Q&A with the creators of Noire, Claire, and the new Claire: Avant piano

Hi Galaxy Team,

Thanks for the opportunity to ask some questions about this impressive product,

I'm interested in the recording process of the Grand piano (Speaking of Claire Avant),

In the walkthrough video, you mention the various techniques you used during recordings, like Using Brushes, Different picks, Flageolet, and so on…assuming time is of the essence while working with such an instrument in this space you used, did you already plan all the technics you want to try based on the character of the Library/Instrument? how much experimentation are you able to do and how far can you push it? what was recorded but was left on the editing floor as they say?

P.S.: Great playthrough video as well, keep them coming.

Thanks in advance, The Piano sounds amazing!🎹

Mine is just a suggestion: next time, make a Q&A BEFORE realizing a product instead of just when it’s time to sell it.

In that way, you’ll have infos about what users think it’s important BEFORE developing it

I'm a huge fan of Noire and despite owning numerous more expensive piano libraries and trying demo versions of pretty much every piano available, Noire is still a prime goto for me though there is still room for improvement.

When Claire was released I was extremely excited to try it but I was left with very mixed feelings. I found the overall tone to be my favorite of all the Fazioli libraries I've tried and the gui and workflow is wonderful. However, I found this library didn't sound as natural as Noire. The release samples still seem off despite trying the latest updated version? Also, the lower octaves sound like they have an unatural sub frequency boost despite the sub feature being turned off? If these issues were fixed in an update I would find Claire to be very useable as a solo piano. As it is, I find Claire is way more suited to sound design where I think it comes into its own.

There are some features in Claire that I would love to have in an updated version of Noire such as the "Richness" feature, editable touch response curve, selectable time/samples adjustable release samples and an extra EQ band with individually selectable freqency band. Also, Claire has a soft pedal feature and there isn't any mention of this being sampled. If this has been modelled, I would love a modelled Una Corda pedal for Noire. Claire has tons more presets for the 'Particles' engine which would be great to have in Noire. I also love the extra mic perspectives in Claire and badly wish NI/Galaxy Instruments captured a roomier mic perspective that could be blended with the dryer sound. However, I think I could achieve something similar using either the Spitfire Air Studios, Samplecity Berlin Studios or Inspirata reverbs.

Please could we have an updated version of Noire incorporating these additional features as this would take an already great piano library to another level?

Also, are there any plans to update Claire to improve the release samples and unnatural sub frequency boosts in the lower octaves?

anybody there? lol

For blind users, access to the Claire controls come primarily via the Komplete Kontrol keyboard plug-in edit mode using speech access, the NKS implementation is therefore of paramount importance for the majority of blind & vision impaired users for ground up sound design.

The ability to select the sample source articulations directly through NKS is an crucial tool for users to shape their own sounds.

Noire featured this under 'Piano Source' where we could choose brush, mallet, plucked etc as the sample source.

This has been missing in Piano Colors, Vocal Colors, and now also Claire, could this be considered for a future update please?

In follow up to the above: I've reloaded Claire and have found that the same issues exist with other presets (for example 'dead' Db keys). [Is there a more appropriate venue to get this resolved?]

Are there any plans for a serious update to Claire? I use Noire all the time — it’s my favorite piano in my library. I was really excited about Claire and bought it immediately, but like many others, I’ve found it unusable due to strange overtones and release issues. In RX, I can see these overtones triggering about a quarter-second after the note, creating an unfocused, weird sound. (This is with the driest, most-basic setting and all overtones, etc.. turned off). Given this, I’m hesitant to spend another $100 on Claire Avant. Are you aware of this issue, and will there be a fix? And if this “issue” is actually the intended behavior for Claire, is it present on Claire Avant?