Citaat:

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



Errr, I guess that is another interpretation. Maybe you should try to read it like: The best among the free...

I mean, if we want the best, most of us should quit right now, since making music would not be possible with the budgets most will be able to spend. The best mixing console, recording device, microphones, studioroom, instruments...

Looking at that in this way would make any instrumentalist react on plugins the same way. There is until now not one affordable solution if allready there is a solution, that represents their instruments in a 100% realistic and therefore "a best" way. All plugins I ever had come across are an approximation of the real thing. Even when using samples it is a very hard thing to represent the real playing of an instrument. But then again, that is the way we work nowadays, the digital domain delivers all those possibilities and we learn to accept the details that might be missing using cheaper mics or mixing consoles or plugins. Free is often not even that bad in this way. I bet there are even songs that are (partly) created from free stuff and still have potential in being a hit. We once had the analogue circuit, and right after computers took over, the analogue fans (and yes, I was and still am one of them) would say it is not the same. And yes, eventhough it isn't, I adapted to it, simply because that is how things are done nowadays. In the end I think it should always be about the music and less about the characteristics of an instrument, since a synth is also an instrument. If I listen to a small transistor radio, I still enjoy the music, even if the sound is a bit thin... And I could go on with these comparissons forever. Well anyway, I think you can get my point here...

I'll be back...