PianoFlex vs Noire

Noire is one particular piano: the concert grand of the composer and pianist Nils Frahm, custom-voiced to his taste and sampled with vintage microphones in a hall of Berlin's Funkhaus. It comes in two versions, Pure and Felt, inside Native Instruments' Kontakt Player, with tools for turning it into something new. PianoFlex is a modeled piano: no recordings, a family of 34 presets, and every part of the piano open to change.

What they have in common

• A felt piano. Noire's Felt version is the same piano with felt between the hammers and the strings. PianoFlex has a Felt style in its Style list, and presets built on it.
• Made for more than realism. Both are built for ambient, film and quiet writing as well as straight playing: Noire with its sound design options, PianoFlex with its Film & Ambient and Experimental presets.
• Shaping the touch and the tone: both have a velocity curve and a sympathetic resonance control, and both let you change how notes start and end.
• Windows, as a program and a plugin.

Where Noire stands out

• An artist's own piano. Nils Frahm's sound, on the piano he picked, in the room he chose.
• The Particles engine makes clouds of moving harmonics from what you play, to spark ideas for solo pieces and scores.
• Sound design. Blend in the hammer mechanics, pedal noises, room noise, tape hiss or a crowd, add a sub-bass channel, and turn the Tonal Shift dial to change its whole color, even to a vintage radio sound.
• Native Instruments' world. It's part of Komplete Standard and above, and made to play with Komplete Kontrol keyboards.
• Mac as well as Windows.

Where PianoFlex stands out

• Nothing else to install. PianoFlex plays on its own. Noire needs Kontakt Player and a Native Instruments account, with activation through Native Access.
• Small. A 16.6 MB download, where Noire is 16 GB.
• Many pianos, and your own. 34 presets in eight groups, from concert and intimate to jazz, uprights and experimental. Shape any of them: the hammers, the strings, the soundboard, the microphones and the room.
• New pianos of your own. Where Noire's Particles add moving textures around its piano, PianoFlex's Generate gives the piano a new character, drawn from nearly a billion, and its Strength runs from a subtly different instrument to one unlike any real piano, suitable for film and cinematic music. Layer two in the slots for a pair of pianos all your own.
• Four pianos at once, as layers in one room.
• Song videos of your MIDI files.
• A free demo that never expires. Noire has audio demos, but no demo you can play.
• $79, where Noire is $149.

Which to pick

• For Nils Frahm's piano, or the Particles engine for ambient writing: Noire.
• For piano sounds of your own, for film and cinematic work: PianoFlex's Character generator.
• If you already work in Komplete: Noire, which may already be in your bundle.
• On a Mac: Noire.
• For a range of pianos you can shape, with no other program and no account: PianoFlex.
• If you want to play before you buy: PianoFlex.

Owning both

Noire is one particular piano; PianoFlex is a piano you mold. Plenty of players keep one particular piano like Noire for the pieces it suits and a flexible one for everything else. PianoFlex's demo is here, and Noire's audio demos are on Native Instruments' site. This page doesn't compare how they sound. That's for your ears.

The facts side by side

Every fact about Noire is from Native Instruments' own pages, checked on 4 November 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars; sales come and go.

More: virtual pianos compared, a table of 28 pianos, and all about PianoFlex.

If something here is out of date, write to [email protected] and we'll correct it.

Sources

• https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/noire/
• https://www.native-instruments.com/products/kontakt-player
• https://support.native-instruments.com/support/solutions/articles/69000879152-on-how-many-computers-can-i-activate-my-native-instruments-product-