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Depends on what you mean by jack-of-all-trades. It's definitely a capable library in general, and probably the choir I would choose if I could only have one, but the main focus of Hollywood Choirs is the wordbuilder. If you want a full wordbuilder that can do actual words and not just dog Latin, it's basically the only game in town. If you don't want the wordbuilder, there are other choir libraries available with more features at similar or lower price points (though this is, in fact, the cheapest Hollywood Choirs has been to date).

The main things that many people feel Hollywood Choirs is missing are sampled legato, SATB sections (HC has only two sections -- men and women), and choral effects. If those things are more important to you than the wordbuilder, then Hollywood Choirs wouldn't be a good choice.

Also be aware that while a lot of people are satisfied enough with the default wordbuilder output that they don't tweak things, using the wordbuilder really well has a very steep learning curve. Be prepared to invest a lot of time in learning it if you want the best results.

Thank you for the thorough answer! Based on what you say about the wordbuilder being the main reason for buying the library, I think I will try to find a cheaper alternate as this is not something I desperately need.

How do you find the Play 6 engine? I'm now considering the Hollywood Percussion, but there seems to be a lot of differing opinions on the engine and I'm not quite sure if I should wait for Black Friday and see if Spitfire Percussion will be on sale then.
 
Was there talk from someone at East West on another thread that there's a follow up or replacement or something for Play on the way at some stage?..
 
Was there talk from someone at East West on another thread that there's a follow up or replacement or something for Play on the way at some stage?..
Maybe you are referring to a previous thread last year that mentioned about midi control integration with hardware controllers was imminent- my guess is Player 6 is this years answer to that!
 
If we select license only for Hollywood Orchestra Diamond from EW website. There is a pop up that says its license only and it cannot be downloaded. If we buy License only then can we download it from EW installation centre?
 
Thank you for the thorough answer! Based on what you say about the wordbuilder being the main reason for buying the library, I think I will try to find a cheaper alternate as this is not something I desperately need.

How do you find the Play 6 engine? I'm now considering the Hollywood Percussion, but there seems to be a lot of differing opinions on the engine and I'm not quite sure if I should wait for Black Friday and see if Spitfire Percussion will be on sale then.
I've never really had problems with Play even in previous versions other than that its load times are generally longer than Kontakt's. Even that has been getting better in the recent versions. I think at this point, the most relevant criticisms of Play are that it isn't as customizable as Kontakt and Play libraries often aren't designed for keyswitching (most notably, the Hollywood series).

Was there talk from someone at East West on another thread that there's a follow up or replacement or something for Play on the way at some stage?..

Are you thinking of Play Pro? That's been in the works for years, and they recently said they were still working on it, but we haven't heard anything since then.
 
Diamond requires a hard drive because of the files size. But I think the drive has everything on it. So once you buy it once, you may only need to buy the license if you get another library.

I found that if JRR doesn't list it, it doesn't necessarily mean they can't get it, just that it wasn't on the "list". I bought HWO Diamond from them during the last sale - it wasn't listed, but I PM'd Eric and they got it. Eric is really great about getting what he can and giving a good deal.
 
Are you thinking of Play Pro? That's been in the works for years, and they recently said they were still working on it, but we haven't heard anything since then.


I just checked there..its the Hollywood choirs thread in reviews..Apparently something is on the way..
I would be fine with Play if it had keyswitching and was a bit more stable on my system..
 
Thank you for the thorough answer! Based on what you say about the wordbuilder being the main reason for buying the library, I think I will try to find a cheaper alternate as this is not something I desperately need.

How do you find the Play 6 engine? I'm now considering the Hollywood Percussion, but there seems to be a lot of differing opinions on the engine and I'm not quite sure if I should wait for Black Friday and see if Spitfire Percussion will be on sale then.
I am also considering Percussion. I recently upgraded to the latest version of Play 5 and had problems with dropped notes with offline bouncing. I use bounce in place all the time so that was a no go. So I had to restore from backup to the previous version. I'm wondering if Play 6 has that problem.
 
I am also considering Percussion. I recently upgraded to the latest version of Play 5 and had problems with dropped notes with offline bouncing. I use bounce in place all the time so that was a no go. So I had to restore from backup to the previous version. I'm wondering if Play 6 has that problem.

i should get my drive today.

i'll be giving it a thorough run through.

hoping to use Play 6 in Vienna Ensemble Pro 6 as well.

Cheap experiment at least.
 
is the soundsonline page busy or having problems? i cant seem to access my account the whole day. tried in safari and chrome and it keeps loading forever :/

wanted to go for percussion diamond.

edit: ok now it seems to work after loading like 5 minutes. whatever ;)
 
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Would love to hear from you about what you think Diamond added over Gold, once you get going!
I just recently got HO diamond and very happy with it. The biggest benefit of diamond over gold is extra mic positions. I really like the sound of adding the close mic with the main mic. The close mic has a drier, crisper, more immediate tone to it.

The string divisi samples are nice too. Those are the only reason why I got diamond over gold, and at the last sale it wasn't that much more, I think around $100.
 
i can confirm the above. the close mics make a huge difference and add quite alot of detail. i also have woodwinds and like the close mics the most. for brass i also like the surround mics for example.

for the current price you cannot go wrong and nothing beats the hollywood range for the price. if you can afford diamond id always go for it.
 
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