What's new

Spitfire Albion One vs EWQL Cloud Composer X

hollywood Orchestra Gold because you'd have all the patches separated. In case you need them. Hollywood strings also has ensemble patches + violin 1 for the right hand for sketching.
 
decision would be very easily made if I were you.

I have a lot of SPitfire stuff but that's because I didn't try out composers cloud for 30$ a month before I started all the Spitfire stuff.

If you got one Spitfire product it'll be like a snowball and make you buy what you don't have in Albion ONE you'll likely end up CRAVING to spend up to 2500$ so I'd be careful

Why not give the composer cloud a try for 30 a month then go from there if you're not satisfied?
 
A couple of things have stopped me just going for the EWQL. One, read lots of people have problems with the Play engine being sluggish/problematic. Two, a lot of reviews and people seem to criticize the brass. Three, I don't have capacity for Diamond, so it would be Hollywood Orchestra Gold which are 16-bit samples and only on 1 mic position. Any thoughts on any of that?
 
A couple of things have stopped me just going for the EWQL. One, read lots of people have problems with the Play engine being sluggish/problematic. Two, a lot of reviews and people seem to criticize the brass. Three, I don't have capacity for Diamond, so it would be Hollywood Orchestra Gold which are 16-bit samples and only on 1 mic position. Any thoughts on any of that?

I heard the opposite about brass. It's one of their strong suit. The play engine should be better than years ago because I heard they updated it.

It's a relatively dry library with that one position you can still have a lot of flexibility.

In terms of big problems, spitfire has a plenty such as the drums velocity problem in Albion ONE and volume deficiency/loss in some patches that makes me not as confident when mixing their products. But nothing sojnds as good spitfire
 
I was impressed with Albion I but I know what you mean about limitations pushing you towards buying more products. I'm struggling to decide which way to go.

EWQL 16-bit samples... does that not affect the sound quality & timbre? And headroom? Would the 16-bit Gold samples be genuinely competitive for library work?
 
If I had my time again - Composer Cloud all the way. Learn to use those East West tools and you'll master the Spitfire stuff easily later.
 
I was impressed with Albion I but I know what you mean about limitations pushing you towards buying more products. I'm struggling to decide which way to go.

EWQL 16-bit samples... does that not affect the sound quality & timbre? And headroom? Would the 16-bit Gold samples be genuinely competitive for library work?

I personally can't hear that difference especially for orchestral music but for electronic music I can sort of hear a difference because they all use the limiter to battle out the loudness war and the bit depth kinda affects the full-ness of the bass, not sure if it was the bit depth or mp3 loss from .wav but I think it's related
 
In my opinion (I usually don't say it this way but if I don't there's going to be a few members that's going to be pissed at me for saying things as if they were facts) the only thing Albion ONE does better than the original 1 was the staccato/spiccato tightness. Albion 1 sounded more realistic plus it didn't have that low drum bug. If you ask me.
 
Welcome to VIC!

A couple of things have stopped me just going for the EWQL. One, read lots of people have problems with the Play engine being sluggish/problematic.

This was certainly true in the past. With the long-promised PLAY 5 update, I don't experience those issues anymore. So, don't be dissuaded by anti-PLAY posts from before 2017 (you may even find I wrote some of them, haha).

Two, a lot of reviews and people seem to criticize the brass.

I'm surprised, the brass is by far the most perennial of the libraries in my view. I still hear people use it all the time in mockups. It's true that there are several libraries out there that try to be even better than HW Brass, but they're all over $500. Also, even if you get one or more of those libraries at some future time, you'll still find uses for HWB.

If anything, I think the woodwinds are widely acknowledged as the Hollywood series's weak point. Take a close listen to the mockups and see if you're comfortable/happy with the woodwind sound.

The strings also have a very specific character baked into the sound. It's by no means a "neutral" string sound. So have a listen to those mockups too and see if you like the tone.

Three, I don't have capacity for Diamond, so it would be Hollywood Orchestra Gold which are 16-bit samples and only on 1 mic position. Any thoughts on any of that?

16-bit samples are not really that bad at all ;)

Having only one mic position is more problematic - ideally you'd want multiple mics to be able to mix specific sounds based on the genre or mood of your music. But this isn't much of a difference from your other library choice, Albion - the nature of Spitfire's recording setup means you don't get a tremendous amount of variability, it's more like "This sounds rather dry and it's in a nice church" vs "This sounds very wet and it's in a nice church." (obviously "nice church" is a huge understatement for the sound of AIR Studios ;) )

IMO if you are just starting out, EastWest Composer Cloud is offering you a tremendous value. For those of us who already own their best libraries there's not as much value in the cloud. They have a lot of libraries besides the HW series but those have aged rather poorly.

Also, before you buy, check out "Berlin Orchestra Inspire." It's another "starter" style product that's really good.
 
The 16-bit & 1 mic thing does bug me a bit.

Anyone use Play5 in Cubase? Cubase is my main daw, on PC.
 
But nothing sojnds as good spitfire
Have to disagree. Especially when it comes to Albion One which sounds rather artificial and over-processed. And for example Cinematic Strings 2 sound better than any SA strings, IMO.

I'd go for ComposerCloud for sure. So many libraries and instruments and with a good reverb you can make a very fine sounding orchestra even with 1 mic position.
 
Top Bottom