# EW Hollywood Orchestra vs Cinesamples CineSymphony



## Iostream (May 8, 2015)

I have never actually used samples from either vendor, but lately I was thinking it might be nice to have a full orchestra from a single vendor (not just the broad strokes I have with Albion). As much as I love Spitfire, that is priced out of my range for a full BML setup. I think I have narrowed it down to Cinesamples and EW Hollywood Orchestra. There is a large price difference, but both are within budget. The Cinesamples libraries would be Core + Pro for everything vs Hollywood Orchestra Diamond.

Any reason I should go with one over the other? I do have Albion I, CS2, and a few other libraries already which can fill out.


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## EastWest Lurker (May 8, 2015)

Let me save everyone some time and tell you how this will go

1. Some will say the EW stuff sounds better while some will say the Cinesamples sounds better.

2. Some will say go with Cinesamples because it is Kontakt based while EW is Play, which in their opinion is vastly inferior and more resource hungry, when in fact it is mostly that the EW libraries, especially HS, are more resource hungry.

3. Some people will say one has the better workflow while others will say just the opposite.

4. People will start comparing their perception of the attitudes of the two companies, whether they are "living libraries", etc.

My advice , and it would be my advice even if I did not work for EW, is that if you have a computer rig that can handle either, listen to the many demos that have been posted by now and decide which sounds best to your ears.

If you are skilled with the libraries because you spend the time to know them and learn how they work best,you can make good sounding stuff with either. If you do not, it will not matter.


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## Maestro1972 (May 8, 2015)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri May 08 said:


> If you are skilled with the libraries because you spend the time to know them and learn how they work best,you can make good sounding stuff with either. If you do not, it will not matter.



+1

Jay hit the nail on the head. I am fairly new to the sample world but I can tell you what I know. I have the Hollywood Diamond Series and L-O-V-E the sound. I have zero problems with PLAY.


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## Daniel James (May 8, 2015)

Both have great sounds. You will probably be good with either.

There has been some issues with quite a few people on this forum with the PLAY engine, so if that is a factor then its worth pointing out. Kontakt is still the most stable sampler plugin in my experience. Also I believe you will need an Ilok for PLAY (well I do at least).... Another factor for some people. Of course this will probably be the main talking point of this thread as already mentioned, but I think if you search the forum a bit you will find a lot more posts from users having issues with EW on play than you will with Cinesamples on Kontakt

Also be weary of any company that feels the need to kill this kind of discussion by making a post designed to deter people feeling the need to have their say...the first response no less. 

Like I said at the start, sound wise you will be in a good place regardless of which way you go. If you are looking for a more proven record of stability then I recommend doing the homework first.

-DJ

*I can practically hear him furiously smashing his keyboard with the response*


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## EastWest Lurker (May 8, 2015)

And perhaps be wary of someone who comes into every thread that mentions EW or Play and tries to discourage people from getting it, although he was much more subtle about how he did it this time.


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## Daniel James (May 8, 2015)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri May 08 said:


> And perhaps be wary of someone who comes into every thread that mentions EW or Play and tries to discourage people from getting it, although he was much more subtle about how he did it this time.



Only because I have it, and it works horribly for me. One is allowed to be a disgruntled customer. A bad experience with the software is relevant to this thread, wouldn't you say?

-DJ

*Called it*


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## Karl Feuerstake (May 8, 2015)

This is my raw, straight-to-the-point opinion of the different companies (and I must say, I do like both companies' quality. Don't take this the wrong way.)


-I like the sound of the room Cinesamples is recorded in. I do not like the sound of the room Hollywood Orchestra was recorded in: it is too dry and bland for my taste. Cinesamples is wet, and the room sounds wonderful; you'll hear that exact room in many film scores, since many were recorded at Sony studios; you'll likely immediately enjoy it.

-I appreciate that the EW Hollywood series has conducted chromatic sampling for sustains (and both have tons of RRs for short notes so I'm not discussing that.) They also have more 'dynamic' layers than Cinesamples. Additionally, there are a TON of articulations, allowing you to really get down to the nitty gritty. In this regard, the amount of sampling EW has done is a lot more detailed. Back to chromatic sampling, Cinesamples does not do this: they usually do Whole-Tones, and at the extreme ranges of instruments often just stretch samples. Pair up whole-tone sampled sustains with lack of round robin, and (I find) you begin to lack that 'organic' sound, especially if you are using pedal points or tonal assertion.

-Cinesamples tends to have better orchestrated 'effects'. Also, on the subject, Hollywood Strings doensn't include *any* at all (there is an effects folder but i don't consider scale runs an effect.) To me this is a real shame, knowing the quality EW delivers, I would've loved them to death.. and Hollywood Winds only includes a few. The ones in Hollywood Brass are nice, especially for the Horn Section, Low Brass Section, and 3-Trumpets, but there could've been a lot more done here especially for Trombones; for some reason, they are severely lacking effects. 

-(For me this is important, maybe not to you.) Neither of them offer a good Cimbasso / Contrabass Trombone; these are instruments common in Film Scores these days. For that, go to BML Low Brass. To be fair though, the HW Cimbasso has a really great 'Marcato' which captures that phenomenal 'attack'. I love layering that Marcato with my BML Cimbasso, for the 'punchy' sound it has. Braaaaamp. 

-In terms of legato, I found Cinebrass Core Horns Ensemble to be totally blown away by HW Brass Horns A6. However this is because it is a fairly old virtual instrument; the newer Cinebrass Pro 12-Horns ensemble and 2-Horns ensemble have a very nicely sampled and scripted legato, which *is* effective. In short: some of the older Cinesamples stuff is not 'up-to-date' any more, but the newer stuff is top-notch.



I do love both developers but they also have a lot of differences. I hope you can find some of my 'review' useful in deciding which to go with. 

If I may make a recommendation: watch the walkthroughs and videos available for the libraries. Decide what you want based on what you hear. They're both great, but they're also detailed in different ways. I have written about my experience with those 'details' above. Different composers will have different opinions about those 'details.'


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## NYC Composer (May 8, 2015)

I have EW HS and HB Gold. I think they're both excellent. I don't have any serious problems with Play. I still use the old EWQLSO percussion, which are still ok for me.
I also bought EW HW Silver winds and am not fond of them tonally. Perhaps the Diamond edition is better.

If you're not aware from previous threads, you'll need a powerful PC (not Mac) as either your main computer or an external slave to run EW Diamond. No one seems to argue with that point.


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## Brendon Williams (May 8, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:


> If you're not aware from previous threads, you'll need a powerful PC (not Mac) as either your main computer or an external slave to run EW Diamond. No one seems to argue with that point.



Though I have no doubt that would be ideal, I use a late 2012 iMac and EW Hollywood Diamond runs fine for me, though it certainly pushes my computer to its limits. It helped a lot when I moved everything to a SSD too.


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## milesito (May 8, 2015)

I have both Cinebrass Pro+Core Cineperc Pro+Core

and NOw I have Hollywood STrings and Hollywood Brass...

They just have a totally different sound but I use both depending on the sound I am going for. Karl's feedback on the sounds are pretty spot on.

As for Play vs. Kontakt, I have found kontakt to be easier on my imac, primarily because I can purge samples not being used...but ever since I switched to an SSD, and especially now that I am using a VE Pro slave PC system, Play works perfectly fine. My hypothesis is that as computers get faster each year, RAM goes up and gets cheaper, and SSDs and NVME etc..gets faster, the sample libraries that were "beasts" to run before will not have an issue and then truly the best sounding libraries that are the easiest to play may become more popular...

My last point is simply that two years ago, I liked the notion of Cinesamples engine where an activated sustain pedal would yield legato samples and when off, you'd have shorter samples, velocity sensitive for duration/dynamic. I personally had issues with playing and recording fast and dynamic lines that switch between long/short notes...That is why I switched decided to give Play and EW another shot, and I have been very satisfied with how playable they are...

just my two cents. both sound great...personally, for playability and speed of recording, however - I give it to EW. And I find it faster to have multiple tracks for articulations versus just keyswitching. It has made me a faster composer (which I did not expect until setting up EW in my template)...


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## NYC Composer (May 9, 2015)

Brendon Williams @ Sat May 09 said:


> NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:
> 
> 
> > If you're not aware from previous threads, you'll need a powerful PC (not Mac) as either your main computer or an external slave to run EW Diamond. No one seems to argue with that point.
> ...



I'd be interested to hear how many voices you're getting and what your template is- you're the first I've heard to say so. With my template, especially using a few of the more demanding patches in HS Gold, I can really tax my slave 2012 4 core 2.6 ghz Mini.


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## Boberg (May 9, 2015)

I've was deciding between Hollywood Strings and CineStrings a few months ago, and it was a hard decision. After a lot of research and forums posts, it was quite clear to me that both of the libraries were great and would do the job. There are of course differences, but only small ones, and I found that they didn't matter all that much for me. In the end I choose CineStrings, mainly because I prefered the sound of it.

I'm very happy with it, but I would probably have been very happy with Hollywood Strings aswell. What I'm saying is, choose the one that you feel has the better overall orchestral sound. The one that you think fits your composition style sound-wise, because they both have very different sound.

One thing to mention though, which was pretty much what made me purchase CineStrings. They have a gritty sound (this doesn't apply to the whole orchestra of course), which can still be made quite smooth and sweet with EQ when playing on low dynamics. I believe it would be hard to get a gritty sound out of Hollywood Strings, considering that they are very smooth from the get go. 
It's easier to make a gritty sound more smooth, than vice-versa. Once again though, this last paragraph only applies to the strings.


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## Iostream (May 9, 2015)

Thanks for your replies. After a bit more research, it really is a tough decision, however I didn't realize that Hollywood Orchestra was on such a massive sale. Kind of makes it a no brainer to grab that and then pick up the Cinesamples bits over time. Never hurts to have both.


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## BNRSound (May 9, 2015)

I recently bought Hollywood Orchestra diamond due to the sale and aside from a bug with PLAY (the newest version 4.2.25 I think) it's worked pretty well. I think it can blend pretty well with Spitfire libraries given that HO has some built in convo reverbs from QL spaces (as I understand it). My system is a Core i7 4770k with 32gb RAM and the template I'm using at the moment only uses around 20gb. 64gb would be ideal but I think you can get a pretty good template with 32. That's with just HO strings, Brass, some percussion, HZ01 from spitfire, and Project Alpha. Still leaves room to add more. I use it through VE Pro 5 and Cubase and with it's current sale price it was a no-brainer. I'm just a hobbyist and do it for fun though. Here is a clip of something I've been working on the last couple days to give you an idea of what it sounds like: [flash width=450 height=110 loop=false]http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F204834831&secret_url=false[/flash]


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## Pixelee (May 9, 2015)

Like Boberg said, I too like the gritty sound of cinestring. The tail is short enough and you could add more if you desire. Another thing is that if you use Cubase and EW, you'll have two dongles taking up your USB slots.


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## 5Lives (May 12, 2015)

I only have Hollywood Brass Gold, but most of CineSamples (except for strings). My thoughts:

- HB sounds great. CS sounds great.
- HB follows the approach of individual patches for every articulation. There are some keyswitch patches as well.
- CS follows the approach of "all arts" patches. The way they set it up makes it really fun and easy to play and switch between the articulations easily. You can write the same HB line in CS in much fewer tracks (and much faster in my experience).
- HB on a brand new, top of the line i7 Macbook Pro off of SSD led to cracks and pops on playback that EW could not resolve.
- CS runs in Kontakt and runs butter smooth. Not a single problem.

All in all, I prefer CS.


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## mushanga (May 12, 2015)

5Lives @ Tue 12 May said:


> ...HB on a brand new, top of the line i7 Macbook Pro off of SSD led to cracks and pops on playback that EW could not resolve...



Wow...that's just inexcusable IMO.

Being a Mac user I am very happy I invested in Cinesamples' brass libraries over EW's.


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## Iostream (May 12, 2015)

5Lives @ Tue May 12 said:


> - HB follows the approach of individual patches for every articulation. There are some keyswitch patches as well.
> - CS follows the approach of "all arts" patches. The way they set it up makes it really fun and easy to play and switch between the articulations easily. You can write the same HB line in CS in much fewer tracks (and much faster in my experience).



That is a strong point. I really don't like breaking out patches for articulations where it can be avoided. Cubase makes it very easy for me to change articulations on a keyswitch or CC switched patch, I just have to map it once.
Either way, the sale on EW right now made it worth the money to try. I can add CS libraries over time and end up with both. I guess it will be interesting to see if I feel the need to.


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## TintoL (May 12, 2015)

There are few things to keep in mind.

STRING RUNS is something that is not easy to find in libraries. In this case, HS is filled with tons of prerecorded runs. And most importantly, it has at least 4 patches for playable runs: repetition run script which is great by the way, spiccato runs, runs smooth etc... This patches are worth a whole library by itself.

Now, there is still the play limitation to count. first, if you are running big templates even with ssd, they take a while to load. Also, Kontakt allows you to use all of your ram... LITERALLY, ALL YOUR RAM without giving you issues. Play needs 4 gigs free to work smoothly and play will even tell you so when you reach that limit. It is a big issue if you are running big templates and you count with 32 gigs only. 

And as others have said, HS has so many articulations, that even let you control the up bows and the down bows. 

I don't find it necessary to get diamond. To me, Gold is enough. Specially if you have other libraries. If you get gold, you should think on having another library like lass to fill the divisi gap that you don't get with HS GOLD.

And, if you want to kill your wallet, in a good way? JUST GET MURAL AND SABLE.

And agree with you. If I could I would get a full BML mural sable setup, but, with the currency exchange is out of the question.

Hope this helps.


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## dcoscina (May 12, 2015)

I wonder if EW will release a Silver version of hollywood percussion? I have all their other Silver editions (and Gold actually) and I have them in a gigantic template. I find their sounds very good and the legato to be largely very usable and smooth.


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## RiffWraith (May 12, 2015)

TintoL @ Tue May 12 said:


> STRING RUNS is something that is not easy to find in libraries. In this case, HS is filled with tons of prerecorded runs. And most importantly, it has at least 4 patches for playable runs: repetition run script which is great by the way, spiccato runs, runs smooth etc... This patches are worth a whole library by itself.



Just an FYI: CStrings has a string runs supplemental lib. Yes, you have to purchase it separately, but they are real runs that will beat the panties off of playable runs any day of the week. And these runs match perfectly and seamlessly with CStrings core.

The only one real and true answer here:

GET BOTH  

Cheers.


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## Brendon Williams (May 12, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:


> Brendon Williams @ Sat May 09 said:
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> > NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:
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I don't exactly have a standard template since every project has a fairly different ensemble, and it's just not possible to have everything I own in one template with my current setup. That said, my full orchestra projects tend to get near 100 tracks (including plenty of true legato patches). My computer definitely struggles with this, but I am still able to playback and bounce - it does what I need it to do! It's worth mentioning that I have regular and constant system overloads IF I don't keep my buffer settings maxed out.


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## TintoL (May 12, 2015)

I agree with RiffWraith that there is CINERUNS. An awesome addition if you are using Hollywoodwinds.

But, if you want to build a different custom run that goes out of the standard scale run you will have to write the notes. And that's when you have to have something like ORCHESTRAL STRING RUNS from Orchestral Tools or like the CINEMATIC STRING runs patch or the STRING RUNS patch from the Volume 3 of Sable or the HS one. 

But, of course that's just my experience and I am not really a professional in this.


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## feck (May 12, 2015)

Am I correct that a legacy user can buy the whole shebang for $599 now but as an existing owner/user of Strings/Woodwinds/Brass I still have to pay $499 just for Percussion to round out my collection?


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## NYC Composer (May 13, 2015)

Brendon Williams @ Tue May 12 said:


> NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:
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Even with your buffer maxed out (2048, I assume?) I'm interested that you can run 100 tracks of The Hollywood Series, including plenty of true legato patches, from your iMac. 
Either way, the absolute most I can deal with is around a 384 buffer, as I play everything in live in realtime, so your methods wouldn't work for me. Still interesting, though.

Are you bouncing down as you go, or are you saying you're able to keep 100 tracks live? I assume you're using Logic?


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## JohnG (May 13, 2015)

feck @ 12th May 2015 said:


> Am I correct that a legacy user can buy the whole shebang for $599 now but as an existing owner/user of Strings/Woodwinds/Brass I still have to pay $499 just for Percussion to round out my collection?



That's what it looks like.


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## Mystic (May 13, 2015)

I do really like using Hollywood. I can't speak for Cinesamples as I don't have it so I will just say what I think about Hollywood.

Pros:
It's the most versatile library I've found. You can so most styles with it where other libraries are quite limited because of the way they are designed.
When used properly, it sounds fantastic. Just don't expect to make something incredible right off the bat. It will take some time.
Play is not nearly as bad as many make it out to be. It use to be and I believe that is why a lot of people hold on to the stigma surrounding it but it's very solid now. Plus with Play Pro coming out "soon™", it will likely be even better.
It uses iLok. Some people hate it, but I find it convenient.
Sales Sales Sales. You can get the whole orchestra pretty cheap considering it's a professional tool. It's regularly on sale.

Cons:
Because of it's versatility, it's extremely difficult to learn at first and takes a while of using it to make anything really worthwhile; especially if you're not already use to working with orchestra libraries.
Lack of updates for samples that need fixed.
It uses iLok. While I do like iLok as a product, I despise the way they work as a company.
You get only 1 license and need to purchase additional licenses.

IMO, the pros very much outweighed the cons and I enjoy using the library. If you want something that you're able to buy and start throwing together stuff right away though, I don't believe this is for you. It doesn't sound good out of the box like some of the other libraries but that's what makes it a great library. It boils down to what you're looking to do with it and how much time you want to put into making it sound the way you want.

Good luck.


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## Mike Connelly (May 13, 2015)

I don't think it makes sense to talk about PLAY without mentioning platforms.

From what I've heard, it seems like PLAY is fine on a decent PC. On a mac, PLAY doesn't perform nearly as well. Kontakt runs extremely well on both platforms. Personally I would only consider the bigger PLAY libraries if you're planning on running them on a PC.


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## Dan Drebing (May 13, 2015)

Do the various Hollywood Orchestra libraries have mix presets like the Cinesymphony ones? I can't find any evidence of them in the manual, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something. It probably doesn't help people with templates/ who really know what they're doing, but a series of presets would increase usability for non-expert mixers like me (and we'd get fewer reverb setup threads on VI!).

Also, I really can't wrap my head around that Hollywood Orchestra deal? Is it really only $599 to start at the top of their line??? That's barely more than I paid for Albion 1....


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## Lawson. (May 13, 2015)

Dan Drebing @ Wed May 13 said:


> Do the various Hollywood Orchestra libraries have mix presets like the Cinesymphony ones? I can't find any evidence of them in the manual, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something. It probably doesn't help people with templates/ who really know what they're doing, but a series of presets would increase usability for non-expert mixers like me (and we'd get fewer reverb setup threads on VI!).



No, they don't.


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## Brendon Williams (May 13, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Fri May 08 said:


> Even with your buffer maxed out (2048, I assume?) I'm interested that you can run 100 tracks of The Hollywood Series, including plenty of true legato patches, from your iMac.
> Either way, the absolute most I can deal with is around a 384 buffer, as I play everything in live in realtime, so your methods wouldn't work for me. Still interesting, though.
> 
> Are you bouncing down as you go, or are you saying you're able to keep 100 tracks live? I assume you're using Logic?




I suppose I should just consider myself lucky then? But honestly, things run well enough that I'm in no hurry to change anything, though I'd love to have everything run more smoothly down the road. 

My buffer settings are at 1024 for I/O buffer size, and Large for Process Buffer Range. I play a number of the parts in as well, and I find it works well enough despite the buffer settings - it's not ideal, but it's certainly not impossible. I rarely bounce down as I go or freeze tracks, so yes I'm able to keep 100 tracks live. Granted, if every single patch had a legato line at once it wouldn't work out, but I normally don't have more 2-8 true legato patches playing back at once. If things are really bogging my system down, I'll freeze the main culprits, but lately that hasn't been necessary.


Yes, I use Logic, running on my Late 2012 i5 quad-core iMac. Every time I read a comment where people say you have to have a PC to run Play, I'm a bit confused, as my computer is far from being great by today's standards, and I use Play every day.


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## Iostream (May 13, 2015)

Holy hell, the learning curve going from kontakt libraries like Albion and CS2 is pretty big. It is going to take me a very long time to set up templates and expression maps I think. I would still like to keep a single midi track per instrument, and I think with expression maps I can do that, just have it change the midi channel for various articulations.


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## 5Lives (May 13, 2015)

Mystic @ Wed May 13 said:


> Play is not nearly as bad as many make it out to be. It use to be and I believe that is why a lot of people hold on to the stigma surrounding it but it's very solid now. Plus with Play Pro coming out "soon™", it will likely be even better.



I think you're making the assumption that folks who have problems with Play are using old versions. I was using the very latest version on the very latest Macbook Pro running off of the top of the line SSDs via Thunderbolt 2. The problem with Play is very real for many people and is bad enough to make the cons outweigh the pros (and there are many pros), especially when Kontakt libraries on the same machine with the same level of detail and content (or even more) work flawlessly.


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## germancomponist (May 13, 2015)

Very cool that they both sound different!

My suggestion is: Buy both! o-[][]-o


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## feck (May 13, 2015)

JohnG @ Wed May 13 said:


> feck @ 12th May 2015 said:
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> 
> > Am I correct that a legacy user can buy the whole shebang for $599 now but as an existing owner/user of Strings/Woodwinds/Brass I still have to pay $499 just for Percussion to round out my collection?
> ...



Wow. To the OP - this is typical of how EW treats its customers. Be warned.


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## Iostream (May 13, 2015)

feck @ Wed May 13 said:


> JohnG @ Wed May 13 said:
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While that sucks, it isn't uncommon from most any vendor, perhaps Spitfire excluded since they never put anything on sale, and offer bundle discounts for people who own parts of their bundles. As vendors create new bundles, people who own portions of the new bundle miss out on discounts. A glaring example of this is NI, anyone who bought any of the sample libraries they released over the last year gets the same problem when the next Komplete Ultimate comes out.


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## germancomponist (May 13, 2015)

feck @ Wed May 13 said:


> JohnG @ Wed May 13 said:
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Reminds me of a cool story: Many years ago I bought EMU Darwin for much money. One week later it was sold for less than the half prise. 
For me I thought: "Oops, I bought it at the wrong time." 
It was me, not the company ... !


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## NYC Composer (May 13, 2015)

feck @ Wed May 13 said:


> JohnG @ Wed May 13 said:
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Wow. Ok,in light of the sale I agree the perc for $499 is weird (and they should address it) but "typical of how EW treats its customers"?? They're offering a large, comprehensive orchestral library with multi mics and lots of articulations already on a drive for $599. That is an insane deal, and ALSO typical of how EW treats its customers.


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## feck (May 13, 2015)

germancomponist @ Wed May 13 said:


> feck @ Wed May 13 said:
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Nice try, but that analogy has no relevance to this. IF you bought an EMU Darwin, and one week later they were offering the latest software upgrade for $100 to new buyers and wanted YOU to pay $400, then your analogy would be correct.


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## germancomponist (May 13, 2015)

feck @ Wed May 13 said:


> germancomponist @ Wed May 13 said:
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So you do not like the free market economy! Congratulations!


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## feck (May 13, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Wed May 13 said:


> feck @ Wed May 13 said:
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Yes, it is typical of how they treat their customers. I have had many friends buy their libraries at full cost, only to see them 50-75% off a few months later. I can't think of another company that has such large, constant price reductions. Now, they can charge what they want - but the perception I have (and many others I know have) is that EW products just don't hold their value. And literally, they don't. This is an important thing for ANY prospective new buyer to know, and the OP should be made aware of it (if they aren't already). There are PLENTY of companies (Orchestral Tools, VSL to name a few) whose products are priced at a point which they will stay at, or near. Another VERY important thing to the OP - EW Hollywood is a dead library. They've stated that they won't re-code, improve, or significantly do anything else to it. Ever. CineSamples makes living libraries, as do most sample set developers today. So, that's significant. One has only to search through the multitude of threads on this and other forums to find out a general idea of how EW operates. I'm not saying they are bad people. I'm saying that their reputation precedes them quite often as being, let's say, not the nicest to their customers. I've had nothing but great experiences with CineSamples, and don't remember anyone ever posting something negative about their dealings with them. Remember people, we vote with our money. And yeah, I own just about everything EW has put out.


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## feck (May 13, 2015)

germancomponist @ Wed May 13 said:


> feck @ Wed May 13 said:
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Nonsense. That's not free market economy. That's just bad business.


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## NYC Composer (May 13, 2015)

How does anything in software that can't be resold "hold value"?

Every company has sales, even the top dollar guys. If you buy a top notch library and it goes on sale for 25% less the following week, are you one o' them dudes who wail and gnash their teeth about it?

Almost all tech stuff, computers, drives, RAM- it all gets cheaper. You pick your time to buy and don't look back, at least in my view.


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## feck (May 13, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Wed May 13 said:


> How does anything in software that can't be resold "hold value"?
> 
> Every company has sales, even the top dollar guys. If you buy a top notch library and it goes on sale for 25% less the following week, are you one o' them dudes who wail and gnash their teeth about it?


Not at all. But if it goes down 50-75%, then I learn to not buy it right away. But none of that is the point here. The point is that "legacy" customers, who haven't bought in at all to the HW series, can now get the whole thing for $100 more than those of us who bought the first 3 series have to pay for just one of the sets today. If there is ANYONE who can, with a straight face, say that this is "OK" business practice, I'd be damn surprised. Spitfire, VSL, 8Dio, CineSamples, and just about every other string library I know of ALL offer bundle upgrades for existing customers. Because it's simply the right thing to do.


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## germancomponist (May 13, 2015)

NYC Composer @ Wed May 13 said:


> You pick your time to buy and don't look back, at least in my view.


In my view too . This is our market, our system!

o-[][]-o


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## NYC Composer (May 13, 2015)

feck @ Wed May 13 said:


> NYC Composer @ Wed May 13 said:
> 
> 
> > How does anything in software that can't be resold "hold value"?
> ...



To the last part, I've already agreed with you- in light of the sale, they should offer more reasonably priced upgrades to existing customers to fill in the missing piece. I can't imagine there are any EW customers who bought at the higher rates but didn't fill in a section that DOESN'T feel that way. On the other hand, the present sale is s'posed to only last another two days. Who knows what comes after.


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## 5Lives (May 13, 2015)

FYI - CineSamples is having a Spring sale right now as well. Good time to grab their stuff.


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