EastWest Quantum Leap Orchestra (or Choirs)

[Robert "Robby" Piotrowski]

What do you think about a programs from EW.QL factory? How it works? I mean: Orchestra, Choirs, Colossus etc. is it possible to make all music by those programms (film music, theatre music, commercial music)? i've heard same demos on YouTube.com. It sound incredible! I make music by Cakewalk Sonar 7. I use Cooedit Pro 2.0, plugins: Waves Diamond Bundle and PSP. I have keyboards: yamaha /old/ and steering-kbd: OBERHEIM MC 1000 88 keys (very heavy and good, without a sound) and same sound modules. My soundcard: E-MU 0404, PC-computer, My idea is to buy EW.QL orchestra Silver or Gold edition. Unfortunately, Platinum edition is too expansive for my pocket. My midi-demos: www.robertpiotr65.wrzuta.pl. I'd like to start by Orchestra ar Colossus, maybe Native Instruments (Reaktor 5, Absynth) in a future?

[Ray Kemp]

Robby,
1. Colossus is now Goliath using East West's Play Engine. I have it and it is great.
2. NI Kontakt 3 includes orchestral samples from VSL and many other sample sets. I have it and it is great.
3. Yellowtools Independence Pro 2 includes Kirk Hunter orchestral samples plus many other useful sounds. I have it and it is great.
4. I have EWQLSO Gold complete because like you I spent only money I had. It is great.

There are many options out there to spend lots more money but on a budget these are pretty good if you take the time to make them work for you. Too many users spend time complaining about what these tools can't do instead of just getting the job done. You will never have enough sample libraries.
Another must for film and TV work will be percussion libraries and loops e.g. Stylus RMX, QL Storm Drum etc. etc.
The list goes on.
Only you can decide what comes first. I personally would say Kontakt 3 because it allows access to many third party sample library developers like Westgate, Xsamples, Pettinhouse DirectGuitar etc.
I say this now but I bought EWQLSO Gold first. I haven't got Symphonic Choirs and I should have because I love that sound but as you say choices and more choices. Goliath has a selection of choir samples but no word builder.
Have fun deciding.

[Robert "Robby" Piotrowski]

Many thanx for an answer! Yes, You're right. I've heard 'bout a 'Storm drum Intakt'. It's a realy "storm" of sounds (if we talk of percussion/drums)! Little bit about EW.QL Symphonic Choirs: You can see 8 part of tutorials here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dDweWxN91U&feature=related

it's a first part of 8 only, but You can find other 7 so easy..
When I saw this tutorial a first time, I was on my knees! You can write any words and your choir will sing it! The only thing is to teach yourself how to do it fine, so ypor choir understund how to sing right! incredible!
yes, I have 14-day demo of EW.QL Symphonic Orchestra! It's oncredible too! Especially, 3 PIANOS in it. I must have it! I need that jazz-piano! But a second (Elton John-like) is good too! third..little bit less, but I prefere a smoother sound like first one...If you add some effect, you can record many good songs with it, but if you add some wood instruments, violines, voices... you have now all music dinner!!!! i buy it soon!

[Per-Erik Rosqvist]

I started with EWQL silver in the composing phase, and I'm still using it and Gold. I love them both. I am checking some of the garritan stuff right now, especially solo-strings that EWQL never been good at. With silver you get a fairly good Steinway, and 2-3 choir-patches and organ, that are not in the gold edition. Gold is (of course) better though for "standard" orchestra stuff.

I've only tested Colossus (Goliath), which has an even more wide set of instruments, including ethnic percussion, guitars and such..

[Xcid]

EW samples are a hit right now because they are extremely well recorded and naturally processed.

[Robert "Robby" Piotrowski]

hello! i have a problem: if i use silver or gold orchestra it's fine if i play standalone but...i cannot hear anthing if i use sonar. all works fine, i see even kaybord in orchestra works good/if i press kbds in my steering machine, but nothing hear. other programs, like 'collossus' or NI b4 II, or stormdrum work good with sound, but not orchestra. wat's a problem??

[Robert "Robby" Piotrowski]

I will bay Komplete 5. it's a most of NI instruments inside of it..and only one registration!

[Robert "Robby" Piotrowski]

what kind of system U use to compose? I have XP home edition. I use 4gb of RAM memmory but XP )(by Bill Gates off course) sees only 3,17gb. for example, in my Sonar 7.0 with Collossuss and Stormdrum I.(both VST vers.) it's very hard to put inside piano from Collossus without a 'crashing'! 3Gb pianos it's impossible! I think, I must change for MC (I mean: buy a new computer unfortunatelly) or Vista with a newest service pack I

[Alex Mørch]

Hi. 4 gigs of ram certainly is enough, as 32 bit OS only is able to read approx 3 gig.. You should get the DFD (Direct from Disc) for your EWQL progs. Makes your ram work less ;-) (Works great for me on only 2 gigs of ram, which of course is not allways enough though..) If you need harddisk space you can buy 1 TB these days at no cost, compared to buying a mac.. Buy some libraries instead XD

And yes EWQLSO Gold is great, but without the expansion it's very limited. I.e. lots of the modulation features are missing. I don't know of the "complete" version, when I bought it a year ago it was called Pro XP and added 21 gigs of samples, making it a 35,5 gb library.

My stuff (Just to be a jerk ;-)):
EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold Pro Expansion, Ra, Stormdrum, Boesendorfer 290, Colossus, Symphonic Choirs. All worth every penny.

[Alex Mørch]

And btw, emu rox!! ;D

[Xcid]

I use 8 gigs or Ram - Quadcore 3.0, Vista B 64 with 1.5 Terabytes and 512 of Vid Memory.
Will update by the next year probably with another faster CPU.

[Jan Civil]

I am using Kontakt 3.5 (a public beta) in Cubase 5.0.1. Which is a 32-bit process, under OSX.5. Which can run some 64-bit processes, but some say it 'isn't a true 64-bit OS'. (Couldn't tell you why). Some of my projects are using around 7 GB of samples, just in Kontakt. I have 24 GB in anticipation of a thing made by VSL, a 64-bit process which runs as a server on a slave machine, and will host vstis other than VSL ones. *Vienna Ensemble Pro*. They already have VE3, hosting their own library. People are creating some serious templates these days like this..
What I just said about Kontakt 3.5, you'd have to have a 64-bit windows OS to do. The specs on what Vienna Ensemble will see under OSX.5 is 2.4 GB per instance, until you just don't have the RAM anymore. So, the money I spent on the Mac, is worth it to me. (not everything has drivers ready for 64-bit OSs on the other platform)
Under Kontakt on OSX.5, I am not limited by anything but 'how much RAM'. So, it's DDR3, in sets of three, I can't really use more than 24, though I could stick 32 in this thing, the last 8 are kind of wasted as single channel memory.
Once you get into some fat libraries, not having the RAM or a host with the ability to use RAM becomes an issue quickly enough.
Also, I got a drum library for BFD2 and it's obese, so good thing it won't be having to share with Kontakt. ONE of the hihats is 4.33 GB fat. "Evil Drums" it's called. So, I'm evil now. !

[James Semple]

Hi Jan,

This is more like a pro setup and nice to see others using this.

On a Mac at least, the 4GB limit thing can be overcome many ways. At the moment I have 8GB and with PLAY and VSL Ensemble running outside of Cubase I can use way more than 4GB. When Kontakt 3.5 goes GA (around mid-July if my contact is right) then I'll look at upgrading from 8 to 16 GB of RAM.

To answer the original poster, EW Gold is good but I feel that without Platinum and the close samples, you often find that you lack punch and everything gets a little woolly and undefined. Also, samples that enormous and reverberent by themselves sound muddy when mixed with lots of other samples recorded the same way.