East west - is there an alternative?

[Cabes]

Hi all

Okay...so I was about to order the East West Gold Complete and get a free QL Pianos. Both for my girlfriend who is a pianist. I want the pianos primarily but thought I would take the opportunity to get the Orchestral stuff on the 2 for 1 offer.

After doing a lot of reading I've now realised that the PLAY engine is awful, as is the customer support. I want the experience for my girlfriend to be as pleasant as possible, and she isn't great with computers.

The problem is we both REALLY like the pianos. I feel like they've got me over a barrel here. What alternatives do I have? I am aware of ivory (missing that something) and Garritan (large price for 1 piano plus she would like a bosendorfer).

Any help here would be great.

[Hint]

VSL do a standalone Bosendorfer piano:

Vienna Symphonic Library


Try TruePianos - it's modeled, rather than sample-based, but gets very favourable reviews from pianists for the "feel". Being a small app, it's also possible to demo it, which is one advantage it has over the big sample libraries:

Truepianos - Welcome


Sampletekk currently have 50% off all of their sample collections:

SampleTekk - Products

[Cabes]

Thanks for the quick reply. My girlfriend hates the truepianos! However, she really likes the bosendorfer from Vienna (I would say its a shade better than the EW). We are thinking of going with the garritan steinway and the vienna bosendorfer.

We can sacrifice the bechstein if it means not using EW stuff.

Thats put my mind at rest! Many thanks

[jdvmi]

Haven't tried Garritan Steinway, but I do have QL Pianos and all I can say is stay away from it, especially since you can never sell it if it ends up not working for you. It's virtually impossible to play real time without cracks and pops even on a very powerful computer. I too play piano and at this time nothing beats the joy I get out of playing my Yamaha S90ES. It's got great action and a great piano sound.

[musikwerks]

Said it before... say it again....

Bardstown Audio Sample Libraries

Kip's Bosendorfer is beautiful.

[feck]

No problems with PLAY here on Mac whatsoever, except wanting to be able to specifically and dynamically allocate as much RAM as I want to the engine. For QL Pianos, they are sick. Sound great. But, they are such a resource hog that unless you are okay to play with 1 of 3 mic positions at 256 buffer size, they won't work well at all. I just program with a smaller set, and bounce the final through QL Pianos. It comes out sounding great. As for all of the problems people seem to have with PLAY, I suppose I am lucky, as I have had none, and just yesterday worked on an arrangement with 9 PLAY engines pulled up in the same project on one computer.

[jdvmi]

Originally Posted by feck

I suppose I am lucky, as I have had none, and just yesterday worked on an arrangement with 9 PLAY engines pulled up in the same project on one computer.

I would say so. Nothing but a pig PITA for me and many many others. At least it's working well for you and I'm sure it has to work well for others too, just haven't had much luck with it at all and has thus driven me even more to the hardware side.

[elambo]

I jumped on the PLAY bandwagon only recently, after using EWQLSO for ages. Mine is working flawlessly inside ProTools. I believe they've made some recent changes to PLAY software - maybe that's why it's working so well.

FWIW, I was VERY hesitant because I'd heard all the same horror stories, then noticed that a lot of people were starting to have success with it since the updates come out.

However, VSL is excellent. It sounds better, but it takes some mixing whereas the PLAY orchestra has beautiful (and real) hall reverb as part of the sample. That could be good or bad, depending on your intentions.

[elambo]

Originally Posted by jdvmi

I would say so. Nothing but a pig PITA for me and many many others. At least it's working well for you and I'm sure it has to work well for others too, just haven't had much luck with it at all and has thus driven me even more to the hardware side.

Latest software?

[lapieuvre]

EWQLSO is compatible with Kontakt, you can load these sounds with it.

[GCL]

I agree, the PLAY engine is nowhere near where it needs to be for high-volume, multiple instance work. So buggy, still. I loved their entire library with Kontakt (which I still use). I hardly ever reach for their new PLAY versions (of which I own the Symphonic and many others). Someone said resource hog? You got that right, and even on a Mac 8-core. The Kontakt version was so much easier on the CPU. 95% of the time I'm choosing to work with my VSL library though. Those guys are on the ball.

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by lapieuvre

EWQLSO is compatible with Kontakt, you can load these sounds with it.

Only the pre-Play versions, which are no longer available. Play versions can't be loaded outside of the Play engine.

[decapitor]

Hey everyone. New here. Does anyone have any experience with both EastWest Play Pianos and the Bardstown Bosendorfer? I would in principle prefer to go with Bardstown because the service will be better and the DRM needed for EastWest is a real turnoff for me. But at the same time I am interested in getting the absolute best sounding most realistic experience I can, so if anyone has used both I would LOVE to hear from you. Thanks. BTW I have the Bosendorfer 290 from EastWest and I think it's pretty good but I think the highs have some slight tunings issues and the sound just isn't perfect. So does anyone know what the improvements are between teh old Bosendorfer 290 from EastWest that was sold as a standalone vs the new one that appears to have a much larger install size from the Play Package?

[Charlie-O]

The East West Symphonic Silver, has a Steinway included. Sounds amazing to me and my business partner who is a pro pianist.

[Animus]

I still think it's ridiculous that EastWest are now using dongles and yet you still can't resell the library.

[raal]

just got VSL and have had no issues other than wrapping my head around the thing. it sounds great though.

i too ran scared from EW.

also bought Ivory recently and it's a little buggy (freezes when i try to switch pianos) but i just instantiate it again and all's fine.