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 is presented in its original Valotti-tuning at 392 Hz, capturing all 3 register variations - 8', 4' and both registers together. Presets at 440 Hz pitch and with equal temperament tuning are also available.
Presets are included for the Kontakt® (full version required) software sampler.
Like all harpsichords, the instrument is not touch-sensitive like a piano. However, hitting a note won't sound exactly the same twice due to different resonances of 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.
In its bass octave, the harpsichord does not feature a c-sharp note, as part of its design. The presets are optimised so it can be played regularly in the bass.
The sample library contains nearly 1.600 single recordings.
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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