Spectrasonics Debuts Keyscape Virtual Keyboard Collection

spectrasonics_keyscape_boxSpectrasonics has introduced Keyscape, a new virtual instrument, which they say features “the largest selection of collector keyboards in the world.”

The new virtual instrument collection features a wide variety of classic keyboards, which were carefully restored and then deeply multi-sampled by Spectrasonics’ Sound Development Team.

The Keyscape sound library ranges widely from grand and upright pianos to belltone keyboards and Clavinets, Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, plucked clavichords and harpsichords, mini and toy pianos, wind keyboards and key basses and more — a total of 450 patches and 179 sound-sources.

Features include:

  • Huge 77 GB library with over 500 sounds, 36 Instrument Models and Hybrid “Duo” Patches
  • Deeply Multi-sampled sounds with up to 32-way velocity switching, Round Robins, etc
  • Mechanical Noise, Pedal Noise and Release Noise behavior modeling
  • Patches feature authentic circuit modeled amps and effects
  • Optional “Lite” installation (30 GB) for stage use
  • Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere 2 integration

Spectrasonics-keyscape-customcontrolsCustom Controls (pictured) presented for each patch allow the user to go ‘far beyond’ the original sound. The interface includes performance controls and creative effects processing that have been specially crafted for each patch.

Authentic expression. Keyscape developers explain what makes these virtual instruments uniquely expressive: “With many of these collector instruments, it’s really the imperfections that make them so interesting. Instead of cleaning up all the quirks and noises they make, we made sure to closely capture them since they are big part of their vibe. In addition to that, our software team closely modeled the authentic behavior and mojo of vintage amplifiers, classic effects units and unique subtleties like mechanical noises, pedal noises and release overtones to bring these sounds to a whole new level of authenticity and dynamic expression.”

‘Duo’ sounds, Omnisphere integration. Along with the hundreds of patches based on the 36 instrument models, Keyscape also includes special hybrid “Duo” sounds, which combine two of the instruments to create something new.  In addition, as a bonus for Omnisphere 2 users, Keyscape also integrates fully as a satellite instrument within the Omnisphere interface. Keyscape will appear as a library inside Omnisphere’s browser for users of both plug-ins.

Here is an in-depth look at the new Spectrasonics keyboard collection:

Pricing and Availability

Spectrasonics Keyscape will be available for purchase as a download directly from Spectrasonics, or as a boxed set from authorized resellers, beginning Monday, September 12. Both versions are priced at $399 (€399 ). System requirements, additional product info and ordering information on the Spectrasonics website.

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32 thoughts on “Spectrasonics Debuts Keyscape Virtual Keyboard Collection”

  3. This is more of a library than a ROMpler. Clearly, they spared no expense to make a serious collection. The fact that they voiced the hammers indicates that they wanted as pristine a piano tone as possible. It also sounds like they may have taken one run at it and failed and then went back and did a second draft– also good signs for the quality. Getting serious bad-asses to come and play them with skills is another validation. If I wasn’t happy with PianoTeq, this would be an excellent option.

  7. My initial reaction was disappointment (another piano library?) but after listening to the video this thing sounds REALLY, REALLY good. Those electric pianos floored me! Amazing to get the Vintage Vibe products included. This is so impressive.

  12. Would love to have seen the yamaha cp 30 this is a totaly underated very expressive analog piano and would have been in keeping with this library. Maybe next time

  14. > Optional “Lite” installation (30 GB) for stage use

    Sampling is an art, and sorting through, leveling, and preparing those samples for use in a sampler patch is a great and nuanced art.

    People who understand sound and are sensitive and able to hear and understand musical expression create concise and elegant sample libraries with carefully selected and processed loop points. It is never simply about using a robot to acquire mass samples and dumbly map it without interpretation or taste.

    Yet that uncultured and obese presentation is the current state of the art. It has extremely tight parallels with the obesity epidemic that roils the western world in modern times, where peoples simply have no taste or discipline.

    If you create a 30GB sample library because you’re in a huge hurry and are just slapping garbage together that is understandable. If you do it for the ages though you are a tasteless moron. And if you buy a library you are utterly clueless and without talent.

    Fantastic sounds do not require such obese libraries.

    1. Rabid Bat….What a lot of garbage. I was there at the early days of sampling and the only reason.. I emphasise ONLY reason… that you looped samples of this nature (i.e. realistic libraries rather than creative/abstract libraries) was because we were dealing with 1 or 2 Mb of ram…. (although my first sampler had only 256k!)… we DREAMT of not HAVING to loop because by it’s very nature that will ALWAYS be less realistic than sampling the full envelope cycle. And when you DID have to loop it the only way to get the decay was through artificial envelopes and filters… again… unrealistic and never ideal.

      Now we have incredible amounts of velocity switching to create the natural dynamics (rather than a simple velocity controlled filter), multiple mic positioning, legato patches, separate element sampling, intelligent scripting and so many more AMAZING elements that YES make the libraries bigger….. but my god do they make libraries more realistic. And why not? Disk space is so cheap why not take advantage of it. This is not 1984

      There are ALWAYS exceptions (for example Nord.. who get incredible libraries out of the smallest sampleset) but to criticise “large” libraries users/developers with phrases like “tasteless morons, clueless and talentless….” says more about you, YOUR ignorance and lack of knowledge. You probably think that your Motif or Fantom or whatever else you use that has a few hundred meg of sample library sounds “just as good” as a Spitfire, VSL or Cinesamples library. Which is obviously nonsense.

      Fantastic sounds CAN indeed be produced with libraries of the SMALLEST size… but what we’re talking about here is libraries trying to create ultra realistic/authentic sounds….. for THESE you will always need huge amounts of data… and definitely NO looping!

      Looping was a a necessity of the ’80’s along with 3.5″ floppy disks…… That was then this is now……..Times have moved on

      1. > I was there at the early days of sampling and the only reason.

        Ty my friend, I was also there at the early days … developing the very instruments you used.

        1. but Rabid that makes you’re comment even MORE non sensical…. you now can’t blame your comments on ignorance or lack of understanding because that obviously isn’t the case……

          I still buy CD’s… and Blu-Rays, I still save my “life” to physical drives rather than to a cloud… and I KNOW that people now see that as living in the past but it’s what I’m comfortable with…… and that kind of thinking is the only reason that I can think of for you still seeing the benefits of small, looped libraries. There are so many great library developers out there making huge but great libraries that you loathe…. and these form the basis of my software set-up simply because of the realism that can be obtained. Regarding Keyscapes, to be honest, bearing in mind that I have single drumkits of 60Gb and single pianos that are almost 200Gb, I think that 77Gb for THAT many keyboard instruments, with THAT level of detail is incredible and shows just how much work and meticulous editing HAS gone into this library.

          As I always say EVERYONE is TOTALLY entitled to their own opinion… but looping is one “vintage” audio technique that I thought EVERYONE was glad to see the back of …. (Again I have to stress this is for creating REALISTIC instrument libraries NOT creative sound design where we ALL know how incredible lopping techniques can sound!)

      2. I also come from the dawn of an era when usable sampling had just become affordable – and I did incredible things with the Prophet-2000, and later with the S-330 and 550. That was 25 years ago, when we had to squeeze full instruments into very small memory footprints.

        This library represents a much newer school of thought, in which a modern professional compiter computer has literally SIXTEEN THOUSAND TIMES more memory than my S-330 did, with a processor that is clocked at least 200 times faster. My S-330 stores sound to 720K floppies while my computer gives me access to terabytes of data (that is over a million times more storage). And this technology is only getting cheaper!

        So while I agree there is value in the economical use of resources, the fact is that I want this instrument precisely because it is so huge. I want the assurance that no samples are going to have imperfect loops, or obvious sample switching when played at different dynamic levels, or adjacent notes. And frankly I want to take full advantage of my hardware.

        Yes it’s excessive, but with that excess comes assurance that perfection is not compromised to save a few bytes that I don’t need anyway.

        If you were talking about writing code I would not hesitate to agree. When “modern” applications are consistently less responsive than their counterparts from yesteryear yet takes 30 times the space it frustrates me to no end, but that analogy simply doesn’t carry over to a comprehensive sample library.

    2. Rabidbat

      Your comment is spectacularly uninformed.

      Spectrasonics is one of the most well-regarded synth developers around – for good reasons – and it is clear that they done some fantastic work with Keyscape.

      With 4TB hard drives available for not much more than $100 these days, ranting about a dollar’s worth of drive space comes across as insane.

      Hard drive space is not a concern at all for the musicians that are the target audience for a $400 virtual instrument collection. Obsession to great, detailed virtual instruments is, though, and Spectrasonics delivers.

    4. Ok, Rabid Bat, I will concede one of your points:

      Having a library with a small footprint is nice if you have limited drive space and RAM. Those are user-imposed limitations that have to do with an unwillingness to upgrade to newer hardware. I sympathize with that tiny piece of your argument.

      However, here are advantages to modern sample-players that stream from ever cheaper drive-space:

      1. key ranges: you can just sample every note, or every other note and you’re golden.

      2. velocity ranges: we can have 4 – 8 velocity levels and it makes the instruments more expressive.

      3. actual dampers-off layers with velocity

      4. decently recorded (mono compatible?) stereo samples at full bandwidth (48K or 96K, and full 24 bit resolution).

      As for the rant that relates this to obesity, that is off-topic and a little mean sounding. I hope you’re ok.

  15. it seems like this is the lastest “top quality” library that will eventually be replaced by something else…. it was “Ivory” several years ago, then some of the Kontakt libraries, now this….. it’s just so much money and storage space…. i was really hoping that modeling technology would be getting more realistic at this point….

    another thing for me, speaking as a piano player…the software is only half of the equation…. you really need a great keyboard for the piano stuff and those are expensive and bulky so at that point you should probably be using a real piano for solo work anyway….. in a band, i doubt anyone could tell the difference between this and the next level down

  16. i agree that the playing in the demo was awesome, but those guys probably loved ivory when it came out, and then went home to play their real pianos

  19. Would absolutely buy this if it was a little bit more gentle on the CPU.
    Can hardly use Triton with full Round-Robin, have to freeze all other stuff.
    Amazing product, but reality is that the majority of us cannot afford the latest computer to run it properly.

  20. wonder if anyone is doing a cheesy keyboard collection?
    casio vl-1 and its brother
    and all those toy keyboards that wind up in songs

    1. he already did that for omnisphere….Omnisphere has great patches but terrible keyboard sounds imo……that’s why he came out with keyscape

  21. I’m usually into synthetic sound but there is a lot of character in these recreations.. very tempting.

    I wouldn’t throw it into the PC with my DAW. I’d build a separate rig for it and treat it as a standalone just like HW.
    The min req CPU is not very high-end. 8GB of ram is like $50 on NewEgg. Biggest investment on a standalone rig would be a pro/semi-pro audio card with a clean output and low latency midi. Even an old M-Audio Audiophile 2496 would get the job done or some of the old E-MU line.

    Really great demo playing. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

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