EWQL COMPOSERS COMPLETE - should i get it? will it work?

[Calum]

Hi everyone,

This kind of thing may have been covered here before but perhaps not to my specific queries, so apologies if you feel as though you're repeating things.

Will it work:

At present I'm using logic pro 9 on my MacBook (not pro), it currently has 2gb of RAM but based on research i'm gonna need a little more - 4GB is the max for my MacBook, will this be enough to use multiple EWQL tracks? In terms of space, I have a pretty much empty 200GBish external hard-drive which I plan to load everything onto and run off - will this make a difference to how fast it is run or the RAM?

About this mac tells me: PROCESSOR 2.4 HGz Intel Core 2 Duo, MEMORY 2GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Should I get It:

At present I have all of the logic VSTs and instruments and a load of free soundfonts, some of which are really quite good and I use often so i don't necessarily feel like I NEED this to make my composition better (here's a link to where i've posted most of my music http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=34709&page=2 and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDLrESwLy0 although it's not complete, is probably what i'm most proud of at the moment - using the sounds i've got)

I do feel like I will need/want to get this at some point, so why not now?

Also can anyone who has EWQL products suggest which products to go for - at the moment i'm thinking of going with the default. But I'm not sure if I will need PIANOS GOLD - as i have a few piano sounds which i'm pretty happy with and don't need a whooole CD of more piano sounds. Also I like to write orchestral music but would also love more ethnic sounds. RA is one of the defaults and looks great but can anyone suggest Silk or Gypsy as well as i'm interested in them?

Well thanks for any help that anyone can offer in advance. Don't be afraid to tell me that I should scrap everything and buy a new computer, although i don't want to!

Calum

[Moseph]

The PLAY sampler itself should run fine. I used PLAY with EWQL Choirs from a Firewire drive on a PC laptop with specs very similar to yours (and 2 GB RAM) and didn't have any problems beyond RAM and transfer bandwidth limitations. Expanding to 4 gigs should help. One caveat: They're in beta for PLAY 3 now -- I don't know what the required specs for that will be once it's actually released.

I was able to use two or three of the multisample patches for EWQL Choirs at a time, and those are much larger than a standard sampler patch, so you'll definitely be able to load multiple instruments at a time -- I just don't know how many. If you attempt large projects with lots of instruments, you will definitely have to do some track freezing. For comparison, I could get maybe ten (large-ish) instruments at a time from the VSL sampler -- I'd expect the situation with PLAY to be similar.

Also, if you haven't considered this, loading things from an external drive introduces its own bottleneck if you're streaming from disk, and the initial load time when creating an instrument or loading a project will be a lot longer than with an internal drive. My sense when I was streaming from disk was that my Firewire drive started having problems about the same time my 2 gigs of RAM started having problems -- although it's hard to say for sure, since when things would go south from having too much loaded at a time, they'd go south fast. PLAY lets you load samples entirely to RAM if you want to, but that in itself would reduce the amount of samples you could load to what would fit in the RAM -- if you end up with 4 gigs of RAM and the external drive is giving you trouble, this would be something to try.

[Calum]

Hmm, OK!

I don't know what a firewire is and i don't have one but I assume from brief googling that they make things go faster - sounds like a plus!

I could always transfer other stuff to an external hard-drive to get space for EWQL on my internal - however i think it might nearly take up the whole thing... hmm well it has 250GB i think so perhaps I will be able to get enough stuff that wouldn't mind being run off an external to give me room for EWQL but it might not be ideal.

Running off a disc - does this make it faster than off the internal harddrive or does it just mean that you don't have to take up loads of space loading it all onto the harddrive?

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the specs of PLAY 3. This will probably be a purchase some time in the near future as I'm quite happy with the stuff I have right now.

Got any preferences on the individual packages - symphony orchestra gold/pianos gold/goliath/stormdrum 2/Ra etc. ?

[Nabeel Ansari]

Just so you know, the Complete Composer's Collection comes on a 3.5inch 1TB hard drive. (so you don't have to worry about space

You could get a nice USB or firewire (if your crapbook pro supports firewire, search for an image of the firewire ports and see if you have one on your computer) enclosure for it, or eSATA (faster than USB 2.0) if your computer supports it.

As far as processor and RAM you check out for the requirements/recommended specs, but don't expect to be able to run a lot of instruments at one time. 4GB is a must for if you use sample libraries.

As far as preferences, I would say not to with Ministry of Rock and Fab Four. The sampled guitars in those are crap, and I've heard good drum sounds from Storm Drum 2. I've also heard voices of passion has good sounds but not much for the practical use department.

Here's what I would get:

Symphonic Orchestra Platinum

Pianos Gold

RA

Silk

Gypsy

Storm Drum 2 Pro bundle

Symphonic Choirs bundle

This maximizes satisfying your need for good, sampled acoustic instruments (and choir).

[Moseph]

Hmm, OK!

I don't know what a firewire is and i don't have one but I assume from brief googling that they make things go faster - sounds like a plus!

I could always transfer other stuff to an external hard-drive to get space for EWQL on my internal - however i think it might nearly take up the whole thing... hmm well it has 250GB i think so perhaps I will be able to get enough stuff that wouldn't mind being run off an external to give me room for EWQL but it might not be ideal.

Running off a disc - does this make it faster than off the internal harddrive or does it just mean that you don't have to take up loads of space loading it all onto the harddrive?

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the specs of PLAY 3. This will probably be a purchase some time in the near future as I'm quite happy with the stuff I have right now.

Got any preferences on the individual packages - symphony orchestra gold/pianos gold/goliath/stormdrum 2/Ra etc. ?

Firewire is an external hookup similar to USB. The consensus seems to be that Firewire is slightly better for an external drive than USB, but I can't speak from experience since I've never used a USB drive. Like USB, Firewire is still much slower than an internal drive.

You might be better off putting the samples on the internal drive if you can, but the external drive would be a lot simpler given that it's a laptop with limited space. The reason I went with an external drive rather than the laptop drive was that my laptop's drive was only 100 gigs and I also didn't want to have the samples on the same drive as the Windows page file (which is where stuff from RAM gets put when it's still needed but not needed immediately). The page file thing is a speed/stability consideration, but it probably isn't really a pressing issue given that the alternative of an external drive slows things way down anyway.

Streaming from the disk is something that all modern samplers do (PLAY included) -- it lets the sampler load some of the samples into RAM and then read the rest directly from the hard drive during playback. It doesn't change the amount of space that the samples take up on the hard drive. Reading the samples from both RAM and the hard disk allows you to load more and larger instruments than you'd be able to if you were limited to loading everything only into RAM. This of course assumes that the hard disk is fast enough to keep up with the sampler's requests for data which is why streaming from disk can become a problem with an external drive if too many instruments are loaded at the same time.

If you're at all interested in using orchestral instruments, I'd say definitely include Symphonic Orchestra. I have Stormdrum 2 and like it a lot -- it's really good for filmscore-style percussion. Choirs is extremely difficult to use well -- I recommend against getting it unless you actually have a use for it, are willing to put a lot of time into learning it, and have a clear enough grasp on how a real choir sounds that you would be able to tell if you're using the library effectively. If you aren't going to use the wordbuilder, you can get other choral libraries for a lot cheaper than it, although depending on what other EWQL things you're interested in, it might still be worth getting Choirs just to fill space in the bundle.

[Calum]

@Neblix

I have a new macbook (d'oh!) which doesn't have, according to one forum i just looked at a few minutes ago, a firewire or eSATA port! I'm glad to hear about the 1TB hard drive that comes with it. Perhaps this is a silly question but are some USB cables faster than others? Or are they all the same? Yeah I'm defo planning on upgrading to 4GB.

How about goliath? I'm going to get stormdrum 2 + symphonic orchestra + probably choirs + ethnic packages but i'm not so sure about how useful pianos gold will be and am slightly tempted by voices of passion... Choirs + voices of passion seems a little excessive... do you know if there's much overlap or is this not a bad choice at all?

Thanks for the info.

@Moseph

I reckon I will give the external drive a go, although as i've said to neblix my macbook does not support either firewire or eSATA, though i'm sure there is some kind of adapter I could get, perhaps i should look into this. But if external is infuriatingly slow/crashy i'll have to make some serious room on my internal! Yeah, i mean short of being a choir director or profesh singer myself, I feel I know quite a bit about how choirs work and so would be able to use them but voices of passion entices me more. I'm the kind of person that doesn't want to miss out on something! So I'd be tempted to get both voices of passion AND the choirs bundle. As I said to neblix, do you know if there's much overlap? I'm interested in orchestral + ethnic sounds really - Okami soundtrack kind of stuff! Stormdrum seems like a must!

Thanks

[Moseph]

I haven't used Voices of Passion, but it's not at all the same thing as Choirs. Choirs is a standard four-part choir (e.g. a church choir or symphonic choir) and Voices of Passion is ethnic soloists. Compare the Voices of Passion demos with the Choirs demos.

[Calum]

I can see how the voices of passion may be a little limited - i watched a few tutorials in which some notes trigger phrases rather than the notes you play... I'm not a huge fan of these. Plus ethnic instruments don't make me feel like an ignorant western hypocrit but ethnic voices somehow do. I was under the impression that the wordbuilder was part of voices of passion but it is infact with the choirs bundle, i think that may have swayed it for me.

Plus solo singers are a lot easier to come by than choirs!

[Nabeel Ansari]

@Neblix

I have a new macbook (d'oh!) which doesn't have, according to one forum i just looked at a few minutes ago, a firewire or eSATA port! I'm glad to hear about the 1TB hard drive that comes with it. Perhaps this is a silly question but are some USB cables faster than others? Or are they all the same? Yeah I'm defo planning on upgrading to 4GB.

How about goliath? I'm going to get stormdrum 2 + symphonic orchestra + probably choirs + ethnic packages but i'm not so sure about how useful pianos gold will be and am slightly tempted by voices of passion... Choirs + voices of passion seems a little excessive... do you know if there's much overlap or is this not a bad choice at all?

Thanks for the info.

No. USB 2.0 is USB 2.0. I'm pretty sure your mac book doesn't have a USB 3.0 port (it would be blue inside).

Also, do not get Goliath. It's simply a smorgasbord of a bunch of different instruments. It's like Complete Composer's Collection's little brother.

And don't get Voices of Passion, seriously. Pianos Gold has much more practical use. If you don't want either, then Ministry of Rock is your next best bet. The guitars are awful (even in the sound demos) but the drums and bass isn't bad.

RA is also an eastern smorgasbord, but it's a little more specialized to eastern instruments/ethnic.

I recommend

-Symph. Orch. (Platinum if you can, has lots of articulation, Platinum plus just have different quality bit depth samples)

-RA

-Silk

-Gypsy

-Pianos Gold

-Storm Drum2 bundle

-Symph. Choirs bundle

This is the only configuration I see worth getting from there, although if you really wanted 200+ GB of piano samples you could go for Pianos (a step up from Pianos Gold).

[Calum]

No. USB 2.0 is USB 2.0. I'm pretty sure your mac book doesn't have a USB 3.0 port (it would be blue inside).

Also, do not get Goliath. It's simply a smorgasbord of a bunch of different instruments. It's like Complete Composer's Collection's little brother.

And don't get Voices of Passion, seriously. Pianos Gold has much more practical use. If you don't want either, then Ministry of Rock is your next best bet. The guitars are awful (even in the sound demos) but the drums and bass isn't bad.

RA is also an eastern smorgasbord, but it's a little more specialized to eastern instruments/ethnic.

I recommend

-Symph. Orch. (Platinum if you can, has lots of articulation, Platinum plus just have different quality bit depth samples)

-RA

-Silk

-Gypsy

-Pianos Gold

-Storm Drum2 bundle

-Symph. Choirs bundle

This is the only configuration I see worth getting from there, although if you really wanted 200+ GB of piano samples you could go for Pianos (a step up from Pianos Gold).

I do not want 200+GB of piano samples! Your suggestion sounds pretty much what I need. I prefer to play live guitars anyway and don't often use "live sounding" drums or bass - stormdrum 2 covers all that i need on that front and acoustic or electric bass is not something i'm in desperate need of.

Yep, i'm pretty sure USB 2.0 is my only option right now unless I seek out some kind of adapter for another format.

Thanks for all your help, I was just going to go for the default which, at least relying on your suggestions, seems like a choice i'd rather not make!

[Nabeel Ansari]

Yep, i'm pretty sure USB 2.0 is my only option right now unless I seek out some kind of adapter for another format.

That's pretty darn useless.

An adapter connection will make the connection as slow as the slowest bus.

If you have a USB 3.0 adapter to plug a 3.0 device into a 2.0, it'll still only be as fast as 2.0.

The port is not what you're looking for, the speed is.

[Calum]

That's pretty darn useless.

An adapter connection will make the connection as slow as the slowest bus.

If you have a USB 3.0 adapter to plug a 3.0 device into a 2.0, it'll still only be as fast as 2.0.

The port is not what you're looking for, the speed is.

OK! The ports i have are: charger port, gigabit ethernet, mini DVI, 2 USBs and headphone, according to google images.

So just to make sure, neither a "gigabit ethernet" nor a "mini DVI" will allow for any kind of firewire or anything that will make things faster?

Even upgrading my RAM from 2GB to 4GB but still connecting via USB 2.0, will my performance suffer? There is a possibility that i may whack everything on my internal drive onto the 1TB external and drive the sounds via the internal, thus getting rid of this problem but that may bring up many other problems for using my laptop in general outside of EWQL performing well!

[Nabeel Ansari]

OK! The ports i have are: charger port, gigabit ethernet, mini DVI, 2 USBs and headphone, according to google images.

So just to make sure, neither a "gigabit ethernet" nor a "mini DVI" will allow for any kind of firewire or anything that will make things faster?

Google images? xD Not just looking at your computer?

Gigabit ethernet is internet and mini DVI is a display connector.

You need a FIREWIRE PORT to use a FIREWIRE DEVICE.

[Calum]

Google images? xD Not just looking at your computer?

Gigabit ethernet is internet and mini DVI is a display connector.

You need a FIREWIRE PORT to use a FIREWIRE DEVICE.

ha, well I took a little look at the ports, saw their little symbols and thought "hey, i don't know what these mean" but google image gave me their names!

Right... it looks like a firewire port simply ain't gonna happen!

SO, if i run EWQL from a external via USB 2.0 even with 4GB RAM, will it suffer dramatically more than with firewire?

To be honest, i don't really know how you'd know the answer to this specific question, but perhaps you could offer some informed insight.

[Nabeel Ansari]

ha, well I took a little look at the ports, saw their little symbols and thought "hey, i don't know what these mean" but google image gave me their names!

Right... it looks like a firewire port simply ain't gonna happen!

SO, if i run EWQL from a external via USB 2.0 even with 4GB RAM, will it suffer dramatically more than with firewire?

To be honest, i don't really know how you'd know the answer to this specific question, but perhaps you could offer some informed insight.

Firewire is "faster" because of some weird CPU overhead situation where USB has more data throughput but more CPU intensive.

In short, firewire will be a little faster. As far as sample loading, you're going to experience longer loading times than with an internal hard drive.

The RAM has absolutely no bearing on this. RAM is primary storage (not really any bearing on speed_, we're talking about secondary storage. (hard drives)

[Calum]

ah longer loading times, perhaps I can deal with this.

But will USB destroy my CPU? I am having CPU problems right now without mammoth sample libraries to deal with!

Is USB merely for accessing the files and loading, not the processing which will be reliant on my RAM?

I think things are starting to make sense now...

[Moseph]

Longer load times, yes, but long load times cause a bigger issue than just making you wait around on a loading screen for awhile. The loading screen load times are what you get when the sampler loads data from the hard drive into the RAM when you first set up the instrument or load the project. This is annoying, but not that big a deal.

The big deal is this: The sampler has to access two areas of storage for playback to occur. First is the RAM. Reading data from the RAM is basically instantaneous, but there may not be enough RAM to store all of the samples. So the sampler also reads from the hard disk when the sample it wants isn't found in the RAM. This loading from the hard disk occurs during playback, so having long load times may cause dropped samples or other playback glitches.

The upshot of this is basically that the external hard drive's load time is likely to be one of the first bottlenecks you run into when playing a lot of instruments at the same time. I doubt USB will be that much worse than Firewire. The libraries should certainly be usable on your system with an external drive; you just may have to get comfortable freezing tracks to free up RAM and/or disk bandwidth.

[Calum]

Longer load times, yes, but long load times cause a bigger issue than just making you wait around on a loading screen for awhile. The loading screen load times are what you get when the sampler loads data from the hard drive into the RAM when you first set up the instrument or load the project. This is annoying, but not that big a deal.

The big deal is this: The sampler has to access two areas of storage for playback to occur. First is the RAM. Reading data from the RAM is basically instantaneous, but there may not be enough RAM to store all of the samples. So the sampler also reads from the hard disk when the sample it wants isn't found in the RAM. This loading from the hard disk occurs during playback, so having long load times may cause dropped samples or other playback glitches.

The upshot of this is basically that the external hard drive's load time is likely to be one of the first bottlenecks you run into when playing a lot of instruments at the same time. I doubt USB will be that much worse than Firewire. The libraries should certainly be usable on your system with an external drive; you just may have to get comfortable freezing tracks to free up RAM and/or disk bandwidth.

Mmm, I will have to adapt! Thanks Moseph, this has been really helpful.

[Moseph]

Actually, you know what? If you already have an external drive and the EWQL bundle comes on another drive that you plan to put in an enclosure and use as an external drive, there's no reason you couldn't move some of the libraries over to the old external drive you already have and then run libraries from both drives at the same time. If you split the libraries so that things you're likely to use at the same time are on different drives, it should help solve the load time issues. I think the way PLAY loads samples (it lets you pick where you want to load from rather than forcing you to set a single sample folder), you might even be able to just copy the EWQL drive onto your existing external drive and then alternate between drives when you go to load instruments so that you're always using both drives equally.

[big giant circles]

If you are capped at 4GB of Ram, that's not ideal if you plan on using large templates and/or loading lots of instruments simultaneously.

[Calum]

If you are capped at 4GB of Ram, that's not ideal if you plan on using large templates and/or loading lots of instruments simultaneously.

it is, for now, my only option. is it bare-able?

Or would you suggest not making the purchase until I have a computer with larger RAM capacity?

[big giant circles]

it is, for now, my only option. is it bare-able?

Or would you suggest not making the purchase until I have a computer with larger RAM capacity?

Well, you can load instruments with 4GB of ram, but you won't be able to load very many. My personal suggestion would be to wait until you have a machine that has more ram, but it's totally your call. Your license carries over so you can always upgrade your machine later.

Furthermore, a dual-core processor is going to get bogged down fairly quickly with all the sample-streaming you'll likely have going on.

[Calum]

Well, you can load instruments with 4GB of ram, but you won't be able to load very many. My personal suggestion would be to wait until you have a machine that has more ram, but it's totally your call. Your license carries over so you can always upgrade your machine later.

Furthermore, a dual-core processor is going to get bogged down fairly quickly with all the sample-streaming you'll likely have going on.

Hmm, yes. I always thought this would be an issue. I see this as a sort of inevitable purchase for what I want to do and although i'm very early in my "career" 20 years young and only working on projects for free as experience, why not get it now? I can see myself being frustrated by limitations but it is a great tool and i've got money saved up for nothing I'd like more than this.

I think I'll go for a Macbook Pro with extra RAM for the next purchase which will no doubt be a long way away. Would you suggest a desktop? Perhaps this would be more powerful and cheaper? Or have more customisation options?

These are all quite far but not super far future considerations as i'm conscious of not getting my set-up ahead of my needs which right now are probably satisfied.

[Moseph]

A desktop is better for music production. You get more power for the money, it's more upgradable, and you can dedicate multiple entire internal drives to sample storage if you so desire.

[big giant circles]

Absolutely. Most people I know that get laptops just so they can have the whole "portable studio" aspect usually (in my experience) rarely end up actually going anywhere to compose.

I'm a big fan of desktops. You have to spend so much more money to get a laptop with decent specs that compare to a powerhouse desktop you can get for less.