Alicia's Keys Sounds Digital / Unrealistic

I recently purchased Alicia's Keys after a year of debate and am very unsatisfied with it.. However I think perhaps there is something wrong because when I watch videos and demonstrations, the plugin sounds quite amazing.

I'm just wondering if there is a solution or if this is just how it sounds ( i don't think it is)

I'm using fl studio, on windows 10, I installed the free version of Kontakt 6, including the player and all other requirements. It does successfully load and play, like i said it just does not sound like it should.

If it matters, i have 16gb of Ram and Ryzen 7 3700x Cpu..



Thanks for any help and sorry if this has been posted before (i've had no luck finding such a forum and am new to the community)

 

the first thing would be to post either a vid or audio file so we can get context on "does not sound like it should" also, what audio interface are you using? Have you tried it in Kontakt Standalone to narrow down if it is Kontakt or possibly an issue in FL? Not trying to lay blame on FL, but need to take it out of the equation to start and then troubleshoot from there...

 

Is there a manual with it?

 

I actually don't really like this library either. Maverick, The Gentleman, and Grandeur are much better IMO. Alicia's Keys is a quite old library as well and was released when NI might have been a little wet behind the ears regarding Piano sample libraries (as their other libraries around that time weren't too impressive as well). That said NI improved alot with Maverick, The Gentleman and Grandeur to the point of me reaching to them first when I need a piano track. Those were well done and I think an average joe would easily be fooled (as well as many trained people in a mix) and would take someone with great ears to be able to spot the inaccuracies (I haven't really heard much to spot).

I wouldn't call Alicia's Keys "digital" but it does have a unrealistic, dark vibe to it. The dark vibe I get (as it is Alicia's sound), but it doesn't seem to have the advanced scripting as the later libraries so it does sound a bit unrealistic. It's still probably realistic enough to fool most people but some astute players/producers probably easily spot it as fake especially in a solo performance.

 

Just as I was typing I actually was playing around with this thing and I think the worst thing about this library are they heavily reverbed presets. I just loaded up the Audience Dry piano patch and the Small Studio patch and they sound pretty good or at least highly usable.

One thing with all of these libraries is tweaking the knobs. You can end up with some cooler more tailored sounds that way. Sounds alot better with those patches. It definitely has that Alicia Keys Dark vibe (works good for some Amy Winehouse tunes as well). These would be the wrong piano for brighter songs (but I think that is the point).


I'm finding tweaking the Convolution Reverb settings helps the most. Alot of those reverb settings are muddy sounding and takes away from the sound IMO. Dialed back or reduce the size, this library comes alive.