CFX Concert Grand, Yamaha’s hand-built $180,000 hand-built piano, is slated to become the finest instrument made.
The story of this grand piano began when Mirek Stiles decided to sample one at Abbey Road. He called on Garritan to join forces with him. The staff of Abbey Road selected the miking techniques and supervised the recording session. Garritan transformed the recordings into a software tool. Stiles and Garritan captured every sonic detail of the piano in Abbey Road Studio One.
The CFX Concert Grand contains AAX, AU, RTAS, and VST plug-ins and also works as a standalone application. Simply run the installer, select between full (122GB) or compact (24.5GB) content, register online, and save the activation file on your desktop. As there is insufficient information on using the software on the included brochure, you should refer to the user’s manual.
CFX provides three sets of virtual mic setups called perspectives. To capture each one, engineers used tow mic kits—one close to the piano and the other in the room to capture ambience. The Classic setup is the most detailed and is an excellent choice for solo performance. The Contemporary is the brightest and plays best with others. The Player perspective offers the best feeling of actually sitting at the piano in Studio one.
In addition, it has five views that allows sharing controls for loading perspectives, changing mic levels and panning, as well as specifying keyboard parameters. A pop-up menu will help you choose between Full or Compact versions of all three perspectives, determining CFX’s impact on computer resources. Thirty two excellent presets are copied for each version. The knobs and sliders are responsible for controlling stereo width as well as the balance between close and ambient mics. It allows fine tuning pitch, transposing by semitones and octaves, and choosing from a dozen tuning standards.
In the Piano view, knobs are supplied for pedal noise, sympathetic and sustain resonance, and release volume, crossfade, and decay. It also has options for choosing lid positions. Duplicating the sympathetic string vibration of an acoustic piano can prove to be difficult for any digital piano. The sympathetic response of the software provides realistic response to your playing and is available in Compact and Full versions.
The Studio view offers controls for the integrated convolution reverb. Impulse responses include concert halls, rackmount hardware, and an underground cave. It also offers three bands of EQ for close and ambient microphones and a saturation effect that impacts harmonic texture.
With Advanced view, you can edit, save, and load velocity curves. Likewise, you can determine the range between the softest and loudest notes and select from 15 included temperaments, import additional temperaments, and dial in stretch-tuning adjustments. CFX Concert Grand can load MIDI files directly to standalone version. There are buttons below each view that allows transport of functions and recording of a WAV file of your performance. To convert MIDI files to WAV files using the current piano sound, just select Render Offline.
For the ultimate live sound, CFX is the closest experience to playing an acoustic piano compared to other software or digital hardware in the market. CFX Concert Grand provides superb sounds at both ends of the tonal spectrum—bright and dark. Offering much control over mic placement and stunningly natural reverb, it can become the piano of choice.
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