I'm not here to pour cold water on anyone's expectations, but "free" and "best" aren't terms that I often use together, particularly with pianos.

I've been playing pianos since 1946, and if I've learned nothing else (some would argue I haven't ever learned anything), it's that there is no one "best" piano - even if you are referring to the world's top concert grands. They are all excellent, but can have quite different sounds - even amongst the same models from the same builder.

Anyone that is serious about piano (that's the only sound I use, so perhaps I'm serious) can DL the trial for Pianoteq - the latest version was quite a surprise to me.

Pianoteq has some quite valuable features: 1) it's very playable live in real time, 2) it's very configurable so that many variations can be achieved with the sound, 3) it takes very little space on a hard drive (this is compared to samples). A quick check with Start/Control Panel/Add Remove Programs, indicates that on my HDD, it's installed size is 22.71 MB.

Glenn