Felt Seiler Free vs Concert Grand Compact

The fundamental difference between these two VSTs lies in their core sound generation and intended sonic palette. Felt Seiler Free is a 'felt piano,' meaning it inherently offers a muted, intimate, and atmospheric character due to a felt layer placed between the hammers and strings, whereas Concert Grand Compact aims for a natural, balanced grand piano sound from a renowned Steinway Model D.

Sonically, Felt Seiler Free integrates three distinct synth/sound design layers—Warmth, Ache, and Loneliness—to enable extensive mood sculpting beyond a traditional piano tone, and was recorded in a specific Studio B. Conversely, Concert Grand Compact focuses on realism for a standard grand piano, featuring a significantly higher number of velocity layers (15 vs. 4), round-robin pedal noise samples, and sampled key-up mechanical noises, all captured with a Neumann M149 tube microphone to preserve nuanced playability and authentic mechanical details.

Choose Felt Seiler Free if your priority is a free, intimate, textural piano with integrated sound design capabilities for ambient or film scoring contexts. Choose Concert Grand Compact if you require a budget-friendly, highly detailed, and naturally balanced Steinway grand piano suitable for recording, classical, or studio production, with a focus on authentic mechanical sounds.

Products Compared

Insights from Real-World Use

Felt Seiler Free

  • Felt Selier Free is a great sound library, especially since it's free.
  • The interface is user-friendly with few buttons yet offers many sound possibilities, which is very nice.
  • This felt piano is beautiful and offers a distinct tone and feel compared to other felt pianos.
  • Strezov Sampling offers The Felt Seiler Free Edition for Kontakt Player. We've been on a pretty epic run of FREE pianos recently, and I'll never have too many
  • Felt Selier Free has a nice feel, but its basic sound is the main draw, not its effects.

Concert Grand Compact

  • Velocity layers, sampling consistency, editing workflow
  • Sound character, low end, high end bite, CFX tonal identity
  • Room/ambience, comparison to Synchron Stage, use-case flexibility
  • Plugin format/player, mic selection, interface controls
  • LOVE this piano, this is great and I DO like the Aria player - the Sforzando player since I've used Garritan for many years now. And I love that. This is a great piano library for a VERY fair price. I

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