Jan 03, 2009  This is a demonstration of the features offered by the Steinberg Grand Piano VST plug in software.

Steinberg's one‑stop piano shop gets an overhaul from the ground up. In the four years since Steinberg released The Grand 2, the virtual piano landscape has been quietly evolving. The primary players in the field — Synthogy's Ivory, Native Instruments' Akoustik Piano and Quantum Leap Pianos — have been leap‑frogging one another for dominance, while The Grand seemed to have fallen off the radar. I personally assumed that Steinberg might have given up the fight altogether and put their piano resources into one of their other top‑selling products, such as Cubase, HALion or Nuendo.

But now, seemingly out of nowhere, Steinberg have released The Grand 3, debunking my theory. It turns out that Steinberg have in no way abandoned their flagship virtual piano suite. Rather, they've been hard at work on an overhaul that sends a clear message to the other virtual piano builders: they're still a contender, and they're making a run for the title.

In the stand‑alone instance, as you can see here, there are additional controls for the metronome, MIDI scratch pad and easy I/O access. The improvements to The Grand 3 are apparent even at a cursory glance: there are now five piano models instead of two, and the library has swollen from 3.4GB to a hefty 32GB. That's not a face‑lift; that's a major reconstruction. Three of the five pianos modelled in The Grand 3 are the Yamaha C7, the Bosendorfer 290 and the Steinway D. These offerings represent the very best in grand pianos and are the same models used in Ivory, QL Pianos, and two of the models in NI's Akoustik Piano. For the composer/producer who doesn't know his Steinway from a fish fillet, think of these as your Stratocaster, Les Paul and Telecaster of grands.

To round out the sonic palette, The Grand 3 adds a Nordiska Pianofabriken upright and Yamaha CP80 Electric. These two aren't grand pianos, but let's not get caught up in semantics. Any upright is a welcome addition to a piano library and the CP80. Well, think of it as a gift from your friends at Yamaha. The Grand 3 runs in stand‑alone mode and also as a VST or Audio Units plug‑in. Installation was very straightforward, but be forewarned: if you're new to Steinberg products you're going to need their USB key. Jeppesen jeppview data cycle 1513. The Grand 3 interface is simple, elegant and well laid out.

You can choose your instrument by clicking on the picture box or by selecting a preset from the drop‑down menu. Each piano (except the CP80) is offered in both close (near the keyboard) and player (near the strings with more ambience) miking modes. Tabs along the bottom of the main window open different parameter groups: EQ, Ambience, Control and Options. Your first step may be turning down the damper pedal sound, since it defaults to '11'.

So now it's time to load some pianos and start playing. I hit a bit of a speed bump here: load times on The Grand 3 are somewhat slow. This is not unexpected, considering that it's a huge library with different pedal and release samples, and it's decompressing the files on the fly, but it's hard not to notice that your piano hasn't loaded in the time it took you to check your email twice, update your Facebook status and make a cup of coffee. Was it worth the wait though?

The simpler view is a gentle reminder of the sampled instrument's elegance. Note the handy resource status info on the upper right‑hand corner. My first stop was the Yamaha C7. I've played plenty of C7s in my time and know exactly what they sound like. Steinberg have done a great job of capturing the C7's characteristic crispness and pristine top end.

Perhaps too great a job. The Grand 3's C7 has the very strong attack that I love but that I know some owners of real C7s go to great lengths to soften.