Noire Vst Piano

[Bonny Battaglino]

Aftera year of being curious about NI Noire, I finally bought a license in last Black Friday's sale. On first installation and trial I was shocked -- and not in a good way. I reckoned Noire to be an immediate write-off and was disgruntled to say the least.

What kept puzzling me though were the examples I heard on YouTube, in particular the few by @Gamma1734, which sounded rather acceptable, interesting, and enjoyable to me. This notion kept haunting me and got me trying to create a natural-piano preset from scratch several times over.

Although I am not 100% satisfied yet -- and that in particular concerns the (subtle) timbre in the middle two octaves (actually from middle-C two octaves upwards) which could be just a tad fresher, crisper, and rounder to my ears -- I thought to share my current preset anyway to hopefully help and inspire others. For there are a lot of people unhappy about, and frustratingly struggling with, Noire.

So here it is. Of course everything is "to taste", but I hope this gets you too on your way to a more satisfactory sounding Noire, from the perspective of a natural piano. Whether that actually resembles a Yamaha CFX? Who knows.

A last tip: When you have everything set as you like it, you can save the whole thing as a 'Multi' under the floppy disk icon in the upper left of the Kontakt player. After that, double-clicking on the saved file or on a shortcut to that file, will launch Kontakt player with everything set to go.

So in Basic Pure some things may be ON that are now actually OFF in my preset, without me mentioning that in my post. I cannot be entirely sure. So please look closely at the images I posted, those reflect the correct settings and show empty squares/circles where things are OFF, solid squares/circles where things are ON.

The first example in @Frdric L 's list is the Noire Basic Pure preset. That one does not make use of the 'felt', which actually is a separate sample library (yet part of the same license purchase). 'Felt' is even (much) further from a natural piano than Basic Pure.

If you wait it out, Noire will highly likely go on sale again in spring or summer. I bought it at their usual 50% discount. At the normal price, the value for money balance is way off, in particular compared to VI Labs offerings (Ravenscroft 275 and Modern U). I bought Modern U at the full price and never regretted that a single dollar/euro.

Is Noire for you? I can't predict that. I'm glad that I can put it to good use in my (double) bass explorations, otherwise I'm not sure if I would be happy having spent the money on it. The timbre indeed is interesting and the playability/velocity response not bad either, in particular with a custom curve as shown in the linked thread.

Noire facilitates just the sustain pedal, with half- and repedaling, no other pedals and (thus) no una corda. It is sample based with modeled resonances and such, just as with e.g. Yamaha (VRM) and VSL.

HZPiano

Thank you for this helpful thread. I've sent an email to NI to see if I'm eligible for their education discount since I teach classes at our church. I'll buy it if I can get it at 50% off, but I can't afford full price at this time. I look forward to trying your preset if I can get the Noire.

One comment - In the images you posted, the color knob seems to be adjusted to somewhere around 40%, but I don't think it's mentioned in your text, so I almost overlooked it. Might be helpful to mention this in the text as well.

David B Would it work if you send them links to some of your previous VST reviews and ask them for a free copy of Noire in return for an online review? I'm not sure if you can say "no strings attached", but they might still be interested if they see your existing reviews.

navindra I thought about that, but I don't really have enough viewers to be considered a legitimate review channel. I just put content out occasionally when something impresses me. I would definitely review it for a free copy, but I'm sure it would only generate a few views. Probably not worth it for NI.

In the top bar you see a floppy disk icon, cog wheel icon, and then an icon that resembles tiles. If you click that one, you can toggle more windows to be displayed, amongst those the window where you can set up the output signal treatment (I don't remember what the window is actually called, but that'll probably be obvious).

Both versions of Noire share identical features; their unique attribute is something called the Particles Engine, discussed later. In its guise as a 'normal' sampled piano, Noire provides highly detailed control over every aspect of the sound, including one or two I've not encountered before in a virtual piano. The main page offers five controls: Dynamics (volume response to velocity), Reverb amount and Delay amount. Color and Tonal Shift transform the tonal character in drastic ways; according to the manual, Color adjusts the sample mapping, while Tonal Shift alters the playback speed and formant frequency. The possible combinations of these two controls are numerous, with tonal extremes ranging from 20 fathoms underwater to demented harpsichord. It's interesting to note that setting Noire Pure's Color control to around -60 renders a thoroughly convincing Felt piano. I actually prefer its richness of tone compared to the 'real' Noire Felt instrument, but as with wine, cars and movies, it's all a question of personal taste.

Turning to the Piano edit page, things get seriously detailed. In the Anatomy section we find volume controls for release samples, body resonance and overtones (sympathetic string resonance); the release samples and overtones can be optionally on or off, whilst a single Attack slider acts as the only envelope control, easing the sound in up to a maximum of two seconds. In the Noises section, Pedal, Mechanical and Felt noises are all optional, with volume controls for each. Pedal noises are further fine-tuned via a drop-down menu offering individual balance controls for rumble, damper and string noises. Similarly, the Mechanical Note On and Note Off noises can be balanced against each other; the low end of these can be quite intrusive if their level is set high, so a dedicated low-pass filter is provided to roll off the offending frequencies.

So what about the core piano sound of Noire? The basic Pure instrument is somewhat dry, having an intimate if slightly restrained character. Tuning is well-nigh perfect, with commendable consistency of timbre and dynamics across the entire key range. Exploring the Grand Piano snapshots reveals its wide-ranging dynamic and tonal potential, although I felt the Particles snapshots could have been rather more adventurous and demonstrative. After delving in and exploring the abundance of tonal adjustments and customisable details, the piano truly came to life, and the hours simply melted away. The Particles Engine is particularly absorbing, adding that elusive unique character and a strange beauty that elevates Noire above the ordinary.

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Been away from the forum for awhile... but not my Pianoteq.

I've listened to a lot of demos of the NI Noire Piano and it sure seems like a lot of fun. Purists would probably be annoyed and me too if used too much or in a more orchestrated environment. But I like fun.

I've tried running Pianoteq through a bunch of demos of particle effect and granular vsts but nothing has come close to Noire. I also thought there might be an intelligent random arp generator out there I could combine with the right delay and shimmer effects, but haven't found that either. But then I see in the Noire manual that you can adjust the balance of the particle engine to any mix with the pure/felt piano you want. This might be the way to go, albeit a bit expensive at $150 for an effect. But I'd love to hear my fav Pianoteq voices blended with the Noire particle effect... and with various mixes of the felt piano. But then... I'm not a purist - not that there's anything wrong with purists either.

Oh yeah... I rekon there was a query in there: has anyone found any VSTs that accomplish anything similar to the "Noire effect", that is, the smart algorithm, particle, or granular type effect? I don't mean mangling, but more subtle. And while we are on the subject, any other useful VST effects to combine with Pianoteq?

Lexikon-Sonate found here: is pretty cool. It's not a VST but will load Pianoteq as the player for its algorithms. A rather scholarly interface but it's safe to install - I had no problems. There's some genius here. Not me, but the programmer.

VST plugin ecosystem at Waves.com for all kinds of production is one of my favs. There are no shortages of great individual plugins but I'm happy to recommend looking into various tools at Waves - they're often nicely based on good workflows and have nice 'bents' on traditional workflows.. great delay tools and EQs, compression choices and so on.. you can't help but be able to make all kinds of unique creations with Pianoteq which rival other products. Cheers.

Coming to the vst, I think that you can give a look at the Unfilered Audio Byome or Triad, that are modular multi effects plugins very capable in terms of audio processing.

The modulation possibilities are quite impressive, at the cost of some cpu power.

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