Your opinions on the different orchestral programs?

brianhood

brianhood

No Care Ever
Jul 12, 2008
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Nashville, TN
www.facebook.com\456recordings
I need to buy a good orchestral program for a band coming up soon that has a ton of full midi orchestra stuff in their songs. I need something that comes with strings, horns, percussion, key instruments(at least pianio), and possibly even choirs.


I have my eye on one of the EWQL packs(probably just platinum). Maybe even just doing the complete composer pack. That one has a lot of stuff i don't need for this band, but it would be cool to have for future projects. It would only be about $300 more, and come with piano and choir packs, plus 4 extra various packs.

Do any of you guys have experience with EWQL platinum on Pro tools 9? Any thoughts or suggestions of other software?
 
Hi,

i´ve got platinum plus! Bought it for 355 € directly from Soundsonline. Really great plugin.... can´t really say anything bad about it, because better plugins are waaaaay more expensive. If you only need it for one band: why don´t you get someone who runs the midi through his plugin and sends you the wavs.

Regards
 
I really like the sounds from EWQL. I got their free version a while back when it was on offer and it was great. In the past, their Pro Tools support has been quite bad and I had a few crashes on my system (mind you it could have been that I was trying to run the 32 bit version on my 64bit system after I upgraded my computer and it didn't install all of the required components - 32 bit version on 32 bit OS was fine for me) but I believe that they've fixed all of those issues up now. I'd be checking just in case though. I'd agree that East West sounds way better than Garritan as well.
 
I have EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum, and the sound quality is really impressive. Using Pro Tools 7.4 still though, and I always have to screw around with the Playback Engine settings in Pro Tools in order to avoid random CPU spikes...normally this means backing off to letting Pro Tools use 6 or 7 processors instead of 8, and it seems to help. However, multiple instances loaded up still kind of gets sketchy, and there really doesn't seem to be a ton of care about Pro Tools compatibility out of the EWQL camp, because I think their main user base are all composing with other types of software. I remember reading that Pro Tools is the only unstable platform that gets the CPU spikes. I don't know, I love the product and the sound, I just wish it wasn't such a headache to use intensely sometimes!
 
I agree; I've got a bunch of the EastWest libraries... they are definitely more stable in Reaper than ProTools 8 (I switched to Reaper before I tried PT9.)

Regardless, I usually use EW in its own instance/project and then copy the audio over to my main project... using it in a project alongside Superior Drums and Trillian = instant crash (I'm only running 4GB of memory.)
 
I really want the Hollywood Strings set, the clips sound phenomenal, and they captured a much more nuanced/thorough set of performance values than the strings in Symphonic Orchestra. Not that Symphonic Orchestra is weak, but especially on a lot of the short notes, there needs to be a lot more velocities and at least 20 performances of each note...not only three or six (and even the six ones sound kind of funny sometimes, depending on what you're trying to program).

Anyway, super expensive for Hollywood Strings though so I don't think it's enough of a priority at this point to warrant spending that much. But when they start running a discount on it... :)
 
Someone mentioned Symphobia to me a while back, and while it looks very impressive, dude.... that price tag is SERIOUSLY outside of my budget. So, I would agree - EQWL is better than Garritan by a pretty large margin (of course... IMO, etc.).
 
Had decent experiences with EWSO. I'd suggest Platinum over Gold. The room mics really help it all come alive. I tracked some choirs and horns here with a keyboard player some months back, and those few little bits ended up being the most huge sounding on the album.
 
I've always found Pro Tools to not cope well with high-RAM requiring plugins. If I were you, I'd do my midi work in Cubase or something, and export and import as wave into Pro Tools.
 
Symphobia is essentially an effect library.. the rips.. scary swells, plinky cartoon patch. It sounds fantastic but I don't think by itself would handle any serious composing. On the other hand with EW you can create essentially the same things, they just aren't prepackaged into a nice neat preset like symphobia BUT there are waaay more articulations which are needed to make something sound real.

The Kontakt library is nice too, uses the Vienna library.. although not the full blown version it still has plenty of articulations and the samples sound good to me.

If you're not looking for crazy orchestral composing you could probably get by with something much simpler...

And to answer your question EW SO comes with Strings, Woodwinds, Brass and Percussion.
 
Just to make this short and sweet, go with Cinematic Strings. In my opinion, the most realistic sounds for the price. They'll also hook you up with a free copy of Monster Staccatos which has VERY powerful and high quality staccato strikes. Symphobia is cool but it's truly a one trick pony. I've used it on a lot of my production music for TV shows/commercials but it doesn't have the versatility of EWQL or CS. EWQL is also good (and pretty much the standard) but I think Cinematic Strings wins this one (given it's size, support, and price).
 
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