Recording - January 2015 - 58

RECORDING'S

SHOWCASE OF SOUNDS

Garritan Abbey Road Studios CFX Concert Grand
By Mike Metlay
The Garritan line of virtual instruments includes everything
from orchestral and big band libraries to marching bands,
world music instruments, pipe organs, and harps, but the new
Abbey Road Studios CFX Concert Grand is something special.

needs that much detail all the time, Garritan offers the option
to install the whole shootin' match, which took about 132 GB
on my test system, or to perform a Compact Samples
Installation, which took a bit over 26 GB.
The latter gives you only the Compact and Notation versions. They omit a lot of the samples, primarily the ones
involving the una corda pedal, and replace them with emulations or optimizations to take up less disk space and use
RAM more efficiently.
The three Perspectives are three different miking positions for the
piano. Each Perspective gives two stereo outputs, one close-miked
and the other more distant. (When using the Notation version,
intended for use inside notation software or other CPU/RAM
restricted applications, only the Close pair is available.)
These can be mixed and their stereo
width adjusted, with a simple on/off
limiter available on the mixed output.
Here's where the magic of the mics in
the room comes into play!
~ Classic features a Close channel with a blend of Neumann M49
and KM184 mics and an Ambience
channel that blends DPA 4006 mics
at midfield with more distant
Neumann TLM50 mics. This is the
"grand piano in a big concert hall"
sound that we know and love from
great classical recordings.
~ Contemporary is a brighter and
edgier sound, a more "rock piano session" vibe, with a Close channel combining stereo AKG C12s with a mono AKG D19 over the
hammers for a sweet extra bang. The Ambience channel comes
from two Schoeps MK 2H mics, kept relatively close to the piano.
~ Player is just that, a player's perspective: the Close channel is a stereo pair of Neumann KM84 mics over the hammers, and the Player channel is a Neumann KU100 "Fritz"
binaural dummy head suspended directly behind the player's
head for an immersive "you're playing this piano" feel.

Installation
This virtual instrument uses the proprietary ARIA engine,
developed for Garritan by ace Canadian software firm Plogue,
The manual recommends a fast hard drive, separate from your
to present a beautiful Yamaha CFX Concert Grand in all its
system drive, for the sample data-connected by SATA/eSATA
glory, with close and distant miking from a variety of stand(that includes internal drives on most computers), USB 3.0,
points. The sampling sessions took place in Abbey Road's
FireWire 800, or Thunderbolt, and preferably a Solid State Drive.
famed Studio One, an enormous space with a 2.3 second reverb time, capable of housing a full symphony
Delivery: boxed USB flash drive
orchestra and a choir with room to spare.
Formats: Windows 7+ with ASIO-compliant interface or Mac
A matter of Perspective
OS X 10.7+; 4 GB RAM required, 8 GB recommended;
32- or 64-bit AU (Mac only), VST, RTAS, or standalone;
CFX Concert Grand comes in three different versions:
64-bit AAX
Full, Compact, and Notation. Each version comes in
Authorization: Serial number/online registration/
three Perspectives: Classic, Contemporary, and Player.
So what's that mean?
downloaded keyfile
The Full version has over 50,000 samples, according
Documentation: online user manual
to Garritan-no, I didn't count them all-covering every
Price: $299.95
key at multiple velocities with multiple pedaling choices,
More from: Garritan, www.garritan.com
release samples, and more. Since not everyone wants or
58

RECORDING January 2015
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Recording - January 2015

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