What good VSTs for Piano are out there?

[floaded27]

I'm doing some recording, and I record keys via MIDI. I brought Vir2 V.I.One a while back, and while they have a few good sounds, their pianos suck. Cant sit right in the mix at all. When I recorded from my Motif, keys sound great. Problem is, as I rework some parts of the songs, if I record straight audio, I'd have to re-record. What a pain! Now I know I can have the MIDI play back through the Motif, but that means I have to disconnect it at church and lug it home and then lug it back to church for rehearsals and service. What a pain!

I've heard that a lot of people use Reason, which I checked out and sounds pretty good. However, $350 is a bit steep for me ONLY because I'm trying to purchase other recording equipment (particularly a multi-channel mic pre for doing multi-track vocals) as well as a laptop so i can go mobile. So those will set me back some dollars, otherwise $350 wouldnt be a problem.

Right now my choices are in preferred order.
1) Lug my Motif back and forth
2) Buy Reason
3) Use the bad VIOne samples

So are there any other software options i may not be aware of besides Reason?

[Purplekeys]

I dont know much about it but Ive heard others say they like to use reason

[acts2-38]

cakewalk TTS-1. However, Im not sure if you can download this as a standalone. I got it bundled with cakewalk sonar.

 Also, edirol has an orchestral vst with a lot of horns and strings....but it also has a concert piano thats pretty good. its kinda reverbed but its one of the better ones out there.

Im not sure how much all this cost because well....internet....captain hook....blackbeard....get it?

[DeeMee]

I am a fan of 4Front's TruePianos and use them alot in my productions. If you have Kontakt 4, the Alicia's Keys by Native Instruments are a good buy also.

http://www.truepianos.com/

www.native-instruments.com/aliciaskeys.info

[drakeboy]

Also Native Instruments Akoustik Piano has some good sounds.

[floaded27]

Thanks, a lot of these were out of my budget for now, since i bought the multi-channel mic-pre and im trying to get a good laptop. But since I downloaded Kontakt 4 (i was using Kontakt 2 up until recently **stupid me for not checking for software updates**) the instruments load WAAAAAY faster, so i was able to experiment with some layering of the different piano modules VI.One has, as well as tweaking the settings and I got some pretty decent results that are a bit more satisfying for now.

[mztee09]

Floaded, I'm not sure what sound you're looking for but NI-George Duke is an individual vst that sounds really nice in Kontakt as well.  Good luck with your experimentations.

[docjohn]

F;have you tried "search" on LGM for freeware? I seem to think there might have been some similar post last 1-2 yrs that a lot of folks responded to