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East West Hollywood Orchestra: compared to VSL and Spitfire?

I own a lot the libraries you mentioned and I also have the Hollywood orchestra Silver and Gold series. I think they are excellent. I've been able to get terrific results just from the Silver collection. To me, the sounds are clear and pristine. Because I don't have Platinum I use Spaces to treat the sounds and find it very helpful. There are tons of articulations and they all sound uniformly great. I do film score and concert work type pieces.
As i am reading this, i am just trying them out right now :) I think, i am going to like them! Really lots of articulations and possibilities to use them! A great new member in my Library-family!
 
Yes, the big patches do take a long time to load. And it is a library that the more you know about how the real instruments work, the better you can make it sound.

The sound is glorious! The fact that I'm willing to put up with the scandalous offense that is PLAY really says a lot about the qualities of the library itself. But God, how I wish that this hellish contraption got reworked and brought up to standard one day ... but I guess that's very unlikely at this point?
 
The sound is glorious! The fact that I'm willing to put up with the scandalous offense that is PLAY really says a lot about the qualities of the library itself. But God, how I wish that this hellish contraption got reworked and brought up to standard one day ... but I guess that's very unlikely at this point?

Look, I no longer work for EW so I am not obligated to say anything but that is pure hyperbole.

Does Play give you all the features that a full sampler like Kontakt does? No. Do the big instruments take quite a while to load? Yes, (But so do the big Kontakt ones, like Kirk Hunter Concert Brass 2, Embertone Friedlander violin and Herring clarinet.) Have there been updates that were dogs? Yes.

But the Mixer is WAY better than Kontakt's, as is the browser, as is its method of creating and configuring multi-ouputs, as is its ability to redirect libraries location.. And in recent years, it runs fine, especially on PC.

So "hellish contraption" is a frankly ridiculous description.
 
Look, I no longer work for EW so I am not obligated to say anything but that is pure hyperbole.

Does Play give you all the features that a full sampler like Kontakt does? No. Do the big instruments take quite a while to load? Yes, (But so do the big Kontakt ones, like Kirk Hunter Concert Brass 2, Embertone Friedlander violin and Herring clarinet.) Have there been updates that were dogs? Yes.

But the Mixer is WAY better than Kontakt's, as is the browser, as is its method of creating and configuring multi-ouputs, as is its ability to redirect libraries location.. And in recent years, it runs fine, especially on PC.

So "hellish contraption" is a frankly ridiculous description.
I agrer
 
Do not check it out, IMHO, as it is a very unfair representation because HS is not used how HS is designed to be used. It is not a library for those who want instant gratification.

Well lets be honest, The point of the video was to first off show what each library sounds like out of the box compared to other libraries. The only way to do that fairly was to load the best patches each library had. And play the exact same line on each. If the aim was to be which library sounds the best after an hours work then that would be a different video. It also showed the speed at which a PLAY library loads in on a pretty common if not a little beefier machine than the people watching. Granted at least now PLAY loads in the background, but is still unplayable until it loads.

As for 'Its not a library for instant gratification' : In a nut shell, thats exactly what my video is saying. If you want it to work for you, you have to put in effort to make it so, where as with the competition, not so much. I could literally make a bongo sound like an epic taiko with some effort and time but I wouldn't release the former and say its the latter and then compare it to some awesome 8dio perc lib that sounds great out of the box lol....and then when someone compares the two have me defend it by saying its not designed that way, its not for those looking for instant gratification.

So yeah if a library isnt putting its best foot forward with tone and loading times. Then someone does a video comparing the first foot forward of libraries, don't be surprised when yours comes out not looking the best.

So yeah go watch it if you want to see what else is out there a bit. TBH it never hurts to have more than one lib for layering anyways.

-DJ
 
Nonsense. Here is the analogy :a guy drives a car in a video that has automatic transmission and says, "See how smoothly it drives."

Then he starts to drive a car with manual transmission but he doesn't know how to use a clutch to shift and says, "This doesn't drive as smoothly."
The problem was not HS, it was your ineptness with it.
 
Nonsense. Here is the analogy :a guy drives a car in a video that has automatic transmission and says, "See how smoothly it drives."

Then he starts to drive a car with manual transmission but he doesn't know how to use a clutch to shift and says, "This doesn't drive as smoothly."
The problem was not HS, it was your ineptness with it.

Explain to me again how my ineptness caused the slow load times. Or made using the exact same midi data to compare the libraries raw tone one by one, an unfair process? I never claimed the video to be an in-depth look at each library, just my initial impressions. If HS comes out the box working and playing like ass thats not my ineptness, that was on EW. I can make any of those libraries sound as good as I need, I have no doubt, Other libraries get me where I needed to be faster, with less hurdles, but that wasn't even the point of the video, like I said it was comparing how each library put its best foot forward.....HS just managed to stick its in dog shit....which is not my fault.

-DJ
 
Yes, the load times were slow, fair enough but.. You had bad patch choices for starters. You performed them poorly secondly.


Folks, do I really need to do a short video to show how good it can sound out of the box when in the hands of someone who knows how to use it or after all these years is it now common knowledge?
 
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Yes, the load times were slow, fair enough but.. You had bad patch choices for starters. You performed them poorly secondly.


Folks, do I really need to do a short video to show how good it can sound out of the box when in the hands of someone who knows how to use it or after all these years is it now common knowledge?

What patches were more appropriate? If I remember correctly I used the bow change legato ones which sound great! I still don't understand all this hatred towards me Jay. Again its been a while but if I remember right, in the video I think I go on to say the sound of HS is amazing, but PLAY sours the experience with its slow load times and less efficient use of RAM...which you agree yourself constantly are things that are facts. It sometimes feels like your dislike for me overrides your ability to actually read what I say even when its agreeing with you on things lol.

-DJ
 
The problem is that usually the same MIDI doesn't work right on two different libraries. They don't respond the same way.

Absolutely true, but it was the most fair way I could think to have the two libraries play raw samples back so we could hear how they sound side by side. Again you can make anything work with some effort but the point of the video was to show the raw samples and the engine loadtimes/ram usage etc. I never did an in depth 'lets make all the things pretty' video.....mostly because of the abusive messages I got from EW fans after that video.

-DJ
 
What patches were more appropriate? If I remember correctly I used the bow change legato ones which sound great! I still don't understand all this hatred towards me Jay. Again its been a while but if I remember right, in the video I think I go on to say the sound of HS is amazing, but PLAY sours the experience with its slow load times and less efficient use of RAM...which you agree yourself constantly are things that are facts. It sometimes feels like your dislike for me overrides your ability to actually read what I say even when its agreeing with you on things lol.

-DJ

I don't hate you Daniel, I hate your lazy approach to things like this. Had you chosen the basic Legato Slur patches and played the parts in, or really understood how they are designed to work, you would have had a better result. The bow change patches are the hardest ones to control.

Once again, you can't do that and expect it to be fair anymore than you can expect a manual transmission to behave like an automatic transmission. HS is best as a player's library, Nick is a good player. TJ is a good player, I am a good player. If you are going to program MIDI in, then you have to understand how the different patches react to cc11 with some patches while cc1 with some others and in tandem with still some others. Which with the patch choices you made, clearly you did not. There was nothing fair about it.

You are right about one thing, some libraries do sound better even in the hands of an inept user, like you were at that point at least, and HS is not one of them.

The proof is that there are people in this thread who just bought it and are already happy with what they are hearing. What does that tell you?


.
 
I don't hate you Daniel, I hate your lazy approach to things like this. Had you chosen the basic Legato Slur patches and played the parts in, or really understood how they are designed to work, you would have had a better result. The bow change patches are the hardest ones to control.

Once again, you can't do that and expect it to be fair anymore than you can expect a manual transmission to behave like an automatic transmission. HS is best as a player's library, Nick is a good player. TJ is a good player, I am a good player. If you are going to program MIDI in, then you have to understand how the different patches react to cc11 with some patches while cc1 with some others and in tandem with still some others. Which with the patch choices you made, clearly you did not. There was nothing fair about it.

You are right about one thing, some libraries do sound better even in the hands of an inept user, like you were at that point at least, and HS is not one of them.

The proof is that there are people in this thread who just bought it and are already happy with what they are hearing. What does that tell you?


.

Like I keep saying, Its the most fair comparison I could create to show how the raw sounds stack against each other AND I still go on to say that HS sound the better of the two. So again I fail to see why you take such an issue with the video, HS sounds great, PLAY is slow to load and uses more RAM....where is the contention. And you car comparison is a little off, its more like I was expecting an automatic then receiving a manual....both of which I can drive but its not as simple to use as all my other automatics, which I can choose to drive instead of the manual. But thats beside the point, I think HS sounds great and as I say in the video it would be my absolute goto if it was a Kontakt instrument, but even still the performance of PLAY doesn't stand up to Kontakt libraries which these days can offer you a comparable sound (if not better depending on taste) with faster load times, less ram footprint and is easier to use. Hehe again feel free to call me an inept composer all you like, I will always let my skills be judged by the work I produce, but I still think just having the same midi data for each library was the easiest way to show how a patch sounded raw (the aim wasn't to make it sound good, just raw)

-DJ
 
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Nick is a good player

That may be overstating it. :) I'm a keyboard-as-tool player, meaning I'm good enough to play parts in and edit them so nobody knows.

You and I believe TJ are real keyboard players.
 
That may be overstating it. :) I'm a keyboard-as-tool player, meaning I'm good enough to play parts in and edit them so nobody knows.

You and I believe TJ are real keyboard players.

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I meant Nick Phoenix. ☺️

Anyway my original advice stands: avoid that video unless you want to know exactly what not to expect from HS if you develop even a modicum of skill using it.
 
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Wow .. a hot discussion going on here, during i had my sound sleep in a calm Austrian night :)

Well, it think there are just different approaches and tastes of different people. But still thanks to all of you of pointing out the pros and contras of the libraries! I experienced, that for different musical pieces and styles, one anyway needs different sounds + layering of different libraries. So its always good, to have as many options as possible in ones pocket :)

Ashermusic: thanks a lot for your critical approach to the issue. Although i bought Hollywood Percussion and Choir already some time ago, i not really used them a lot and are not so familiar with using the play machine in the right way (just loading an instrument in a track, thats it till now). If you happen to have some links where this is explained more detailed, i would be grateful to you!

Daniel James: although i have not watched this particular video of yours yet, i am still very grateful to you. As i started to become active in the VI composer field last year, i came across your videos right in the beginning, and they gave me a lot of inspiration and help, how to work with virtual instruments, and which libraries to buy .... and i spent a small fortune on that in the meantime, haha! Many thanks!

So ... wish you all a nice and peaceful day!!! Greetings from a sunny morning in Salzburg!
 
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Yes, the load times were slow, fair enough but.. You had bad patch choices for starters. You performed them poorly secondly.


Folks, do I really need to do a short video to show how good it can sound out of the box when in the hands of someone who knows how to use it or after all these years is it now common knowledge?
It would be great! :)
 
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