Like many times before, Clavia has again given us a nice little Christmas present: a new grand piano sample set called Royal Grand 3D. So far Clavia hasn't revealed the exact piano model which was sampled, but I suspect it is a Yamaha. At least it sounds more modern compared to those more vintage ones. "3D" comes from the fact that it's binaurally recorded simulating players position. As they put it: "The dummy head is shaped like an average sized human head, equipped with ear shaped microphones, in order to reproduce the human hearing experience. The Royal Grand 3D was recorded in an acoustically dampened room where the dummy head was placed in the player's position to capture a natural and authentic experience of actually sitting in front of the piano."
Royal Grand feels just great - it's maybe Clavia Piano Library's best in terms of playability. At least on Nord Piano 3's action you'll get just right response, right tone from pp to ff. With earlier Bright Grand (Yamaha) for example, I felt that those brighter tones (forte) came out sometimes too easily. Royal Grand feels so easy and natural to control. It's more close to my idea of playing a real grand piano.
On the other hand, it can perhaps be too "round" sounding to cut thru in difficult acoustics or noisy gig situation. Quite often if you start to mess with EQ you'll loose something (natural sound and/or playability). Time will tell. To my ears Royal Grand is little closer to Roland's typical piano sounds. They are very even but they can be little "muddy" on stage situation. Clavia's Bright Grand is so clear and powerful and I never need to EQ it or anything. Those mellower pianos sound great at home or on recording but on stage they can be problematic.
More on Royal Grand 3D from Clavia's site:
(link)
