# PLAY 4 released



## ghostnote (Aug 19, 2013)

http://www.soundsonline.com/Support


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## Geocranium (Aug 19, 2013)

I guess Doug Rogers was right when he said PLAY 4 would be released in August.

Who knew it would be August of 2013?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

How do you guys always beat me to this? Do you just hang out there and look at the screen?


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## ghostnote (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> How do you guys always beat me to this? Do you just hang out there and look at the screen?



Read on soundsonline yesterday that it'll be released today, so I checked the support site 30 minutes ago, grabbed a cup of coffee, downloaded it and then opened the thread 

Background loading is OK... I can type things while its loading but it's still in front of everything...

EW replaced the font, it's smaller and a bit darker now. The old one was IMO better.

Mixer is great.


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## jleckie (Aug 19, 2013)

My god. You mean it's even HARDER to read anything on the GUI? I couldn't see it before. If its even smaller now...


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## ghostnote (Aug 19, 2013)

jleckie @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> My god. You mean it's even HARDER to read anything on the GUI? I couldn't see it before. If its even smaller now...


 
It's not much smaller, but I have problems reading things on the GUI.

Another thing: I've noticed an increase in sound quality (Cubase), can somebody confirm this?


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## jamwerks (Aug 19, 2013)

Glory be to God almighty !!


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## sammy24 (Aug 19, 2013)

Now I'm waiting on Play 5.


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

WARNING: Play 4 will replace and remove Play 3 under the default settings, keep that in mind. 

Hollywood Strings legato patches are REALLY laggy with Play 4, going back to Play 3 for now. Kinda disappointed, as it seems like the only real new feature of Play 4 is the mixing page.


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## gsilbers (Aug 19, 2013)

so it does have background loading? 

and how is the loading times in general?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

midi_controller @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> Hollywood Strings legato patches are REALLY laggy with Play 4, going back to Play 3 for now. Kinda disappointed, as it seems like the only real new feature of Play 4 is the mixing page.



Nobody else has reported this and I have not seen it either. Perhaps check your settings.

And background loading is a "real new feature" certainly.


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## studioj (Aug 19, 2013)

So if we have PLAY3 templates all setup and don't do any active loading of anything really... and aren't interested in the FX... is there really any reason to update? PLAY3 works fine... now that i spent a gazillion dollars on hardware to run it . But seriously, I can't see any reason to change it up unless I specifically want those things? 

If i understand correctly the background loading is only for extra mic positions, not additional patches... beyond me why the feature would be half done like that if it is true.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

studioj @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> So if we have PLAY3 templates all setup and don't do any active loading of anything really... and aren't interested in the FX... is there really any reason to update? PLAY3 works fine... now that i spent a gazillion dollars on hardware to run it . But seriously, I can't see any reason to change it up unless I specifically want those things?
> 
> If i understand correctly the background loading is only for extra mic positions, not additional patches... beyond me why the feature would be half done like that if it is true.



Stability. I do not know what they have one under the hood but so far it seems _really_ stable. 

And for me, the Mixer page is going to be very useful for pre- balancing between articulations in a multi-timbral instance.


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## studioj (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> studioj @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > So if we have PLAY3 templates all setup and don't do any active loading of anything really... and aren't interested in the FX... is there really any reason to update? PLAY3 works fine... now that i spent a gazillion dollars on hardware to run it . But seriously, I can't see any reason to change it up unless I specifically want those things?
> ...



Will my old HWS templates open properly? Play3 is very stable for me...
but the mixer does look interesting for experimenting more with mic positions which I don't do a lot with.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

All my templates opened fine.


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> Nobody else has reported this and I have not seen it either. Perhaps check your settings.
> 
> And background loading is a "real new feature" certainly.



Load up "1st Violins Leg Slur RR LT 6 Ni" or "1st Violins Leg Slur RR LT 12 Ni" and play quickly. Something is very wrong there. It's not on all the patches, just some. Just because no one has reported a problem yet doesn't mean there isn't one. 

As for background loading, I guess it depends on how you define background loading. If you define it (as I do) as loading in the background, then no, Play 4 doesn't have background loading. As I am typing this, I have my template loading up, and I have a nice big box in my face telling me what it is loading, which remains on top of all other windows, the same as Play 3.

Loading times seem to be the same (for my SSDs at least), RAM usage seems to be the same. 

Ok, here is something new: I tried loading my large template and now I have 5 Play 4 loading bars that are stuck at ~85-95% and won't finish loading, one for each string instance. Fantastic!


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

Just did it. I am not saying they are not a little laggy. The leg slur patches always have been. I am just saying, i am not noticing it any more in Play 4t than it was in Play 3.

And while what you say about problem reporting is true, the longer and more people that test it without reporting it, the more likely it becomes mathematically that is a system specific issue.

And what you have described in your final sentence makes me even more suspicious that is the case.


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## StevenOBrien (Aug 19, 2013)

It's a pity that there's no background loading, it's pretty much the only feature I wanted (apart from the improved stability, of course!). I'd really love to be able to use my computer in the 15 minutes it takes to load my template without having to worry about accidentally clicking or hitting some random key which triggers the "abort" button. Is there a particular reason why this isn't being done?

And is it just me or do things seem to sound better in general?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

Well Steven, there _is_ a form of background loading that really helps you once your project is loaded and you want to add instruments or mic positions, but I agree that it is not as full featured as Kontakt's.

i have not noticed a sonic difference, but since a few users have said this now, I will ask if anything has changed underthe hood that would corroborate that.


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## duanran007 (Aug 19, 2013)

It sounds better to me, especially the legato transitions in HS are much smoother( did A/B test with Play3) 
But I also noticed the ASIO usage in cubase seems higher and the new PLAY crahsed my project several times.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

duanran007 @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> It sounds better to me, especially the legato transitions in HS are much smoother( did A/B test with Play3)
> But I also noticed the ASIO usage in cubase seems higher and the new PLAY crahsed my project several times.



How did you do an A/B test when Play 4o verwrites Play 3?


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## duanran007 (Aug 19, 2013)

1,Install Play4
2, change the vsl dll name to something like PlayVST4.dll
3, install Play3

then you get both 3 and 4 together... :D


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

duanran007 @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> 1,Install Play4
> 2, change the vsl dll name to something like PlayVST4.dll
> 3, install Play3
> 
> then you get both 3 and 4 together... :D



Really? i did not know that. So presumably then, if you open a project that had Play 3 loaded instruments saved, it retains Play 3?


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

You see, when you tell someone that it's a system specific issue, essentially what you are saying is "Unless more of our customers have the same problem, too bad, we don't value you that much". I'm not an idiot, and if it was a simple little problem that I could fix, I would have. I know how to install, configure and use my software, and I've not had a problem with anything else (including Play 3) so that tells me there is something wrong with Play 4. Considering East West's track record of not properly testing their software, I'm not surprised. I am surprised however, that on the day of public release, you automatically go to the "user error" defense. Come on man, even if this stuff is system specific, it's still a BUG that I can't fix.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

midi_controller @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> You see, when you tell someone that it's a system specific issue, essentially what you are saying is "Unless more of our customers have the same problem, too bad, we don't value you that much". I'm not an idiot, and if it was a simple little problem that I could fix, I would have. I know how to install, configure and use my software, and I've not had a problem with anything else (including Play 3) so that tells me there is something wrong with Play 4. Considering East West's track record of not properly testing their software, I'm not surprised. I am surprised however, that on the day of public release, you automatically go to the "user error" defense. Come on man, even if this stuff is system specific, it's still a BUG that I can't fix.



That is absolutely NOT what I am saying or implying. Nor am I saying or implying you are doing a single thing wrong.

What I AM saying is that no one else has reported it. Period. So that makes it _likely_ it is system specific. Which is _not_ a reflection on you so please take your ego out of it.

Troubleshooters have to approach troubleshooting system specific issues differently than ones that a bunch of people have. It is not impossible to figure out what is going on when a couple of guys have it but it is much easier when 500 guys have it. As guy who troubleshoots Logic/Ve Pro rigs for lots of people as part of my living, trust me, this is true.

The first step is always to try to reproduce it. If others cannot, then it becomes more difficult. And for me personally, as a user, I am not seeing the "greater lag with legato patches in Play 4 than Play 3" issue and the hanging progress bars has not happened here in the 2-3 weeks I have had different versions of Play 4.

But if you send me a step by step example, of course I will pass it on and we will see if the EW guys can reproduce it. And of course, if anyone here also can, that is very helpful information.


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## duanran007 (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> duanran007 @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > 1,Install Play4
> ...



Yes your old projects will load play3. But if you change files name again, like play3 => playvst3.dll and play4 => playvst.dll, then the you will load play4 when opening old projects.

P.s everything was done in windows. Not sure about Mac tho.


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## constaneum (Aug 19, 2013)

I had bad experience with upgrading PLAY 2 to PLAY 3 where by all my projects previously running on PLAY 2 cant be loaded with PLAY 3. Ended up with lots of frustrations to manually insert back those "failed to load instrument patches" into PLAY 3 one by one. Will such problem happen again when migrating from PLAY 3 to PLAY 4???


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

constaneum @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> I had bad experience with upgrading PLAY 2 to PLAY 3 where by all my projects previously running on PLAY 2 cant be loaded with PLAY 3. Ended up with lots of frustrations to manually insert back those "failed to load instrument patches" into PLAY 3 one by one. Will such problem happen again when migrating from PLAY 3 to PLAY 4???



Here is what i can tell you factually:

The Play 4 beta cycle was really long, to the point where people joked about it, right?

It was a staggered roll out, so there was an additional period of time when only SD 3 buyers also got it, so they could report issues.

Then there was an additional period of time when only SSL/EW FX buyers also got it, so they could report issues.

So can I promise you you will not have a bad experience? Of course not, there are way too many variables. But what I can say is given all of the above, the likelihood that you will have far fewer issues with the Play 3-4 transition than you did with the Play 2-3 transition seems to me to be clearly mathematically very high.


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> That is absolutely NOT what I am saying or implying. Nor am I saying or implying you are doing a single thing wrong.
> 
> What I AM saying is that no one else has reported it. Period. So that makes it _likely_ it is system specific. Which is _not_ a reflection on you so please take your ego out of it.



This has nothing to do with me or my ego (?). It was that you automatically went on the defensive. I understand if no one else has reported my problems. But considering that this software was just released to a wide audience, wouldn't it be more prudent to look at any issue arising as something that shouldn't be brushed off just yet? Again, East West doesn't have the best track record with testing their software (or their sample libraries for that matter), so labeling anything as "system specific" at this point seems radically premature.



> The first step is always to try to reproduce it. If others cannot, then it becomes more difficult. And for me personally, as a user, I am not seeing the "greater lag with legato patches in Play 4 than Play 3" issue and the hanging progress bars has not happened here in the 2-3 weeks I have had different versions of Play 4.



It wasn't really lag, it was more that the end transitions of a line would take about twice as long to trigger as the ones before it when played quickly, which seems like a scripting problem, except that I've gone back and forth a couple times and it's not there (or at least, not nearly as prominent) in Play 3.



> But if you send me a step by step example, of course I will pass it on and we will see if the EW guys can reproduce it. And of course, if anyone here also can, that is very helpful information.



And I would be more than happy to if I was a beta tester but I just don't have time to go through every problem I have and record audio / video demos of them. The best that I can do, for the "lagging" problem, is just say load up Play 4 stand alone, load one of the patches I mentioned, and then play, for example, 3 notes ascending or descending quickly, like a run. It should be really, really obvious.

As for the loading bars getting stuck, I don't have any idea why it would do that, and the only thing that I can think to try and replicate it is load a template over 40GBs in VEP on a single computer with about 25 or so instances of Play and see if it happens to you.

I'll be very surprised if these are system specific issues, considering I've never had one before. Ever.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

Fine this makes it easy as all I need to do is wait for a bunch of guys here to try what you suggested and report back.


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## constaneum (Aug 19, 2013)

sounds like......hmm...I better to stick with PLAY 3 since i'm quite happy and comfortable with PLAY 3. Don't wanna take any risk in updating PLAY 4....Don't know what sort of improvements in PLAY 4 (all i care is less resource hog) besides background loading features which I don't need when I can go grab a cup of coffee or tea while waiting for the instruments to be fully loaded up.


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## dgburns (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> All my templates opened fine.



Would you be so kind as to tell us if it is possible to open Ve Pro metaframes originally saved with play 3 instances with play 4?
thnx
david


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

dgburns @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > All my templates opened fine.
> ...



I did so successfully here.


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## dgburns (Aug 19, 2013)

awesome ! thnx Jay


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

Actually I am having a senior moment. I think that while it loaded all of the instruments I did have to reload the samples in some of them.


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## Lemmonz (Aug 19, 2013)

I'm getting the 'lagging problem' from the patches (main mic position) mentioned by midi_controller. I'm getting it consistently in this logic 9.1.8 session:

http://www.zachlemmon.com/lag.zip

For me, the last note in the phrase has a sort of ritard into it. Sounds almost like a nice finish to the phrase, but it's totally not true to the midi so it's an issue. 

I'm using HS Diamond from an SSD on a Mac Pro 4,1 running OS X 10.6.8 with 26 gb's ram, 2.93 ghz quad. DAW is Logic 9.1.8.

If I've left any other info you need out, let me know.

-Zach


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## constaneum (Aug 19, 2013)

???????????? Reload samples in some of them? meaning whatever setup in PLAY 3 might not be carried forward to PLAY 4 fully?


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## 5Lives (Aug 19, 2013)

Works fine for me on PT 11 - for the most part. I seem to get some CPU spiking happening, which doesn't occur with other instruments. Also, I only have RA though, so I don't think I experienced some of the other Play issues folks had with larger libraries (in terms of loading times). Background loading seems to work for me or the patches are just so small I don't notice.

Generally speaking though, the vibe I get from this company and their reps puts me off from buying more of their instruments. They sound great, but they're so defensive so quickly. It doesn't come across as helpful or wanting to support their user base. Just compare it to the CineSamples or Spitfire or SoundIron or OrangeTree, etc. guys and it is abundantly clear. My 2 cents.


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## dgburns (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> Actually I am having a senior moment. I think that while it loaded all of the instruments I did have to reload the samples in some of them.



Do you mean that the patch loaded ,but you need to cycle off/on the mic buttons,or

you need to re load the patch from the browser to get it loaded ok.

either way is not a biggie for me,I'm just trying to understand what will happen.

also,do we need to mess with the new Ilok license manager app,or does the ilok work without needing to get Ilok involved?

(see what I did there,I didn't take the bait on the age comment :mrgreen: )


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## XT26 (Aug 19, 2013)

In my VE Pro template it loaded all the EWQLSO patches fine but I had to reload all the piano and Storm drum patches manually. 

Otherwise no issues here.

Cheers,
Tom


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

Actually, that may have been my problem with the hanging loading bars; I was loading my massive Play 3 template. Might not be a problem if I made a new one. I think I'm just going to stick with Play 3 for now anyway, there really isn't anything I need in Play 4 at the moment.

Zach - Yup, that sounds about right. I'm using HS Diamond from an SSD on an Intel 3930k, Windows 7, 64GBs RAM, so I guess we can say it's not system specific, since we aren't even on the same OS. Thanks for the confirm! :D


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## 667 (Aug 19, 2013)

With all the impulses included in the SSL/FX bundle, it really makes sense for everyone to do the upgrade (unless of course you have Spaces)  And even then you may want it for the SSL EQ and comp.

But Spaces has been highly praised and for good reason, and I was surprised how many impulses are included here. (More than in Spaces I think). So good value for anyone wanting that reverb and uses a lot of EW libs.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

Lemmonz @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> I'm getting the 'lagging problem' from the patches (main mic position) mentioned by midi_controller. I'm getting it consistently in this logic 9.1.8 session:
> 
> http://www.zachlemmon.com/lag.zip
> 
> ...



Thanks Zach, I'll check it out, and forward it on.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

dgburns @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > Actually I am having a senior moment. I think that while it loaded all of the instruments I did have to reload the samples in some of them.
> ...



I think I had to reload it but I honestly don't remember. I have 27 VE Pro instances in my big template with about 6 patches each and it wasn't that many of them as I remember.


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## midi_controller (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> I think I had to reload it but I honestly don't remember. I have 27 VE Pro instances in my big template with about 6 patches each and it wasn't that many of them as I remember.



This is off topic but I'm curious, do you find you have more stability in VEP using that many instances? I just have all my junk loaded into one giant instance, although I've thought about breaking them down into sections.


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## Dan Mott (Aug 19, 2013)

midi_controller @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > I think I had to reload it but I honestly don't remember. I have 27 VE Pro instances in my big template with about 6 patches each and it wasn't that many of them as I remember.
> ...



It's better to spread the instances out.

You could have one whole instance, just devoted to HS. Using 2 threads. Then another for your perc and another 2 threads which now = 2 cores used. Then you could have another for woodwinds and another for brass, both using 2 threads. That now equals 4 cores and if you have more cores, then great!

What's your CPU usage like when you get lag?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 19, 2013)

midi_controller @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > I think I had to reload it but I honestly don't remember. I have 27 VE Pro instances in my big template with about 6 patches each and it wasn't that many of them as I remember.
> ...



Well thanks to Peter Schwartz's Ski Switcher for Logic Pro, I can now have a separate Ve Pro v-frame or "project" with i.e 1 Play instantiations with i.e 6 Vln 1 patches, all addressed by 1 track in Logic; then a second for Vln 2, etc.( A similar setup with about 12 GB is on my16 GB Mac Mini for Kontakt.)

It is working really well with my app. 21 GB Hollywood Series template from one SSD on my 24 GB PC. But apparently you are trying to run nearly twice what I run on my PC slave on a single computer, and several GB more than what I am running on 2 computers, and I don't know where the breaking point comes.

But before that Ski Switcher, I had separate v-frames for high strings (Vln 1, Vln 2, Vla); low strings (cello, bass); hi brass (fr, horns, tpts,etc. so I think it was 9 total and that worked quite well also. I just had to have more Logic tracks than I liked.

I cannot prove it because AU limits me to 16 MIDI channels per v-frame so I never tried it except with the Multiport layer, which VSL admits drops MIDI events when it gets big, but I find it hard to believe that running everything in one giant instance is the best way to go.


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## Saxer (Aug 19, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ 20.8.2013 said:


> I cannot prove it because AU limits me to 16 MIDI channels per v-frame so I never tried it except with the Multiport layer, which VSL admits drops MIDI events when it gets big, but I find it hard to believe that running everything in one giant instance is the best way to go.


i didn't try it myself but i heared that the 'dropping midi events'-problem went better in logic x. has to be prooved but might be worth trying.


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## azeteg (Aug 20, 2013)

Dan-Jay @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> It's better to spread the instances out.
> 
> You could have one whole instance, just devoted to HS. Using 2 threads. Then another for your perc and another 2 threads which now = 2 cores used. Then you could have another for woodwinds and another for brass, both using 2 threads. That now equals 4 cores and if you have more cores, then great!



The optimal setting would be to have one instance, with the number of threads per instance equal to the number of virtual cores minus 1. This would apply if it was a pure VEPro machine. If you run a sequencer on the same machine, it can make sense to reduce the VEP threads a bit, to leave some space for the sequencer.

Plugins hosted will then usually add a lot of their own threads for disk streaming, convolution and so on - so the real number of threads will be higher. A well designed instrument plugin should not be too greedy on threads, and should share resources between instances. You can monitor the thread count in the Windows Task Manager (or the OS X Activity Monitor). I always find it peculiar when I see *some* plugins using an insane amount of threads.


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## azeteg (Aug 20, 2013)

Saxer @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ 20.8.2013 said:
> 
> 
> > I cannot prove it because AU limits me to 16 MIDI channels per v-frame so I never tried it except with the Multiport layer, which VSL admits drops MIDI events when it gets big, but I find it hard to believe that running everything in one giant instance is the best way to go.
> ...



Unfortunately the environment has very small internal buffers, which gets filled to the brim and start dropping events when the data traffic is too high. I guess that when creating the environment, eMagic never expected hundreds of channels, with note and automation events, to be crammed into a single port; then having the event count multiplied by 3 for the way I encode the MIDI events. The buffer size was raised in one of the latest 9.X.X releases, but I am (so far) unaware of any changes with LPX. Would be great to get some real-world feedback there.


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## Rob (Aug 20, 2013)

I have good feelings about this update... now cubase7 doesn't crash on exit... legato simulation doesn't automatically turn the reverb on, good... the mixer is handy and the ssl deal is tempting. Old projects load just fine
windows7/64


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## pablo1980 (Aug 20, 2013)

Jay, do you know if the memory problem that prevents using play (and spaces) with the steinberg mr816 has been fixed...

I asked support more than a year ago and never got a response about it.

Thanks


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

pablo1980 @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> Jay, do you know if the memory problem that prevents using play (and spaces) with the steinberg mr816 has been fixed...
> 
> I asked support more than a year ago and never got a response about it.
> 
> Thanks



Not aware of the issue. Want to bring me up to speed?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

Lemmonz @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> I'm getting the 'lagging problem' from the patches (main mic position) mentioned by midi_controller. I'm getting it consistently in this logic 9.1.8 session:
> 
> http://www.zachlemmon.com/lag.zip
> 
> ...



OK, I got into this just now. I hear what you and midi controller here when I play it in myself, I do not here it. Pic 1. is yours, pic 2 is mine. I think it is due to the overlapping in your performance.

Here is an mp3:
https://soundcloud.com/jay-asher/lag-issue

I will pass it on if you guys want, but after some experience with them for a couple of years now, I think they will say:

1. Not the best patch choice for this.
2. Pretty poor performance and it is the overlapping causing it.


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## morphlite (Aug 20, 2013)

Howdo,

Can you now load any articulation you want to any key switch yet? That has always been my biggest irritation.

Cheers
Paul


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> Howdo,
> 
> Can you now load any articulation you want to any key switch yet? That has always been my biggest irritation.
> 
> ...



No. Play 4 is a sample player, not a full on sampler.


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## morphlite (Aug 20, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> 
> 
> > Howdo,
> ...



Thanks Jay,

Not sure that's really a "full on sampler" feature. I don't want to edit/record samples. Just load a patch in a keyswitch slot. Companies like VSL manage it fairly easily. Hey ho. 
Look forward to upgrading to Play 4 anyway.

Cheers
Paul


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> 
> 
> > morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> ...



I know. EW has said that ability will cone with Play Pro. In the meantime, Brain Wherry's app allows you to do so and in Logic Pro, the SkiSwitcher environment does as well.


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## morphlite (Aug 20, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> ...



Thanks for those suggestions. Hadn't come across them. Cheers Jay.


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## chimuelo (Aug 20, 2013)

Sascha Knorr @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> One major Play 3 issues has been fixed with Play 4:No clicks, pops or other drop-outs in non-realtime rendering anymore. That alone is worth the update imho.



Now we are talking. I am not worried about new conveniences or VEP Pro since Reaper can spawn instances and assign them to seperate cores.
But if realtime annoyances have been addressed that means Streaming has been addressed, which also could be the slight difference in Sonic quality too.
When Gigastudio went from 16bit to 24bit and tweaked the Rockwell Streaming patent slightly I heard thjat difference, and to me this is where the action is.

Thanks Sascha, and Jay, and PLAY. o-[][]-o


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## jamwerks (Aug 20, 2013)

morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> Just load a patch in a keyswitch slot. Companies like VSL manage it fairly easily.


Cough... Cubase Cough... :mrgreen:


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## snowleopard (Aug 20, 2013)

I'm going to sound like a troll here, but anyone know anything about Play Pro? I heard about it many, many moons ago, and have still patiently been waiting. I don't expect it to replace Kontakt, but to be able to go under the hood more the way Play Pro is reported to do sure would be music to my ears.


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## Robin (Aug 20, 2013)

Did a quick test with Play 4 on my machine by loading the same ca. 40 GB quite Play heavy template (Play hosted in VEPro 5).

Play 3: Template Loading Time: 3:44 min
Play 4: Template Loading Time: 7:52 min

Background loading is no real background loading in my opinion as it still is on top and you can still not start working.

My main issue: Slowdown of saving time for the project didn't improve a bit.

The Mixer feature is nice, but the doubled loading times don't make me think twice about staying with Play 3 for now and hoping for a miracle that one day Play will be doing what its users want it to do.


Quite dissappointed over here.

Robin


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

Robin @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> Did a quick test with Play 4 on my machine by loading the same ca. 40 GB quite Play heavy template (Play hosted in VEPro 5).
> 
> Play 3: Template Loading Time: 3:44 min
> Play 4: Template Loading Time: 7:52 min
> ...



Didn't see that here, no quicker, but no slower either.

But your machine must be more robust than mine because my 21 GB template took about 7 minutes to load from an SSD in Play 3.


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## ghostnote (Aug 20, 2013)

Already adressed this on soundonline: I'm having pops and clicks while playing violins and violas leg. in HS Silver. Goliath's stormdrones have clicks and pops once in a while.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

Michael Chrostek @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> Already adressed this on soundonline: I'm having pops and clicks while playing violins and violas leg. in HS Silver. Goliath's stormdrones have clicks and pops once in a while.



System?DAW? Audio interface? Buffer size?


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## dpasdernick (Aug 20, 2013)

I have to take my hat off to Jay. You, unfortunately, are the proverbial punching bag for all things East West. Keep the faith brother, you're doing a great service here.

Darren


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 20, 2013)

dpasdernick @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> I have to take my hat off to Jay. You, unfortunately, are the proverbial punching bag for all things East West. Keep the faith brother, you're doing a great service here.
> 
> Darren



Thank you for the supportive comments! Actually, lately I feel people here have been treating me pretty well. I think most understand that I do the best I can to help them.


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## midi_controller (Aug 20, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> OK, I got into this just now. I hear what you and midi controller here when I play it in myself, I do not here it. Pic 1. is yours, pic 2 is mine. I think it is due to the overlapping in your performance.
> 
> Here is an mp3:
> https://soundcloud.com/jay-asher/lag-issue
> ...



That's pretty unfortunate, because this is obviously a problem with the way that Play 4 is handling the scripts of these patches. Any way you look at it, the patch isn't following the MIDI data, but doing it's own thing (otherwise, it would have stopped short on the note, not held it even longer). Oh well.

About the VEP Instances thing: I've actually never had any problems with having one giant instance, no cpu spikes, nothing out of the ordinary really. I just set it to use all 12 threads and it's worked fine (well, before I tried to use Play 4 :D ). CPU usage holds at around 30% idle @ a buffer size of 512, including all my effects and junk, and I've never seen it go above 60% during usage yet. I'll make a template today that gives each section it's own instance and see if that improves anything.

@snowleopard: Play Pro has been vaporware for years now, no one has even verified whether or not it's even being worked on anymore, so I'd say don't get your hopes up. An alternative, while not being the best solution but at least it's something, is TranMIDIfier which gives you many options to do thinks like keyswitches and adjusting crossfade / velocity curves. Very awesome software, I've got almost all my Play stuff running through it.


----------



## guydoingmusic (Aug 20, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:


> dgburns @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Mon Aug 19 said:
> ...



So far no issues here. My Play 3 template opened in VEPro4 (running on PC) with PLay 4 showing no issues for me. 

Brad


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## Lemmonz (Aug 20, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> OK, I got into this just now. I hear what you and midi controller here when I play it in myself, I do not here it. Pic 1. is yours, pic 2 is mine. I think it is due to the overlapping in your performance.
> 
> Here is an mp3:
> https://soundcloud.com/jay-asher/lag-issue
> ...



Personally, it doesn't bother me that much. If this were an actual project, I'd edit the midi to see if that would solve it, or load up one of the gazillion patches in HS that would do it and carry on writing music. If I had to use that patch, I'd bounce the phrase to audio and 'flex' it to what I needed. Not the most elegant solution but it works. 

I uploaded the session since it could reproduce the issue every time. Not sure if the performance would've been different under Play 3. If someone does find the performances differ between versions of Play, then I would think there would be a way of fixing it. 

It might be a good idea to mention the issue to EW since others will probably run into the same issue, and thus go ask for support or complain about it. It is sort of an odd issue that'll probably show itself in the most unwelcomed moments of writing, or live performance if there are actually people out there using HS like that.


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## Nathan Allen Pinard (Aug 20, 2013)

> 2. Pretty poor performance and it is the overlapping causing it.



In slow legato strings, sometimes I have to do this to force the legato to work in Play 3.

Maybe this means it's not a bug in Play 4, but actually that something was fixed and causes you to have to edit MIDI data that you wrote pre-Play 4? Play 3 always has kinda missed legato transitions if you connect them perfectly (and no overlap)


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## Wunderhorn (Aug 20, 2013)

Is there anywhere a list of what is new about PLAY4?


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## JBZeon (Aug 20, 2013)

No problem loading a EWQLSO Platinum template of 64 instances of PLAY with 16 channels per instance in VEP5... loading times are shorter in Play 3 but nothing to worry about loading times in Play 4...a beer and ready. Cubase 6 connect faster to VEP5 when Play 4 is used, memory consumption is lower with Play 4 (about 4.3GB with the same template ?) but CPU consumption is higher, 15-18% more...tested in 3930k Win7x64 RME

Bugs like persistent release trail after untick in some patch are fixed and finally, legato doesn't automatically turn the reverb on, bravo¡

Everything is working properly.


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## TGV (Aug 21, 2013)

So far, my experiences in Logic are mixed. On the positive side, the plugin opens faster in Browser mode, and (so far) it loaded a project without telling me that a patch was created with a newer version or the license had become invalid.

On the negative side: none of the suggestions made in the user forum seems to have been implemented, and copy/paste in WordBuilder produces crashes Logic X (an ancient bug). And the VST version doesn't accept any text input at all, at least not in Bidule. And there is no option in the installer to have Play 3 and 4 co-exist, which seems to be available for Windows.

A small thing, but the OSX installer isn't even signed. Is it really so much trouble to do that?


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## SymphonicSamples (Aug 21, 2013)

Just as a reference I also have seen much slower load times in VEP5 with Play 4 . Heavy Play content about 40 gigs of Play and the load time has at least doubled now . I tried this on both Win 7 x64 and Win 8 x64 , with Win 8 being a very new install . I've certainly seen VEP 5 - Play 3 issues in past VEP revisions where the samples loaded 2 times in VEP but this seems different  The 4-Play , sorry Play 4 is over now and have gone back to Play 3 , hopefully there is a solution for this soon , would love to give it a test drive with heavy midi loading / large template .


----------



## Walid F. (Aug 21, 2013)

When I loaded up one of my templates after updating Play, Cubase can no longer find the instance of play. It says "Missing: 19 - play_VST_x64"...

I can't even add a new instrument track with play loaded in it. When I scan the plugin-folders, it finds it, but then when I try to load it up, nothing gets loaded up - just the track where it says "play_VST_x64 01", my midi input, and no output to any play engine. 

I'm on Win 7 pro, Cubase 6.

W


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

Sadly, I can confirm the slower load times. My almost 20 GB Hollywood Series template in VE Pro 5 loads from an SSD in app. 9;12 with Play 3, 14:10 with Play 4


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

TGV @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> On the negative side: copy/paste in WordBuilder produces crashes Logic X (an ancient bug). ?



Here it does not crash Logic Pro X, but it hangs it so I have to force quit. I will report this.

EDIT: No problem however doing this in VE Pro 5 and it does not do it in Logic Pro 9 but it does not copy the text either.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 21, 2013)

Are these slower loads mac-only do we know? Also can someone explain when background loading works and when it doesn't? Can it seanlessly load on-the-fly from purged? (Unlikely I guess, but I can only ask...)


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Are these slower loads mac-only do we know? Also can someone explain when background loading works and when it doesn't? Can it seanlessly load on-the-fly from purged? (Unlikely I guess, but I can only ask...)



No, my test was on PC.

Background loading apparently has on impact on project loading. But once the project is loaded, it allows you to add/change mic positions and instruments in the background while continuing to work


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 21, 2013)

Wow, SLOWER loading. Quite an achievement - I won't be upgrading anytime soon it seems


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## KEnK (Aug 21, 2013)

Long ago I was advised by EW tech support to not update to Play3,
because I'm using lower end sys specs.
(I think they should change the sys req on their page)
Been wondering about Play4-
Sounds like it's also not for me.

k


----------



## bwherry (Aug 21, 2013)

morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> 
> 
> > morphlite @ Tue Aug 20 said:
> ...



The app is called TransMIDIfier (link in my sig). It allows you to selectively target different articulations loaded at different MIDI ports/channels from a single MIDI track - and lots of other nice things. Hope it helps you.

Brian


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## esounds (Aug 21, 2013)

SymphonicSamples @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Just as a reference I also have seen much slower load times in VEP5 with Play 4 . Heavy Play content about 40 gigs of Play and the load time has at least doubled now . I tried this on both Win 7 x64 and Win 8 x64 , with Win 8 being a very new install . I've certainly seen VEP 5 - Play 3 issues in past VEP revisions where the samples loaded 2 times in VEP but this seems different  The 4-Play , sorry Play 4 is over now and have gone back to Play 3 , hopefully there is a solution for this soon , would love to give it a test drive with heavy midi loading / large template .




Sadly I too had to go back to PLAY 3 in my HS and HB templates. My machine worked ok with PLAY 3 but PLAY 4 with nothing new enabled has a much higher CPU load on the machine. Honestly I do not understand the crazy amount of CPU PLAY uses on large templates with NOTHING playing. No convolution reverbs, etc... but PLAY consumes HUGE amounts of CPU doing nothing but having patches loaded ready to go. Kontakt, Halion and many others do not have these issues.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 21, 2013)

Load times are about 10x slower :cry: 

Eastwest should do something with Wordbuilder functionality. It is almost unusable on large project if cursor doesnt interact with sequencer.


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## Mike Greene (Aug 21, 2013)

Simon Ravn @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Wow, SLOWER loading. Quite an achievement - I won't be upgrading anytime soon it seems


Yeah, but you gotta give Jay credit for being a straight shooter about it. It's a step in the right direction. In the old days, we'd be getting denials and we'd be told there's something wrong with our systems.


----------



## JBZeon (Aug 21, 2013)

Yes, CPU load on big templates in 3930k and slaves with AMD are insane, 15-23% doing nothing... do no want to upgrade slaves now, Play 4 without SSL/EW FX suite..sadly back to Play 3.


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## Lemmonz (Aug 21, 2013)

Are you guys able to use the mouse wheel to scroll through the instrument list up by the 'Browser/Player' tab?

I could do this in Play 3 but not in 4. Trying to figure out if it's something on my end or if that's missing in Play 4. I hate clicking up there.


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## devastat (Aug 21, 2013)

I was quite happy with PLAY4 except that I am now experiencing a problem in HS, all the measured tremolo, repetition patches and pre-recorded runs are out of tune and on the wrong key, anyone else experiencing this?


----------



## synergy543 (Aug 21, 2013)

Mike Greene @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Wed Aug 21 said:
> 
> 
> > Wow, SLOWER loading. Quite an achievement - I won't be upgrading anytime soon it seems
> ...


Yes, nice to have some honest integrity. 
Yet, the situation is still very sad indeed. I wonder if a public beta would possibly result in a better product? This way, the developer wouldn't have to wait a year for the product release to hear from the rougue users (who seem to be providing more useful feedback than the actual beta testers - no?).


----------



## Lemmonz (Aug 21, 2013)

Yeah Measured trem is out of tune for me as well.


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## devastat (Aug 21, 2013)

On the positive note I was experiencing some drop outs with HOW before, that I am not experiencing anymore in PLAY 4.


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## Gerd Kaeding (Aug 21, 2013)

Hi all ,

Although I didn't encounter slower loading times or higher CPU usage on my Mac systems ( please see my specs below), I would suggest to MacUsers who have those issues with Play 4.0.12 to test the following procedures :


1.
If you use HDD's ( and not SSD's) for your PLAY libraries , use the application "Disk Utility" and do "Repair Disk" for those HDD's .
( If you host PLAY libraries on SSD's you can skip this step .)


2.
a)
Make sure that under PLAY's settings for Streaming the box "Increase Ram Buffer" is unchecked !
b)
In the Browser Window point PLAY4 anew to all the directories of your libraries . Close PLAY4 , use the application "Disk Utility" and "Repair Diskpermissions" on your System Drive.

Now restart your computer.

3.
If you saved patches with user modifications in PLAY3 it might help to save them again in PLAY4.

4.
For VEPRO users:
It is a good idea to save the metaframes ( or even the single vi-frames) that now load with PLAY4 . But keep in mind that if you switch back to PLAY3 - for what reason ever - these frames might not open with PLAY3 ( ... this is pure speculation. Didn't try it myself. Just a thought ... ).




-- -- -- 

My specs for my PLAY-VEPRO systems :

System1:
MacPro 8-Core 2.8 GHz / OS X 10.6.8 / 24GB RAM / VEPRO5 (build 5.1.12337) / PLAY 4.0.12

System2:
MacPro 6 Core 3.33 GHz / OS X 10.8.4 / 48GB RAM / VEPRO5 (build 5.1.12337) / PLAY 4.0.12 

PLAY Libraries hosted on Samsung 840 Pro SSD's (512GB versions) via Sonnet PCI-express Cards "Tempo SSD" & "Tempo SSD Pro" ) on both systems .

Hollywood Diamond Series on both Systems. 

__ __ __


Best wishes

Gerd


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

JBZeon @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Yes, CPU load on big templates in 3930k and slaves with AMD are insane, 15-23% doing nothing... do no want to upgrade slaves now, Play 4 without SSL/EW FX suite..sadly back to Play 3.



OK, well with my i7 that I am _not_ seeing.


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## jleckie (Aug 21, 2013)

I feel really bad for EW, but then on the other hand, who on earth would release their software with SLOWER loading times than before? Knowing full well that slow loading times are one of the main issues with their software in the first place.


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## RobertPeetersPiano (Aug 21, 2013)

I feel bad for EastWestLurker.

Nick and Doug are active here, they must have read this thread, and all they do is sit back, relax and get some money from new customers.

How on earth is it possible to delay a release for one year? And to top it of deliver something that isn't better than the previous version? 

It's just pathetic, and EastWestLurker, if I were you, I would try and fine a job in a good sample company.


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

RobertPeetersPiano @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> I feel bad for EastWestLurker.
> 
> Nick and Doug are active here, they must have read this thread, and all they do is sit back, relax and get some money from new customers.
> 
> ...



A} Doug virtually never comes here, Nick comes in spurts. And they are not just "sitting back and relaxing." I guarantee you they work as least as hard and long hours as you do.

B) Don't feel bad for me. I am fairly paid and treated with respect. I consider them a _very_ good sample company, just as I consider the Logic developers good, even thought Logic Prp X has issues with 1.0.

That is the nature of 1.0 releases, no matter how long they are in beta,and I am certain both Play 4 and Logic Pro X will get better.


----------



## TSU (Aug 21, 2013)

I think there is a reason for very long loading time. All Hollywood products are really big. There is REALLY many samples. Compare samples number to other libraries.

And size. One mic position of HS ~ 60gb. So for example LASS is 24gb. But with A,B,C + Full. So 24/4=6. So the 6gb vs 60gb of content.

All other libraries load times is as usual as in kontakt libraries. Maybe Pianos load time is long too... but there is 270gb of data. 3 positions. 4 grand pianos. 270/3/4=22gb one grand piano.

All who wants fast load times should use fast SSD's and VEPRO to load up your template only once.

I am not defending EW. This all is for justice 

And I understand that main question is "Why P4 load times are longer than with P3?". This is really strange... but I talk about the whole EW load time problem.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 21, 2013)

Nevermind.


----------



## sin(x) (Aug 21, 2013)

Guys! Over all the squabbling, you seem to have missed a crucial point:



Gerd Kaeding @ 2013-08-21 said:


> Although I didn't encounter slower loading times or higher CPU usage on my Mac systems



Don't you see what's happening here? They're finally bringing the two systems head to head! :mrgreen:


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## JBZeon (Aug 21, 2013)

Jay, i meant the CPU usage not RAM.







Same template in play 3 and play 4, loaded in VEP5.1, connected from Cubase 6.5.3: after loading and do nothing CPU usage in Play 4 make the slave useless, in play 3 i have some headroom to play with it. Ram usage in play 4 is lower but CPU higher. I really like Play 4, there are some bug fixes that i ask to fix, but why more than 20% CPU usage in same conditions?

So i have 2 options, stay with Play 3 or throw the actual slave out the window and jump to another 3930k slave with 64GB RAM and forget about the green lines..maybe next year.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2013)

My screenshot includes the CPU usage while idle, which is what I was responding to as someone said it was through the roof while idle., which to me, means unconnected.. I can post one when it is connected later.


----------



## esounds (Aug 21, 2013)

Same kind of results here as well. I work at 128 buffer as I assume you do to judging from your CPU load. Jay works in Logic which throws everything into a 1024 buffer when not record enabled.


----------



## midi_controller (Aug 21, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> My screenshot includes the CPU usage while idle, which is what I was responding to as someone said it was through the roof while idle., which to me, means unconnected.. I can post one when it is connected later.



Are you sure you have your sequencer / VEP on (as in, active so that you can actually play back your instruments, just not playing back the entire session)? The reason I ask is Play does eat up CPU when idle, and considering you have ~20GBs loaded and your CPU is sitting at 0%. I've just never seen that before, on any of my machines.

I think it's also important to remember that no one INTENDED for Play to have any issues, and I think everyone at EW were probably working like crazy to try and get this sucker, and Stormdrum 3, out (especially considering their advertisement earlier in the year; they are supposed to come out with quite a few libraries before the end of the year). Maybe the team is just spread too thin working on too many things at once, but I'm sure they will eventually fix the problems. The only thing that I'm kinda bothered by is the lack of progress Play has made, but that is more a personal issue, I'm sure plenty of people are happy with the new features.


----------



## Nathan Allen Pinard (Aug 21, 2013)

@JBZeon

It's probably not Play doing that, as VEPro will consistently use CPU because it runs live constantly like any audio plugin that waits for audio (but still processes 100% of the time)

The extra 30% I'm not sure about. Are you running the EQ or anything, or is that all off?


I also think background loading is rather useless sometimes. But it appears Play4 background loads the mic positions. Which to me is VASTLY useful and probably reduces the load time before you can write by 50% or more.


----------



## jtnyc (Aug 21, 2013)

Hello -

Can anyone tell me if the mixer has the ability to set up an aux reverb with individual sends on each of the instruments channel? In the manual I see a picture of the mixer, and it looks like you can, but I don't see it in my mixer. Could it be that you have to buy their fx bundle to be able to do this? I hope not.

Thanks -


----------



## JBZeon (Aug 21, 2013)

@Nathan

No EQ , all OFF only EWQLSO Platinum patches loaded in VEP5, MIDI tracks and their corresponding connections (4). The screenshots are from AMD x6 with 32GB ram, but this extra 20-27% also occurs with Intel 3930K. I also test with an empty Cubase project and simply connect the instances from Cubase to VEP get similar CPU usage using Play 4 and Play 3.


----------



## NYC Composer (Aug 21, 2013)

Mike Greene @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Wed Aug 21 said:
> 
> 
> > Wow, SLOWER loading. Quite an achievement - I won't be upgrading anytime soon it seems
> ...



+1


----------



## dgburns (Aug 21, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Load times are about 10x slower :cry:
> 
> Eastwest should do something with Wordbuilder functionality. It is almost unusable on large project if cursor doesnt interact with sequencer.



took the plunge and have play 4 on one pc slave that has ewqlso and hb brass on it.I am not seeing slower loading times as a general unscientific observation.all ssd's for the sample libs and os,which is win8.

I had to completely re do my ve pro templates,but apart from that,so far so good.glad I did the upgrade.

fwiw


----------



## Nathan Allen Pinard (Aug 21, 2013)

JBZeon @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> @Nathan
> 
> No EQ , all OFF only EWQLSO Platinum patches loaded in VEP5, MIDI tracks and their corresponding connections (4). The screenshots are from AMD x6 with 32GB ram, but this extra 20-27% also occurs with Intel 3930K. I also test with an empty Cubase project and simply connect the instances from Cubase to VEP get similar CPU usage using Play 4 and Play 3.



I don't think Play 4 was design with EWQLSO in mind. They most likely did not concentrate or support that. Play 3 is quite old so EWQLSO was still used quite a bit.


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2013)

Hi folks,

After waiting patiently for so long, I installed Play 4 on my Mac Pro, hoping that the clicks & pops I've been experiencing with Play 3 would now be over. If anything, they are worse. Especially on my favourite patch, the HB 6 French Horns Leg Slur. It will click and pop when sustaining a single note and nothing else is loaded but Play! Can someone else running HB on a Mac try this patch, please?

Before Jay says it's all working fine on his system, I can tell you this. I uninstalled Play 3 first. In fact I did it twice after thinking maybe it didn't 'clear' the old files the first time around. Same thing. The clicks appear to be on the loop points if I'm not mistaken. Nothing to do with CPU or RAM. This is an 8 core Mac Pro OSX 10.6.8 with 32Gb RAM and NOTHING else loaded. The solo Horn patch plays fine as do the legato trumpets, though I have not tested them when the RAM is below about 4Gb.

So, I uninstall Play 4 and reinstall Play 3. The same patch plays fine!! I gave up running HS on the Mac but use a few HB patches, though I often have to render them to audio. Now that my beloved 6 Horn patch is 'broken' and I'm back on Play 3, I will not be investigating this just yet.

Usually legato HB patches work OK if I have at least 4 Gb free memory. Why is it that I can play any one of the 100 or so patches in my template from numerous Kontakt libs, to Omnisphere with no problems when the free RAM is below about 4GB, but playing one monophonic legato line with a Horn patch is a click-fest even when Logic isn't running? Nothing is reaching its 'limit' in either VE Pro or Play. Various buffer and engine settings have been tried. HB is installed on an SSD.

My system works perfectly, and has done, with every other piece of software for years now. Play with HS/HB is the only problem. BTW, I use SD2, Silk and other Play libs on the Mac with no problems. Clearly there are still issues with the bigger 'streaming' libs.

Such a shame...

~C


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 22, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> Hi folks,
> 
> Especially on my favourite patch, the HB 6 French Horns Leg Slur. It will click and pop when sustaining a single note and nothing else is loaded but Play! Can someone else running HB on a Mac try this patch, please?
> 
> ...



No, EW has already confirmed this on the SOL forum.


----------



## jules (Aug 22, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> Especially on my favourite patch, the HB 6 French Horns Leg Slur. It will click and pop when sustaining a single note and nothing else is loaded but Play! Can someone else running HB on a Mac try this patch, please?



Same here on pc, w7 64, cubase 7.0.5. Clicks and pops. Probably patch related (a bad loop point or something).


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> 
> 
> > Hi folks,
> ...



Which now begs the question, how after SO long, can an update be released where probably one of the most used patches doesn't work, and that no one picked this up in beta testing?!! I wasted 4 hours of my life messing about with this and now I'm told EW knows it is broken. Sorry to say, but I have little faith in Play and any future updates, especially after reading several of the posts in this thread and my experiences so far. Bear in mind this is coming from someone who did an official demo for HS and who has been praising both HS and HB and recommended both to many other composers since their release.

~C


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 22, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> [
> Which now begs the question, how after SO long, can an update be released where probably one of the most used patches doesn't work, and that no one picked this up in beta testing?!!
> 
> ~C



Good question, Frankly I wonder about that myself.


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> 
> 
> > [
> ...



Nice to see that response from an EW employee! Now, do you think EW will reimburse me for my lost time and the frustration involved!!? Yes, I think not too...

~C


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 22, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> 
> 
> > ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> ...



I will take that question as being rhetorical as I can think of no product/service that you buy that when it malfunctions you get reimbursed for the time you spent diagnosing it and the resulting frustration.

If you turn in a cue and the director hates it and spends hours with you getting it to where he wants it, do you reimburse him? Yes, I think not too.....


----------



## RobertPeetersPiano (Aug 22, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> Nice to see that response from an EW employee! Now, do you think EW will reimburse me for my lost time and the frustration involved!!? Yes, I think not too...
> 
> ~C



Ha, I thought of that too! 
It's just unfair, when you have broken hardware, it gets fixed or you get a full refund, but can you take any legal actions for 

- False advertisement (By telling you the minimum, recommended and optimal system specs (my system is in optimal, yet doesn't work properly))
- Not delivering a usable product
- Lack of customer care after sale


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> 
> 
> > EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 22 said:
> ...



I was joking Jay, but I do feel it is unacceptable to release an overdue update with such a glaring fault. 

Your comparison with the composer/director situation is just silly, though...

~C


----------



## EastWest Lurker (Aug 22, 2013)

Silly statement (joking apparently) merited a silly comparison (joking also.)


----------



## Rv5 (Aug 22, 2013)

RobertPeetersPiano @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> Ha, I thought of that too!
> It's just unfair, when you have broken hardware, it gets fixed or you get a full refund, but can you take any legal actions for
> 
> - False advertisement (By telling you the minimum, recommended and optimal system specs (my system is in optimal, yet doesn't work properly))
> ...



Yes you can, if you are in the EU report your findings to the ECC and log a complaint about it.


----------



## will_m (Aug 22, 2013)

I don't really use anything from EW any more save the occasional SD patch but I thought I'd install PLAY 4 just to see if there had been any progress in the last few years. 

Load times seemed pretty similar, it crashed twice in standalone mode and I really did struggle to find much new about it apart from the mixer page. For such a long time in development its pretty awful, such a shame when they make something as enjoyable to use as Spaces.


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## JBZeon (Aug 22, 2013)

Nathan Allen Pinard @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> JBZeon @ Wed Aug 21 said:
> 
> 
> > @Nathan
> ...




I think is not a EWQLSO Platinum library issue, some Hollywood series users has this problem too.

Nor is it a frustrating problem but that 25% of extra CPU would come very well for 
other things...

waiting for next PLAY updates to see if it improves the CPU consumption.


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## jleckie (Aug 22, 2013)

Man-the guys at NI must be getting a chuckle out of these types of things. :(

I would actually be afraid to put that software on my computer. 

But think how glorious those sounds would have been on K5.


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## christerholm (Aug 22, 2013)

Indeed. If the Hollywood series was on Kontakt 5' I would have got them ages ago.

Play is ok for secondary instruments, but building your whole template with Play just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.


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## muziksculp (Aug 22, 2013)

Funny... I was expecting to read stuff like : _Wow ! PLAY 4 loads my patches almost twice as fast, and I can load and play at least 30% more EW-Library patches in PLAY 4, and everything works perfectly, no clicks, no issues, just pure joy to work with PLAY 4 ... Great job EW for delivering PLAY 4 It ROCKS _ :lol:

Looks like I'm not going to upgrade to PLAY 4 for quite some time. Given all the time EW had us wait for PLAY 4 , and now some are reporting it being worse than PLAY 3, and some of the old issues are still not sorted out >8o

So is all they did is add a mixer in PLAY 4, but reduced its efficiency/performance ?


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## mark812 (Aug 22, 2013)

Kontakt ftw. :D


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## Dan Mott (Aug 22, 2013)

I cannot seem to find an official improvements list...

I haven't yet downloaded my copy. Looks like I won't need to.


----------



## aaronnt1 (Aug 23, 2013)

Dan-Jay @ Fri 23 Aug said:


> I cannot seem to find an official improvements list...
> 
> I haven't yet downloaded my copy. Looks like I won't need to.



I don't think there _are _any improvements! It seems to be PLAY 3 with a mixer! Why EastWest can't seem to improve load times or reduce RAM useage after all these years is beyond me. Get some more professional programmers in I say. Pay a higher wage for better programmers if that's what it takes. I think PLAY has become the bain of Doug Roger's life!


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## christerholm (Aug 23, 2013)

muziksculp @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> Funny... I was expecting to read stuff like : _Wow ! PLAY 4 loads my patches almost twice as fast, and I can load and play at least 30% more EW-Library patches in PLAY 4, and everything works perfectly, no clicks, no issues, just pure joy to work with PLAY 4 ... Great job EW for delivering PLAY 4 It ROCKS _ :lol:
> 
> Looks like I'm not going to upgrade to PLAY 4 for quite some time. Given all the time EW had us wait for PLAY 4 , and now some are reporting it being worse than PLAY 3, and some of the old issues are still not sorted out >8o
> 
> So is all they did is add a mixer in PLAY 4, but reduced its efficiency/performance ?



I already had problems with Play 3, so I have stayed on Play 2.1.2. It is the last version which works without pops and clicks for me. Luckily I don't have any newer libraries that need Play 3. With Play 4, I was hoping I could maybe finally update, but it looks like I will still stay on Play 2. Forever and ever? o=?


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## Nathan Allen Pinard (Aug 23, 2013)

Play 3 works perfectly for me, loading times are short, RAM usage is high but HS is a THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GIG library.

As far as I know, there is NO Kontakt library that even comes close to this that is as dynamic as Hollywood Strings. Yes CS and LASS sound good, but they don't match the same "sound" as HS and are not even close to the size.

So those people saying Kontakt 5 would've been better. There is no possible way you could know that.

---

As far as Play 4 I haven't upgraded yet. I may because I route the mic positions to separate channels in my DAW to mix separately. I can do this in Play 3 but it's very tedious since you do it within the instance itself (and this is with VEPro)

I'm curious to see the stability and features, not so much loading time. But then again, I don't load up 120 instrument templates like some.


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## jtnyc (Aug 23, 2013)

jtnyc @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> Hello -
> 
> Can anyone tell me if the mixer has the ability to set up an aux reverb with individual sends on each of the instruments channel? In the manual I see a picture of the mixer, and it looks like you can, but I don't see it in my mixer. Could it be that you have to buy their fx bundle to be able to do this? I hope not.
> 
> Thanks -



Someone said that Play 4 is Play 3 with a mixer. From what I can tell they've added a mixer, but without the ability to use sends and a reverb aux (unless you buy their Fx package?). Bussing sounds to an aux channel for fx processing is a basic function of any mixer. I do hope I am missing something here. 

Can anyone please confirm? 

Thanks


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## jleckie (Aug 23, 2013)

Play 4 is play 3 with a mixer and slower load times.


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## morphlite (Aug 23, 2013)

jtnyc @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> Someone said that Play 4 is Play 3 with a mixer. From what I can tell they've added a mixer, but without the ability to use sends and a reverb aux (unless you buy their Fx package?). Bussing sounds to an aux channel for fx processing is a basic function of any mixer. I do hope I am missing something here.
> 
> Can anyone please confirm?
> 
> Thanks



Hello,

Yep, unless I missed something, if you haven't got the fx package it's just volume/mute/pan/solo control with output routing and mic position controls. Makes it easier being in one place, but that's you lot really.

P


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## apessino (Aug 23, 2013)

Nathan Allen Pinard @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> Play 3 works perfectly for me, loading times are short, RAM usage is high but HS is a THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GIG library.
> 
> As far as I know, there is NO Kontakt library that even comes close to this that is as dynamic as Hollywood Strings. Yes CS and LASS sound good, but they don't match the same "sound" as HS and are not even close to the size.
> 
> So those people saying Kontakt 5 would've been better. There is no possible way you could know that.



Are you seriously suggesting that loading times with HS and Play 3 are "short" for you? Compared to what?  I find it to be BUTT SLOW regardless of how I do it. I have all of the EW libraries on SATA SSDs, on a machine with gobs of RAM and it is still a pain to load most HS patches - it used to be flat out unbearable when I was using HDs (even in RAID0). There is also a documented bug with Play + Cubase in 64 bit (on PC) where loading more than 3Gb of samples total (across all instances) to Play will cause Cubase to crash once the project is saved and reloaded. This is still not solved AFAIK. Even if I stay below the 3Gb limit if I use Play I will get crashes - not a question of if, just of when. I can't remember the last time I've had a crash that was not caused by Play.

As a comparison, my fully Kontakt based template loads >32Gb of stuff across 5 VEPro instances in about ONE minute and then I am ready to go - of course Kontakt is still loading in the background, but I can select any patch and start playing, Kontakt prioritizes background loading accordingly and I can get things done almost immediately. Short of having a "tutti" on the first note of a full orchestral score the approach makes long loading times a non-issue.

I don't recall ever having a problem with Kontakt - never a pop, a click, much less a crash. Not to mention that Kontakt is an incredibly deep sampler and all of the editing and authoring features are right there for you to use should you choose to do so. 

Honestly, I cannot think of one thing that Play does that Kontakt does not do better (and about 1000 that only Kontakt can do). Can you? 

The only reason why EW developed Play is because they wanted to be independent and free of the fees that NI charges. I can certainly understand and respect that, but I also think that Kontakt is on another level engineering-wise, and Play is still somewhat inadequate to realize the vision the EW developers had for it.

Finally, the huge size of a library is a drawback, not a “feature.” A library should be as small as it can possibly be in relation to the number and depth of the articulations it provides. The EW libraries are gigantic (the Diamond ones, at least) and one of their biggest strengths is how comprehensive and well recorded they are, but is that enough to offset the fact that they take up such a large chunk of your memory? I don’t know how you can say that LASS does not match the “sound” of HS. LASS sounds even better in my opinion, it is way more flexible, much more playable and it does so with a lot fewer patches and at a fraction of the size of HS. That is a good thing, not a flaw.  

I really like the EW libraries (damn, I own 12 of them!), I think they sound great and are very versatile and complete, but I find myself using them less and less simply because Play makes them a lot less appealing than they would be otherwise.


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## jleckie (Aug 23, 2013)

Good post apessino.

I too have 'weaned' myself away from them. Sad but true.


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## mark812 (Aug 23, 2013)

apessino @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> The only reason why EW developed Play is because they wanted to be independent and free of the fees that NI charges.



And iLok.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 23, 2013)

Man, i have ome a long way. Was a tine I would have argued all a lot of these posts

For now I will only point out that what constitutes acceptable loading times is very personal. Since I launch my template at the beginning of the day and shut it down at night, 3 minutes or 13 minutes is just not important to me. When I add instruments or mics or change an instrument, the difference between 5 seconds or 25 seconds is not important to me. I understand it is to some others and that is just fine with me.

As for "I don’t know how you can say that LASS does not match the “sound” of HS. LASS sounds even better in my opinion, " is strictly just that, an opinion and one that I do not personally agree with. And before anyone says that I say that because I work for EW, remember I spent my own hard earned money to build a PC to run more of HS at the time because I liked it so much., even though it would have been cheaper just to buy LASS.

But if you share the opinion, you should indeed use LASS perhaps. No knock on LASS at all, it is a fine library. But what sounds"even better" is very much a subjective thing. 

BTW, apessino, you did make one statement that is factually inaccurate when you wrote "The only reason why EW developed Play is because they wanted to be independent and free of the fees that NI charges."

That is simply wrong. Another reason was that EW was getting massively ripped off and N.I. would not do much about it. Also, there were changes that EW required to be made to Kontakt for their future libraries that at the time, N.I. was simply unwilling to do.


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## apessino (Aug 23, 2013)

Of course it is an opinion - do I have to state that explicitly? I simply expressed surprise at the notion that LASS does not "match the sound" of EW. I prefer LASS because the approach of recording each group of desks independently results in so much flexibility and richness, and it works flawlessly within Kontakt. I also think that HS is a fantastic sounding library - but to suggest that it has unmatched sound by any other offerings seems at least arguable to me, especially when the value-for-resource-allocated ratio is taken into consideration.

All just my opinion, of course. 

As for my "factually inaccurate" statement I stand corrected. I am a video game developer and I can certainly relate to the issue of protecting one's intellectual property (and revenue!). Unfortunately, now we have three documented reasons why Play makes sense for EW, but we still don't have one why it does for your customers. 

I pre-ordered SD3 the day it was announced, I have not even installed it yet. Honestly, the thought of going thorugh Play 4's growing pains is such a turnoff I find myself staring at the box every night and then deciding to wait, even though I know that it sounds fantastic.

At the end it is not my place to criticize and I am not complaining one bit, EW can choose to allocate its resources and follow whatever path it thinks best. All I am saying is that as a consumer of your product I am very satisfied with the programming and the engineering of the samples, but less than thrilled with the performance and reliability of the playback engine, especially when compared to the competition. This will definitely affect my decisions to purchase in the future. Just a data point for you - take it for what it's worth. 

Either way I appreciate you being on this forum and answering these posts - I imagine it is not fun to do so. :D


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## midi_controller (Aug 23, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> Man, i have *ome* a long way. Was a *tine* I would have argued *all a lot* of these posts



Jeeze Jay, it's only 3:30, little early to be hitting the bottle eh? :D

I'm going to defend EW on the loading time issues. There is no Kontakt library on the market that comes close to the amount of samples that Hollywood Strings has per patch, per mic position. Not one. It is going to load slower than Kontakt because it doesn't have true background loading. 

Yes, ~320GBs seems like a borderline ridiculous amount of samples but that is 24-bit, 5 mic positions, up to ~16 RRs, and one of the most comprehensive articulation sets on the market. You really think any of that was wasted? 

Like Jay, I load up my template (with VEP) in the morning while having breakfast, then it's ready to go for the rest of the day. If you have gotten to a point where you are bothered by how long loading takes, I'd advise you do the same, because not only does it fix that problem, but it also allows you to save much, much faster (which I personally think is more important).

As for LASS sounding better than HS, depends on what sound you are after. HS is closer (but still not close enough IMHO) to the film scores I love. LASS, while good in it's own right, is just too far away from that sound for me to want to work with it. It's not an us vs. them kind of thing, one of them will be closer to the sound you want, that's all.


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## mark812 (Aug 23, 2013)

midi_controller @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> I'm going to defend EW on the loading time issues. There is no Kontakt library on the market that comes close to the amount of samples that Hollywood Strings has per patch, per mic position. Not one.



http://www.productionvoices.com/products/piano-samples/production-grand-2/ (http://www.productionvoices.com/product ... n-grand-2/)


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## midi_controller (Aug 23, 2013)

Ok, maybe one. :D


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 23, 2013)

midi_controller @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > Man, i have *ome* a long way. Was a *tine* I would have argued *all a lot* of these posts



Jeeze Jay, it's only 3:30, little early to be hitting the bottle. quote]

If you were in my shoes, you would start drinking early too 

Great post btw.


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 23, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> If you were in my shoes, you would start drinking early too



Maybe, but there's always insoles.


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## quantum7 (Aug 23, 2013)

Man, I wish I had read this thread before I wasted hours with PLAY 4 yesterday. I truly believed with all the time it took to release that PLAY 4 was finally going to be THE version. Things definitely are worse now...at least on my system. If only I could find a replacement for SD2.....and if only I didn't love EW Pianos so much I could finally get PLAY off my DAW once and for all. If only N.I. had proper protection, I'm guessing EW would have never left Kontakt. Sad! OK....done venting now, reinstalling PLAY 3..... and I sincerely wish EW luck at fixing things.


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## Dan Mott (Aug 23, 2013)

As if Kontakt can't use the ilok licensing system.

Yeah, yeah... I know people don't like ilok. Seriously though, ilok isn't all that bad and it's even better now with the new software. Licensing has never been so simple. ilok libraries are obviously a lot harder to pirate.

This has probs been discussed before and I must have missed it, but just a thought.


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## Casiquire (Aug 23, 2013)

Nathan Allen Pinard @ Fri 23 Aug said:


> Play 3 works perfectly for me, loading times are short, RAM usage is high but HS is a THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GIG library.



Yes, 319 gigs. Divided by five mic positions, 64 gigs or so. On the patch level, there's not an enormous difference in the size of the patches, so yes you can compare HS with Kontakt libraries of similar sizes. It's not really fair to compare it with Cinematic Strings which has only one legato type.


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 23, 2013)

@Casquire Actually divided by 6 positions - don't forget the divisi mics (A and B) add up to another stereo pair.


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## Casiquire (Aug 23, 2013)

Per Lichtman @ Sat 24 Aug said:


> @Casquire Actually divided by 6 positions - don't forget the divisi mics (A and B) add up to another stereo pair.



Which makes the size at patch-level even smaller. Plus most of the competition has moved on to compressed files, which Play still hasn't, so add some gigabytes for that as well.


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## jtnyc (Aug 23, 2013)

morphlite @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> jtnyc @ Fri Aug 23 said:
> 
> 
> > Someone said that Play 4 is Play 3 with a mixer. From what I can tell they've added a mixer, but without the ability to use sends and a reverb aux (unless you buy their Fx package?). Bussing sounds to an aux channel for fx processing is a basic function of any mixer. I do hope I am missing something here.
> ...



That's just sad. Luckily for me I stopped buying Play libraries along time ago, but I own 3 and still like to use SD2 and Ra once in a while. It would have been nice to load a few instruments and be able to send to a single reverb. I guess that's too much to ask. When I realized the mixer was so limited, I honestly wasn't surprised. EW make some great sounding samples, but Play has had so many issues from the start. It has improved over the last 4-5 years, but at a slower than snails pace, and now finally, they have added a mixer (well part of a mixer), if you want the whole thing you've got to buy an FX bundle you don't necessarily need or want.

Go figure


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 23, 2013)

apessino @ Fri 23 Aug said:


> Finally, the huge size of a library is a drawback, not a “feature.” A library should be as small as it can possibly be in relation to the number and depth of the articulations it provides. The EW libraries are gigantic (the Diamond ones, at least) and one of their biggest strengths is how comprehensive and well recorded they are, but is that enough to offset the fact that they take up such a large chunk of your memory?



I think the size of HS _is_ a big strength and I personally would rather have large patches and comprehensive keywsitch patches loaded in RAM. I was actually somewhat disappointed by the sizes of HB and HOW compared to HS since you could tell straight away they weren't going to be as comprehensive and deeply sampled as HS and I think perhaps EW did so because people initially complained about the sheer size of HS. If it is a choice between larger, higher quality patches with loads of dynamic layers, round robins and bigger instrument ranges but longer loading times, or lower RAM patches with less content and layers but quicker loading times then I will always opt for the large higher quality patches (besides there are the lite patches in HS). Besides, like a lot I suspect, I start my PC in the morning and load my project and then do all my morning stuff (shower, coffee, check emails) whilst project is loading. When all that is done, project is loaded. Simple. What I was hoping though was that PLAY 4 would unleash some magic and still improved load times and RAM footprint, especially as everyone says Kontakt can do it. But if PLAY has gone as far as it can go in terms of managing the patches of the Hollywood series then I guess I will have to be content to accept that.


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## paulmatthew (Aug 23, 2013)

As a non EWQL library user here, I have to say that for someone who does not own any of the EWQL sample librarires, this does not bode well for them for non users. I really wanted to be able to finally pick something up other than a plugin , Spaces ( which is fantastic by the way).

It seems to me like they don't want to abandon PLAY because it's their baby and they just cannot let it go. It might be easier or better for them at this point if they could just rewrite the coding and scripting of their libraries to work with a player like UVI , Kontakt or Engine. I would think with all the time invested in PLAY and the updates they have done , EWQL libraries could have been ready to go for another player by now. I'm probably beating a dead horse , but that's due to how much I want to use their libraries.

Please EWQL , fix these issues so I can give you an honest try without worrying about the problems with PLAY. I know there are plenty of us lined up waiting to either give your libraries a try , and I know there are some that have your libraries and will not use them anymore until PLAY issues are resolved. All I hear about are slow load times , lagginess , crashing etc. 

The EWQL slogan could be "Let's PLAY" instead the customers are saying "PLAY THIS"


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 23, 2013)

Casiquire @ Fri Aug 23 said:


> Per Lichtman @ Sat 24 Aug said:
> 
> 
> > @Casquire Actually divided by 6 positions - don't forget the divisi mics (A and B) add up to another stereo pair.
> ...



@Casiquire

All true - but keep in mind that LASS 2.5 is 16.5 GB total with about 30% compression. So uncompressed that would be 24GB divided between all the mic positions - or less than half of one HS position for everything.

Now LASS explicitly states the sample compression ratio, but it can be up to about 50% in other cases. I'll just use compressed from now on.

The first two volumes of Spitfire Audio Sable work out to between 5 and 6GB each per mic position for the main mics, with compression. So around 11GB per mic for the first 2 volumes with the size of the third up in the air. If it stay similar, we're looking at 17GB compressed.

The size of DVZ Strings from the specifications, but it seems to be about 30GB compressed, spread between the desks (much like what VSL later did with Dimension Strings). If you view all of the sub-samples as one combined ensemble size, then this would be close to HS in data size for the mic position.

The Adagio Vol. 1 collection is 90GB compressed spread between 3 mic positions and 3 ensemble sizes. So around 10GB compressed per ensemble size per mic position.

So there aren't any string libraries for Kontakt that actually equal the per-mic data size per-ensemble, even assuming 50% compression.

If Volume 3 of Sable is significantly more data than the first two volumes, then it will be the first string library for Kontakt to get in the same ballpark - at least based on the published data so far.

So maybe Kontakt is a less apt comparison than the VSL engine, at least for the time being.


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 23, 2013)

@paulmatthew Play 3 may not load as efficiently as Kontakt, but except for being a little finicky if I get close to running out of memory, the newest release of it has actually been quite stable.

The early versions were really a pain in terms of all sorts of glitches on the systems I used, but these days the main thing I would like (other than being a little more efficient) is really just the ability to edit the programming more (especially keyswitching and the like).

So if you hold off on Play 4 and go with Play 3, you might actually do fine - it really depends on how well it cooperates with your specific system.


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## Sid Francis (Aug 23, 2013)

You people mostly talk about problems with Play4 here. But my question would be: 

for what again did I wait a year now? For a mixer page to control vol and pan? 

And if I want to transpose and retune my instruments (transpose, not midi shift) I still have to make my way through more or less hidden menues? Wow. You guys at EW REALLY take your time....


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## paulmatthew (Aug 24, 2013)

> So if you hold off on Play 4 and go with Play 3, you might actually do fine - it really depends on how well it cooperates with your specific system.



So is it safe to assume one could use a single sample library(Hollywood Strings or Silk) from EWQL in PLAY 3 or PLAY 4 and be okay. I am running an I5 mac 2.8 quad core with 16GB ram. I've had no issues thus far , other than load times with Cineperc core and Cinematic strings 2.0 , but that's to be expected i guess.


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## azeteg (Aug 24, 2013)

midi_controller @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> Ok, maybe one. :D



I really wonder which instrument wins the most-samples-per-patch gold medal. Our Vienna Imperial has 23 000 samples per patch (and mic position), and would actually be 300-350GB uncompressed.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 24, 2013)

Dan-Jay @ Thu Aug 22 said:


> I cannot seem to find an official improvements list...
> 
> I haven't yet downloaded my copy. Looks like I won't need to.



Nor can I, but:


- New Mixer page with all instruments in one window for best mixing control, add/changing mic positions
- Background loading: Load several instruments and mic positions at the same time. HUGE time saver, thought not on initial loading
- Effect section that comes with SD3 (€79 purchase if you want to unlock it for older instruments), including Filter, EQ, Compressor, Gate, Expander, Transient Shaper, Expanded Convolution Reverb etc.
- Time stretching has been improved
- Legato transitions have been improved
- Improved stability
- Reverb is now True Stereo (like in Spaces)


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 24, 2013)

What's the nature of the legato improvement?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 24, 2013)

Per Lichtman @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> What's the nature of the legato improvement?



I assume smoother.


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 24, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat 24 Aug said:


> Per Lichtman @ Sat Aug 24 said:
> 
> 
> > What's the nature of the legato improvement?
> ...


Hey Jay, any way to find out for sure what the change in legato improvement is? It would help me to know for certain because I'm still on the fence about updating to PLAY 4 but if this could be officially confirmed then I'd go for it! Many thanks, cheers.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 24, 2013)

The official word is:
"There were changes made to the software plus improved scripts, resulting, for example, in smoother legato transitions plus many other improvements too numerous to detail."


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## midi_controller (Aug 24, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> "There were changes made to the software plus improved scripts, resulting, for example, in smoother legato transitions plus many other improvements too numerous to detail."



Ah, that would explain the little bug I found. I never found the transitions to be not smooth though, so I'm really not sure what that means. Would someone be so kind as to load up either the Solo Horn or Bb Clarinet legato patches, play with the modwheel at ~40, and tell me if they are still jumpy? Maybe that is what they meant.


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 24, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat 24 Aug said:


> The official word is:
> "There were changes made to the software plus improved scripts, resulting, for example, in smoother legato transitions plus many other improvements too numerous to detail."


 That's great news! Thanks Jay


----------



## pavolbrezina (Aug 24, 2013)

And when will be updated Wordbuilder for Choirs? For now this product is almost unusable...


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 24, 2013)

Just been confirmed over at Soundsonline that background loading upon startup is currently being worked on and will take a few weeks () before ready. I assume that is more along the lines of the Kontakt type?


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## rpaillot (Aug 24, 2013)

Play 4 installed.
VEP Pro template loading correctly but not working.

What a great start


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 24, 2013)

rpaillot @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> Play 4 installed.
> VEP Pro template loading correctly but not working.
> 
> What a great start



What do you mean specifically by "not working" ?


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## jleckie (Aug 24, 2013)

Maybe the giant ON/OFF button is grayed out.


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 24, 2013)

Loads of drop outs with PLAY 4 that were not there in PLAY 3. PLAY 4 seems to have a much much lower RAM footprint than PLAY 3 - some of my projects are loading almost 3 GB less than in PLAY 3! - all engine and buffer settings exactly the same. I think this is the reason for so many drop outs. Have issued a support ticket, hope they fix it real soon.


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## Casiquire (Aug 25, 2013)

Per Lichtman, check out the video posted by Daniel James comparing HS and LASS and tell me if the loading times seem appropriate for the amount of content being loaded. A LASS patch at 150MB loaded in seconds, then a HS patch at 250MB takes far longer. The point is Play is just inefficient.


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## rpaillot (Aug 25, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> rpaillot @ Sat Aug 24 said:
> 
> 
> > Play 4 installed.
> ...



Well the VEP metaframe seems to load correctly at first
( 3 instances of play )
But after the loading some "ghost" loading samples windows are still there in the middle of the screen, stuck.
I then decide to load my cubase project and.....
VEP crashes my slave computer. 

Reverted back to P3.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 25, 2013)

aaronnt1 @ Sat Aug 24 said:


> Just been confirmed over at Soundsonline that background loading upon startup is currently being worked on and will take a few weeks () before ready. I assume that is more along the lines of the Kontakt type?



Hah hah - "a few weeks" in EW land is probably a few years :lol:


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## muziksculp (Aug 25, 2013)

Few weeks in EW-Land = ~o) 

I guess it will take EW another year to fix/improve PLAY 4 :wink:


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## muk (Aug 25, 2013)

It's a real pitty that a company that makes such good sample libraries has problems with software. If you compare Play 4 with VSL's VI Pro for instance, imo Play looses in:

flexibility (this might be personal opinion)
stability (Certainly depends on the system. However, I think there's good reason for complaints about VI Pro being nowhere near the level of Play. Actually, it even gets praise from users. Go figure that )
bugfixing policy (again, might be subjective)

So, while for sample quality imo EWQL and VSL are on the same sonic level (even if totally different soundwise, of course), in terms of software and consumer care EWQL is lagging behind.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 25, 2013)

And much more besides, muk. Pretty much my whole template now is built round the concept of running purged and background loading on the fly. It's a minority sport at the moment, but as a way of working it has so many time and money benefits we'll see increasing numbers working this way as SSDs become ubiquitous. Until Play works smoothly in this area, it's a non-starter for those of us who have embraced The Purge.


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## midi_controller (Aug 25, 2013)

rpaillot @ Sun Aug 25 said:


> Well the VEP metaframe seems to load correctly at first
> ( 3 instances of play )
> But after the loading some "ghost" loading samples windows are still there in the middle of the screen, stuck.
> I then decide to load my cubase project and.....
> ...



...and there is my other bug confirmed. As was said earlier in the thread, re-doing your template with Play 4 might fix that, but that is only a theory. There was too many other problems, so I didn't bother to test it further.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 25, 2013)

muk @ Sun Aug 25 said:


> If you compare Play 4 with VSL's VI Pro for instance



You cant compare VI Pro to any orchestral sample player {Play, Aria, Kontakt, etc.}. There is really no competition, VI is on its own league 8)


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## muk (Aug 25, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Sun Aug 25 said:


> You cant compare VI Pro to any orchestral sample player {Play, Aria, Kontakt, etc.}. There is really no competition, VI is on its own league 8)



Pretty much my own opinion. But why is that? EWQL and VSL started from a similar position if I'm not mistaken. EWQL came up with Play, VSL with VI Pro. So it IS possible to come up with an incredible own player, but in my opinion EWQL failed to do so. And even if you compare Play to Kontakt I think it leaves a lot to desire. Real shame, because EWQL's samples are top notch and CAN compete with VSL.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 25, 2013)

muk @ Sun Aug 25 said:


> But why is that? EWQL and VSL started from a similar position if I'm not mistaken. EWQL came up with Play, VSL with VI Pro.



Look at prices, there is answer. Complete VSL about 10.000 Eur compared to about 2.000 Eur {only symphonic sounds} on EW side. VSL has a looot of money in research.


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## Casiquire (Aug 25, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Sun 25 Aug said:


> Look at prices, there is answer. Complete VSL about 10.000 Eur compared to about 2.000 Eur {only symphonic sounds} on EW side. VSL has a looot of money in research.



This is true, but EW shoots themselves in the foot by having libraries constantly on sale and marked down. They lower the customer's perceived value of their products by slashing the price of a library just a year after release. Compare with Dimension Strings--VSL primed their customers to expect each section to be worth hundreds of dollars, and the price has been rising since the library came out. This isn't a flaw of EWQL at all, just an observation about pricing strategy.

Another observation is this...I don't think EWQL concentrates as much on repeat customers as VSL. From support to library updates to...everything you can think of, VSL is barely focused on new customers and very focused on existing users. EWQL seems to be the other way around by focusing on the customer's first time experience by having great-sounding libraries right out of the box.


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## Hanu_H (Aug 26, 2013)

I am just really sad to see this happen. I started with EWQLSO Gold and Symphonic Choirs in Kompakt and was blown away. I next purchased SD2, RA and Platinum in PLAY. I had a old computer so I upgraded and everything was fine. But then I bought LASS and CineSamples stuff and realized that Kontakt is so much better. It's a lot more stable and you can do everything in it. I really have wished everything good for EW and PLAY but now I see it's not gonna happen. EW is just too blind to see what the customers really want. It's like this huge ego thing that makes you not see your stupid mistakes. When you start thinking; I have been in this industry for so many years and know what I am doing, you are already lost. Customer knows always better than you. You are there because the customers, not the other way around. That's the main reason why I like companies like AudioBro, Cinematic Strings, CineSamples...they honor the customers like they should be and listen to what they are saying and that makes them superior.

I really hope EW wakes up, starts listening to the customers and again starts to make excellent libraries for the composers, not ego boosters for themselfs...


-Hannes


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## quantum7 (Aug 27, 2013)

Hanu_H @ Mon Aug 26 said:


> I am just really sad to see this happen. I started with EWQLSO Gold and Symphonic Choirs in Kompakt and was blown away. I next purchased SD2, RA and Platinum in PLAY. I had a old computer so I upgraded and everything was fine. But then I bought LASS and CineSamples stuff and realized that Kontakt is so much better. It's a lot more stable and you can do everything in it. I really have wished everything good for EW and PLAY but now I see it's not gonna happen. EW is just too blind to see what the customers really want. It's like this huge ego thing that makes you not see your stupid mistakes. When you start thinking; I have been in this industry for so many years and know what I am doing, you are already lost. Customer knows always better than you. You are there because the customers, not the other way around. That's the main reason why I like companies like AudioBro, Cinematic Strings, CineSamples...they honor the customers like they should be and listen to what they are saying and that makes them superior.
> 
> I really hope EW wakes up, starts listening to the customers and again starts to make excellent libraries for the composers, not ego boosters for themselfs...
> 
> ...




Well said!


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

Nevermind.


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## Mike Greene (Aug 27, 2013)

Double-nevermind! :mrgreen:


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

Mike Greene @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> Jay, I'd delete that post ASAP if I were you. You're essentially challenging EW haters to give counter-examples of what you've said. Heck, I even find myself biting my tongue right now . . .



Good advice. It was unnecessary.

No company remains successful ignoring the wishes of the majority of its customers over time. None. Nada. Zippo. Forum comments notwithstanding.

The proof is always in the sales figures. Always.


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## reddognoyz (Aug 27, 2013)

My opinion is EW continues to thrive because they make amazing sounding products. I give Play a C for cimplicity and EW sounds an A+ for Arrogance? ha ha : ) no, kidding, their sounds are just great, they really are. I use the Blackbird guitar in both series I'm currently scoring and I use it a lot. It sits in the mix really really well. I just use the main articulation and play it like a keyboard, no fancy programming, I have other fake guitars for that, but for simple fingerpicking patterns I haven't heard anything better. There are many other "go to" Ew sounds for me. 

I don't have the new Orchestral stuff, I would in a heartbeat if I had a series that called for that sound, it just isn't part of my day to day scoring and I think I would go the PC slave SSD route. I hear you need horsepower for those libraries. 

I don't see any reason for me to move to Play 4 at this point, it hasn't added any features that I personally was hoping for.

I still use a couple of things that came with their early brass librarie. Anyone else ever ever use the Minnie Da Mooch Trumpet?? very specific, but the perfect "spit take" effect!


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## TGV (Aug 27, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> The proof is always in the sales figures. Always.


Then a Fiat Panda is better than a Mercedes CL65?


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## jleckie (Aug 27, 2013)

PLAY 4 is everything I ever dreamt of.

Then I realized I was just dreaming.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

TGV @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:
> 
> 
> > The proof is always in the sales figures. Always.
> ...



We were not discussing whether Play is better than Kontakt. I readily concede that most EW users tolerate Play because they want to use the libraries. Clearly, if they did not love the libraries or loved other K5 libraries equally, they would not. 

But what I accept as fact that some here do not, is that staying with Kontakt, for _multiple_ reasons that I have written about here several times and will not do again, was no longer a viable option. EW _had_ to develop its own engine.

And what I _know_ as a fact is that EW is doing the best they can to improve it.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 27, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> No company remains successful ignoring the wishes of the majority of its customers over time. None. Nada. Zippo. Forum comments notwithstanding.
> 
> The proof is always in the sales figures. Always.



In the UK we have an airline called Ryanair - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair . It is wildly unpopular, in 2012 winning "least popular short haul airline" in UK's highly respected Which? survey - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12 ... 35738.html . They scored a satisfaction rate of 34% - in other words, 2/3rds of their customers were dissatisfied with them (the most popular scored 82%).

Being that massively unpopular, you'd think they'd be in dire financial straits, wouldn't you? Nope. Revenues have risen from €231 million in 1998, to €1,843 million in 2003 and €3,013 million in 2010. Similarly net profits have increased from €48 million to €339 million over the same period.

How to explain it? Customers hate them, but yet they still use them, making them hugely profitable. My own theory as to why this is is very simple - Ryanair are very cheap. People are weak, they can't help themselves when a massive perceived bargain is waved in front of them, even KNOWING the grief they'll probably suffer as a result. After all, maybe they'll be in the lucky third afterwards, and have a perfectly good time with them.

Just a tangential thought.


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## midi_controller (Aug 27, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> And what I _know_ as a fact is that EW is doing the best they can to improve it.



I strongly disagree with this. EW is more concerned with their new products than with Play, or with the suggestions their own customers have requested to be in Play. They don't want to make it the best that they can, just good enough to run the next library. Look at all the suggestions that people have made for Play, and what did we get in Play 4? A mixing page that doesn't really act like a mixer (unless you pay for it) and background loading that wasn't really background loading. 

And I'm sorry but what the hell happened to Play Pro? It looked pretty much finished in the video I saw of it, and that was before the launch of Play 2! The official word? Delayed to "add functionality to Forbidden Planet". It's been years, and we still have neither. Play Pro is probably the most requested thing concerning play, and personally, the only reason I wanted it was to essentially fix the problems that I have with their libraries, since it's obvious that East West just isn't interested in doing it. It's been years and there is still glaring bugs in Hollywood Strings. That is completely unacceptable.

If within the first few seconds that I loaded up Play 4 I found a bug, that means that either your beta testing team is not very good, too small or they were only really testing Stormdrum 3. And since it was insinuated that it had been in beta for a year, well, you tell me what that says about East West's commitment to improve it.

I've never been as frustrated with any other sampling software as I have with Play, not even close. And now you want me to pay for an effects bundle? REALLY?!?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

midi_controller @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:
> 
> 
> > And what I _know_ as a fact is that EW is doing the best they can to improve it.
> ...



Strongly disagree if you want but opinion is opinion and facts are facts and factually, you are incorrect. Different people work on Play than work on the libraries. They work concurrently. They read all the suggestions for Play and implement now what they can and do not implement what they cannot. 

Somebody here I think posted on the SOL forum that background loading was not all they hoped it would be as it did not help with project loading and someone from EW responded that they were working on adding it and anticipated it would be ready in the not too distant future. 

EVERY company wants to give customers all they want. EVERY company endeavors to do it. I and many others have been asking the Logic developers since 1.0, what 15 years ago, to give us the ability to move more than 1 track at a time in the track list. We finally have it now in LP X. Did they wait all this time because both Emagic and later Apple simply said, "No, we don't care what they want, we are not going to do it!" 

Of course not. They do WHAT they can WHEN they can.


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## Rv5 (Aug 27, 2013)

Guy Rowland @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:
> 
> 
> > No company remains successful ignoring the wishes of the majority of its customers over time. None. Nada. Zippo. Forum comments notwithstanding.
> ...



Ryanair purposefully paint their planes garish yellow and blue, and have their website looking like it's from the 90s to give the impression they are cheap. In more instaces than people realise, BA compairs price wise. As you point out it all works to keep them going well!

Depends how far you want to go I suppose - we live in a world where men take pictures of women celebrities on the beach because people buy the magazines the pictures are printed in. Those magazines are succesful.

Of course - it depends how you define succesful. Other companies are praised and respected - as well as making sales and profit.


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## Hanu_H (Aug 27, 2013)

Like I said in my post, I like EW's libraries and sounds and it makes me sad to see this all go ruined. I know many composers who have bought the CCC, only to find that they can't even run the libraries, even if the minimum requirements EW states are easily met. Then they switch to Kontakt and everything is fine on their computers. It's just that people who don't know about sample libraries and computers, fall into the temptation of cheap libraries that EW offers. It's not because they love them but because they can afford it. And also the marketing EW does is really aggressive compared to the others. Some people even say they've been robbed by the EW, because they have a computer over the minimum requirements and still the libraries don't work. I own 4 EW libraries but I only use one at the moment, I wish I could use more. EW, don't be offended by the information you get from your customers, open your eyes(ears) and listen. It might even be a really good business decision. I understand that EW is not going back to Kontakt and I don't even want that, I just want a good sampler around the EW sounds...

-Hannes


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## midi_controller (Aug 27, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> Strongly disagree if you want but opinion is opinion and facts are facts and factually, you are incorrect. Different people work on Play than work on the libraries. They work concurrently. They read all the suggestions for Play and implement now what they can and do not implement what they cannot.



I know that different people work on different projects, I never suggested otherwise. I'm just looking at what was presented. If they could have gotten background loading working the way it does in other programs, why didn't they do that in the first place?

I was a bit harsh though, and I wasn't really trying to direct it at you Jay, I'm just frustrated. I have a hard time understanding why East West would prioritize an effects package (who mixes inside their sampler? Even if it has world class effects?) over Play Pro, and then release it when it's bug ridden. Look at how many people in this thread are going back to Play 3. That right there should tell East West that there is something very wrong with their new version.


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## andy_i (Aug 27, 2013)

Hanu_H @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> Like I said in my post, I like EW's libraries and sounds and it makes me sad to see this all go ruined. I know many composers who have bought the CCC, only to find that they can't even run the libraries, even if the minimum requirements EW states are easily met.



I second that. A lot of jerky responses if I don't bounce down Play stuff regularly. All my Kontakt stuff flies along next to it without breaking a sweat.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

I understand and I am not mad at you MC, I think you are a good guy. And I get the frustration. 

My guess is that adding the FX since they were adding a mixer was easy. Adding the background loading upon project boot was harder. Either that, or they underestimated how much it was wanted. Either that or they felt the FX would lead to more sales than the full-fledged background loading. I don't know.

And I wish I had been a beta tester so I could tell you what I saw and did not see.

Based on what I have been told, what appears to be many bugs may actually stem from one to two issues they are working on. i am keeping my fingers crossed.


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## reddognoyz (Aug 27, 2013)

Hey Jay curious about Play in terms of it's hackability as opposed to Kontakt. It's it much less likely to be cracked? Is that one of the reasons they decided to develop their own playback engine?


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## KingIdiot (Aug 27, 2013)

It was very well known at the time that piracy is one of the sole reasons Play came into development. NI had no intentions of helping developers create more sophisticated copy protection algorithms. The other benefit si that the licensing costs to publish for Kontakt through NI and they're existing options proved to be a sticking point for some.

another one people seem to point towards these days is that the sound of Kontakt's playback engine isn't as good as others. It proves tough to some to hear your awesome sounds crapped on with aliasing in resampling and bad summing/effects/filters/etc

there's quite a few reasons to go out on your own and make a playback engine.

there's also couple big reasons to stay developing for Kontakt.

you gamble. you hope it works. Some parts of whatever you choose ends up a success, other parts aren't


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

Once again, KingIdiot proves that his screen name is a total misnomer.

Also, I was told that when HS was in the planning stages Kontakt, at that time at least, simply could not handle the demands of it. EW asked NI to make some changes, and NI said no.


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 27, 2013)

I really like it here, people can speak there minds. Play 4 would not even install on my iMac. Failed at the end but P3 works fine. But of course on EW forum you cant ask for help , so there forums make it seem like there software is perfect. And if you go against admin (his fav line- it works for every one else.) He bans you from his site if he thinks you making the software look bad. Ya i had a few word after he ban me. But glad it happen. I found a new home and way more info and help then i was getting from EW. Ever with video , error code data, there support team could not figure it out. Last step was to remote. After reading many post , i was not going to let them go thru my system if they could not get P4 to work after so many beta testers and time. I will be trying more VSL and 8dio and maybe projects am stuff now. I enjoy the samples i have from EW, but there forum and admin and support , is no good... But im loving this back and forth here. Breath of fresh air, nice that most don't let words hurt them and can have a debate and cheers a beer in the end. And not cry and just ban you. Toast to my new forum fam.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

Once again facts are stubborn things. I just visited the SOL forum and found the following active threads:

1. Am I the only one who has trouble reading the Play 4 font?
2. Play 4 cannot verify license.
3. Wordbuilder crashing 
4. QL Pianos distortion.
5. Play 4 playback weirdness.
6. Play 4 Errorloading instrument messages
7. Play 4 loading bug in VE Pro 5
8. Play 4-more crashes than with Play 3.
9. Play 4 bug
10. Play clipping in PTHD 11
11. Play 4 can't find 16-bit samples on new projects
12. PLAY 4 - loads of drop outs and pops and clicks
13. Issue with Play 4 and Sonar

And that is just some of them, none of them locked or deleted. I won't insult people's intelligence here by spoon feeding a conclusion about whether it is making the software seem perfect.

it is not what they say, it is how they say it that gets people banned on the rare occasions that someone gets banned.


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 27, 2013)

I not going to waste the same time here I spent there. But think about it. Since you are so informed with EW. There's a feature called erasing post. Lol but again. As I said moving on. I guess since you found those post there admin cant say it working for everyone else. I feel allot better you finding those. Thanks :idea:


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 27, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ Tue Aug 27 said:


> I not going to waste the same time here I spent there. But think about it. Since you are so informed with EW. There's a feature called erasing post. Lol but again. As I said moving on. I guess since you found those post there admin cant say it working for everyone else. I feel allot better you finding those. Thanks :idea:



You're' welcome. Opinions are opinions and everyone is entitled to them, and I rarely argue them here anymore. But facts are facts and when people make statements that I can prove are factually inaccurate, i am going to make that case.

Clearly English is not your first language and you are frankly clumsy with it. I am not criticizing you for that at all, as like a lot of Americans I am not fluent in any second language, but it is possible that got in the way of your exchanges there, since most of the EW mods are English speakers. You may have come across as rude when it was not your intention.


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 27, 2013)

Lol ,,The apple doesn't fall far from the tree....

My english is fine. Just enjoying ,, missing a ban option are we. 

In other news. Off to another post.


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## StatKsn (Aug 27, 2013)

Hi all,

I have noticed that you can have both Play 3 and 4 installed on Windows by running the installer in a sandbox, and just grab the file called play_VST_x64.dll (or x86 equivalent).

So far it is working fine. I want to keep the old version installed as Play 4 standalone .exe doesn't even launch on my rig, claims that libmmd.dll is missing. Also I heard some horror stories about Play 4, so I don't want to let it affect existing projects.

As of EW forums, I have a strange experience in the past that they did not approve my reply to a question post suggesting a working, user-side solution to 99% CPU load problem in the early releases of QL Spaces. Instead they had approved "I don't know" kind of a reply. There might be a reason, but after that I have decided to stop going there, as what I want is open community questions and answers when it comes to technical problems.


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## 5Lives (Aug 27, 2013)

If Kontakt was / is so bad and Play is superior, why doesn't EW open it up to other developers then? Or why don't other developers move to something like UVI? So many of them continue to produce for Kontakt - some of the best libraries, such as CineSamples and Spitfire and Audiobros.

I think EW has great libraries at a good cost, but Play has acquired / built up this reputation for being bad. It's unfortunate - but that reputation once earned is hard to lose until EW put a lot of resources behind making Play better than the most easily accessible next option (Kontakt). Look at VSL though - they did it. Their sample player is phenomenal.


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## Casiquire (Aug 27, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ Wed 28 Aug said:


> Lol ,,The apple doesn't fall far from the tree....
> 
> My english is fine. Just enjoying ,, missing a ban option are we.
> 
> In other news. Off to another post.



Actually Jay has frequently made it quite clear that he would be a little less hasty to delete or ban if he had anything to do with moderating the EWQL forum. Learn a bit about the person you are speaking with before assuming things about them....

Jay, sorry to see you so caught in the middle of all of this. I hope the things we're saying here make it back to the people in a position to enact change at least to some degree because the fact that people are getting so worked up about it is an indication that perhaps there is a potential market of users that is going untapped--people who really want the libraries but avoid making the same mistake twice.


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## KingIdiot (Aug 27, 2013)

The performance of Kontakt's streaming system is still in better shape than most players out there. It's jsut able to buffer better. And then there are scripting options that are sometimes better.

Generalizing and hyperbole does no one any good except agendas.

Look there are definitely things better in Kontakt than other systems, there are definitely things that work for VSL and their products. EW does lots of products in Play with all different developers, because it's their proprietary format their trying to push.

I totally get the fact that Play rubs people the wrong way, especially since it's coming off the heels of a sampler that performs more efficiently in some regards.

but seriously it's like trying to stone Jay here because he's the EW guy. Look in the past Jay and I have had some heated debates, way before he hopped into EW land. But seriously, how does all the antagonism help anyone.

I say this on his side as well. Though I think he's doing pretty good considering how kick a man when he's down this thread feels like. I get it, he can't really openly say "well yah that sucks we'll check it out" for everyone to feel better, because it openly admits to things that aren't confirmed internally and opens a world of shitstorm. It's to be expected form most people directly affiliated with any company. Be aware/conscious, and understanding/empathetic maybe, instead of calling him out on his wording. He has to be careful, he's not trying to be shady. The guy's always wanted to help at his heart, even if it seems to lock horns at times.

The tools got some problems, and you hope for it to get better/fixed. Or you leave and spend your money elsewhere, or if you feel cheated, try to get your money back if you can.

Things aren't always hunky dory, and just because someone else got it right for themselves doesn't mean they could have got it right with other peoples wants/desires.

Yes Play has a rep here, so does EW. I don't do anything for them anymore. I got really close to doing all of Storm Drums 3 and fucked finishing it all up with my own life getting in the way.

I think play actually sounds pretty damn good, but it hates my rig because it's really fucking old. I wish it were more efficient or they had light versions/settings that worked more efficiently for me, but that's not their focus. QLeap, and by extension EW, has long since had a forward thinking position with sample rigs and power. I understand that you guys have some awesome rigs and it's not working. Updates suck sometimes.


If you're working and updating early adopter style... not so plainly put, you deserve my crown. Go with the track record. If you feel like you're gonna be beta testing, and can't afford to, let other users do it, and check it on your down time.

Not everyone can be Nintendo, sometimes it's Activation or EA. Still popular shit, and valid stuff coming out of both studios. Sometimes there's some empathy required. Even if you think they're dicks, if you act antagonistic, you just drive conversations into defensive land and it really helps no one to have that kind of energy being thrown at the only person you can communicate with. I mean, this isn't reddit or facebook. Save the dickish flippant jokes for IRC, that's what I used to do. (Who cares if there are spies.)

why the hell am I using all these games metaphors today? I didn't even buy a next gen console.


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## ChrisAxia (Aug 28, 2013)

Am I the only one surprised that Jay was NOT a Play 4 Beta tester? Considering he and East West knew he would be on the receiving end of users' Play 4 issues, who decided it would be a bad idea for Jay to be on the beta team?

~C


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 28, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Wed 28 Aug said:


> Am I the only one surprised that Jay was NOT a Play 4 Beta tester? Considering he and East West knew he would be on the receiving end of users' Play 4 issues, who decided it would be a bad idea for Jay to be on the beta team?
> 
> ~C



There could be any number of reasons why Jay wasn't on the beta team. 

I've only been here on VI a short while but feel for Jay sometimes, it's a thankless task. He's a dartboard for all our PLAY opprobrium and that must get real tiresome real fast. Sorry Jay, we just want EW to come up with a great player that's all and it gets frustrating that it isn't all it could be and hinders us in certain situations. Sometimes it feels as if EW don't listen, not you personally, but EW management and so we try to speak louder. Cheers for all your posts though, at least we know there is a conduit on here back to EW.


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## R.Cato (Aug 28, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> Am I the only one surprised that Jay was NOT a Play 4 Beta tester? Considering he and East West knew he would be on the receiving end of users' Play 4 issues, who decided it would be a bad idea for Jay to be on the beta team?
> 
> ~C



No, you're not the only one. Thanks for pointing that out. 

Maybe he was just too busy, but nevertheless as Online Coordinator he should have been there just to be able to better communicate with the community and I am sure he also would have prefered that seeing how supportive he is towards us users.

Strange world... :roll:


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2013)

We have had these same discussions over and over and over an over for a couple of years now. Don't you guys have better things to do? Music to write? I know I do.

At the end of the day, whatever you think of Play and Kontakt, if you want to use EW libraries, you need Play. That isn't going to change. So if that is a big deal to you and you think a competitor's products are as good, then you should buy that product.


For those of you who do choose to use EW and have issues they need help with, THAT"S why I am here. Not to defend the SOL forum or EW's decision to go with Play with people whose minds are made up anyway. 

I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to get sucked into that totally useless discussion yet another time.


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## dgburns (Aug 28, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> We have had these same discussions over and over and over an over for a couple of years now. Don't you guys have better things to do? Music to write? I know I do.
> 
> At the end of the day, whatever you think of Play and Kontakt, if you want to use EW libraries, you need Play. That isn't going to change. So if that is a big deal to you and you think a competitor's products are as good, then you should buy that product.
> 
> ...



+1 
and fwiw,I've been pounding hard on play 4 for the last week or so with no issues whatsoever

Gornisht helfn :roll:


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 28, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to get sucked into that totally useless discussion yet another time.



You are right, so here is my question. EWQL Choirs are best sounding choirs out there. But problem is, that it si almost unusable because cursor of sequencer doesnt interact with wordbuilder. How can I compose for example 20 minute piece. Am I supposed to start over again from beginning, or am I supposed to press F4 all the time in all voices, or pressing and unpressing solo button in all voices on phrase when I want to start? I dont know, please help me, because even my support ticket on EW is opened for about week, nodoby response. This is Play problem and I think it cant be that complicated to code cursor cooperation between wordbuilder and sequencer. I dont think that I want to buy another product, because there is no such product on the market (yes I know and hear all you are going to mention). So you EW are only one who can make EWQL Choirs users happy and allow them to working effectively with this great library. Thank you


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to get sucked into that totally useless discussion yet another time.
> ...



Please email this to me with your system specifics and i will try to get an answer for you.


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## HardyP (Aug 28, 2013)

Dear Jay,
it´s good to have you here around, and I think your aim to be as neutral as possible can be felt in many postings. So keep up the good work, and good luck to find a proper tongue in all the nasty stuff...

But I´d like to share my impression of the P4 story:
It was announced 1 year ago - with "public beta just around the corner". It was delayed (no prob, very common in software dev. 8) ), but in the announcements around EW´s birthday it was highly praised, "you will be blasted away" o=< , eg. It was delayed again, "it will be released, when it´s ready". No prob so far, we love stable products :mrgreen: . In addition, long-known issues with P3 (clicks in Pianos, iLok-losses in Logic) seemed to be postponed to P4 :roll: .
To sum it up: The expectations towards new features where high, the expectations concerning stability the more!

It isnt´t astonishing, that under this circumstances the wrath of their customers is shed upon ew... Maybe you can adress this point of view internally.

Just my 2c - Hardy

PS: the support team of ew is really hard working, and VERY helpful. But as soon, as they can confirm a software bug, things get very sloooooow moootiiiioooonnnn ... and mostly silence then (beside Helen´s follow ups, which are great!!).


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 28, 2013)

[quote="EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:26 
Please email this to me with your system specifics and i will try to get an answer for you.[/quote]

Thank you very much


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 28, 2013)

Hmm, look im smiling. I have nothing against jay. Unless he the sam3 admin on EW. I was just speaking my issue I had over there. I felt I was starting a new leaf here. Then jay seem to defend the admin there. Yes they did erase the post. Maybe to help clean the back and forth, since he or she made it seem i was only one having the same issue. Since it working for everyone else. I was even looking forward to getting help from Jay reading some of his earlier post. Yes I was unhappy how things ended on the EW forum, and read where others had P4 issues. But when you think one sided. It hard to have a dialog. When you search for the post as Jay did and seen only stuff they want u to see. I admit I was mad at EW when I install p4 and nothing would load in stand alone mode. And made it seem it was my fault. When p3 installed fine. But a user on the forum said I could reinstall p3 again. But EW admin said it would damage my system even more if I did. So I was dead in the water and to email there support team who do not reply sometimes. Also he said not to ask support ? On the forum , and I apologized. But it the person on the forum who help me, not EW support or admin. 

But as I said I enjoy my EW , but not when it wont load at all. I feel me and jay got off on the wrong foot and I if in came off wrong I can admit when im wrong. But that road should go both ways. (Hand out there) Ready to kil this E & W coast beef with jay. Jay u could care less but i need your brain l. Lol had to make a joke at the end of course.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 28, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> Hmm, look im smiling. I have nothing against jay. Unless he the sam3 admin on EW. I was just speaking my issue I had over there. I felt I was starting a new leaf here. Then jay seem to defend the admin there. Yes they did erase the post. Maybe to help clean the back and forth, since he or she made it seem i was only one having the same issue. Since it working for everyone else. I was even looking forward to getting help from Jay reading some of his earlier post. Yes I was unhappy how things ended on the EW forum, and read where others had P4 issues. But when you think one sided. It hard to have a dialog. When you search for the post as Jay did and seen only stuff they want u to see. I admit I was mad at EW when I install p4 and nothing would load in stand alone mode. And made it seem it was my fault. When p3 installed fine. But a user on the forum said I could reinstall p3 again. But EW admin said it would damage my system even more if I did. So I was dead in the water and to email there support team who do not reply sometimes. Also he said not to ask support ? On the forum , and I apologized. But it the person on the forum who help me, not EW support or admin.
> 
> But as I said I enjoy my EW , but not when it wont load at all. I feel me and jay got off on the wrong foot and I if in came off wrong I can admit when im wrong. But that road should go both ways. (Hand out there) Ready to kil this E & W coast beef with jay. Jay u could care less but i need your brain l. Lol had to make a joke at the end of course.



If you have specific issues, email me a detailed explanation of the issue with all your system specs and I will do my job, which is to try to get you the help you need.


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## HardyP (Aug 28, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ 2013-08-28 said:


> Yes they did erase the post. Maybe to help clean the back and forth


Maybe they cleaned, because your issue was in the wrong section, or it was allready mentioned in other postings? 
Even if I have my opinion on the specific situation (see posting earlier), I can feel with EW, since many posters do not search the forum for their issue, and post within that thread; and on the other hand do not give any details in order to help them reproducing the issue.

And as a sidenote: If they allready offered a live session via team viewer, I can only recommend allowing that, cause it may help you - or prove that you did everything right, and THEY have an issue!!


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## mk282 (Aug 28, 2013)

KingIdiot @ 27.8.2013 said:


> It proves tough to some to hear your awesome sounds crapped on with aliasing in resampling and bad summing/effects/filters/etc



1. There are three resampling modes (HQI) in Kontakt, "high" is not too CPU intensive and it gets rid of a lot of aliasing that happens in "standard" mode.
2. Summing in Kontakt is just fine. It's just zeroes and ones, really. 1+1=2.
3. New filters in K5 are REALLY good. Ditto new effects.


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## KingIdiot (Aug 28, 2013)

mk282 @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> KingIdiot @ 27.8.2013 said:
> 
> 
> > It proves tough to some to hear your awesome sounds crapped on with aliasing in resampling and bad summing/effects/filters/etc
> ...




you're right, I was stating why some developer's felt the need to to switch. It's different for each person, and what they want/need/feel is good enough

disagree on the idea of summing. Internal audio signal paths can be different based however bussing/sends internal routing goes. Again, up to the developer on what they deem is a want/need/change

As for effects, people are still moving to Mach five for more options, the convolution in Play is built for their own impulses. Alchemy is crazy.. blah blah. They're good, some people just want different/better/creatively.

my point was to explain why some developers feel/felt the need to move, and reasoning behind it. Not state things as if their subjective opinions are fact.

That's the issue, people ask why would they want to, it becomes personal choice based on what were problems, or still feel are problems.

Look I'm not trying to be a jerk and state things and bash NI. Kontakt is my center. It has been and will be for a while, until someone surpasses it and I can load all my old Ktk libs into it perfectly, or until libs stop being available for it. Happened the same way with Gigastudio.


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## ThomasL (Aug 28, 2013)

mk282 @ 2013-08-28 said:


> It's just zeroes and ones, really. 1+1=2.


Yes, but it should be *1+1=10* then


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## mk282 (Aug 28, 2013)

Yes, but there are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.


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## Jerome Vonhogen (Aug 28, 2013)

synergy543 @ Wed Aug 21 said:


> I wonder if a public beta would possibly result in a better product? This way, the developer wouldn't have to wait a year for the product release to hear from the rougue users (who seem to be providing more useful feedback than the actual beta testers - no?).



The answer is: Yes and No.

No, the feedback of testers is just as valuable as the feedback of regular users. Difference: testers usually give much more feedback than regular users, and they have to do this in a very short amount of time as well, while following strict protocols. One should keep in mind that, regardless of the fact that a product may have been in Beta for a long time, every new Beta version/build requires a completely new test, because new artifacts may occur anytime. It's not sufficient to just test fixed bugs.

Yes, a public beta would possibly have resulted in a better product. I must admit that I had hoped that there would be a public beta. As far as I know, there just wasn't enough time to organize a public beta (please, don't attack me for this, cause I'm not in charge of QA at East West, and I don't make these decisions. In fact, I'm not even an EW employee; apart from East West, I'm a devoted supporter of several other developers that I love just as much).

I've promissed myself that I wouldn't read any posts on Play 4 and EW at VI-Control, since I don't want to be accused of being an East West fanboy anymore. ((Just to be clear, let me say this one more time: I'm NOT(!) a fanboy, you hear me?? :wink: ))

Anyway, after being asked in a PM about some of the issues discussed here, I decided to read this thread after all. And although I still prefer not to get involved in this, I thought it wouldn't hurt anyone if I'd shed some light on a couple of misunderstandings that seem to be influencing the debate.

- First of all, there was no specific Play 4 Beta test team, testing was done mainly by the internal test team.
- In the past few months, the main focus of the test team has been the combination of Stormdrum 3 and Play 4 (apart from the ongoing testing of other stuff) on several different systems/setups and with as many DAWs as possible.
- After the release of SD3, much, if not most of the testing time & energy was spent on bug fixing and improving the released product.
- In general, if any bug or artifact shows up in a final product/release version, that doesn't necessarily mean that the test team hasn't already reported these bugs. I don't know EW's policy on warning the end-user for known issues, but there should be some sort of bug list visible during installation which should contain all currently known artifacts.
- @ChrisAxia: I can't speak for the other members of the test team, but testing all HB patches for compatibility with Play 4 was not a priority as far as I'm concerned. At the time, it wasn't clear yet when Play 4 would be released to non-SD3 users.
- @ChrisAxia: I have said this on several occasions, Jay should definitely join the test team. I agree with you 100%.

I wish I could talk about all this in more detail, but that is neither my job, nor my responsibility. 

Please, understand that I'm an independent composer just like you, which means I'm not an East West employee, and I'm not being paid for my time. I just happen to be part of the test team of East West (but this could have been any other company/developer, really). Having said that, I still think the people working at East West are wonderful people, and really super-nice. I just don't understand why they have not yet arranged an alien abduction for that 'Admin'-guy over at the SO-forums. Sometimes getting an anal probe inserted by aliens is the only way to teach a human being not to be such a PITA himself!
(o) ~o) (o) 

- Jerome Vonhögen


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## midi_controller (Aug 28, 2013)

Jerome Vonhogen @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> - First of all, there was no specific Play 4 Beta test team, testing was done mainly by the internal test team.
> - In the past few months, the main focus of the test team has been the combination of Stormdrum 3 and Play 4 (apart from the ongoing testing of other stuff) on several different systems/setups and with as many DAWs as possible.
> - After the release of SD3, much, if not most of the testing time & energy was spent on bug fixing and improving the released product.
> - In general, if any bug or artifact shows up in a final product/release version, that doesn't necessarily mean that the test team hasn't already reported these bugs. I don't know EW's policy on warning the end-user for known issues, but there should be some sort of bug list visible during installation which should contain all currently known artifacts.
> ...



Yeah, that was pretty much what I thought happened. Very, very bad way to go about things. I think East West needs to increase the size or overhaul the Play team or something; If a year after Play 4 was officially announced you had to rush the release that badly... come on. Imagine if Native Instruments did something like this.

See this right here is why I think East West only cares about their new products. If I had bought Stormdrum 3 or, even worse, that effects package, I would be demanding my money back right about now. Just wow.


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 28, 2013)

I know I'll be correct on this, but when I thought play4 was being created I thought it was going to be the play pro. Edit key switches ect. Why didnt they just delay 4 and bring this all at once. Or is this a stage process? 

Jay ty I will be home in two days to provide more info and code , of the issue im having.


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## Casiquire (Aug 28, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ Wed 28 Aug said:


> I know I'll be correct on this, but when I thought play4 was being created I thought it was going to be the play pro. Edit key switches ect. Why didnt they just delay 4 and bring this all at once. Or is this a stage process?
> 
> Jay ty I will be home in two days to provide more info and code , of the issue im having.



I'm guessing you haven't been on this forum or the SoundsOnline forum long. Play Pro has been "almost ready for release!" since Play 2 or earlier, it's been years and years. Play 4 was never going to be Play Pro or vice versa. I'd suggest thinking of Play Pro as vaporware until the official announcement of its release.

My other advice is to never, ever trust an EWQL release date or time frame. There were about eight products that were announced for release this year--I think including Play Pro. We've had one so far (Stormdrum). Unless they'll be releasing half a dozen products in the next three months.


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## StatKsn (Aug 28, 2013)

Cpluse2 @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> It hard to have a dialog. When you search for the post as Jay did and seen only stuff they want u to see. I admit I was mad at EW when I install p4 and nothing would load in stand alone mode. And made it seem it was my fault. When p3 installed fine. But a user on the forum said I could reinstall p3 again. But EW admin said it would damage my system even more if I did. So I was dead in the water and to email there support team who do not reply sometimes. Also he said not to ask support ? On the forum , and I apologized. But it the person on the forum who help me, not EW support or admin.


While I am not fond of their forums at all, my overall experience with the EW support ticket is good. Am I just being lucky? If you are not familiar with DIY support, you might want to stay away from Play 4 for now though. Installation process of Play has always been awkward despite the fact that it works fairly simple. I remember I was not even able to install my very first Play product at the time due to the bug in the installer, ended up with manual copy.

I don't think they are pretending that their software is perfect like you have stated. They are aware. Indeed, however, EW might be the most defensive of the all software developers I have ever seen in my life and they are reluctant to admit that their software has problems in a public forum. Most notably their support forum is invisible without signing in, which prevents you from finding similar questions and solutions via a search engine - also left unregistered users just want to look through past questions clueless (I didn't know they have a support forum until registering out of curiosity)


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## jleckie (Aug 28, 2013)

I cant help but wonder a few things. If East West went to PLAY to keep from Pirating I can completely sympathize with a move like that. 

If they went to PLAY to save money, i.e. from having to give a large percentage to NI I can understand that as well.

But...From what I can tell, they have been rather successful in avoiding any pirating. (VERY successful I might add) 

However, regarding the saving from having to share proceeds with NI: For how much they are spending on development to get PLAY up to speed with Kontakt AND other engines I honestly think they are much less successful in that (and that may have not been predicted by east West). The money may have been better spent by EW by including NI in the bargain and having a whole lotta happy customers in return. 

my 2 pennies


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## NYC Composer (Aug 29, 2013)

jleckie @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> However, regarding the saving from having to share proceeds with NI: For how much they are spending on development to get PLAY up to speed with Kontakt AND other engines I honestly think they are much less successful in that (and that may have not been predicted by east West). The money may have been better spent by EW by including NI in the bargain and having a whole lotta happy customers in return.
> 
> my 2 pennies



This assumes (I think) that they have spent substantial money on developing Play in the past few years, which would surprise me to find out. If it's true, the investment hasn't been very successful in making the platform more efficient and competitive.

I find that odd, given that their investment in developing cutting edge, wonderful sound libraries has paid off so well.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 29, 2013)

My guess is that they have ONE programmer full time, tops, who works on PLAY for both PC and Mac, and also does in-house developer tools.

That's judged by the speed of development of PLAY....


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## HardyP (Aug 29, 2013)

Simon Ravn @ 2013-08-29 said:


> My guess is that they have ONE programmer full time, tops, who works on PLAY for both PC and Mac, and also does in-house developer tools.
> That's judged by the speed of development of PLAY....


+1...


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 29, 2013)

BTW I officially hate PLAY (3) at the moment. Using so much time trying to get a click free bounce of a short piano line. Clicking happening in the same place each time, no matter if I bounce realtime or offline - and it only happens once in a while when the sequencer is just playing it back. This is on Mac. Oh and on my slave PC I generally have to realtime bounce any Hollywood Brass or I can get random artifacts/clicks. Such a joy.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 29, 2013)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> BTW I officially hate PLAY (3) at the moment. Using so much time trying to get a click free bounce of a short piano line. Clicking happening in the same place each time, no matter if I bounce realtime or offline - and it only happens once in a while when the sequencer is just playing it back. This is on Mac. Oh and on my slave PC I generally have to realtime bounce any Hollywood Brass or I can get random artifacts/clicks. Such a joy.



Well by your own admission, the way you have set things up pushes the envelope and may be contributing to that, right? Because I don't have that issue on my slave PC at al and hopefully I have proven by now that i would say so if I did.

BTW, thanks for the supportive comments, Casquire, King Idiot, et al.


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## lpuser (Aug 29, 2013)

Guys, first of all, Jay is a nice guy and it takes a lot to not get upset by some of the comments. He does his best to assist and that in itself is appreciated!

Second, EW support is - most of the time - very helpful. They have helped me sort out a problem with iLok drivers over many months and we got it solved finally. Of course, such a situation is never desirable, especially during time-critical projects, and I think that EW should have been probably a bit more clearer about certain "requirements", as should have been Pace. But in the end, it worked. You can - of course - argue that expensive libraries should use a copy protection which does not keep people from working (and in this area, NI is truly great, never had any trouble with Kontakt - ever).

The one not-so-good experience I´ve had with EW support was a reported sample problem, of which I´ve never heard back for many months. After asking again, they seem to have lost the case completely and wanted me to send over everything again. Which is a problem, because due to hard disk switching, some mails have not survived the transition. So I´m gonna check again from scratch. Well ...

As for Play 4, I certainly had high hopes, too although I must admit that my experiences with Play 3 were not that bad. Of course, using newer libraries showed the shortcomings, but on the other hand - look at synthesizers like D16s LUSH-101. Some of the patches are not even playable on a high end Mac Pro, due to the plugin being so CPU intensive. So yeah well, things happen. The only downside regarding EW is probably, that there is no way of checking IF the libraries work on your own machine beforehand. You buy and have to keep all fingers crossed. If it does not work, bad luck - no way to resell the libs. But that´s certainly the same with other devs.

Is anybody successfully using Play 4? Hmm ... I am still hesitating.

Cheers
Tom


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## ChrisAxia (Aug 29, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28 said:


> We have had these same discussions over and over and over an over for a couple of years now. Don't you guys have better things to do? Music to write? I know I do.
> 
> At the end of the day, whatever you think of Play and Kontakt, if you want to use EW libraries, you need Play. That isn't going to change. So if that is a big deal to you and you think a competitor's products are as good, then you should buy that product.
> 
> ...



Jay, I'm not sure if your response was directed at me, but yes, I have much better things to do like write music, which is a full time job for me and why you will notice the amount of posts I have made over several years as a member of V.I is very low. I don't frequent the SOL forum. I am still intrigued why you were not a beta tester. If this is common knowledge, perhaps someone can enlighten me if you are not prepared to. 

~C


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 29, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> 
> 
> > BTW I officially hate PLAY (3) at the moment. Using so much time trying to get a click free bounce of a short piano line. Clicking happening in the same place each time, no matter if I bounce realtime or offline - and it only happens once in a while when the sequencer is just playing it back. This is on Mac. Oh and on my slave PC I generally have to realtime bounce any Hollywood Brass or I can get random artifacts/clicks. Such a joy.
> ...



Nope I have unloaded a ton of samples, it changes nothing. I wasted an hour before I got a working bounce. Only way I got it working was by only bouncing the piano part of the score, omitting the preceeding 10 bars or so.

Oh and btw, do I need to tell you that despite the "way I have things set up" Kontakt will never render errors in offline bounces, whereas PLAY can/will? PLAY is just a POS software coded by someone not up to the task for sure. We have 100's of threads with all kinds of PLAY issues, including clicks and pops. Feel free to try and underplay that fact by just blaming my system as you always do - it is not going to help the reputation EW and PLAY now have 8)


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 29, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Wed Aug 28 said:
> 
> 
> > We have had these same discussions over and over and over an over for a couple of years now. Don't you guys have better things to do? Music to write? I know I do.
> ...



Absolutely not directed specifically at you. And I don't know why I was not a beta tester. I did ask to be.


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## Lemmonz (Aug 29, 2013)

lpuser @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> ...
> Is anybody successfully using Play 4?...



I just finished a project with it using HS diamond and SD2 on mac. Other than the tuning issues for tempo sync'd patches (I was using measured trem but switched it over to normal trem) everything has been fine. Offline bounce worked out fine for me. No clicks or pops. 

Not saying that'll be the same for others though...


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 29, 2013)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> 
> 
> > Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> ...



That is not what I am doing. I was only asking. If that is what is happening for you, that is what is happening for you.

Using Logic with VE Pro hosting Kontakt stuff on my Mac and Play stuff on my PC, however, it is _not_ what is happening here and that is the whole truth.

People can reach whatever conclusions they want from that fact because I am through with those kind of arguments.


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## ChrisAxia (Aug 29, 2013)

Thanks for clearing that up. Glad to hear that you asked to be a tester. Shame EW decided against it...

~C


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## KingIdiot (Aug 29, 2013)

ChrisAxia @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> Thanks for clearing that up. Glad to hear that you asked to be a tester. Shame EW decided against it...
> 
> ~C



+1 million.


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## StatKsn (Aug 29, 2013)

Does anyone know how to type in the value from the keyboard in the instrument properties in Play 4?

It was possible in Play 3 but not in 4. It is quite troublesome to set the tune without the keyboard when setting up fake-doubling or fake-RR (can be done with a combination of tune and transpose). I might need to ask.


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## Diffusor (Aug 29, 2013)

Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> My guess is that they have ONE programmer full time, tops, who works on PLAY for both PC and Mac, and also does in-house developer tools.
> 
> That's judged by the speed of development of PLAY....



Didn't someone mention awhile back that EW had a programmer job opening and were only offering 80k/year? In LA? You are not going to get quality experienced programmers for that. If that is true it all makes sense.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 29, 2013)

EW has verified that there is indeed an issue with Play 4 with loading from SSDs. It has been fixed and the new update will be available next week.


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## midi_controller (Aug 29, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> EW has verified that there is indeed an issue with Play 4 with loading from SSDs. It has been fixed and the new update will be available next week.



Was that what was causing the loading bars to get stuck?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 29, 2013)

midi_controller @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> 
> 
> > EW has verified that there is indeed an issue with Play 4 with loading from SSDs. It has been fixed and the new update will be available next week.
> ...



I would assume so, although I did not have that issue, just the considerable slowdown.


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## SymphonicSamples (Aug 29, 2013)

Thanks for the update Jay , that's welcome news . I'm glad that's been resolved .


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## aaronnt1 (Aug 30, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri 30 Aug said:


> EW has verified that there is indeed an issue with Play 4 with loading from SSDs. It has been fixed and the new update will be available next week.



I've got many EW libraries including all the Hollywood diamonds and everything is on SSD's, and the only library I have had loading time issues with is EWQLSO. In fact I created a support thread about it and after some detective work, have narrowed it down to a Windows registry issue, but which I suspect PLAY 4 is causing during it's installation. The strange thing is that uninstalling PLAY 4 and installing PLAY 3 brings back normal loading speed to EWSO, but install PLAY 4 again, and EWSO gets very slow again.


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## IFM (Aug 30, 2013)

Looks like they need to make Jay an official Beta tester at this point and fire whomever was doing it before. These seem like alpha stage issues not Beta. Oi! Good job Jay keeping us informed and taking the heat. 
Chris


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## Cpluse2 (Aug 30, 2013)

midi_controller @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> 
> 
> > EW has verified that there is indeed an issue with Play 4 with loading from SSDs. It has been fixed and the new update will be available next week.
> ...




Lol Wow. I think this might be the issue im having. Lol great news
. Morning everyone.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 30, 2013)

EW support ticket for EWQL Choirs still open without response for about week now. I think they dont have answers for me.... :?


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 30, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Fri Aug 30 said:


> EW support ticket for EWQL Choirs still open without response for about week now. I think they dont have answers for me.... :?



They are still checking it out but so far have not been able to reproduce it.

Please don't take this as "here is EW blaming the user", but just for my information, did you read the manual thoroughly about using WB?

Not BLAMING him folks, just asking, as I would ask Logic users I try to help. You would be amazed how many times the answer is "no."

One guy actually wrote me, "you shouldn't have to read a manual to use a product." :roll:


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 30, 2013)

What does manual to do with fact, that if you change tempo in Sonar, singers start to sing bad and very different, scratched, some kind of streaming problem {I am not using learn function, so it may sing the words right}. After reload, everything is working good with those new tempo changes. 

Even the manual doesnt contain info about cursor not supported in wordbuilder, it is really hard to programming long pieces if you must pressing F4 all the time in all voices and then after some tempo change choirs start to sing very weird. I think most people give up after this experience. But I dont give up and working on massive piece right now, because simply EWQL Choirs is that great sound library. It takes me 10x more time to program something.

I would like to mention that I am not novice that doesnt read manuals. I am working with 10GB VSL projects using MIR Pro with not even one scratch sound during playback, so my system is I think pretty good {I5, 16GB Ram, etc...}

I know what I am doing and I try everything with Play, every parameter in settings, nothing helps. Maybe Sonar X2 is the problem, I dont know...


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 30, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Fri Aug 30 said:


> What does manual to do with fact, that if you change tempo in Sonar, singers start to sing bad and very different, scratched, some kind of streaming problem {I am not using learn function, so it may sing the words right}. After reload, everything is working good with those new tempo changes.
> 
> Even the manual doesnt contain info about cursor not supported in wordbuilder, it is really hard to programming long pieces if you must pressing F4 all the time in all voices and then after some tempo change choirs start to sing very weird. I think most people give up after this experience. I would like to mention that I am not novice that doesnt read manuals. I am working with 10GB VSL projects using MIR Pro with not even one scratch sound during playback, so my system is I think pretty good {I5, 16GB Ram, etc...}
> 
> I know what I am doing and I try everything with Play, every parameter in settings, nothing helps. Maybe Sonar X2 is the problem, I dont know...



Understood and once again, not blaming you or your system, just asking, because I don't know you. I don't see this in Logic and I don't use Sonar. Hopefully they will be able to reproduce it.

Do you have a project that illustrates this you can zip and email me?


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 30, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 30 said:


> Understood and once again, not blaming you or your system, just asking, because I don't know you. I don't see this in Logic and I don't use Sonar. Hopefully they will be able to reproduce it.
> 
> Do you have a project that illustrates this you can zip and email me?



It is not problem, but you really have to try this in Sonar, because maybe in other DAW it is working I dont know. I will send you project soon...


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 30, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Fri Aug 30 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Fri Aug 30 said:
> 
> 
> > Understood and once again, not blaming you or your system, just asking, because I don't know you. I don't see this in Logic and I don't use Sonar. Hopefully they will be able to reproduce it.
> ...



I think the EW guys probably have Sonar to test it in.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 30, 2013)

They dont have to wait for my project {I am out of studio right now} they can test anything they want with full SATB WB load. Simply make tempo changes several times in project and they will hear...

and I found this intersting post on EW forum, no reply, but symptoms looking similar on my side http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/show ... hp?t=44152


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 30, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Fri Aug 30 said:


> They dont have to wait for my project {I am out of studio right now} they can test anything they want with full SATB WB load. Simply make tempo changes several times in project and they will hear...



Maybe yes, maybe no. I cannot tell you how many times people have described problems with specific third party software in Logic that I could not reproduce. A project illustrating it saves them time and would help.

Besides, it is Labor Day weekend in America and fixing Play 4 is I am sure a higher priority.


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## christerholm (Aug 31, 2013)

If they cared about their customers, it should not matter if it is a holiday


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## playz123 (Aug 31, 2013)

christerholm @ Sat Aug 31 said:


> If they cared about their customers, it should not matter if it is a holiday




Oh so true...EW employees should in fact be chained to their desks 24/7 in order to serve the needs of the entitled generation. Certainly a few hours off, perhaps at Christmas, should be more than sufficient, and as a far as spending time with familiy and friends...well they should just forget about them since they may never see them again anyway. After all, in some countries, this is the Labour Day weekend, so EW employees should definitely be at work and labouring today, and all bathroom breaks cancelled until further notice. Even though most of us take time off occasionally, and have come to realize that Play is as important as work, why should EW employees be allowed similar priveleges? Who are they to expect the same rights as others? Down with freedom; up with respect for the entitled. God Save The Queen!!


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## TGV (Aug 31, 2013)

playz123 @ Sat Aug 31 said:


> christerholm @ Sat Aug 31 said:
> 
> 
> > If they cared about their customers, it should not matter if it is a holiday
> ...


Most excellent solution. Not only will it show great customer dedication, it will surely also result in much better software.

Ok, at this point I *could* insert a smiley, but that would not be very helpful. You could think I meant it, but also thought it was funny, or that I was being ironical, or that I wish it were true, but wouldn't dare to suggest so if not covered by plausible denial, etc.

Well, first, I didn't mean a word of my first paragraph. I also hope that christerholm and playz123 don't mean it either. However, from playz123's words it's clear that he (she? nah) feels slightly piqued by something in christerholm's post. Understandable, given the fact that emotions sometimes run high in this thread.

Now, I don't want to derail this topic even further, but as a general recommendation, I'd suggest: be careful with smileys in sensitive threads...


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 31, 2013)

I think everyone was clearly joking. Surely all of us understand that we have to have at least some semblance of a life away from our jobs.

And if someone actually does not, there are a lot of good therapists available at a reasonable price nowadays.


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## pavolbrezina (Aug 31, 2013)

EastWest Lurker @ Sat Aug 31 said:


> And if someone actually does not, there are a lot of good therapists available at a reasonable price nowadays.



But I doubt there is good therapist for Play interface users :D just kidding...


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## Per Lichtman (Aug 31, 2013)

pavolbrezina @ Sat Aug 31 said:


> EastWest Lurker @ Sat Aug 31 said:
> 
> 
> > And if someone actually does not, there are a lot of good therapists available at a reasonable price nowadays.
> ...



I think it's the people that don't use PLAY that may need therapy - and we may need to worry about their therapists facing the consequences of intense boredom.

After all "all work and no PLAY makes Jack a dull boy."


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## jleckie (Sep 3, 2013)

For LURKER;
http://www.everydayhealth.com/alzheimer ... d%3D366703


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## rpaillot (Sep 3, 2013)

Diffusor @ Thu Aug 29 said:


> Simon Ravn @ Thu Aug 29 said:
> 
> 
> > My guess is that they have ONE programmer full time, tops, who works on PLAY for both PC and Mac, and also does in-house developer tools.
> ...



I wish I could get 80 k a year :lol:


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## Nathan Allen Pinard (Sep 5, 2013)

> My guess is that they have ONE programmer full time, tops, who works on PLAY for both PC and Mac, and also does in-house developer tools.
> 
> That's judged by the speed of development of PLAY....



So I guess that means Blizzard Entertainment has one programmer?


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## chrisn3901 (Sep 5, 2013)

Does anyone have problems with Nuendo 5.5 and 6 crashing on Mac running Mountain Lion? When I load PLAY 4 in the VST Instrument Rack or an instrument track running Stormdrum 3 it crashes. Will there be an update for this soon? And old projects have loading freezes with PLAY samples.


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