Meteo Xavier Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 Also, I know the learning curve is steep but does the software come with tutorials or are there tutorials anywhere for the interface? There are Youtube tutorials for them. There is also a highly recommended and not too cheap textbook called "The Guide For MIDI Orchestration". I have a copy and I have yet to fully dive into it myself, but its highly recommended none the less. EDIT: Wow, how many times can I fit the phrase "highly recommended" in one paragraph? Let's fix that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 5, 2012 Author Share Posted June 5, 2012 So I'm going to probably wait to get the CCC until it's on sale... I've seen it for $777 before, last cyber monday. But to hold me over I guess I might buy one set with an educational discount. I'm thinking the symphonic orchestra, but I can't decide between silver and gold. I've noticed that Gold has no organ or choirs, while silver contains some of these things, albeit I figure they're stripped down versions of EW other products like symphonic choirs or what not. Is it worth getting silver for these things or does the full articulation set of gold outweigh all of this? And if I got gold, would the instruments mesh well with other non-EW samples on a count of their reverb? I tend to like to place choirs and orchestras together and was wondering if I didn't get silver or symphonic choirs with gold that the instruments won't go well with any other choral vsts I already have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Mac Attack Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 I've noticed that Gold has no organ or choirs, while silver contains some of these things Silver is packaged along with Gold, so you still get access to these. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 5, 2012 Author Share Posted June 5, 2012 I'm starting to feel like a noob... >_< The reason I asked that is because in the instrument listings for the set choir articulations only appear under the tab labeled silver. Another somewhat unrelated concern I can't find a link for the gold mic updates at all, and when I went to the upgrade section, gold's default upgrades are platinum or platinum plus, how exactly do you request the alternate mic positions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShrackAttack Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 I read a while back that they are not allowing the other mic positions for Gold to be purchased anymore until they are fixed, but I could be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 9, 2012 Author Share Posted June 9, 2012 damn it the more I research on this the more I'm confused. So for the choir word building only works on the default articulation? Like you can't use word builder on say falls or whispers? Also what are the default words for the whisper? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theshaggyfreak Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 I read a while back that they are not allowing the other mic positions for Gold to be purchased anymore until they are fixed, but I could be wrong. They took them down a couple months ago and I may have even been the catalyst for that. I spent a month dealing with their tech support trying to fix a few problems. Honestly, it was one of the worst experience I've ever had dealing with tech support from any company. I won't go into too many details again (I've posted about this before in this thread) but EWQL lost my business. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShrackAttack Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 If I had it all to go back and do over again, I would not buy the complete composer collection. The PLAY engine is just flat out bad. I'm more of an orchestral guy myself, but if I could I would only purchase Symphonic gold, Stormdrum 2, Ra, and the pianos and preferably use them with Kontakt. Goliath, Voices of Passion, and Choirs really aren't that great. Though I will admit I've never spent much time with the wordbuilder since the learning curve seems like a huge pain in the ass. Symphony Gold and SD2 are pretty much a staple though, but I wish I had more control over them like in Kontakt. The only reason I ever use MoR is for the black kit, occasionally I'll use a bass. The guitars just sound overly fake. I had really high hopes for MoR when I bought it 2 years ago, but I just really ended up not caring for it that much which was disappointing. Though that could easily be user error. Overall, while I think Eastwest stuff is generally good bang for your buck, if you plan on doing music professionally ever it is a good idea to go other more specialized routes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 That doesn't make any sense. You'll still have to use PLAY if you buy them separately. They got rid of Kompakt a long time ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 I still have yet to experience anything in PLAY that earns this kind of ire. It's not wonderful by any means, but I don't personally get the criticism on it myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theshaggyfreak Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 I still have yet to experience anything in PLAY that earns this kind of ire. It's not wonderful by any means, but I don't personally get the criticism on it myself. It's definitely worse on the Mac side than Windows. Play gave me quite a bit of grief when I first started using it with the added mic positions for the EW/QL SO Gold. One of the major problems with the EW/QL SO stuff is that the discs they send you are quite old (I think some were from 2007). The updates that you have to download to make it all work don't always do what they're supposed to. Something else to keep in mind is that there is just about zero chance getting rid of the licenses you purchased if you want to offload them to someone else. You would literally have to give up your iLok and the account that goes with it. I know that this isn't exactly abnormal these days but it is something to consider. I agree with ShrackAttack that I somewhat wish I had never made this purchase. Tech support from EW/QL has a pretty bad reputation these days and I experienced that first hand. My advise is to give money to a company who makes a good product and (mostly) treats their customers right. If you need orchestral samples Vienna really isn't really that much more expensive in the end. For the other stuff, there are various dedicated libraries that sound great. It's easy to get sucked in by all these big bundles. Just be careful that you're getting your monies worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShrackAttack Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 That doesn't make any sense.You'll still have to use PLAY if you buy them separately. They got rid of Kompakt a long time ago. That's my point. I wouldn't purchase them again if I could only get the PLAY version. I'm not telling him to go buy the Kontakt version, since its obviously unavailable now. I also wasn't telling him to not buy the complete composer's collection, since if you're going to buy 2-3 of their products anyways you may as well just get extra crap for the same price. I'm just giving my opinion that I think PLAY is pretty terrible and which Eastwest products I thought were decently useful. I still have yet to experience anything in PLAY that earns this kind of ire. It's not wonderful by any means, but I don't personally get the criticism on it myself. It's just the lack of customization imo, though the engine used to crash incessantly for me (but its fine now). Kontakt allows you to do infinitely more to your samples. With PLAY you're stuck with the way they think it should sound and a few options to screw around with or rendering down each sample as audio files and putting them into kontakt yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 That's my point. I wouldn't purchase them again if I could only get the PLAY version. I'm not telling him to go buy the Kontakt version, since its obviously unavailable now. I also wasn't telling him to not buy the complete composer's collection, since if you're going to buy 2-3 of their products anyways you may as well just get extra crap for the same price. I'm just giving my opinion that I think PLAY is pretty terrible and which Eastwest products I thought were decently useful.It's just the lack of customization imo, though the engine used to crash incessantly for me (but its fine now). Kontakt allows you to do infinitely more to your samples. With PLAY you're stuck with the way they think it should sound and a few options to screw around with or rendering down each sample as audio files and putting them into kontakt yourself. but if I could I would only purchase Symphonic gold, Stormdrum 2, Ra, and the pianos and preferably use them with Kontakt. That sounds like you're telling him to buy them separately to use them with Kontakt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShrackAttack Posted June 10, 2012 Share Posted June 10, 2012 Sorry that my sentence structure wasn't that great, but the key words there were "if I could". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 23, 2012 Author Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah I'm starting to realize how crappy tech support is for EW products. Now it's a direct trade off between product quality and support. If I buy I'm essentially betting on having few to no problems >_< I know Vienna and garritran exist as alternatives, but its seems like EWQL really has the sound that I want. I might just do their june sale, buy two products, if I don't like them... just $400 down the drain. Also it looks like the gold mic positions are not coming back, why the hell do they have misleading information on their site. It's like they want you to hate them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garpocalypse Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 I picked up EWQLSO Gold a year ago and when I got it, one of the discs had a giant black burn mark on it. Like someone put a lighter to it before putting it into the sleeve. While they were pretty quick to send me a new disc they didn't want to send me a completely new set instead. Good thing the other discs turned out to be fine or that would have been the longest install session i've had yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 Yeah I was pretty puzzled by that too. The EWQLCC I got came in their nice-looking box but was packaged kinda strangely and cheaply. The discs were fine though (although my Stormdrum 2 has some the instruments only play extreme right, though I'm told I just need to reload the samples onto my hard drive). Hard to tell what the hell's going on over there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShrackAttack Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 The discs were fine though (although my Stormdrum 2 has some the instruments only play extreme right, though I'm told I just need to reload the samples onto my hard drive). Same exact crap for me lol. A lot of the samples from Eastwest are just poorly edited period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 Well I haven't actually tried it yet to see if that works or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 29, 2012 Author Share Posted June 29, 2012 Last question... I'm just going for the 2 for one deal. If I only really need choirs and an orchestra anyways. Do you find Gold's default reverb a hinderance? Is it at all possible to try and mix it with other vsts despite its defualt sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 You can always turn the reverb off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickomoo Posted June 29, 2012 Author Share Posted June 29, 2012 wait really? Oh I meant the mic positioning. The positions of the instruments would always sound weird when placed with other samples in a mix right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 wait really? Oh I meant the mic positioning. The positions of the instruments would always sound weird when placed with other samples in a mix right? Why would this concern you for EWQL but not for any other sample library? All sample libraries are recorded with microphones that are in some way positioned around the instrument they're recording. If you're referring to the slight reverberation of stage mics, it's not that bad. http://www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Orchestra Where it has the small demo picture on the left, turn up Stage Mics and disable the others. That's what it'll sound like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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