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Piano in 162 for Logic Sampler

Free Piano in 162 instrument patches for Logic Pro X: lukas.zapletalovi.com/Piano162Logic

This repository contains Logic Sampler (also known as EXS24) instrument patch for the excellent Piano in 162 sample library (14 GB). There are also several channel strip patches available with smart controls for microphone mix and quick access to key effects like compressor or key response.

Brief overview of what is available:

  • Logic Sampler instrument patch in two mic configurations (close, ambient) in multi-output setup.
  • Filter cutoff modulated by velocity to flatten out sharpness of the tone.
  • Channel strip patches with Smart Controls (click for an MP3 preview):
    • Piano 162 Init: both close and ambient mics, no compression, natural velocity.
    • Piano 162 Init Loud: both close and ambient mics, some compression, light velocity.
    • Piano 162 Close: more close than ambient mix, no compression, natural velocity.
    • Piano 162 Ambient: more ambient than close mix, no compression, natural velocity.
    • Piano 162 Pop: mostly close mic mix, ton of compression, lighter velocity.
  • Smart Controls for all strip patches:
    • Microphones - Close: volume of the close microphones.
    • Microphones - Ambient: volume of the ambient microphones.
    • Dynamic - Compression: channel compression gain and threshold, leftmost position is a bypass.
    • FX - Low: channel equalizer low frequency control.
    • FX - Key response: velocity processor gain and ratio for light touch, leftmost position for natural response.
    • FX - High: channel equalizer high frequency control.

When loading Logic Sampler patch directly, make sure to open up "Sampler (multi-out)" and not just "Sampler (stereo)". This is a two channel instrument:

  • Main (1-2): stereo output
  • Close (3-4): close microphones
  • Ambient (5-6): ambient microphones

To work with both channels separately on the Logic mixer, click on the plus icon to expand channels 3-4 and 5-6. Normally, Smart Controls should do tho.

No conversion tool was used to create this instrument, it was all made from sctratch manually note by note. Start and end of each sample was audited multiple times, volume was manually modified for the best possible experience and few problems fixed. This was all done in my free time, I am not a professional sound designer.

All patches were created in Logic Pro X 10.6 and may not be compatible with older version of either Logic Pro, or Logic Sampler (EXS24 in older versions).

What is Piano in 162

Piano in 162 is a sample library of a Steinway Model B grand piano for Native Instrument Kontakt as well as other formats excluding Logic Pro. It was created by Simon Dalzell and made available free of charge, however, redistribution of the sample content is not allowed. Therefore, this repository only contains Logic patches. To get the instrument working in Logic, Piano in 162 sample content must be downloaded separately (SFZ version). Since it is a huge download, feel free to start it on the background while you can finish reading this page.

The grand piano was sampled in high quality (96kHz) with two mic configurations (close and ambient) without and with sustain pedal for sympathetic resonance. Each of the 88 keys has five velocity levels (pp, p, mp, mf, f), every sample is present twice for round-robin and sample files are well organized with good names.

The download size is 4.7 GB and all 3520 samples are distributed in FLAC format, an efficient loseless compression. Logic Sampler does not support FLAC encoding, therefore all samples must be converted to WAV in order to be able to load the instrument. Make sure you have at least 19 GB of free space before you start.

Instructions

Instructions

A) Download and setup patches

  1. Download Piano162Logic.zip.
  2. Extract the archive.
  3. Copy all three folders from Audio Music Apps into your home directory in Audio Music Apps.
    1. Folder Audio Music Apps/Sampler Instruments/Piano 162 contains Logic Sampler patch.
    2. Folder Audio Music Apps/Channel Strip Settings/Instrument contains chanel strip patches.
    3. Folder Audio Music Apps/Samples/Piano 162 is empty: this is where sample content must be copied.

Now, I understand that not everyone is able to fiddle around with sample conversion, so I created a script that will do everything for you. If you are comfortable with typing commands in MacOS Terminal, use (B2) option and use your own conversion utilities or figure out UNIX commands yourself. Otherwise, use (B1) option to use a script that will do everything for you.

B1) Download and setup samples

I created a script that will install MacOS Homebrew if it is not already installed. Then it will install p7zip and flac command line utilities. And finally it will use the utilities to extract, convert and drop unused samples. This is how to use it:

  1. Make sure to have at least 19 GB of free space.
  2. Move the Ivy Audio - Piano in 162 sfz.zip, which you downloaded from the "Piano in 162" webpage, into the PianoIn162Logic folder next to the convert.sh script.
  3. Open up MacOS terminal with Command-Space and typing "terminal" with Enter key.
  4. Navigate to the PianoIn162Logic folder extracted above: cd ~/Downloads/Piano162Logic
  5. Run the script: bash convert.sh
  6. The extraction and conversion takes some time, have a break. FLAC files will be converted into Audio Music Apps/Samples subdirectory.
  7. Move folders Close and Ambient from PianoIn162Logic/Audio Music Apps/Samples/Piano 162 into your home folder under Audio Music Apps/Samples/Piano 162. Do not copy, these folders are huge (use Shift key and drag to move).

B2) Download and setup samples (manually)

  1. Download Piano in 162 SFZ version.
  2. Use The Unarchiver or 7-Zip (both available in Apple App Store or on the web) to extract the ZIP archive. MacOS (Big Sur) was unable to extract the archive because it uses more recent ZIP format and it will report a corruption.
  3. New folder named Piano in 162 Samples will be created with Close and Ambient subfolders both containing two additional subfolders (with and without sustain pedal).
  4. Delete all files named *2Ambient.flac and *2Close.flac, the instrument patch does not use round robin and this will save you a lot of space. There are many of them, see below how to do this automatically.
  5. Convert all FLAC files into WAV files. Some conversion tools will have "extra" features like removing silence or normalizing audio, make sure NOT to use any of these features and extract everything as-is.
  6. Delete the source FLAC files as they are no longer needed.
  7. Put the samples in WAV format into your home folder into Audio Music Apps/Samples/Piano 162.

Feel free to flatten the directory structure if needed, Logic Pro will find samples regardless of their paths. Just do not rename samples, they MUST have the very same names except the extension (WAV instead of FLAC). Also keep case sensitivity.

Limitations or issues

Logic Sampler is limited to polyphony of 99 voices and since each note triggers two samples (both close and ambient mics), the total polyphony is 50 effectively. This could be workarounded by creating separate Sampler instances but I wanted to keep things simple and also it makes no sense to try to compete with professional sample libraries or even physical modelling or hybrid instruments. They will always sound better with much greater polyphony.

The sample content library comes with round-robins for each individual sample and Logic Sampler is capable of round-robin sampling. However, for practical reasons I ended up using just samples named with "1". Double the samples, double the work on getting a good sound from them.

One ambient pianissimo sample was incorrectly recorded (there is a silence essentially) and although I could use its round-robin counterpart, again, I wanted to keep things simple. Therefore a pitched neighbor is used as a replacement.

Although I did my best to level out velocities for each individual sample as well as for groups, there is still apparent sample change between layers. Therefore I used velocity x-fade across 3 MIDI levels which smooths the transition a bit.

There is a bit of noise, apparently in the ambient samples. I added a bit of fade-out for each sample to smooth it out.

Background

You maybe wonder why I created a Logic Sampler instrument while Piano in 162 is available for Kontakt and also via free and open SFZ instrument format. Well, after Apple introduced their first M1 models of laptops and Macs, there were no SFZ instrument plugins in native format. Although Rosetta is working fine, I wanted the best possible performance.

Another reason was to try out the new Logic Sampler because I simply wanted to check it out, its workflow has been vastly improved. And I have to say it is a wonderful experience and in my opinion, it is the best all-round multi sampler I have ever worked with. I also own Reason with its, ehm, NN19 and NN-XT, tried EXS24, Renoise and few others. Logic Sampler has a ton of capabilities, it recognizes root notes from filenames or, which was particularly useful for this instrument, keeps filename ordering when samples are dragged into the map screen. Also sample audition via arrow keys was fast, snap to transition/0dB as well as fade-in, fade-out and group operations on zones and groups was very useful.

So there you have it, enjoy this piano.

FAQ

Will it work in older versions of Logic Pro X?

I have no idea, test it and report back.

Have you used a conversion utility for this?

No, this was done manually in Logic Sampler.

Something is not right

Identify the problem (key, velocity, mic channel) and either report back or make an adjustment and send the updated EXS patch back to me. Sharing is caring!

Thanks

Huge thanks to Simon Dalzell for the sample library.

Feedback or problems

I am looking for any kind of feedback or contributions, just create a discussion topic. When reporting problems, include your MacOS version, make a screenshot or copy and paste the error from the terminal.

License

Sample content copyright is owned by Simon Dalzell (Ivy Audio). Head over to the site for more information.

The patches for Logic Pro are public domain, feel free to do anything you want. If you do some decent improvements, send patches back over to me. Make sure to describe what you did so I can test it.

Tips and credits

  • Simon Dalzell - Piano in 162 sample content: donations
  • Lukáš Zapletal - Logic Pro instrument and patches: tips