East West PLAY - most stable host DAWs?

[Aaron Smith]

I own both Symphonic Choirs as well as Symphonic Orchestra, and I absolutely love them both—phenomenal sounds and an excellent range of user-controllability built into the software itself.

However, as a Pro Tools user, there has always been a lack of stability in how well the PLAY engine runs, regardless of which version of Pro Tools I've been on (currently PT9), which PLAY update I've installed, the fact that all the samples are streaming from a dedicated internal drive, or how much memory my Mac Pro has (currently 11GB). It seems mostly to be random CPU spikes, and the best remedy has been to set the Pro Tools CPU count to less than full (which would be less than 8 cores on my machine). Doing so definitely makes PLAY usable, but it still is kind of glitchy and crashy sometimes, and I have always felt as though East West doesn't really have a very large base of Pro Tools users, and thus they aren't too terribly interested in making any serious efforts to improve PT compatibility specificially. Sucks, but I understand where they're coming from.

Now, I love Pro Tools for all things audio and I have no desire to entirely hop ship, but I've been feeling more and more than it might be worth getting into a different DAW just for the purpose of composing with MIDI instruments. Do any of you have experience using PLAY on different DAWs and/or can vouch for the stability of said workstation when working with a lot of MIDI instrumentation?

Also, at this point in my career, MIDI isn't a massive part of what I do, so I don't think it would be worth spending a huge pile of money just for enhanced PLAY stability, but I'm willing to explore...

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

East West stuff works great on Cubase 5 on my Mac Pro, never had problems with it, not one single crash. I don't use it that often though, but when I do, it works.

Have you updated PLAY to the latest version btw?

 

[Aaron Smith]

Yeah I'm current with the updates, I'm pretty proactive with keeping up to date on all my software.

 

[Aaron Smith]

This page has been the full extent of East West's Pro Tools support for several years now: http://www.soundsonline.com/Improved-Performance-Pro-Tools?sc=11

 

[Boerboel666]

I was at a composers clinic a few months ago , all pro guys writing for tv , film etc . One of the speakers asked for a show of hands as to which DAW everyone was using . I would say close to 100 % were logic users , I am too but was not expecting that . Obviously the use of orchestral samples was way higher than average in this group . Composing in midi with logic is great also , fast and intuitive . I have had some problems with kontakt player and sample packs in logic but it has been a hardware issue for me not software .

 

[Aaron Smith]

Good info man, thanks. $500 to get Logic Studio ain't too bad really, especially if I continue getting more deeply involved with scoring/composing. Plus I'll get Waveburner with it...

 

[Aaron Smith]

I've been resisting the impulse to buy Hollywood Strings for a good while now, but I can't hold out much longer...hahaha.

 

[Boerboel666]

Check out Cinesamples if you haven't already some good composer friendly products but still high quality . Hollywood strings does look good though ! I am still short of a really good string package , keep changing my mind on which way to go ...

 

[JeffTD]

Good info man, thanks. $500 to get Logic Studio ain't too bad really, especially if I continue getting more deeply involved with scoring/composing. Plus I'll get Waveburner with it...

Waveburner rules, but definitely find someone to get it at a university campus for you - it costs $150-200 there.

 

[superfreak]

I've been resisting the impulse to buy Hollywood Strings for a good while now, but I can't hold out much longer...hahaha.

Aaron I suggest you check out AudioBro L.A. Scoring Strings!

 

[Sweetnothing]

I've been resisting the impulse to buy Hollywood Strings for a good while now, but I can't hold out much longer...hahaha.

Keep in mind that library is a resource hog...depending on the patch/articulation, it just needs too many resources as many people I know told me.

Their solution was to put the whole sample library into a separate SSD to keep the load times faster. That and 64 bits to have as much ram available for the samples to load into.

I bought LASS instead, more resource friendly, but then again, didn't got any first hand experience with HS, just talk.

 

[updog]

i haven't had problems running Play after their most recent updates. i'm running Logic 9. i think it's great for working with midi, so i'm recommending it as well if you're looking to switch.

in fact, my only problem with my setup is my computer getting maxed out. i'm an ass so i keep buying all sorts of new plugins instead of saving up for a new computer powerful enough to run them...

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Aaron I suggest you check out AudioBro L.A. Scoring Strings!

Uau!!! The demos blew my mind

 

[Skinny Viking]

I so badly wish I had a fucking clue how any of these programs work

 

[JoergieN]

Great topic. I'm a part time game composer and I was just thinking about making the switch to protools. But seeing that I primarily use EWQL Symphonic Orchestra for orchestral stuff I might have to do a little more research.

 

[Audiosprite]

Incidentally, EWSO is on sale this week: http://www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Orchestra

Anyone have the Silver version? Are you happy with the range of instruments available, or do you need Gold+ to get a suitable library?

 

[JoergieN]

Get the Gold man. I know it costs more but trust me on this one, save up. The other mic positions that you get with the higher ones are less useful so the gold is the best bang for your buck.

The reason I responded to this topic was for the pro tools thing though. I've done more research and I've found that protools is not a great daw for midi. The reason I was trying to switch to protools was because I was at my buddy's studio and he's a really successful film composer and he had eastwest samples running in synchrony with Avid's Protools, sibelius, artist series, and media composer at the same time and he had the most sick work flow ever. But I just found out that all that works with logic as well, which is what I use now. I'm not making a living even close to being able to work with all that but hopefully I'll move up in my company and be able to work with more.

 

[Sweetnothing]

Incidentally, EWSO is on sale this week: http://www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Orchestra

Anyone have the Silver version? Are you happy with the range of instruments available, or do you need Gold+ to get a suitable library?

Depends on the use. Silver has few articulations and it only has stage mics.

I've never had a problem with the stage mix since it sounds great that way, but articulations...you'll have a hard time doing something a little convincing away from keyboard pad sounds, at least in my experience with EWQLS.

If it's for simple lines, not caring about tech stuff like legato, using expression...then yes, it's great. It also has that hollywood, hans zimmer kinda big sound.

However, for the price...you just can't go wrong, I think for that price, you only have a VSL library to compare.

Both have pro's and con's

EWQL is far easier to work with compared to the vsl, and you don't really need to process it besides little eq.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

East West stuff works great on Cubase 5 on my Mac Pro, never had problems with it, not one single crash. I don't use it that often though, but when I do, it works.

Have you updated PLAY to the latest version btw?

This is my experience.

 

[Zack Uidl]

I use Cubase 5 mainly and will be using Cubase 6 once I wrap up some projects. I honestly cannot recommend it enough for what you want. Even over logic.