# A new name for a new gig.



## EastWest Lurker (Mar 2, 2011)

Hi guys,

It's Jay Asher. I am hardly new here but this screenname is.  

In the last few years, frequently on forums I have endeavored to help folks with problems they have with various products I use, and defended companies and products when I felt the criticisms were inaccurate, system specific, or unfair. EastWest and its Play products have been among them. 

This did not go unnoticed by EastWest who liked the (mostly) disciplined and objective way I have done so, and the company offered me a position to assist those having issues and coordinate a resolution, which I have accepted.  I will ask you to believe me when I tell you that when I have written what I have in the past I had no idea this offer would be forthcoming, so profit was not my motive.  I also will promise you I will never write anything I do not believe to be true.

So I will be here under this screenname to try and help you resolve issues with EW products that you are not getting satisfactory answers to and give you information that East West thinks you should know. I will continue to use Ashermusic to discuss non EastWest related topics.

Obviously, there is nothing I know and can tell you that the EastWest folks do not, but my one advantage is that because it is not my company and I have not spent the tons of hours developing products that they have, I can be more dispassionate about comments that are posted.  Some of you have had issues with the company, I understand and respect that, but I believe it is a positive move they have recognized this and appointed someone to monitor and assist.  I am here to serve a constructive role.  So by and large I will not respond to non-specific issues, rants against the company in ad hominem attacks, but will focus on helping you achieve resolution for specific issues.

Sometimes this will help, other times it will not. One of the singular things about how Digidesign, now Avid, did their business that lead to their reputation as the most stable system was to eliminate variables.  They wrote the software, designed and built the hardware, designated the plug-in formats, and tested and qualified systems. So they would essentially say to their user base, "Here is what we have tested. If you use our hardware and software with only our recommended settings, hardware components, platform and OS recommendations, we will warranty that it will work well. Any deviation from this may or may not work and  we do not take responsibility for any system that is having  problems that does not follow this."  This could be annoying as they were slow to qualify new OS, computers, hard drive systems, etc. but it definitely gave users a good path to stability.
 
This is simply not possible in the world EastWest has to deal with.  There are too many different Macs, different PCs, some hand built with tons of different components by people with different levels of skill at this; different versions of different OS; different hard drives; different amounts of RAM and CPU power; different hosts; different combination of plug-ins, virtual instruments (some of them very demanding on computer resources); and yes, different levels of knowledge and skill of the users.

So there are always going to be issues that some users have that others do not because of the interaction of all these, and it changes constantly!  EastWest is the industries most awarded producer, and just picked up 2 more awards last month, one being Sound On Sound "Readers Choice Award", voted by the readers of SOS over a 3 month period; the other being Electronic Musician "Editors Choice Award", so in general their products are highly regarded.  However, as with all successful companies, some users have unresolved issues, and my role is to give those customers my best effort, within reason, to try and resolve these as soon as possible.  

Hopefully, I won't screw it up 

Jay Asher
Online Coordinator
EastWest/Quantum Leap

[email protected]


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## José Herring (Mar 2, 2011)

Cool Jay!

I would like to mention though that I'm in the process of building a new machine for EW Play products especially HS and the upcoming HB now that I've completed the work on my main machine.

You mentioned that Avid has a definitive recommended system that works with PT. You say that it's not possible to do this with Play. but, I think that it is. There is definitely a system and settings that work with Play. I've found that EW has been reluctant to post detailed specs (ie, type of soundcard, mobo, audio cards, drivers, OS tweaks, ect...).

I know that Vision DAW has a Play system and perhaps EW doesn't want to cut into that or perhaps they don't want to limit themselves to recommending 1 type of system. But, do you think there is any way that you could convince them to post more details about the recommend system specs and setting? 

I know that they have on their forum a "working Play systems" thread, but whats working for your somebody in Kentucky is more often than not what I would consider "rock solid".

Also, it seems to me that you would cut down on the number of "frustrated users" who are trying to run Vienna, Kontakt 4 and Play on a first generation mac pro quad core with 8 gigs of ram and expecting HS to conveniently fit into their template. Which I don't know about you, but for some reason seams to irritate and annoy me so I could imagine that it's pissing off the good folks at EW to no end.

Jose


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## germancomponist (Mar 2, 2011)

This is very cool! 
Congreats to you, Jay, and to East-West! A very good idea!


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## Ian Dorsch (Mar 2, 2011)

Nice, Jay, congrats on the new gig!


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## EastWest Lurker (Mar 2, 2011)

josejherring @ Wed Mar 02 said:


> Cool Jay!
> 
> I would like to mention though that I'm in the process of building a new machine for EW Play products especially HS and the upcoming HB now that I've completed the work on my main machine.
> 
> ...



I will pass on that suggestion Jose. And thanks Gunther and Ian for the encouraging words.

Jay Asher
Online Coordinator
EastWest/Quantum Leap

[email protected].


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## ComposerDude (Mar 2, 2011)

Congratulations, Jay!

Agree with Jose's point. Also Peter Alexander has said for years, getting the "true specifications" of a system is crucial to reliability and meeting expectations of real world use...that's where his "TrueSpec" company name comes from.

From the systems engineering perspective, it would be *great* to have complete system specs (hardware, and software including version numbers), with calibration in max polyphony attainable continuously with certain representative libraries (as scripting intensity and system load can vary). Some appropriate MIDI file could be crafted to gradually increase system stress, so tests across platforms are comparable.

This is not a problem isolated to East-West by the way. 

Every composer here "gets to" be their own integration engineer (except the big guys who have technicians working for them, who get to do it). There are a bunch of configuration issues that one might not think were important, that turn out to be. It's subtle stuff that is normally handled invisibly in-house by vertically-integrated companies. But when you buy black-box pieces from companies X, Y, and Z, and try to make them all cooperate on yet other black-box hardware, and interact with (or at least not conflict with) products from still other companies _that have side-effects on machine state including how much memory is grabbed_ it becomes a really nontrivial problem. 

We're lucky that things even work as well as they do. But improved discipline in specifications would at least make it much easier to know what kind of new machine to order/modify, to run the latest cool East-West library. I think their products are so good and cutting-edge that if horsepower requirements dictate getting another computer to run a library that I deem essential to the sonic palette (if the current computer is already maxed-out), it would be worth it. If we can adequately use the library without buying another computer, so much the better. Comprehensive specs and benchmarks would be a great starting point for proper engineering of system solutions, and managing expectations of performance.

-Peter


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## EastWest Lurker (Mar 3, 2011)

Thanks Peter.

So I passed on what you and Jose wrote and here is EW's response:

"_We can and have published our own PC systems (Macs are easy, get the latest with lots of ram and fast hard drives), but it's dangerous territory because some users think the computer can handle anything they throw it, and that simply is not the case, it depends on the computing requirements of the individual collection. If users have large templates and want to include the large legato patches from HS for example, they need to bounce those and continue with the rest.

Also, where possible load PLAY instruments before Kontakt, because Kontakt reserves most remaining system ram for itself.

Here's our test PC -

Case
Compucase HEC, 6C28B Black Mid-Tower Case, No PSU, ATX

Power Supply
Cooler Master, Silent Pro M 850W Power Supply w/ Modular Cables, 80 PLUS Bronze, ATX12V 2.3 EPS12V 2.92, 6x 8/6-pin PCIe

Motherboard
ASROCK, X58 Extreme6, LGA1366, Intel X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x 16 SLI CF /3, SATA 6Gb/s RAID 5 /6, USB 3.0 /4, HDA, GbLAN, FW /2, ATX

Display card
ASUS, EN210/DI/512MD2(LP), GeForce® 210 589MHz, 512MB GDDR2 800MHz, PCIe x16, VGA+DVI, HDMI, Low-Profile

Processor
INTEL, CoreTM i7-980X Extreme Six-Core, 3.33GHz, LGA1366, 6.4 GT/s QPI, 12MB L3 Cache, HT EM64T EIST TB VT XD, 32nm, 130W

Ram
KINGSTON, 24GB (6 x 4GB) HyperX PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz CL9 1.65V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

Hard Drives
WESTERN DIGITAL, 1TB WD Caviar® BlackTM (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
WESTERN DIGITAL, 1TB WD Caviar® BlackTM (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
CRUCIAL, 128GB RealSSDTM C300 SSD, MLC Marvell 88SS9174, 355/140 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s
CRUCIAL, 128GB RealSSDTM C300 SSD, MLC Marvell 88SS9174, 355/140 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s,
CRUCIAL, 128GB RealSSDTM C300 SSD, MLC Marvell 88SS9174, 355/140 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s,

Optical Drive
LG ELECTRONICS, GH22NP20 Black 22x DVD R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, IDE/ATAPI

Operating System
MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition installed on 1TB WD

Cost us $3600 from avadirect.com"_


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## robteehan (Mar 3, 2011)

$3600?? 
Damn I'm switching to Cubase, forget Logic and Apple.


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## ComposerDude (Mar 3, 2011)

Jay, thank you -- and East-West -- very much.

-Peter


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## NYC Composer (Mar 10, 2011)

Jay, I did indeed miss this original post-congrats to you!


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## IFM (Mar 10, 2011)

Awesome Jay, gratz!

Chris


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