The Sound Board

SonicCouture have updated their Hammersmith Steinway and the library now also includes two generative tools (not unlike what you find in a.o. Noire).

Me, I never clicked with the original Hammersmith. It's been years since I played it, but I do recall it had a lovely pianissimo and a strong fortissimo but in between those two extremes, everything sounded sort of samey to my ears, despite the 21 velocity layers. However, the new demos seem to indicate that things have improved quite a bit in the new version. I'm downloading.




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Piet, do you know if they also updated the LE version?
EDIT: just checked, yes they have.
If you don't mind, do you think upgrading to Pro makes a big difference? I see I can do it for 49$, seems like a good opportunity.

I've been spending some time with it today and ... I'm afraid I still don't like it very much. I'll post an audio example tomorrow, Rob, cause I can't describe with any useful accuracy all that's bothering me while playing this instrument.

As far as I'm concerned: I'll be soon moving this update to where the previous version of this library resided: my graveyard HD.
But first a few audio examples.

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hahaha the graveyard drive! Genius

I confess that after listening to the video I still find the timbre cold, thin and honestly not attractive

RobS wrote: ↑Mar 13, 2026 2:00 pm (...) cold, thin and honestly not attractive.

The very words, Rob.
Here's a few minutes with it. Very likely the last ones I spent with it.

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thank you Piet, I always love your improvisations... as for the tone, it sounds like there's a hi-pass filter on everything. Like they took away all the warmth and emotion from the sound. I won't update at this point, thanks for helping me decide.

I agree, they made a few strange decisions when processing/finalizing the Hammersmith content. The audio generated by this library also sounds very compressed at times to my ears, and that must be coming from the samples, because I didn't use any compression or limiting at all.

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