Even after hours of fiddling with it, I couldn't configure it so that it would feel natural when playing, and I couldn't get the dynamic range to be large enough for loud notes to really feel loudly. Wait for some other people's opinion about this though, as I said there's people who really like it. There's hardly a piano VST that is more divisive on here, some love it dearly, some hate it. I personally think its playability is great if you spend the time to configure it, but the sound will always sound synthetic and fake to me. Every time I play Pianoteq and move back to a sampled piano it always feels soo good.

The thing of note here though is that the stage version doesn't allow you to fine tune the instrument beyond the preset choice. That means you will also not be able to change string length, and you won't get note edit for volume. Some notes had a really annoying nasal and metallic sound (even more nasal and metallic than all the others), and the only way to fix that was to change the string length a little bit. That won't be possible with the stage version.

And some notes were way too loud or hurt my ears on my setup, in my case that were the highest four or five or so keys. In the stage version, you cannot change the volume of those, in the Standard version you could. Honestly, if you HAVE to get a VST then just get Garritan CFX Lite instead. I would add that something that stuck with me CyberGene said ages ago, ask yourself, 'Are you a timbre man', if accuracy and authenticity in timbre is important, then pianoteq will not be for you, unless you happen to have ears that happen to convince you the timbre is real (versus synthetic and somewhat harsh and fatigue prone how it seems to me), then you are in luck and will likely love it.

Garritan cfx vs ravenscroft 275