Fred… I am a long time admirer of Kurzweil as well as an owner of a couple of their products in the past, and I think that they have one of the best piano sounds of any “hardware” based keyboard. I listened to the demos on the link you provided and they sound very good, but still not approaching a good giga piano. But that is of course only my opinion.

You asked about the Steinway giga pianos, I have a Steinway B sample that is superb. I started this thread to see if I could find anything better. As to your question on latency I have noticed none. But I have answered this in more detail on your thread http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum43/HTML/000045.html. Also I checked out http://www.pianoteq.com that you mentioned. I have to say it is a very good modeled piano that would probably cut through in a mix well, but I think that I prefer sampled pianos for solos.

Frank… I remember reading a lot of good reviews on the Bardstown Bosendorfer 290. I will give those demos another listen. It is also good to know that Colossus and Garrington PO both have a good piano, as I have considered both for their orchestral sounds.

Rikki… I haven’t tried any of the soundfonts yet. I am looking for a sound for the lead instrument and also for piano solo’s so the smaller file size sounds probably won’t be the ones I need.

RobertG… Ivory has me very interested. I have listened to the demos just not ready to take the plunge $$$ yet. Its price of $349.00 is a lot of money when you are not sure. Has anyone here tried it yet? I would love to hear some first hand experiences. The Steinway sounds close to one of my giga pianos, but I really like the Yamaha C7! I don’t have a sample of the Yamaha C7 piano yet. I wish they had a demo version of their software I could try.

Thanks to everyone for their replies and let me know if you find better.

Richard