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What do you guys think of PLAY?

@saboo Some laptops actually support more RAM than what it says on the official specification sheet.

Try installing 2 sticks of 32gb RAM from Samsung: "Samsung 32GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM Memory Module for Laptop Computers (260 Pin SODIMM, 1.2V) M471A4G43MB1" on Amazon.

If it doesn't work, just return the RAM, I guess.
This. I remember putting 32GB into my laptop eons ago when I used to work on it, even though it only supported 16GB officially. Now that was like 2014 so yours should be fine but do research it (Reddit). Check your CPU's specs on Intel's website it should indicate the max amount of memory that your CPU is compatible with.

Cheers
 
What conveniences do you find lacking? In what ways is it inflexible?
Last year, after installing a few NVMe SSDs in my tower along with the SATA ones, I did a lengthy experiment to see how much faster libraries would load off of faster NVMe drives, and I was going to record results. Didn't have to... Berlin and Spitfire libraries with Kontakt loaded WAYYYY faster on NVMe drives, as expected, mine are about 3500mb/sec reads. It was Play that totally surprised me: the different was almost nothing. A full Hollywood Strings Platinum patch takes 7 seconds coming off of an M.2 SATA drive, and 6 seconds coming off an M.2 NVMe drive. And I rebooted between each load test to make absolutely sure cache was clear, AND, I repeated the test a few times to verify. As a software developer I can tell you that this is in the programming of Play, and it may have to do with compressing and decompressing files, not sure, but Play should load faster off of NVMe's and it is barely faster. My guess is that future versions WILL, they just need to figure it out over at EW.

HOWEVER, this did SOLVE a problem! I was trying to figure out which libraries had to stay on my slower SATA SSDs because I only have 3TB od NVMe space, and EW made the decision easy! ;)
 
On my aging 2013 iMac, my Hollywood Orchestra VE Pro template, which includes the Hollywood Choir, Harp, and the EW Bosendorfer piano, about 27 GB, loads in 4:30 from one conventional SSD connected by USB 3.

I find that acceptable.
 
I only used it for a month, but I didn't have any problem. But it's not a sampler. It's a rompler. And there's a difference.
 
On my aging 2013 iMac, my Hollywood Orchestra VE Pro template, which includes the Hollywood Choir, Harp, and the EW Bosendorfer piano, about 27 GB, loads in 4:30 from one conventional SSD connected by USB 3.

I find that acceptable.
Remember when we use to load one gig of samples from our Zip drives using SCSI? Yeah, 4:30 minutes is a dream come true. Just enough time to make the coffee :)
 
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Try to avoid it like the plague, but unfortunately, a lot of great sounds are only available using it. So, great but not great.
 
Hey everyone, basically last time I checked, everyone seemed to hate EastWest PLAY because of bugs, and that it didn't have as efficient purging as Kontakt. Has this changed? Is PLAY good now?
Play and Kontakt it’s different things. Kontakt it’s a full sampler but Play created to use EW instruments and Play do it well. I don’t have any bugs.
 
I just don’t find it to be that intuitive and I’ve never really been a fan of it, it’s stable now and doesn’t take forever to load samples anymore but I’m still not into it, I think SINE ruined all other samplers for me cause it’s just so good...
 
I just don’t find it to be that intuitive and I’ve never really been a fan of it, it’s stable now and doesn’t take forever to load samples anymore but I’m still not into it, I think SINE ruined all other samplers for me cause it’s just so good...
Except, when you know, it doesn’t work. I haven’t had nearly the issues others have had with SINE but it has started to crash Logic with increasing frequency ever since I got Amber. (I don’t know if it is Amber itself or that this is the first Sine library where I’ve been routinely trying to use more than a handful of Sine instances in a single project that is the culprit.) OT definitely has kinks to work out
before I can enthusiastically endorse it.
 
Except, when you know, it doesn’t work. I haven’t had nearly the issues others have had with SINE but it has started to crash Logic with increasing frequency ever since I got Amber. (I don’t know if it is Amber itself or that this is the first Sine library where I’ve been routinely trying to use more than a handful of Sine instances in a single project that is the culprit.) OT definitely has kinks to work out
before I can enthusiastically endorse it.

I had some issues when it was first released, but ever since that first update it’s run very smoothly, maybe I’m just lucky but my experience with it ever since the update has been great!
 
I had some issues when it was first released, but ever since that first update it’s run very smoothly, maybe I’m just lucky but my experience with it ever since the update has been great!
Yes, it was very stable for me running the trombone from JXL Brass and even when I added a couple of instruments from Ark1. But then I started working with Amber and had 8 or so instances of Sine open in the project, and that’s when I started getting issues. I’m still not sure if the problem is Sine in general or something specific to Amber’s implementation of it. And the problem is not completely reproducible on demand except the hang on close if a track with Amber on it is selected and the GUI is open when I close the track. If I am working in the project and I go to a track with Amber on it, there’s always a chance it will hang there too, but it doesn’t happen reliably. It’s just that since I got Amber I’ve had maybe a dozen times Logic has hung and everyone of those times Amber has been on the active track and the Sine GUI has been open. I haven’t had any other hangs or crashes during this time. To me that points to some issue with Sine.
 
There are few libraries on it I couldn't replace (Stormdrums, Choirs). But if I ever could find good replacements, I'll escape from it without looking behind. Loadings are slow, internal FX are bloated and not necessary, have lots of buffering issues with Reaper, lots of libraries doesn't have crucial features (like no pitch control on Stormdrums). So yeah, PLAY is definitely showing it's age.
 
No. But I am sure not going to keep moving dongles between them. Apart from the wear and tear on both the plastic dongle and the USB port, what happens if I forgot to walk with the dongle and one computer is at home and the other miles away at work?

I have a cubase mac and a nuendo pc... They are almost identical in software, in that I can start a project on one, either one and finish off, or continue working on the other.
When I was younger and foolish, there were some software I bought twice to do this, Waves and McDsp.......not anymore.....Has to have two activation for me.
Rsp
 
No. But I am sure not going to keep moving dongles between them. Apart from the wear and tear on both the plastic dongle and the USB port, what happens if I forgot to walk with the dongle and one computer is at home and the other miles away at work?

I have a cubase mac and a nuendo pc... They are almost identical in software, in that I can start a project on one, either one and finish off, or continue working on the other.
When I was younger and foolish, there were some software I bought twice to do this, Waves and McDsp.......not anymore.....Has to have two activation for me.
Rsp

I hear you, it is goofy. Another solution could be using the machine license, and activating/deactivating as needed.
 
Play is fine as a sample playback engine. Haven't had problems with it in many years now.

I don't like to tinker with samples. I will do it sometimes but most of the time I'm just looking for a sound that I like and use Kontakt (or Play, or SINE, or UVI etc.) as a passive playback engine.

Much of the criticism leveled at Play is either years out of date (bugs, for instance, that long ago disappeared) or from lack of familiarity. Some of that criticism, consequently, is long out of date or just "it's different," which isn't really justified.

Tweaking

That said, if you are someone who likes to really massage your patches, Kontakt (depending on the library -- some are locked) offers far more latitude than Play. I don't enjoy tweaking, so it's not usually an issue for me.

It's the Sound

I strongly feel that, if you're creating orchestral mockups, it's the sounds that matter, not the engine. Accordingly, if you like the East West sounds, Play will not interfere with making great music. Moreover, other engines are ok these days as well. UVI works fine too, so does Omnisphere and many others, at this point. Orchestral Tools' SINE also is working for me although again, I'm using it for playback, not trying to tweak.


[note: I have received free products from East West]
I’m with you, John, I just don’t really have time to tweak sounds so I want to get as much done in a day as possible and need things to just work and sound good from the get go. I normally don’t create my own presets, I would rather spend my time doing other things.
 
It's the same answer for every new Sampler that comes around.
It's only to protect the product from pirating and they don't want to pay the NI fee.
There is no bonus for the customer.
Kontakt still and might forever be the best Sampler out there.
All the new Samplers can't be better than Kontakt because they are new and still need to figure everything out.
 
It's the same answer for every new Sampler that comes around.
It's only to protect the product from pirating and they don't want to pay the NI fee.
There is no bonus for the customer.
Kontakt still and might forever be the best Sampler out there.
All the new Samplers can't be better than Kontakt because they are new and still need to figure everything out.


I can tell you what Doug Rogers told me, which is that the main reason they switched from Kontakt to Play is that when they were doing Hollywood Strings, Kontakt could not provide certain things they needed and Native Instruments refused to make the necessary changes.

And the bonus to the customer is that we never again undergo the fiasco we did when Gigastudio was so dominant and went belly up.
 
It's the same answer for every new Sampler that comes around.
It's only to protect the product from pirating and they don't want to pay the NI fee.
There is no bonus for the customer.
Kontakt still and might forever be the best Sampler out there.
All the new Samplers can't be better than Kontakt because they are new and still need to figure everything out.

Play is not (and never was) a sampler.

If anyone used the old NI player for the old EW libraries, as Jay and I did, Play was a breath of fresh air. You practically needed a microscope just to look at the interface.
 
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