The right felt piano plugin can give you the soft, intimate foundation you’re looking for in a lofi beat, but choosing between plugins involves much more than the piano sound itself. Some options keep things simple, while others give you detailed control over mic positions, mechanical noise, and more.
Keep reading to discover four of the best felt piano plugins out there for different budgets and creative needs.
Native Instruments Noire: Best Premium Felt Piano (£129)
Noire combines the gentle sound of felt with the depth of a concert grand piano. This makes it perfect for piano-focused compositions that need a larger (but still intimate) sound.
The piano featured in this plugin is a 9-foot Yamaha CFX belonging to German composer Nils Frahm.
Noire is a much broader instrument than a simple felt piano. It comes with a non-felted version (called “Pure”) which has a clean, dry grand piano sound, as well as detailed sound design controls and inspiring creative tools.
You can shape both the Pure and Felt versions with options to adjust the attack, release, resonance, overtones, velocity curve, and more. There are also plenty of options for realism, including the addition of noises from the pedals, the felt, the keys, the room, and even the pianist as they shuffle around.
Despite all of these custom controls, Noire only offers one fixed microphone perspective. Other piano plugins sometimes come with multiple mic types and positions to blend between, which can be very useful for adjusting where the piano sits in your mix.
One of the most unique features of Noire is its “Particles Engine”. This inspiring creative tool generates an intricate, detailed cloud of additional notes in response to your playing. There are all sorts of options here to create catchy rhythmic patterns or lush ambient pads.
If you’re looking to invest in an extensively customisable grand piano and creative sound design tool, Noire could be the ideal choice. But if you’re mainly looking for an intimate felt sound, you might be paying for options that you don’t really need.
Learn more about Noire in this walkthrough from Native Instruments.
Intimate Felt Piano: Best Value + High-Level Tone Control (£26)
This is a soft, textured upright felt piano, perfect for lofi, ambient, and cinematic music. It focuses on providing an intimate felt sound with plenty of control over the details.
Recorded in a small studio on a Kawai KU3B upright, it has a smaller feel than Noire while still giving the sensation that you’re playing the piano yourself.
Intimate Felt comes with three blendable variations:
- Felt: a double-felted sound with extra softness
- Tape: a denser felt material, recorded to tape and slowed down slightly for a warm sound with a gentle tape flutter effect
- Pluck: a double-felted sound with muted strings for a percussive effect
In terms of additional effects, there are dials to separately adjust the fabric noise, room noise, hammer and pedal release, as well as high and low-pass filters for each of the piano variations and effects.
One of the main places where Intimate Felt Piano stands out is its mic blending capabilities. With room, ribbon, and paired condenser mics, you can blend between close, warm, and spacious perspectives to match the mood of your track and adjust its position in your mix.
Intimate Felt also comes with extra details for a more realistic performance experience. The 3 velocity layers and your choice of up to 4 round robins give you plenty of capacity for soulful melodies with natural, realistic variations in their expression.
At £26, Intimate Felt is the ideal option for lofi producers who want plenty of control over a soft, textured felt sound without paying for a premium library. You get multiple sample sets, multiple mic signals, and detailed control over all the important parts like mechanical noise.
See Intimate Felt in action with this tour and demonstration below.
Spitfire Audio Originals Felt Piano: Best for Simplicity (£29)
This is a close, delicate and detailed upright from Spitfire, who are well-known for their huge range of cinematic virtual instruments. The piano featured in this plugin was performed by Mercury-nominated jazz pianist Gwilym Simcock.
The interface is simple and easy to navigate, giving you control over the expression and dynamics, reverb, ADSR, and sustain pedal. It features two blendable mic perspectives with paired condenser and ribbon mics, and a dedicated hammers signal to bring in more mechanical hammer noise.
To keep things quick and easy, it has 10 presets ranging from dry and up-close to distant and pad-like.
Anyone looking for a straightforward felt piano will appreciate this simple setup, though if you want to shape the felt and noise character more extensively, you might prefer something with more detailed controls.
Take a look at Originals Felt Piano in the walkthrough video from Spitfire.
Felt Instruments Lekko: Best for Unique + Experimental Sounds (£59)
Lekko brings you the sound of a small Scandinavian upright, recorded as quietly as possible and processed entirely with analog tools.
It was designed by Tomek Ślesicki, founder of one-man sampling studio Felt Instruments. Tomek brings his “anti-digital” attitude to Lekko with an emphasis on the fragile sound of felt, mechanical noises and human imperfections.
This piano comes with three variations:
- Super Soft Sustain: a very soft and warm sound with dreamy sustain
- Tremolo: constantly evolving swirls of notes, improvised from the chords you play
- Muted Shorts: a plucky percussive sound, created by finger-muting the strings
Lekko’s most unique feature is its Afterglow Articulations. These are 6 experimental cinematic textures inspired by Hildur Guðnadóttir’s soundtrack to Chernobyl, including grainy pads and crunchy half-speed and quarter-speed tape samples.
In terms of shaping your sound, Lekko lets you control things like attack, release, echo, reverb, and additional layers added to the Afterglow Articulations. There are also options for bringing in mechanical and performance noise from the keys, pedal, and pianist.
Rather than aiming for ultimate customisation, Lekko focuses on bringing you a beautifully warm and charming felt sound alongside some really interesting cinematic textures. If you’re looking for more unusual sound design potential, this could be the one for you.
You can learn more about Lekko and download a free trial on the Felt Instruments website.
Which Felt Piano Plugin Should You Choose?
The best felt piano plugin will be the one that gives you the sound you want and the level of control you need.
A more expensive option might be worth it if you’ll make use of its additional depth and sound design possibilities, but you don’t necessarily need a premium instrument to get a realistic and expressive felt piano sound.
You could think about whether you want a simple setup without the complexity of extra effects, or whether you’d enjoy being able to fine-tune things. You could also think about whether you’re just looking for a realistic piano, or if you’re also excited by the idea of unusual sounds that you can transform into something completely different. And if you’re producing lofi, you might consider how much lofi-ness you want built directly into the instrument, rather than adding it later with effects.
If you’re looking for a soft, mellow felt sound with a wide range of tonal possibilities but without premium prices, you can learn more about Intimate Felt Piano below.
(Prices and features were correct as of 14/09/2026 and may change. Check the developers' websites for current pricing.)
