The Edition Buermann series from realsamples welcomes another very old instrument to their new sample series. The realsamples "Early Pianoforte" Sample Library offers sounds from a 1793 Stein Pianoforte and some informative history to go along with it.

A lot of things went down in 1793: George Washington started his second term in office and Marie Antoinette was tried, sentenced and executed all within a three day span (talk about an efficient court system!). With events like these, it's easy for the history books to overlook the pianoforte Johann Andreas Stein built in Augsburg in 1793. Carrying a tune that realsamples describes as "svelte, present and with courtly elegance," earlier Stein instruments were favored by cats like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

To capture the great dynamics and feel of the instrument, realsamples recorded each note at 32 different velocity layers. Combine that with eight variations of release on each key, and that comes to over 2,500 single samples.

Early Pianoforte was recorded with vintage Neumann TLM-170 mics, Crane Song Flamingo preamps, and Universal Audio 2192 digital converters. All audio was recorded in 24-bit / 192 kHz resolution.