideal.

And with those super violent loud strikes, the sound doesn't really get louder or more violent after the initial strike - it blooms and changes timbre slightly, but not in a way that would require a sound louder or more strident than the initial sound. It's the initial crash that's somewhat unnatural - everything after that is just the blooming of sound - and that part sounds rather natural. So, I'm not fully understanding the logic.

I think the developer should've really given an example of what this means. I find a lot of developers are doing this very impressive technical jargon lately, that doesn't really translate sensibly when taken as stated, and sometimes is just a flashy restatement of a very typical/common feature.

I also wonder if saving these super high velocities for only when you've pressed 127 with a strong aftertouch ...is why their instrument has been accused of having a limited high dynamic range that seems to top out at just forte. And that may be true, if they're saving all the highest velocities for this particular circumstance.

Sure, you don't want your fff samples kicking in at 100...BUT, conversely, you also don't want your ff samples to only kick in after 127 AND a requisite of aftertouch.

johnstaf Definitely. On my FP90 it's quite difficult to reach 127, just like it's difficult to max out an acoustic. I like the way VSL samples the fffff levels.

Agreed. I've owned at least five different DPs since 2020, and not one of them let me get to 127 with ease. Even when I felt I was about to put my hand through the keybed, I was still barely at 120. So, who are these people whose instruments just reach 127 with ease, lol.

Also, I agree that VSL samples fff/ffff very well. While, with every other VST I've used, I have to alter the velocity curve to make it easier to reach 127 so I can get the highest, most strident velocities, with VSL, I always kept 127 as the highest velocity, because I never really needed to go that high. Their highest velocities, were, in fact, just like karate-chopping the piano - something you would never do in normal practice and never use. Where VSL sometimes drops the ball on their p-ppp range, they can never be accused of skimping on the f-ffff range.

After reading through this thread, I think this new feature can only be tuned to a very limited set of keyboard controllers. That's a very narrow group, so why bother? It's an interesting proposition, but even if all controllers had polyphonic aftertouch, they'd be calibrated differently anyway, and there would be no consistency in implementing this feature.

We ALREADY have problems that need personal fine tuning via custom velocity curves - adding this feature worsens that problem IMHO