For years my go-to piano was the Spitfire Labs Soft Piano, which is a great sounding (and free!) piano, but between the head of Spitfire being outed as a transphobe and the massive oversaturation of that sample library across all sorts of music, I think it's time to switch things up.
So, what are y'all's favorites? Free stuff is always nice, but if it's really, really good, I'm tempted to break my rule of always finding free alternatives for paid plugins.
Right now I'm having a lot of fun with the demo of Pianoteq. I can't afford the full version at the moment, but I'm incredibly tempted. It's physically modeled, not samples of a real piano, based on super complex synthesis of the physics and acoustics of a piano. Because of that it's maybe not as immediately attractive sounding as something from Spitfire or Kontakt, but it makes up for it in playability. If you just punch stuff in the piano roll (which is awesome!), that might not be super important to you, but as a piano player myself, goddamn it's like home sweet home. Just makes me wish I had the space and money for a real upright piano even more.
