Shearwater Piano vs Cinekinetic Fractured Piano

The fundamental difference between these two instruments lies in their core sound profile and intended use, with Shearwater Piano offering an acoustic upright and Fractured Piano providing a sound-designed textural experience. Shearwater focuses on musicality, while Fractured Piano emphasizes experimental textures.

Shearwater Piano is a meticulously sampled intimate upright piano with a "paper mode" variant, offering a plucky bounce sound recorded with masking tape for alternative character. Fractured Piano, conversely, is derived from a Bösendorfer but has been extensively processed into atmospheric and experimental timbres, featuring 37 presets designed for sound design rather than traditional piano playing.

Choose Shearwater Piano for a warm, characterful upright piano sound suitable for songwriting and film scoring where an unplugged piano is desired. Choose Fractured Piano for creating evolving soundscapes and textural elements in contexts such as sound design, pop, or film scoring that require a more experimental and processed sonic palette.

Products Compared

• Shearwater Piano
• Cinekinetic Fractured Piano

Insights from Real-World Use

Shearwater Piano

• Shearwater Piano is the best piano plugin the reviewer has used in years.
• The piano sounded euphoric, spacey, grand, live, and real.
• Expresses strong positive sentiment regarding the warm and cozy sound of Shearwater Piano.
• Versatile tone slider offers many tonal options, from bright to warm and dark.
• Presets and effects sound amazing and elevate the plugin.

Cinekinetic Fractured Piano

• Says Cinekinetic is uniquely worthwhile compared to Electromagnetic, depending on what you already own.
• I got both the packs mentioned on your video. Gospel Musicians have a wonderful FM Tines pack too. Even have Spectrasonics now but found the list of tones quite limited. Looking for user tones.
• does anyone know how to properly install and get cinekinetik libraries to work? I've been trying for over a month, following all the instructions to the letter. It loads, but no sounds will come throu
• IK Multimedia seems really underrated (or at least quiet in their marketing compared to competitors). I picked up a great bargain over Easter, so I now have all of these keys to play with...
• If you could compare them, it would be similar to Spitfire Audio Originals. ... The IK ones tend to go into a sound design, cinematic direction.