# Opus Edition Newbie Questions



## 3DC (Apr 18, 2021)

Can somebody please help me understand: 

1. If I pre-order Opus Diamond Edition now do I get only new content 130 GB or new content and previous Diamond content 944 GB? At this point I need to know the size of data I am buying for 795$. *944 GB or 130 GB?* 

2. Does EW have sale prices over the year like "Black Friday"? Should I wait for the sale that may or may not come? What would you do in my place? Wait for sale, go for pre-order price or go for subscription which is leaking money and basically you own nothing.

3. With solo instruments included would you say that Opus Edition is good "All in one" library for newbies? 

As always thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.


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## doctoremmet (Apr 18, 2021)

1. Not a clue
2. They have basically had a permanent sale of 60% off for the past six months for most of their legacy products. Bets are eventually we’ll start seeing those for OPUS as well
3. If those solo instruments are the same samples as the old Hollywood solo strings, I don’t think they will suffice. But maybe they’re new samples? That being said the EW orchestral samples (even the old ones) are pretty great and a good allround package.

A subscription may be the best idea? To get your feet wet?


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## Lewis Emblack (Apr 18, 2021)

If you are getting OPUS You are getting the old and new - it looks as though HO as it has been known is being discontinued and HOOPUS will be the only one going forwards, so almost 1TB of samples in total.

*edit* I agree with @doctoremmet in regards to the subscription - get CCX for a month and see how you get on. You may decide Gold is the better option with a few supplemental libraries, or may want all mics, bowing, moods, etc. Only you know what you will make use of and what you might need. I bought Silver in 2019, decided I wanted the Diamond last year, and signed up for CC+ for a year just after Xmas.


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## from_theashes (Apr 18, 2021)

1. Of course you get all the content included in HOOPUS... like the Website says: „total size is now 944GB“

2. usually they do sales frequently.

3. Definitely, yes!


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## Evans (Apr 18, 2021)

While EW runs big sales all over the place, I wouldn't count on the brand new release/repackaging going on sale for a while. 

Also, how beefy is your computer? EWHO Diamond can really chew through both CPU and RAM. I bet Opus will be the same.


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## emilio_n (Apr 18, 2021)

If you need a full orchestra and you decide that Opus is a good choice, I think if I am you I will buy at the introductory price now. I don't think they will make a big discount on this BF. Maybe just offer again the introductory price. Said that EW is famous to have all year sales but not in just-released products.

You have other options to take in mind. BBCSO Core or Pro is a good alternative. Cinematic Studio Series could be another option or even Berlin of OT when moving to Sine if they have good sales. All these one could be the same better than Opus depending on what you want to produce.

After Spend a lot of money o libraries the last year and a half, I regret to don't choose only one "brand" to have my core orchestra. YOu will buy a lot of things to complement but the decision for your full orchestra is important. I have a little bit of all the bigs companies. ARKS, BBCSO, CSS, CBS, CWS, EWHO... Maybe in the future, I will use it all and I will learn how to layer, etc... at this moment, I will be happier if I have only 1 big orchestra, some cool side libraries and much more money in my pocket.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Apr 18, 2021)

Since the library size is 944GB, I wonder if you need a 2TB drive for the installation?


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## ThomasS (Apr 18, 2021)

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Since the library size is 944GB, I wonder if you need a 2TB drive for the installation?


I wondered that too. I have a Composer Cloud Plus subscription, and cleared out my 2TB SSD drive and downloaded all the Hollywood Diamond libraries onto it and tested how much drive space they actually took, and then accounted for the promised 130GB extra content of Opus. (Opus just adds the new content to the existing diamond library)

Here is what I calculated, according to the actual files on my drive:

Hollywood Strings 367.0GB

Hollywood Brass 171.2GB

Hollywood Woodwinds 157.1GB

Hollywood Percussion 73.7GB

Hollywood Solo Cello 40.3GB

Hollywood Solo Violin 39.9GB

Hollywood Solo Harp 14.7GB

*TOTAL SO FAR 863.9GB*

New Opus Sounds 130.0GB

*Total with Opus 993.9GB*

Now something is wrong with these totals, because EastWest says the total for Opus Diamond is 944GB, but I find the actual intallation of HOD on my drive, plus the coming 130GB will be 993.9GB. I wonder how they got these figures (which are out by nearly 50GB.) Maybe Opus overwrites some of the earlier samples, so it adds 130GB but subtracts 50 or so? We'll have to wait and see. _(They keep using the term "reimagined" to describe what Opus does to the existing patches, but who the hell knows what that means?)_

- In any case, a 1TB drive only actually stores 931.0GB so it cannot contain all of Opus Diamond. It could, however, handle the four main sections, and you could put the three solo libraries on another drive. Or you can look at the figures above and decided which could fit on a 1TB drive.

- The installation does not seem to temporarily take up double the space, because the EastWest downloader sequentially downloads the zipped libraries and then unpacks them and deletes the zipped files before moving on to the next library. It is all automatic, and I pushed one button and all 863.9GB were unpacted on my drive about 20 hours later.

- The important thing is that it be an SSD, and preferably an NVMe SSD. With my 2TB SSD I can have all of Opus as well as the complete Cinematic Studio libraries (strings, brass, woodwinds) as well as a few other favorites. So 2TB is much better, but 1TB would be fine for the four main Opus sections.

- On another point, if you are running Windows, make sure to exclude your Opus folder from virus checking in windows secruity settings, because that significantly speeds up the performance.


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## Lewis Emblack (Apr 18, 2021)

ThomasS said:


> I wondered that too. I have a Composer Cloud Plus subscription, and cleared out my 2TB SSD drive and downloaded all the Hollywood Diamond libraries onto it and tested how much drive space they actually took, and then accounted for the promised 130GB extra content of Opus. (Opus just adds the new content to the existing diamond library)
> 
> Here is what I calculated, according to the actual files on my drive:
> 
> ...


I have Diamond (and OPUS will be) on a 1TB SSD and the Solos along with the rest of the CC+ distributed between another 1TB SSD and a smaller M.2 along with other main libraries and plugins.


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