The Tack Piano: Tack Piano Kontakt Instrument by Wavesfactory

The instrument is a sampled upright piano with tacks on the hammers, which gives each note a more metallic, percussive attack. Wavesfactory says the library was re-sampled from scratch and includes 8 velocity layers and 2 true round-robin repetitions.

The mixer lets you blend three recorded positions: Close, recorded with two Neumann KM184 microphones above the hammers; Mid, recorded with two Sennheiser 421 microphones below the keys; and Far, recorded with two spaced Neumann TLM 103 microphones at the back of the room. A Mix option combines all three into one file to save RAM. Each channel has its own pan, volume, mute/solo, stereo width and output selector for routing to separate channels in your DAW.

The settings page covers round robin, velocity curve, noises and sound. You can choose the number of round-robin repetitions, enable neighbour borrowing to extend them with scripted round robin (up to 6 in total), and adjust release samples, key on and key-off noises, and pedal noises for sustain, soft and sostenuto pedals.

The effect script provides a high-quality EQ, several compressor types, chorus, flanger and phaser modulation, distortion, saturation and tape emulation, algorithmic and convolution reverb with more than 40 custom impulse responses, and amp simulators. Any of these can be placed in any of the 8 effect slots.