When experiencing patches included in instrument libraries we may give adjectives as following:
Some legatos patches in EW symphonic orchestra (by. ex cellos) are expressive and realistics. (EW SO is an oldy by now, but there are not such patches in EW Hollywood serie)
By contrast some patches are not so inspiring by themselves (playing solo) but will integrates in the mix and orchestration very easily (mainly 8DIO patches – thinking of strings and choir)
So EastWest did it! Like Adobe, Microsoft, Avid and many others EW give us the possibility to pay every month to use their libraries.
Honestly at this point I’m not excited at all especially when thinking at the products available under this license. If you are not an EW product’s user that will cost about 50 bucks/month (45,99 EUR). If you are already an EW product’s user that will do it for 30 (27,99 EUR).
What do we get at this price? All the “Gold” range of products, so a little bit better than “Silver” (their entry price products) but not yet “Platinium”. Usually that means 1 mic position instead of three and 16 bit samples. I would care more of having mic positions than the bit resolution and when I think to what others offers in the same price range I will not think twice.
Here is the comparison chart for Symphonic Orchestra:
| Silver | Gold | Platinum | Platinum Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Articulations | Essential articulations and instruments | All articulations and instruments | All articulations and instruments | All articulations and instruments |
| Mic Positions | Stage mics only (conductor’s position) |
Stage mics only (conductor’s position)* |
All three mic positions (close, stage, hall) |
All three mic positions (close, stage, hall) |
| Sample Rate | 44.1kHz | 44.1kHz | 44.1kHz | 44.1kHz |
| Sample Bit Depth** | 16-bit | 16-bit | 24-bit | 24-bit and 16-bit |
| Installed size | 11GB | 33GB* | 117GB | 194GB |
In other producst we also have the denomination “Diamond” ex. Hollywood Woodwinds, in this case the difference is in the delivered articulations and of course mic. position and bit resolution.
So anyway the catalog is huge, here it is:
East West relies on the “Play” engine and iLok protection. I have nothing bad to say against iLok but I hear and read often bad experiences of it, and many users have welcomed that Waves ceased to make the use of it mandatory. Play engine often complains of getting too few memory even if Kontakt is still happy with my system memory. I often “print” the tracks to audio so that the engine does not need to process and render the MIDI data live.
My opinion is that we have much better and newer products available with exceptional scripting and sound qualities (thinking of 8DIO and Spitfire audio to name a few…)
Please comment your thoughts about this way of marketing instrument libraries. The Pros and Cons of having our credit cards debited on a regular basis to use these tools.