ReasonTalk.com

Its not often (or so I thought) we see any reviews of any Reason RE so this is good to see.... Ill buy the article see what it says.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... ical-piano

Then I discovered a whole heap more

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... daw/reason

Actually RE reviews aren't that uncommon. Not many from Sound on Sound but Music adar tends to do them. My first thought though was why a radical piano review now? Then I remembered that it's part of version 10 so it's fresh to some people.

QVprod wrote: ↑

21 Apr 2018

Actually RE reviews aren't that uncommon. Not many from Sound on Sound but Music adar tends to do them. My first thought though was why a radical piano review now? Then I remembered that it's part of version 10 so it's fresh to some people.

Folks like MusicTech did some late reviews including Rad Piano (before it was included with Reason) and they called it doing “catch up.” It was a bit of a series.

joeyluck wrote: ↑

21 Apr 2018

QVprod wrote: ↑

21 Apr 2018

Actually RE reviews aren't that uncommon. Not many from Sound on Sound but Music adar tends to do them. My first thought though was why a radical piano review now? Then I remembered that it's part of version 10 so it's fresh to some people.

Folks like MusicTech did some late reviews including Rad Piano (before it was included with Reason) and they called it doing “catch up.” It was a bit of a series.

I suppose any reason can be found to review something old.

FYI - those sound on sound articles aren't reviews, they're tips and techniques pieces, so you're not going to get any in-depth breakdown on the pros and cons of a RE.

But here's a "review", lol:

https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech ... ano-555041

I wouldn’t even give it two stars. That 3 and half stars from CM is being very generous.

IMHO Reason Pianos refill was ground breaking and at the time was probably better than everything else including pianos on Gigasampler and Kontakt.

Radikal Piano was a let down. It sounds quite artificial. Hopefully they will release a version 2 that removes the artefacts from the sound.

I like Radical Piano. I find I can get it to sit in a mix much easier than some others.

Radical Keys is great. It was nominated for a NAMM TEC award, which was pretty cool
http://legacy.tecawards.org/tec/13nomineestech.html

There's this misconception that you need to have a gazillion-gig piano sampler library with meticulously modeled keys, strings, and creaks from every corner of the piano. Sitting in a mix, this simply is not true. I find Radical Piano to be a great piano plugin, and even in some "not in a mix"/solo sessions, its sympathetic resonance and key mechanics are pretty impressive.

I tried Alicia's Keys and found it to be a waste of hard drive space for my use. Radical works perfect, is light on resources, and doesn't take up unneeded hard drive space.

I'm not a fan of Radical Pianos, then again I never "really" liked many piano libraries. Back in the 80s I had the premiere Kurzweil piano sound, and only The Grand and a few other libraries along the way did I enjoy using excluding hardware or the real thing, until about v4 of Pianoteq which really beefed up the realism, and now with V6 nothing can touch, especially if you know how to program it a bit to your liking.

Plus my pianos rarely take a backseat in a mix.

EnochLight wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

There's this misconception that you need to have a gazillion-gig piano sampler library with meticulously modeled keys, strings, and creaks from every corner of the piano. Sitting in a mix, this simply is not true.

Nah that’s not it. All of that is for realism and different sound options. A lot of people who buy those libraries are classical pianists. Those things matter more when the piano is the main instrument.

Issue with Radical piano is it just sounds bad compared to pretty much everything. People still use the default Yamaha Motif piano from the 2000s in recordings which are clearly not large in size.
I’ll submit though, Radical does well when you intentionally want a bad sounding, detuned or Lofi sound.

Radical piano sounds like fl keys kinda unless you tweak it a bit or use different patches.
For something more realistic I say either tweak it or use the nn libraries.

I just tried it again and this time by tweaking it too, not just exploring the presets. It is sure not that bad at all when you tweak and try to find your own sound. The beauty of this Piano RE is that you can tweak the hell out of it. If you want it front and less velocity sensitivity, you can do it - if you need a bit rounded sound you can do it. So yeah, I rate it 8/10 at this point.

Hm...Yeah it kinda acts like pianoteq.

I have not yet managed to get a usable sound from Radical Piano. Everything sounds like someone hits you with a hammer on the head.

wow that sounds amazing nevermind.

Radical Pianos has about the same amount of configurability of any typical piano VST.

No modeled or sampled piano library is even remotely close to the Pianoteq engine, not by miles.

Oquasec wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

wow that sounds amazing nevermind.

Skilled pianist and nice shirt!

IMO, Radical Piano is a solid piano-like instrument, but nowhere near the true piano quality of Pianoteq or Arturia's Piano V2 or a sample-based piano like Alicia's Keys. Those of you who care about the quality of your virtual piano, I hope you are comparing Radical Piano with other options outside of Reason because you need to hear and feel the difference for yourself.

And a good player can make anything sound amazing.

I stand corrected, took a gander at piano teq and truepiano again after a few years.
For the record I'd like to have as many alternatives to kontakt's stuff as possible just because.

Oquasec wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

wow that sounds amazing nevermind.

Am I the only one who does not like the timbre of Radical Piano?

I actually like how it sounds : /I've used alicia's keys, pianissimo, truepianos and an old version of pianoteq.
Plus the id8 and refills.Altho there is a big difference. I can't really replicate it's tones with the libraries & vice versa.

I like radical piano, I can’t seem to find a way to make radical keys audible in a mix, I tried the key velocity envelope and that kind of helped. But the Radical piano does what it needs to for my tracks, I like it a lot better than the ID8 piano. I wonder if any of those companies music tech or SoS have done any articles about expanse. I’d love to see what people (who use vst only) would say about one of the Re power houses

Hm...Haven't seen it mentioned yet but I also own addictive keys.

I've never really thought of Radical Piano as a device for hyper-realistic piano sounds. 'Radical' is in the name, after all! Personally, I've gotten very usable sounds out of it, and as others mentioned, I do find that it fits will in mixes without much effort. And I think there are some very good sounds suitable for solo piano stuff (it's not something I've tried myself, though). Is it as in-depth as Pianoteq or something similar? Probably not, but I think they serve different purposes.

Noplan wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

Oquasec wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

wow that sounds amazing nevermind.

Am I the only one who does not like the timbre of Radical Piano?

Nope you're not alone.

MikeMcKew wrote: ↑

22 Apr 2018

I've never really thought of Radical Piano as a device for hyper-realistic piano sounds. 'Radical' is in the name, after all!

That's the interesting thing. It's sounds like a real piano to some people's ears... I don't understand how... but it does. Perspective is a crazy thing.