Opinion shopping - Orchestral softsynths??

Howdy folks -

The title kinda says it all - I'm curious as to what people are using for VSTi's emphasizing orchestral and vocal sounds.  Balance simplicity, authenticity, and upgrade path i.e. can I get a "lite" version and then upgrade to a full if I like it/need more voices/etc?  Plugin is the priority, if it can run standalone, so much the better.

I won't say money is no object, bang for the buck helps, but I have modest resources I'm willing to invest in the right program.

Thanks all!

Oh - and best of all to everyone in '11.......

The orchestral shootout was by no means comprehensive.  There wasn't a single Vienna Symphonic Library entry.  In my estimation, if you have about $1k to drop, then I'd say get VSL Special Edition.  You should also budget for a true-stereo reverb plugin such as Audiodamage EOS, 2C Breeze or 2C Aether or even Altiverb to get the most out of it. 

From that base collection you can augment it with more articulations from VSL or get other complimentary libraries such as LA Scoring Strings, Hollywood Strings, Symphobia, Wallander Brass, etc.

If your budget is more modest, then you're basically stuck with Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 which is fine for sketching and pre-production work. The single-velocity samples don't have the detail or expressiveness required for exposed orchestral work.  The East West Quantum Leap Orchestra products have come down in price dramatically, but a lot of people have been less than pleased with the reliability of their PLAY sampling engine.

There are several options for choirs, none of which are cheap.   

If you want a bunch of opinions on this subject by guys who do fake orchestra stuff very well, go to the vi-control.net forum. 

The VSL stuff is in a class by itself. I walked into the VSL booth at NAMM one year, intending to just take a shortcut through it, and was totally captivated by what was playing over their sound system. I had to sit down, totally forgetting about where I was previously headed, and just soak up that fantastic sound.

Not to be confused with the VSL libraries that come bundled with Kontakt. Those must be VSL's throwaway first attempts, because they're not in the same league.

Not cheap, but a reasonable compromise between price and expressiveness is EWQLSO. Takes a dongle, though, if that's a showstopper for you. The first-place winner in our orchestral shootout was an EWQLSO Gold entry.

GPO is an excellent budget solution, especially if you're doing orchestration for pop/rock rather than orchestral music per se. Randy Bowser has made some very good recordings with it.

When we did the orchestral shootout, the main lesson learned was that the skill of the operator is far more important than the quality of the library. We had some great entries from talented orchestrators using very modest tools, including the much-maligned TTS-1.

Wow - a veritable cornucopia (take that, spellchecker...) of good info.  That's why I love youse guys.....

Thanks all, some good stuff to chew on here - appreciate it!!