mp3 Demo 1 - Froberger - Toccata 1
mp3 Demo 2 - Fux - Sonate 6b Allegro
mp3 Demo 3 - Kerll - Toccata
mp3 Demo 4 - Georg Muffat - Partita 5 - c - courante
Performed by Steffen Fahl
The performances contain additional reverb.
The Austrian Harpsichord library features an instrument built by Johann Anton Miklis in 1671 in Prague (which belonged to Austria back then). Offering three sounds - 8', 4' register and the combination of both - it shows the rich and slinky texture of Austrian-built instruments which Mozart would have known.
Austrian harpsichord by Johann Anton Miklis, 1671
The harpsichord still remains in well-playable condition despite its age. It is now available for your sampler, presented in its original Valotti-tuning at 392 Hz, capturing all three register variations (8', 4' and both registers recorded together). Presets at 440 Hz are also available.
In its bass octave, the harpsichord does not feature a c-sharp note, as part of its design. We added "optimized" presets so it can be played regularly in the bass as well.
Like all harpsichords, the instrument is not touch-sensitive like a piano. However, playing a key will bever sound exactly the same twice due to resonances of the soundboard and strings.
Up to now, many keyboards and samplers represented harpsichords by repeating the exact same digital sample. In order to avoid the problem, we captured the sampled registers with 8 variations (4': 4 variations) of each note. The key release sounds are also of major importance: We recorded 4 release samples per note.
The sample library contains nearly 1.600 single recordings.
Presets are included for HAlion®, Kontakt® (full version required) and EXS24® software samplers.
For recording, we employed custom-made Wagner™ U47w® tube microphones with Crane Song™ Flamingo® preamps and Universal Audio™ 2192® digital converters. The samples were recorded at 192 kHz/24-bit, downsampled to your resolution of choice.
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