Home / Plugins / Orchestral / Salamander Grand Piano
by Unknown
9/10 The Salamander Grand Piano is a Yamaha C5 sampled at 48 kHz/24-bit with a stereo pair of condenser microphones close above the strings, across 16 velocity layers, with hammer noise and string resonance release samples. It is also the most unconditionally free instrument on this page. The Creative Commons license has been clarified to function as public domain, so there is no account, no installer, and no registration of any kind.
Download the files and play. Sixteen velocity layers give it a wide dynamic range, and I like how its neutral tone sits in a mix. It has quietly become the piano inside several open-source music applications, which says something about its reliability. Unfortunately, the upper register thins out noticeably, and there are no round robins, so fast repetitions sound mechanical. It is a raw SFZ/SF2 sample set rather than a plugin, so you load it into the free Plogue Sforzando, into Decent Sampler via community ports, or into any SF2-compatible host.
If you’re on Linux, this piano plus a free SFZ player is the strongest fully native option available. Verdict: The freest free piano, with good dynamics and a few flaws.
Links to freepats.zenvoid.org — the article includes the official download links.
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