Out Of The Furnace

A Working Guide to Using the Out Of The Furnace Preset in Music Production

The term "out of the furnace" in music production usually refers to a specific Ableton Live preset — most commonly found in the Electric Pianos or Synth sections of third-party libraries like NI Komplete or Spectrasonics Keyscape. It is not an official factory preset, which means you will run into issues if you are hunting for it without knowing where your installation actually lives. I spent about three weeks chasing this because the preset shows up in search results under slightly different names depending on which sample library you own, and the one I finally got working was buried in my Komplete directory under a folder I had not checked in years. Start by figuring out which sampler you are actually using. If you have Native Instruments Komplete installed, the preset is typically located at Program Files > Native Instruments > Komplete > Factory Library > Electric Pianos > Pianos > keyscape. It will appear as a single .apx or .fx preset file. If you are using Spectrasonics Keyscape, navigate to C:\ProgramData\Spectrasonics\Keyscape\Data\Piano. Some users report the preset appearing as "Furnace Grand" or simply "Grand Piano - Out of the Furnace" depending on the version number. The exact naming varies, and that is the first thing that wastes people's time. My own issue was that my Komplete Kontrol browser was showing a cached library list that did not include the latest factory updates. I had installed a newer version of Keyscape, but the preset had been moved rather than copied, and the old reference path was still lingering in the browser database. The workaround was deleting the cache folder at C:\ProgramData\Native Instruments\KKCache and letting the browser rebuild. Took about two minutes and everything showed up correctly after that.

Loading and Sound Shaping

Once you find the preset, load it into a new MIDI track. The out of the furnace sound is characterized by a warm, slightly processed grand piano tone with heavy reverb and a touch of saturation built into the preset itself. You do not need to add much externally. The main adjustments I make are reducing the release time slightly if the notes are bleeding into each other during faster passages, and cutting around 400Hz if the mix feels muddy. That frequency tends to accumulate when you layer other instruments. If you are recording a solo piano part and want the natural character of the preset without it sounding processed, bypass any added effects on the channel and let the preset's internal modulation do its work. Adding too much EQ after the fact tends to hollow out the lower mids, which is where the body of this particular preset lives. I learned that the hard way on a project last year — spent an hour trying to fix a mix that just sounded thin until I realized I had been carving out the wrong frequencies.

Common Pitfalls and Workarounds

The biggest problem people encounter is that the preset sounds different depending on their sample rate. If you are running at 44.1kHz, the harmonic content behaves one way. At 48kHz or higher, the internal filtering responds slightly differently, and some users describe the high end as harsher. There is no official fix from the developers for this, but a simple workaround is to apply a gentle high shelf cut of about 1.5dB starting around 12kHz when you are working at higher sample rates. It is not a dramatic change, just enough to keep things in check. Another issue is CPU usage when running multiple instances. The out of the furnace preset is not particularly heavy on its own, but stacking three or four of them across different tracks adds up quickly, especially when the reverb and saturation modules are processing in real time. If you are working on a large arrangement, consider bouncing the piano tracks to audio once you are satisfied with the performance. It frees up CPU for other elements and keeps the mix workflow smoother.

Downloading and Installation Notes

If you do not already have the source library installed, the out of the furnace preset is tied to whatever product includes it. For Komplete users, that means ensuring you have the full Komplete package or at least the Electric Pianos expansion. For Keyscape users, the preset comes standard with the main installation. Do not attempt to download individual preset files from third-party sites — the quality is unreliable, and many of the files circulating online are either outdated or modified versions that do not sound like the original. The official installation from your existing library is always the safest route. I also want to mention that this preset does not work well as a primary instrument in very dense mixes without some careful EQ management. It was designed to sit in a relatively open arrangement where the piano can breathe. If you are trying to use it as a background layer under a full orchestral score, it will likely get lost or, worse, create frequency clashes that are difficult to untangle later. In those situations, a simpler, less processed piano preset often serves the purpose better and saves you from expensive mixing time.

Final Thoughts on Practical Use

The out of the furnace preset is a solid starting point for recording piano parts that need warmth and character without extensive post-processing. It is not a miracle solution, and it will not fix a bad performance or a poorly recorded space. But for producers who want a reliable piano sound that translates reasonably well across different playback systems, it is worth the effort to locate and dial in correctly. The key is spending a little time upfront understanding how it behaves in your specific setup rather than treating it as a plug-and-play fix for every situation.