Anthony Hughes mentioned the Free Navia Harp from Steinberg in his video about Dorico 6.2. (It’s not bundled, but Dorico will use it, if installed, in the Auto Playback Template.)
There’s a Harp with Iconica, but not one in HSO, and Sonic Selection has a fairly poor synthy one.
Anyway: I thought I’d try the instrument, and have a Harp-off!
All the instruments are just loaded in “as is”, and no tweaking or adjusting has been done.
NAVIA FREE HARP
ICONICA
NOTEPERFORMER
GPO5 Concert Harp KS (also Garritan Harps: Lyon & Healy)
(NB: the GPO5 instrument definition file has a serious error, setting the volume at an absurdly high level that will distort. As per my GPO Errors document, open the Lyon and Healy Harp KS 1.sfz file, and delete line 84, which is volume=16. The matching file for the same instrument in the Garritan Harps collection has no such volume setting.)
Conclusions:
Iconica has a weird ‘twang’ on the C4 in the first two bars, which seems to be in the mp layer sample.
Generally, the Navia instrument is pretty good.
For my money, I still prefer the Garritan instrument, once the file has been edited; though it’s still quite loud in the mix at the corrected level. It’s no coincidence that Gary Garritan, a harp player, intended it that way.
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