Scarlatti, 14 times

I'm just presenting these for what they're worth, Mossy. Just so that people can hear how all these different virtual pianos cope with the material.

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None are bad in my opinion.  As for which sounds best, it seems to be similar to how much seasoning makes a steak taste best.  There are subtle differences but the underlying material is the same.  Many times it seems to be just a question of the perceived ambiance.  All that said, I'm just comparing listening on the internal speakers of a $200.00 Asus laptop, so there could be subtleties I'm missing.

Nice job Piet !

But you forgot Roland V-piano and Roland Supernatural piano.

Interesting that even between only samplers we can hear that some are more clear than others, and some have just a little bit of muffed sound. One critic to older versions of pianoteq was about some muffed sound, but the actual version it's more clear than many sampled pianos.

Well, Piet already have Roland V-piano.

Jake,

You’re absolutely right, this particular fragment only tells us something about just a small handful of aspects of a piano sound — the character and the quality of the sustains being, regrettably, NOT among them — but this little experient was only begun following a discussion about the Hammersmith (which I don’t like) and my original objective was to illustrate that despite its many velocity layers, it has much less dynamic timbral differentiation than, say, the VintageD. (As I think this comparison clearly shows.)

And after I had rendered the piece with the Hammersmith and the VintageD, I began thinking that it wouldn’t perhaps be a complete waste of time to try it out with a few other libraries as well.
So, it's perhaps good to keep in mind that dynamic colour/articulation is the main (and almost only) point of focus here.

A similar test with a more varied piano part that includes sustains, pedal work, etc. would, I agree, tell a more complete story.

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Piet usually IS a part of the beta team, and his input is greatly valued there, too.

Ah, I see and hear, now. Thank-you for the explanation.

Vintage D has repedalling. You just have to click the feature under the articulation tab. It's one of the most complete script ever created for pianos. O.o"

I do not own the Vintage D, but in the below demo, I seem to hear that the pitch of the hammer strike, particulalry in the right hand, is harmonious with the pitches of the notes. If that makes sense. In other words, the note seems to emerge with the hammer strike. The hammer seems to "pop" the note out, and the hammer strike blends with, is at times indistinct from the pitch of the note.

I'm not sure that this could be done intentionally on a piano--to calibrate the pitch of the hammer strike to the lower partials of each note. That would require calibrating the weight of the shanks, voicing each hammer, and much more, to each note. Could it instead be the older tube equipment that is helping to eliminate the crisper sound of the hammer blow, so the notes seem to pop out so cleanly? The tube mics and Neve console?