I have both and I must say that although I like the Keyscape C7 sounds, the samples are noisy. It sounds warmer and more rounded, natural feel to it compared to Ravenscroft which sounds more clinical and brighter. The 275, however, is very clean sounding without distracting noise, especially when you're playing many notes. The noise on the Keyscape gets worse the more notes you play, even with noise reduction at the highest level. It might not be as obvious in the RU-vid videos since the sound is so compressed. The Keyscape load-up takes forever - seriously. My machine is an 8-core 3GHz i7 with 32GB and 2TB SSD, and it still takes more than a minute to fully load everything up. Ravenscroft only takes a few seconds and makes it so much easier to use as a go-to piano when you want to noodle around. The other thing that is a problem is that the Keyscape is more prone to pops and clicks from dropouts. I'm using this with UAC-2, UR22mkII and Motif XF6 as outputs and it's the same all across - for any given setting, I get more pops with the Keyscape. That said, I wish Keyscape would address the issues because the warmer sound is really nice for jazz. The MKS-20 with Keyscape is great though - really really nice sound. One other thing I should say, the Keyscape samples have some artefacts on certain notes - like strings buzzing. It might be there in the C7 they sampled but it's distracting. Hope this helps someone.
Have they updated since your comment? I have none of the problems you've listed here with Keyscape so I'm wondering if they've just revamped their whole program
I think they must have cured those problems as my Keyscape has no pops or clicks. Yes it takes time to load, but only around 8-10 seconds for me. Mine is only a 6 core processor with 32g ram.
Ravenscroft 275 vs Keyscape, Ravenscroft is easy to use and amazing quality and blows the Keyscape away but is only one instrument while Keyscape is a library of instruments. I always go to Ravenscroft for my piano sounds and I have Ravenscroft/Alicia keys/Pianoteq and Keyscape/eighty eight and others
Great review. I've been toying with the idea of ravenscroft. I have Keyscape, but the drawback with Keyscape accoustic piano's are, they are all Yamaha C7 pianos with varying eq's. It would have been nice to have had say Yamaha, Steinway, Bechstein etc. The first Grand piano C7 is very warm and nice, but as soon as you go into the brighter pianos, you start hearing this metalic unatural sound to the notes. The Upright keyscape piano is unusable for me, I'm not sure what upright they recorded it from but I don't like it. The other pianos, felt, and electronic are all OK, but I have better ones on other software. I find myself more often than not on Kontakt pianos. They have some very nice pianos to use. However, like all of us, we all have different tastes, and we all continue to search for that holy grail piano that has the exact tone and responce we love. Ravenscroft sounds good and has a bit more flexibility in adjusting mic position etc, but still just the same 1 piano. So, at the moment, I am undecided whether to pull the trigger on Ravenscroft. I do wish more manufacturers would offer time limited demos to try. Hearing a piano online is never quite the same as playing it on your own controller, to get a real idea of whether it suits your needs. 👍
hello. great review. congrats! i need an advice. for best results with ravenscroft (sound quality and low latency) do i need an external audio interface? thank you
For the desktop version, I'm pretty sure you need, on Windows very likely, but a secondary option you might want to try without an audiointerface is Asio4All free asio driver. on mac, I don't know for sure if you need an interface, i would say probably, but I read somewhere that some of the newer apple CPUs dont necessarily need an asio driver for doing some simpler audio stuff like playing one piano sample library live. On Windows yoi simply cant do that without a crackle-fest CPU hickup sounds, the default Windows Wasapior whatever is it called driver is not design for serious audio work.
Both have so many shades up to your taste but at the same time both are missing a fortissimo layer which is fundamental for me playing dynamic and loud dirty jazz, which almost any library (I dunno why) out there is missing since years. For most of my performances I still prefer a 200 megabytes Nord piano sound than these, but I would really like that sooner or later something will change. MORE #FORTISSIMO #127 wake up libraries producers
Why do all factory presets sound the same? I'm using a new Ipadd Pro 10.5. I start by turning on my keyboard which powers my midi device. then, I open Ravenscroft 275 and select my midi device in the Ravenscroft settings. The result sounds very nice but, when I rotate through all of the preset pianos, I don't hear any difference in the piano sounds. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you.
I like the ravenscroft .. Very open, big bass. And, with "touch", you can make it warm.. I have Keyscape, love it! :) , but the Ravenscoft 275 is it. for me..
John, I invested in the Ravenscroft 275 and used it on my iPad Air first and I kept losing polyphony when I Pressed on the sustain pedal. I deleted it from the iPad and then downloaded it onto my iPhone 5C and I didn't have that problem with me losing polyphony any more. This App is awesome ! I was playing with it when my wife came in and she thought that I had purchased a keyboard workstation until she saw the setup. Lol . The first thing she said was we don't need to carry any more heavy keyboards for our worship services.
Yes! The Map is not the territory. I found a similar issue when playing the Full Ravenscroft 275 on older chipsets on a PC. Even though the specs say it should work and it technically does. You have to take into account the settings you want to play at, polyphony, mic settings along with the computer and situation. The reality of playing live most likely will be closer to a close mic setting vs. a full 4 mic set up which is why the ipad / iphone version of the Ravenscroft is SWEET!. Also if you playing this sound for worship services then I invite you to check out one of the reasons I think that the Ravenscroft sound is so inspired. Watch this video about Bob Ravenscroft ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KWq8zjUSMwc.html
I use Synthogy Ivory American Concert D. One feature I like is that they figured out how to create open damper sympathetic resonance and sustain pedal resonance like a real piano. Do either Ravenscroft or Keyscape have that extra quality?
I heard about Ravenscroft 275 accidentaly... It's the most beautiful accident I had ever. I love it more than any vst pianos. I want it. It's better and more real than Keyscape.
I feel the keyscape is ok for jazz.....but for classical the sound of titanium strings on the Raven can't be beat.....plus the sound can be warmed right up for jazz or any style with tweaks on board......even so, I bet Oscar Peterson would choose Raven...lol....these guys are breaking new ground at the labs...it's going to take people time to catch on....great video by the way
The Keyscape sample isn't coming clear...it sounds overly compressed and actually sounds like it is clipping but you said you didn't use processing...so, I don't know what is happening. Is that the way it sounds?
Actually, there's "internal" clipping in the midhigh ranges if you hammer down. I have the Roland A88 and Keyscape, and always wondered why you hear that SPLAT when I for example mashed a D-minor chord midhigh range. Its because of the tape setting. If you turn down tape tho, you lose a lot of that true piano feel. Keyscape is great for jazz, but in more than one way it's less flexible than Ravenscroft. With Ravenscroft they chose to clean the samples of the noise that you inevitably get when sampling a piano. Unfortunately that's also much of a piano's character. They left the same "noise" in with the Yamaha CFX from Garritan for example, and lo and behold, people are complaining about noise. The engineers chose to keep it though, because this noise contains so much of the piano's character. I think it's the overtones. The problem with a sampled library then, is that you get an unnatural amount of that noise because it's not generated naturally so it just stacks instead of blending. I've found that I like playing Ravenscroft better, but nothing comes as close to an intimate real piano sound as Keyscape. So for production the C7 is unbeatable in terms of just the sound. For playing, I prefer the Ravenscroft, it does exactly what I want. It even inspires me to play faster on my A88 than I normally do with Keyscape because Keyscape sort of limits me. Then there's the really important note that both are completely different pianos that have a completely different build.
Hi there, would love to hear more about keyscape for composers. Due to health reasons causing tendinitis.. I have to compose in the piano roll in my daw. Some pianos just don't sound good without all the velosity variables with a keyboard. So I am looking for one that will sound as human as possible writing this way. I do adjust velocity on notes in the piano roll, but its just not the same. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.. Thanks !
Because there are more people who have a keyscape than Lavenscroft there are a lot of comments saying that they like a Keyscape. Throw away the old instrument and take the new instrument, the UVI KeySuite!
Which one Acoustic piano from UVI Keysuite you like the most? Or which one would you put next to Keyscapes C7 and Ravenscroft in comparison? Thank you!
Guys/girls just an update on my side.I had issues with latency and sound quality so I done some digging around the software and found for some reason Keyscape wasn’t runner Asio4all sound drivers.So I soon altered that and now it sounds 100 times better.
I felt you don't know what sympathetic resonance is.. so just in case :) Sympathetic resonance is what happens when you play a key, and all the other strings (all of them) begin to vibrate in harmony with the key. It simply has to do with the fact that the entire piano is vibrating from the sound. So increasing that, can give you a kind of "dreamy" effect. It sounds quite cool actually. There is a good video about it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nsF9fq-zQLs.html You can watch the entire thing, but in case you just wanted to hear the sound right away :)
I heard very well. The sound will be different depending on the microphone setting and so on. Can you will compare these two instruments? Production grand 2 and C7 Grand. Both are Yamaha c7 grand.
Hello John, Love all your videos and information that you pass on. Question, I want to get a VST piano and I like the sound of both in the review, what would you recommend as a good "bang for the bucks" that would include more than 1 piano or even piano and other instruments? Or do you have to buy specific libraries for what a person might want or need Thanks
Yeah, they play like total cr@p, also they are not possible to tweak to get dryer sound (like Raven or Keysc.) without sounding weird, eventhough they have close mic, but even in those you can hear the EWQL hall studio whatever as reverberating quietly in the back, especially when playing staccato stuff.
