VSTi's... What would be you're choice? What do you use at the moment?

Chris Alpiar January 26, 2010 at 8:13pm

EWQL is ok, the choirs are excellent and their RA and silk is too, the orchestra is not bad, but its not really easy to create a sound that is different than the EWQL sound. Generally I use VSL stuff for orchestra padded with a butt ton of gigastudio stuffs, older VSL to hans zimmer to dan dean to garritan, to project SAM to Sonic Implant, etc etc.

LASS and Symphobia are both on my list to buy this year

Deborah Young February 8, 2010 at 5:42pm

I'm also new to the world of VST's. I've heard demos of both Vienna Symphony and EWQL. Both sound great, but I couldn't afford them. So I purchased IK Multimedia's Composer Trio, which included 3 Virtual instruments (SampleTank.2L, Miroslav Philharmonik Classik Edition and Sonik Synth 2. The package includes more than 6,200 sounds (including orchestral instruments and some darn good synths, drums, etc.). It costs something like $150 USD. But I'm not sure if it's still on the market (I think it is).

Adam Weldon March 17, 2011 at 10:38pm

EWQLSOPP is finally in the house! Been a long time coming. I can understand what you mean about the sounds but with a few tweeks here and there and some nice convolution reverbs it works great.

EWQL Complete composers collection is on offer at the moment... very tempting!

I've uploaded a couple new indents / short pieces for those who are interested. Cheers

David W. Hamilton March 18, 2011 at 5:10am

I currently use East West's Symphonic Orchestra Gold--I'm going to be getting their Customizable Collection, too, plus some Vienna libraries/Project SAM.

I hear that LASS is very good--they're also expensive. (They do often have a sale that takes it down to about $1000, but it's typically around $1300, if I remember right)

Do your research... find out all of your options... ask those who've used the products before you. :-) I would look at all possible options, and find demos for them as well to see if they will work for what I want.

James Semple March 18, 2011 at 9:09am

East West make great stuff and more importantly their sound is a very popular sound amongst directors.

As for other sample libraries, well yes there are a huge number of unbelievably good libraries out there. LASS is absolutely stunning, Symphobia is great, definitely check out Requiem which is IMO the best choir available right now.

Also Omnisphere is a must have, even if you're primarily writing orchestral music. It's just simply too useful to not own.

For my list of stuff check out http://www.jamessemple.com/studio.html

James Semple Composer

James Semple

Anders Christensen March 18, 2011 at 1:29pm

I have the Complete Composers Collection and I am very happy with it. I also spent a lot of time trying to find the right VST to start with. I do love soundtrack music and if you want that film sound go with EWQL.

Almost every sample in Complete Composers Collection are execelent and you can create a lot of different styles of music using only the samples from the Complete Composers Collection. Also the symphony orchestra comes with some great percussion as well as the strings, brass, woodwinds etc.

The only bad thing I have to say about it is the Pianos Gold - a lot of background noise on those samples that builds up when you have many notes playing at the same time. Choosing Silk, Gypsy or one of the other options would be my recommendation. If you want a really good piano take a at Alicias Keys from NI.

Adam Weldon March 18, 2011 at 2:01pm

James, you are a hoarder of virtual instruments! Very nice!

Anders, I currently use the Steinway in the percussion section of EWQLSOPP which works great for what I need, howveer i've been having some small "clicks" when playing certain notes just after the sample is triggered. After speaking to EW about it, they've recommended using ASIO4ALL which helped a little but still seem to have the problem. Also I now have some red letters coming up in certain areas of Protools "PNG" which is annoying but dosen't affect anything adversly. Apparantly it's something to to with memory allocation. I'll have to look into it.

Just received Complete Coposers collection, with Gypsay and Ministry of Rock instead of SO and Pianos. I also upgraded to SD2Pro and Choirs Pro. Haven't listened to all the sounds yet but on first audition the sounds are very high quality and playable.

James Semple March 18, 2011 at 2:40pm

Regarding pianos I think Alicia's Keys is great for a pop piano. It drops into a mix beautifully.

For something more Thomas Newman or JNH then I would go with Tonehammer Emotional Piano or Art Vista Malmsjo.

David W. Hamilton March 18, 2011 at 2:46pm

Never heard of Requiem before--just looked it up. Wow! :-D

Russell Bell March 18, 2011 at 4:00pm

Eastwest are among my favourites but as mentioned above,there are a lot of diverse alternatives and some are a lot more engaging.

i use orchestra gold with close mics,voices of passion,RA and storm drum 2 from EWQL.

i use a lot of tonehammer and i agree,requiem is also my favourite choir library.i also use epic dhol,small epic percussion,cait,francesca,Barbarry,emotional piano,plucked piano.

from sample logic i use Air,cinesamples cineorche,hollywood winds,drums of war.

Project sam symphobia has some very nice stuff in there that makes a nice change from the ewql.I find symphobia has some more subtle tones that layer quite nicely.

im also a recent fan of sonokinetic and i also now write demos for them which is handy because it gives me a lot of access to free libraries and a means tro try new things out that i might not consider.its always the wild card library that ends up drawing out more orginality and diversity than the safe everyday working options!!

so far im using Maasai,felt force one,euphrates and tigris,dessert voice and sultan of strings.

i honestly think between sonokinetic and tonehammer,you have the most realistically priced sounds anywhere on the web of that quality.

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VSTi's... What would be you're choice? What do you use at the moment?

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