Etude Crossgrade from Dorico 6 is a Steinberg grand piano virtual instrument built on a sampled Yamaha C3X. It is offered as a crossgrade for owners of Dorico 6 and is available in VST3, AU and AAX formats.
Etude Crossgrade from Dorico 6 gives piano players and composers a sampled Yamaha C3X concert grand in a plugin format. Steinberg recorded the instrument in a space designed for piano recording and describes its sound as balanced, with bright upper harmonics and warm low octaves. The library is compressed to 18 GB from about 45 GB of source material. It runs on Windows and macOS, and the developer notes that it is a crossgrade offer limited to owners of Dorico 6.
The C3X is sampled chromatically with 12 layers of dynamics, so note-to-note and velocity changes should feel natural in performance. Four microphone positions, Player, Mid, Tail and Room, give you control over the room sound and the balance between the close and distant recording.
Blending these positions lets you shape the piano for different contexts. A closer Player signal suits a dry, present tone, while the Room and Tail positions add a sense of space.
Etude includes adjustable sustain and sympathetic resonances, which affect how the strings respond when the pedal is held and when other notes are played. Adaptive release samples and piano noises are included to add realism to note endings and the mechanical detail of playing.
These controls let you tune how much the instrument sustains and how much it reacts to the surrounding notes, which is useful for both sparse and dense arrangements.
Formats, systems and requirements as listed by Plugin Boutique. Missing details are left out, not guessed.
| Developer | Steinberg |
|---|---|
| Type | Plugin |
| Category | Virtual Instruments |
| Formats | VST3, AU, AAX |
| Operating systems | Windows, macOS |
| Architecture | 64-bit |
Etude Crossgrade from Dorico 6 is available in VST3, AU and AAX formats.
It supports Windows and macOS. The Windows version requires Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), and the macOS version supports macOS Big Sur through Sequoia, including Apple Silicon through Rosetta 2 or a native app.
The library requires the free HALion Sonic 7 or the full version of HALion 7, an internet connection for activation and download, and about 18.3 GB of free hard disk space. The crossgrade is for owners of Dorico 6.
