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Thoughts on EW Hollywood Orchestra

I curious about RAM usage for EWHO. Anyone been crazy enough to add the whole thing into their template?
 
I curious about RAM usage for EWHO. Anyone been crazy enough to add the whole thing into their template?

I think hollywood strings can be a ramhog when you use the diamond edition with the specific articulations like bow change legato which can easily take up 1 GB per patch or even more. The rest is by nowadays pretty descent. My recommendation would be to have at least 32 GB ram for the gold edition or better 64 GB ram when going for all this specific HWS Patches which take up most of the ram. Fire out the money :D
 
So, I've been window shopping online and realised East West have a Valentine's Day Special on for the Hollywood Orchestra (Diamond - 5 Mic Positions). It's $466. That seems like a very good deal.

I don't own much East West stuff but at this price, I'm thinking it could be a great investment (for different musical choices and I love having the choice of different samples to write music with). Just wondering what people think of Hollywood Orchestra? Does it get updated (any bug fixes)? Do people still use it? Sounds like a weird question as samples are samples but there's so much choice out there now. A few people I work with use HB and HS so I have been meaning to get them for a while.

I'm not interested in Composer Cloud. I've got far too many subscriptions and I just like buying the things I use. Each to their own on that front.
Thanks

Jono

It really depends of your workflow and how much time you plan to invest to program and to tweak it. Although a bit old now, EastWest Hollywood series are of top quality. No doubt that. It's playable and already good out of box but you need to tweak it a bit to make most of it, as with almost any library. Most people use only %20-30 percent of the instruments and articulations it includes and they are already happy with it. Many new competitors provide a more user friendly Kontakt interface, in particular with all the articulations loaded up with keyswitches. You need to set up several tracks for each EW instrument to control all articulations. Besides, Play now seems to be mature and you can get fantastic results if you work your way through a good template setup and CC programming.
 
I curious about RAM usage for EWHO. Anyone been crazy enough to add the whole thing into their template?

I have been crazy...or stupid enough. You really want that 64 gigs of RAM if you're going to load up almost every patch there is. Otherwise the only thing you'll be running is HWO;) (Talking about the Gold edition here).
 
It really depends of your workflow and how much time you plan to invest to program and to tweak it. Although a bit old now, EastWest Hollywood series are of top quality. No doubt that. It's playable and already good out of box but you need to tweak it a bit to make most of it, as with almost any library. Most people use only %20-30 percent of the instruments and articulations it includes and they are already happy with it. Many new competitors provide a more user friendly Kontakt interface, in particular with all the articulations loaded up with keyswitches. You need to set up several tracks for each EW instrument to control all articulations. Besides, Play now seems to be mature and you can get fantastic results if you work your way through a good template setup and CC programming.

Yeah, a couple of Film/TV Composers I work with use it (amongst other things) hence why I'm looking at buying it. I also feel like my life isn't complete until I own every sample on the planet. ;)
 
I have been crazy...or stupid enough. You really want that 64 gigs of RAM if you're going to load up almost every patch there is. Otherwise the only thing you'll be running is HWO;) (Talking about the Gold edition here).

Probably gonna run it initially on a computer with 96gb of RAM and see how that goes.
 
Probably gonna run it initially on a computer with 96gb of RAM and see how that goes.
A savvy Cubase user like yourself will realistically get by on less than 32gb.
I have a pretty full HWO template plus choirs and harp at the moment that is using roughly 24gb.
But that's not with every patch loaded, that's with extras like runs and FX and unused tracks disabled in Cubase.
 
A savvy Cubase user like yourself will realistically get by on less than 32gb.
I have a pretty full HWO template plus choirs and harp at the moment that is using roughly 24gb.
But that's not with every patch loaded, that's with extras like runs and FX and unused tracks disabled in Cubase.

That's good to hear. I will likely just build an EWHO Template to begin with just to get to know it and write a few tracks etc. Need to get familiar with it to create someone's template and knowing the patches makes that process so much faster.
 
Is there a general consensus on the percussion (diamond)? Many people talk good things about strings and brass, and badmouth the WW ( :D ) but the percussion is often just shrugged away as "not bad".

I'm currently using Spitfire Percussion, but I feel it's a bit too wet and "symphonic orchestra"- sounding to me in many projects where I could use a bit more clearer and more closer sound which isn't dependant on the huge AIR room in order to sound powerful. I also have Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion for the smaller things, and I feel that the good old EWQLSO (gold) percussion is closest to the sound I personally would like to get. Is the Hollywood percussion sound closer to the EWQLSO sound than Spitfire?
 
Somehow I never like their legato. Brass is the best of all Hollywood libraries (my own opinion). The horns are nice but I rarely use legato patches though.
 
Is there a general consensus on the percussion (diamond)? Many people talk good things about strings and brass, and badmouth the WW ( :D ) but the percussion is often just shrugged away as "not bad".

I'm currently using Spitfire Percussion, but I feel it's a bit too wet and "symphonic orchestra"- sounding to me in many projects where I could use a bit more clearer and more closer sound which isn't dependant on the huge AIR room in order to sound powerful. I also have Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion for the smaller things, and I feel that the good old EWQLSO (gold) percussion is closest to the sound I personally would like to get. Is the Hollywood percussion sound closer to the EWQLSO sound than Spitfire?

The percussion is good, it sounds great. Yet I still never use it, because there's no modwheel controllable swells. That's a dealbreaker for me. I have Rhapsody (currently on sale for an unbelievable price!) and NI Symphony Percussion. Love them both more than Hollywood Perc. Not a bad library, but you could easily do better.
 
Somehow I never like their legato. Brass is the best of all Hollywood libraries (my own opinion). The horns are nice but I rarely use legato patches though.

Funny how opinions can differ from person to person. To me, the string and brass legatos are the best I've ever heard yet still.
 
Thanks, @DS_Joost - I messed a bit around with both Spitfire and the EWQLSO, and decided that I can prolly live without the Hollywood Percussion, and your post kind of settled it for me afterwards.
Then again, EW have sales nowadays all the time so I have plenty of opportunities to be in this same situation in the future as well. :D
 
So would it be more appropriate to compare Albion One to The Orchestra? Preference in that case?
I've been surprised by how good the Orchestra sounds, given its small RAM footprint, especially the strings on chug-a-chug ostinato figures from the arpeggiator engine, and it does provide individual instrument sections (no soloists though), but I still consider it more a sketching tool (and as such it is phenomenal aside from the fact that there is not an easy way to extract the midi from it in order to replace or layer). But unlike Albion One, I wouldn't use it alone in a finished product.

The sketching process of the two is also different. The Orchestra is more akin to something like the Sonokinetic phrase libraries that you can use to lay-in characteristic backgrounds to sketch the gestural shape of a passage or piece. Because it works through a series of arpeggiators, though, The Orchestra gives somewhat more adaptability than the Sonokinetic libraries and it does not insist on triadic harmonic structures. The other side of The Orchestra is just a traditional section-level orchestral library with basic articulations and legato. For me, "Stealing the Medallion" by Steffan Brinkmann, a delightful little demo on the product page on the Sonuscore site, gives the best idea—both the library's strengths and its real weaknesses as an orchestral library—of how the library works for orchestral composition. I don't think this is the library's strength, however. That would be the textures you can generate with its engine.

Albion One, by contrast, is more like working in traditional short score with very well recorded sections of winds, brass, and strings (and some percussion and hybrid synth stuff as well). But you are sketching for those sections and you can't, say, bring out the cello or the oboe except by replacing the part with another library or layering another library in. The sketch does sound excellent, however, and if you compose for that sound in mind, you can deliver finished pieces from it.

In terms of preference, it would depend on which kind of sketching you think is most helpful. I sometimes sketch with the two in tandem.
 
Is there a general consensus on the percussion (diamond)? Many people talk good things about strings and brass, and badmouth the WW ( :D ) but the percussion is often just shrugged away as "not bad".

I'm currently using Spitfire Percussion, but I feel it's a bit too wet and "symphonic orchestra"- sounding to me in many projects where I could use a bit more clearer and more closer sound which isn't dependant on the huge AIR room in order to sound powerful. I also have Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion for the smaller things, and I feel that the good old EWQLSO (gold) percussion is closest to the sound I personally would like to get. Is the Hollywood percussion sound closer to the EWQLSO sound than Spitfire?

It’s a good library if you have the rest of the Hollywood Orchestra, otherwise “not bad” is a fitting description.
All the patches are usable but none of them are really “go-to”. I actually prefer The bass drums and cymbals of SO unless the piece features HO heavily.
 
Ok I caved and got it. No more... this week.

Not a bad choice. You just bought the most flexible and immediately usable orchestral percussion library out there. At least how I see it. It doesn't sound too big or jaw-dropping out of the box, but that's not where it's strength lies. It's strength lies in the fact that the dry sound of the thing makes it cut through any mix, no matter how thick. If you want a bigger sound, layer it with something more distant. I really use this as a first option on every track I work on that needs percussion.
 
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