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#Ravenscroft #VST #VILabs

Hello and thanks for joining us at the Merriam Pianos YouTube channel. As we continue our series on VST’s, we’ll be looking at one of the most highly regarded of all VST’s today - the VI Labs Ravenscroft 275.

The Ravenscroft 275 is one of the finest pianos made anywhere in the world today, and one of Stu’s personal favourites, so we’re excited to dig into the VST sampled from this incredible instrument.

Please like the video below, and if it’s your first time on the channel, subscribe and hit that notification bell!

Background:

This plugin is built off a recording of the Ravenscroft 275 concert grand piano. This is one of the most unique concert grand pianos in the world today, and a truly bespoke instrument as only a handful have ever been made. German piano maker Sauter supplies the rims, and the instrument is built meticulously by hand by a very small team of high-level craftsmen in Arizona.

The Ravenscroft 275 uses 1,000-year-old solid spruce for the soundboard - by far the oldest spruce sourced for any piano made today. Why is aged spruce so special? It has the potential to be incredibly well cured and possess extremely small growth rings for optimal energy transmission.

The termination points in the front and rear duplex scale are made of Titanium, and the piano itself is impeccably built over 1,000 man-hours, which for perspective, is twice as long as it takes to build a Bosendorfer Imperial. It’s got a very unique tone, and is without question one of the nicest pianos on Earth.

User Interface:

The user interface is a single screen and is quite easy to use. There’s an ‘Edit’ option with a fairly basic set of adjustable parameters like pedal noise, volume key noise, stereo width, tone, MIDI assignment, pedal options, sensitivity, and resonance options. But the bulk of what you’ll be playing around with on this plugin is in the center of the user-interface - 4 completely different sample sets, and each sounds like it was recorded at a minimum of 12 velocity levels.

These sample sets are built on 4 totally different mic placement setups - player perspective mic placement, close miking, side microphone placement, and room tone.

While you don’t get quite the same room ambience as some other plugins as it sounds like the 275 was recorded in a fairly dead room. This isn’t a drawback, but something to be aware of, but there is a reverb engine on-board available as well if you want to add some ambience.

Sound:

Right away, there’s a clarity to the sample that’s difficult to put into words. The sustain is remarkable, to the point that you might easily forget you’re listening to a VST as opposed to a genuine acoustic piano.

Interestingly, our preferences for the settings were quite different when playing with headphones vs acoustically. With headphones, the Player perspective sample set was pure magic. When listening on monitors, a combination of the close and room mic placement was what we found most satisfying.

Strengths:

This plugin really shines with an easy-to-navigate user interface that delivers a very raw, unaffected engine. For solo piano playing, this is easily on the best VST’s available, and totally appropriate for jazz, classical and contemporary music.

On the other hand, this wouldn’t be the ideal engine when mixed with several other instruments, though some EQ and compression can fix that.

It’s essentially a perfect capture of this very special concert grand piano which many people will be happy to hear.

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