Two months ago I sold my Roland RD-300 NX. I loved it because of its functionality but not the sound. I returned to the MIDI keyboard controller + a computer and bought Acuna 88. I have a grand (Diapason by Kawai, 183 cm, 1984) home and need the piano to play live only (semi-acoustic group, smooth jazz/pop covers). Last weeks I spent trying (and buying) software pianos. Three winners at the end: Pianoteq, Sampletekk and True Pianos. Sampletekk (for HALion) is nice but too much compressed and lacks all these modern pianos features like symp. resonance, half pedalling etc. True Pianos - seems to be nice for live gigs but it's not as tweakable as Pianoteq and doesn't support half-pedalling.

Three days ago I bought Pianoteq Standard + Bluethner Rock pianos expansions. After these three days I must say that Bluethner sounds great. I love it and I think it's the best of Pianoteq D4 is ok but I still cannot find "my sound" from it - it's not powerful and warm, clean and open as a real Steinways I've recently played. I wasn't sure about Yamaha and Kawai models when I tested a trial version. But now Yamaha is the second mostly used preset in my live gig list. Rhodes model doesn't sound as close to original as I remember it and Steinberg Neo Soul seems to be closer to the real one.

Well, it was a great time spent to tweaking Pianoteq models during last days. I love all these historical models. But again: Bluthner model sound soooo good that it was worth to buy Pianoteq just for this model

Regards,
Jacek